Topicality, Terminology, and Too Many Acronyms | Champion Briefs
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June 6, 2014


Topicality, Terminology, and Too Many Acronyms

By Christian Chessman

By the end of this post, the phrase "Going for T in PF at NSDA" should make perfect sense.

This topic is unusual for Public Forum debate because it permits – and honestly, encourages – a strong topicality debate at the core of the resolution. The action mechanism "strengthening the relationship" is not a term of art, and seems amorphous and indeterminate. The limits to the scope of "strengthen" appear to be the creativity of the affirmative team – a clever team could find a niche action with niche advocates and steamroll with a small affirmative. This post will look at various interpretations of the topicality debate for the NSDA topic.

What is topicality?

If you're familiar with the term, skip this section.

For those who have not yet been introduced to the term, topicality is a term originating in Policy Debate, and refers to the debate over the parameters of the resolution. That involves debates over the interpretation(s) of the various terms in the resolution, as well as the interactions between those terms. Negatives who wish to challenge the affirmative can and should advance an interpretation of the terms they feel the affirmative does not meet, and then an explanation of how the affirmative does not meet them.

Topicality Example on this Topic.

Let's say I am the negative team, and I interpret the phrases "strengthen" and "with Ukraine" to require the affirmative to act directly with Ukraine. An affirmative who argues for sanctioning Russia would not meet this interpretation, because it acts directly on Russia, and indirectly affects the relationship between NATO and Ukraine. The negative should explain that this means the affirmative has not proven the resolution, since their arguments fall outside the umbrella of arguments pertinent to the topic. The negative can acknowledge that "strengthen" can cover a variety of international actions, but argue that the affirmative takes an international action outside of that coverage.

The sanctions affirmative can respond two ways; first, by arguing that they meet the interpretation of the affirmative and second, that they have a counter-interpretation that is preferable to the interpretation of the negative. To argue that they meet the interpretation of the negative, the affirmative could read evidence claiming that Ukrainian officials have requested that NATO sanction Russia, and then argue that they are directly strengthening the relationship by fulfilling Ukrainian requests. Even though the affirmative's action is directly targeted at Russia, the process of carrying out that action is a direct interaction with Ukrainian requests for action.

Competing Interpretations and Counter Interpretations

The affirmative could also advance a counter-interpretation. They should respond by arguing the "strengthening" and "with" can be indirect as well as direct, and explain why their interpretation should be preferred by the judge when the two contradict (or "compete" in policy debate terms). Those explanations can be grammatical in nature – for example, an argument that the preposition "with" modifies "relationship" rather than the functioning as an adverb to "strengthen". As a result, the "with" refers to the relationship rather than the act of strengthening. Instead of "[strengthening with] Ukraine" (an act of strengthening taken in conjunction with Ukrainians) the topic requires "strengthening [with Ukraine]" (an act of strengthening that develops the relationship NATO has with Ukraine). Since these arguments can be complicated, debaters should attempt to explain them as clearly as possible.

Another reason to prefer the interpretation of the affirmative might be that it is consistent with the usage of the term in the literature surrounding the topic. This shows that there is a consensus that the term means what the affirmative interprets it to mean, suggesting that definition is more accurate.

These are just examples of reasons to prefer an interpretation – policy debate usually grounds those reasons in appeals to competitive fairness and debater education, which are the traditional purposes of policy debate (hardware and learning).

Defining Strengthening

This clause of the resolution suggests that the affirmative's advocacy must be more than the status quo because it must "strengthen" the existing relationship. If the negative can argue that the affirmative's advocated actions have already been done, then the affirmative has not proven the topic. If the status quo is desirable or adequate, then no further strengthening action is necessary.

Since NATO has engaged this situation extensively, the affirmatives options for new forms of "strengthening" are severely limited. Since the term "strengthening" only makes sense in reference to the status quo, affirmative teams must keep constant tabs on the situation in Ukraine. If NATO puts the affirmative's mechanism into place the morning of NSDA nationals…the affirmative needs a new case. Negative debaters can take advantage of this burden to pigeonhole the affirmative into advocating for undesirable or aggressive actions by arguing that everything else has already been done. These claims will have to be evidenced, of course, and suggest a benefit to staying updated daily on Ukraine's situation.

The most effective affirmative responses will focus on distinguishing details of status quo programs from the mechanisms advocated by their case, and will have evidence indicating that the specifics of their affirmative remain undone. For example, there is a present sanctions regime against Russia, but the scope of people it is applicable to in Russia is extremely limited. Affirmatives who supported sanctions generally could argue that they are at present incomplete, which suggests that a more thorough regime meets the topical requirement to "strengthen".

Affirmatives could also argue incomplete compliance from NATO countries; Germany has been recalcitrant to sanction Russia, though other NATO states have already sanctioned them. Increasing the number of NATO states enacting the mechanism in question likely also meets "strengthen".

Looking Back: Past NATO actions

Let's take a look at what NATO has done so far: (this list is as of 4:42am on 5-19-14)

  1. Publicly condemned Russia1
  2. Completely ended "all practical civilian and military cooperation"2
  3. Targeted Sanctions (seven Russian individuals and 17 financial entities linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin)3
  4. Stationed temporary troops in neighboring Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia)4
  5. Called for permanently stationing troops in the above Baltic countries5
  6. Conducted joint military exercises with those neighbors (including heavy artillery, heavily armed combat vehicles, and tanks)6 with over 6,000 soldiers7
  7. Deployed fighter aircraft to patrol Ukraine's borders (then increased the total number twice)8
  8. Deployed naval forces including: nine minehunter ships9 and a warship into the Black Sea10
  9. NATO also has standing interstate security agreements with Ukraine that preceded Russia's aggression, including: "peace-support operations, defence and security sector reform, military-to-military cooperation, armaments, civil emergency planning, science and environment, and public information. Cooperation in all areas is currently being intensified to enhance Ukraine's ability to provide for its own security.11

Looking Forward: Potential NATO actions

Though NATO has taken extensive steps to strengthen its relationship with Ukraine, it has not exhausted the full scope of potential interstate actions. NATO can take actions that fall broadly into two categories; diplomatic measures and military measures.

Diplomatic measures can include – and are not limited to – public declarations of support for Ukraine, specific public pledges of action, threats against Russia, broader economic sanctions that target lower level officials, travel bans for Russian leaders and public figures and formally admitting Ukraine to NATO as a member state.

Examples of military measures include permanently deploying troops around Ukraine, deploying troops in Ukraine, conducting complex joint military exercises with the Ukranian military, providing training to the Ukranian military, covert military support, intelligence support, aid packages of food, money or both, training and deploying rapid-response teams, and selling or donating military supplies.

Defining "with Ukraine"

This article has already examined the concept underlying this topicality argument, and I won't rehash that here. Instead, this section will focus on conveying this argument to the judge, with examples of cases which are topical under both interpretations.

When framing the argument, I suggest categorizing actions as either "direct" or "indirect". Direct strengthening refers to anything that acts directly upon Ukraine, such as an aid package. Indirect strengthening refers to anything that acts indirectly upon Ukraine, such as a sanction against Russia.

The "direct" / "indirect" dichotomy provides a simple and intuitive way of communicating the broader argument, and should be defined for the judge in the round.

Negative debaters can explain why "indirect" actions create too broad a topical umbrella by giving examples of affirmatives that meet "indirect" action, but seem intuitively outside of the resolution. For example, an affirmative which discussed covert assassination of Putin would almost certainly deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine, and would be an enormous political and material risk to the NATO countries which participated in it. An interpretation of the topic that allowed such broad affirmatives makes it nearly impossible to debate for the negative, since literally almost anything could be topical.

As the affirmative, one way you can argue that you meet the interpretation of the negative is by pointing out that some actions fit both categories. For example, NATO could issue a security guarantee to Ukraine, pledging to act against militarily against Russia should it invade. Such a guarantee is both a promise to Ukraine (direct) and a threat against Russia (indirect). In that sense, the affirmative and negative interpretations may not be mutually exclusive, and therefore not a reason to vote negative.

Defining "in order to deter further Russian aggression"

This clause of the resolution suggests two interesting insights; first, that the direct endpoint of the "strengthening" mechanism must be deterrence and second, that the deterrence is exclusively focused on future actions.

The former insight suggests that the affirmative must at least briefly discuss the ways in which it deters Russian aggression and at most focus on it entirely. Negative debaters could argue that actions whose primary purpose is not deterrence are not topical. For example, a strong affirmative argument is that NATO action is necessary to prevent the collapse of the global nonproliferation regime12. Actions whose primary purposes relates to nuclear nonproliferation and giving Ukraine security assurances in conformity with the Budapest Memorandum do not appear to meet the topic, because they are not about Russian aggression. Functionally the topic limits the affirmative scope of impacts to "deterring Russian aggression".

Affirmative debaters can get around this argument by responding that actions can simultaneously have, equal multiple purposes. Continuing with the security assurance example, an affirmative could respond that deterring Russian aggression is the center of the argument; in deterring Russia, NATO shows that states can be secure while still giving up their nuclear weapons. In this framing, the nonproliferation arguments are an after-effect of deterrence, rather than a replacement for it.

The latter insight suggests that affirmatives which attempt to end current Russian aggression do not meet the topic since the topic limits debaters to deterring "future" action. For example, affirmative cases targeted at getting Russia to return its troops to Russia would be untopical because that's not deterring "further" aggression, it's correcting past aggression. Negative debaters can use this argument to moot portions of the affirmatives case; for example, if the affirmative had an advantage predicated on reducing Russia's presence in Crimea, the negative could dismiss it as irrelevant to the topic because that aggression had already occurred.

Putting the T in Portable Skills

Aside from being valuable on this debate topic, learning how to argue competing interpretations of a word or phrase is an important skill in winning topic scope questions in future debate rounds, in law school analyses (trust me, from contracts to Con Law it's all we do.), and public policymaking. But most importantly, future debate rounds. The key to winning topicality arguments is making them accessible to the listener; what your interpretation is, why is makes the most sense, and why it is a reason to disregard the opponent's argument or arguments. The best litmus test for argument accessibility that I have found is your parents – if you can persuasively explain your topicality argument to your dad or mom, you deserve to (and will) win rounds.

Works Cited

  1. Reuters. "Ukraine Crisis Will Be 'Game Changer' for NATO". Reprinted by The Moscow Times. May 18, 2014. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/ukraine-crisis-will-be-game-changer-for-nato/500342.html
  2. Smith-Spark, Laura and Palk, Susannah. "Ukraine crisis: NATO military chief warns Russian troops could invade swiftly". CNN. April 3, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/02/world/europe/ukraine-crisis/
  3. These sanctions are "largely a symbolic gesture, rather than a battering ram against Putin's imperial ambitions" which gives affirmative cases potential room to argue for stiffer sanctions. Payne, Amy. "Q&A: Do the Latest Sanctions on Russia Go Far Enough?" The Heritage Foundation. April 29, 2014. http://blog.heritage.org/2014/04/29/qa-latest-sanctions-russia-go-far-enough/
  4. Reuters. "Ukraine Crisis Will Be 'Game Changer' for NATO". Reprinted by The Moscow Times. May 18, 2014. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/ukraine-crisis-will-be-game-changer-for-nato/500342.html
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Reuters. "NATO's record 6,000-strong drills kick off in Estonia amid Ukraine tensions". May 5, 2014. http://rt.com/news/156928-nato-military-drills-estonia/
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Bandow, Doug. "Washington Should Not Defend Ukraine or Expand NATO: U.S. Should Shift Responsibility For Europe's Defense to Europe" CATO Institute. April 7, 2014. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/washington-should-not-defend-ukraine-or-expand-nato-us-should-shift
  11. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "NATO's Relations with Ukraine". NATO Topic Listings. Updated April 2014. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_37750.htm
  12. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a security guarantee from the US, Russia, and the UK in an informal treaty called the Budapest Memorandum. Since Ukraine lost a major deterrent by giving up its nuclear weapons, these three countries pledged to militarily defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russia's actions are a clear violation of the Budapest Memorandum – and a failure to act on NATO's part will signal that Ukraine was foolish to give up its nuclear weapons, increasing the likelihood that other small states pursue them for lack of a better way to be secure.