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b y D a v i d M . C h e s h i e r b y D a v i d M . C h e s h i e r b y D a v i d M . C h e s h i e r b y D a v i d M . C h e s h i e r b y D a v i d M . C h e s h i e r

The most popular category of counterplan on the weap-ons of mass destruction (WMD) topic involves consultation.The negative argues that instead of promptly adopting and imple-menting the plan, the United States should consult some speci-fied government beforehand, only moving forward if the plan meetsthe approval of our consultation partner. Many versions were

produced over the summer, including counterplans to consultNATO, Japan, Russia, China, Israel, India, and Canada.On this resolution, the consultation counterplan is often an

irresistible strategic option for the negative. Because most plantexts as written advocate immediate implementation (if they dontthe affirmative may be in topicality trouble), the counterplan ismutually exclusive, for one cant act and consult about acting atthe same time. Because the resolution locks the affirmative intofrequently defending policies the rest of the world would agree to,the counterplan consultation process would usually culminate inthe eventual passage of the plan. Thus, the negative is able toargue there is little or no downside to asking for input. Consulta-tion promises to capture the advantages, with the value addedbenefit of an improvement in Americas relations with NATO, Rus-sia, or China (from here on Ill use Russia as my example). Theview is also prevalent that the consultation counterplan cannotbe permuted by the affirmative, since to do so invariably commitsthe affirmative either to severance or intrinsicness (more on thisshortly). Consultation is here to stay.

For the counterplan to work, the negative must include lan-guage, which gives the consultation partner a veto over the

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plan. That is, Russia must be able to sayno, and if they do, we must agree to follow.To do anything less is to promote illegiti-mate or artificial consultation, which the lit-erature typically condemns. The idea is thatRussia doesnt want to be dictated to; rather,they want to be taken seriously, with assur-ances their objections and suggestions willbe incorporated, and this is true of NATO,China, and all the rest.

Advice to explicitly include a vetoprovision may seem counterintuitive, espe-cially to those affirmative debaters willingto defend the standard of textual competi-tion. The logic of textual competition whenadvocated by the affirmative goes like this:if language from the counterplan can liter-ally be pulled from the counterplan and af-fixed to the plan (with the effect of generat-ing a permutation, yielding net benefits),then the counterplan does not compete evenif the attached counterplan text radically al-ters the meaning of the original plan. In theconsultation context, to provide an example,textual competition defenders will seize onthe veto language for the purpose of apermutation. They will say they can per-mute the plan by affixing the veto languageto the original plan text, even though thistransforms the plan into somethingprobabilistically topical, and in effect makesthe permutation the equivalent of thecounterplan. Because textual competitionstandards are not widely endorsed on thenational circuit, Ill pass up the chance to

discuss them in more depth, except to saythat apart from this difficulty, including vetolanguage in the counterplan is in every otherrespect I know a good idea for the negative.

The events of September 11,devastatingly tragic as they were, havechanged the strategic landscape in waysfavorable to consultation arguments. Be-fore September 11, the Bush Administrationwas widely criticized for its ungenuine com-mitment to alliances in Europe, for instance,Bush and his team were widely dismissedas permanently predisposed against genu-ine deliberation. Instead, Bushs preferredpolicy, on everything from Kyoto to missiledefense, was to arrive for talks where themain purpose was for Bush to tell Europeand others what he intended to do. All thisseems to have changed, if only momentarily,in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks onNew York and Washington. Now, if onlyout of the urgent American self-interest inalliance building, the Bush team is consult-ing everyone in sight. This fact is not with-out benefits to the affirmative after all,

perhaps consultation truly is now the nor-mal means by which the United States doesbusiness. But the main effect is tostrengthen the negatives hand: the normalmeans argument is weak for other reasonsbeyond the fact situation of American di-plomacy, and given the current urgency of alliance consultation there is less reasonthan ever to force a plan into existence with-out seeking advice and input from our allies

or strategic competitors.I highly recommend an essay on theNATO consultation counterplan written byDan Shalmon, formerly a national champi-onship debater from Glenbrook North HighSchool (IL), now enjoying considerable suc-cess on the college circuit as a debater forthe University of California at Berkeley. Hisessay in this years Hitchhikers Companion(organized by Stefan Bauschard, published byParadigm www.oneparadigm.com) introducesthe argument in a sophisticated way. Shalmonlays out how to set up the argument incross-examination so that some affirmativeescape paths are foreclosed, includes a verygood bibliography, and prepares the nega-tive to answer the most common responses.Although his essay is specifically organizedaround the NATO literature, Shalmons theo-retical advice is applicable and sound forcounterplans engaging other consultationpartners. My essay is to supplement histhoughts by addressing some of the largertheoretical issues, and by adding anotherperspective to his discussion of the most

often defended permutations.

Two Weak Objections:International Fiat and Plan-Inclusion

Debaters are often tempted to initiatetwo theoretical objections to consultation,though neither really pertains. Some arguethe counterplan should be rejected becauseit necessarily entails international fiat. Asyou know, some object to international fiat(which usually takes the form of a plan orcounterplan acting through some other ac-tor, such as a counterplan to have Russiadismantle its nuclear forces at its own ini-tiative) as distortive of routine policy com-parison. In the context of an American de-bate, which we imagine might be happen-ing among American decision makers, itwould simply not be normal or germane fora senator to stand up and say: Hold on!We should not act in this case. Rather, weshould imagine that Russia has acted tosolve the problem for us. Others opposepermitting debaters to fiat through the so-called object of affirmative scrutiny; thus,

if the affirmative is urging us to contain1930s-era Nazism, they would object to acounterplan saying Hitler will voluntarilysuspend his genocide on the grounds thecounterplan is just as abusive as a crimetopic counterplan which has criminals aban-don their racketeering.

International actor counterplans(have Japan do the plan) have survivedthese arguments, and with good reason.

There is a full and nuanced literature as-sessing the comparative benefits of Ameri-can action as opposed to, say, Russian in-volvement in global affairs. And the Sen-ate example just offered can be dismissedas misconstruing the nature of fiat: even inthe world of magic wand fiat debaters arenot pretending to be senators when theyseek a judges endorsement for federal gov-ernment action. And if this is so, thecounterplan to fiat through India is funda-mentally no different than a plan which hasa high school student from Boise fiat theSenators of forty-nine states or Represen-tatives of 434 districts of which she is not acitizen, or a regulator who would probablynot consent even to an interview with a highschool visitor. Both plan and counterplanadvocates implore a judge to endorse thegovernmental action of agents largely for-eign to round participants. And who knowswhat we would do if we (gasp!) selectedanother topic with an international actor one supposes debate would have to end.

But whichever side of the issue one

endorses, it doesnt matter in the consulta-tion context since the counterplan does notdictate any action or response from anothergovernment. Properly written a consulta-tion counterplan will only specify Ameri-can governmental action: The U.S. federalgovernment shall consult with Russia overthe implementation of de-alerting propos-als. If Russia refuses to consult with theUnited States, or vetoes de-alerting, it willnot occur, and so on. This text imaginesno fiated Russian action, since it only or-ders the beginning of the process, whichoccurs wholly on the American side, andspecifies only an American response. And,remember, if even this degree of orches-trated state-to-state interaction is illegiti-mate fiat, then it is unclear how any affirma-tive plan operating under the topicality re-quirement to be a foreign policy couldsurvive the fiat challenge either.

Others will be tempted to object toconsultation counterplans on the groundsthat they are plan inclusive (hereafter,plan-inclusive counterplans are PICs).

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I dont know a single judge in America whofinds the PICs good/PICs bad debateintellectually illuminating, but that has notmuch impeded its success as an affirmativecounterplan response. As is the case withinternational fiat, most judges I know haveno definitive objection to PICs (and manybelieve they have much improved plan-cen-tered policy comparison), but because bothsides can be reasonably defended, and

since it takes little time to initiate the objec-tion, PICs theory debating is now popular.Again the issue is whether consulta-

tion really is plan-inclusive. I dont think itis, although others may disagree. Defend-ers of the PICs argument will say thecounterplan includes the plan since itdetails a scenario by which the plan will beimplemented (that is, if Russia says yes,the plan is enacted). But literally speaking,the mandates of the counterplan do not in-clude the plan, for the counterplan explic-itly adopts no part of it. The condition of Russian acceptance changes everything, inpart because what we eventually agree towith our Russian partners after a process of meaningful give-and-take may bear no cor-respondence whatsoever to the originalplan text thats how genuine consultationworks.

Is Consultation Artificially Competitive?Debate on the question of artificial

competition (by which I mean the issue of whether a counterplan is a genuine or rigged

objection to the plan) is today controlledby the back and forth over defended per-mutations. As a result, there is a tendencyto accept the legitimacy of the consultationcounterplan, since most (and maybe all)imaginable permutations suffer fatal theo-retical deficiencies. Well look at the spe-cific permutations in the next section, butone example suffices to explain the pointfor now. The so-called lie permutationsays we will commit to the plan (secretly if necessary), and we will consult (or pre-tend to), taking the chance our certain deci-sion to move forward will not be detected.Beyond the debate one might have over thedesirability of this ruse is the theoreticalintrinsicness problem. The part of the per-mutation carrying out the deception is nei-ther a part of the plan nor the counterplan;it is simply invented out of thin air andtacked on so as to produce a net benefit.This is normally thought illegitimate becauseallowing affirmatives to invent things to addon to the plan and counterplan invites un-checked abusiveness.

But it may be mistaken to so fullyconflate the issue of permutation legitimacyand artificial competitiveness. The consul-tation counterplan may pose an instance of an artificially rigged alternative to the plan,whose artificiality cannot be made plain bythe thought experiment of a permutation.

To see why consultation might be il-legitimate, even if that fact cannot be ex-pressed in a reasonable permutation, it is

productive to compare it to anothercounterplan thought illegitimate by most judges. If a negative team were to defend acounterplan to steal the plans funding anddivert it to AIDS treatment in southern Af-rica, most would find it abusive eventhough its not topical (in fact it has noth-ing to do with weapons of mass destruc-tion use), mutually exclusive (you cantspend the same money twice), and net ben-eficial (AIDS is the biggest threat to hu-manity). The problem is that, in the ab-sence of evidence that WMD and AIDSfunding naturally trade off, the counterplanoffers a choice only in the falsest, mostrigged sense. Reduced funding for AIDStreatment is not regularly an opportunitycost of WMD action, and only becomes onethanks to the counterplans fiat. Nor, totake a more extreme (and hopefully plainer)example, does the following counterplanpose a genuine choice: any adoption of de-alerting will be mandatorily interpretedas a repeal of AIDS programs worldwide.To tolerate these counterplans as genuinely

competitive is to utterly destroy the abilityof affirmatives to win, for as Dallas Perkinsargued many years ago, no affirmative canprove its plan desirable in every possibleworld (as created by counterplans), and thecapacity of the negative to re-define theworld in which the plan is tested, so as tomake the plan either unnecessary or unde-sirable, is unlimited.

The question is whether consultationfalls into this category of excludable or arti-ficially competitive counterplans despite ourapparent collective inability to produce alegitimate permutation illustrating the point.Does a consultation mandate create a con-trived comparison in the same way the anylaw that says de-alert will trigger repeal of AIDS treatment or the steal their moneycounterplans do? In my opinion, the affir-mative argument (consultation is artificial:the only reason consultation good evi-dence counts against us is because theyrigged fiat to consult on our plan) can becompellingly made, although deciding theissue requires us to take account of matters

both factual and theoretical.It matters, for example, whether con-

sultation normally happens or not. If theUnited States normally consults (e.g., theNATO Charter requires it), then thecounterplan mandate is not so rigged. Onthe other hand, if we regularly consult as amatter of treaty compliance then wouldntwe automatically do so on the plan too?

A side note: In the context of an oth-

erwise very smart essay, Shalmons answerto this question seems unusually weak, andin my view deeply flawed. Shalmon recom-mends the negative concede the normalmeans argument, all to say, this meansthe plan is abnormal means; since we con-sult on everything else, the absence of con-sultation is unique to this plan. But thewhole point of the affirmative normalmeans response is that consultation al-ways happens as a matter of routine; forthe negative to concede the point is to ad-mit the link connects to no policy, includingthe plan. Shalmons other arguments onthis point are equally suspect, although Iagree with him that the entire issue can of-ten be headed off given a skilled cross-ex-amination.

This discussion of artificial competi-tiveness leads to this practical advice: youmight want to consider adding an argumentto your affirmative consultation answerswhich says, Reject the counterplan be-cause it artificially competes. Its no morelegitimate than a counterplan that steals our

funding. Theyve invented a net benefitpurely out of their use of fiat, which is not avalid reason to reject our plan. Run thenormal permutations elsewhere, but connectnone with this claim. Doing so will giveyou another place on the flow to make thenon-germaneness objection to consulta-tion without being held hostage to poten-tially flawed permutations.

Can Any of the ObviousPermutations Survive Scrutiny?

A brief review of the major permuta-tions against consultation confirms the sus-picion that most, maybe all, cannot find theo-retical legitimacy. Simply saying we shoulddo both doesnt help, since it is literallyspeaking impossible to both act and not actwhile we hear out our allies concerns, andhard to defend pragmatically given evidencethat NATO, Russia, and the rest cant standit when we say were listening even whilewe charge ahead, giving the lie to our claimsto care what they think.

Several of the other possibilities are

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vulnerable to the objections againstintrinsicness permutations. In additionto the lie permutation already discussed,the intrinsicness problem also affixes to thedo the plan and consult on something elsepermutation (the consulting on somethingelse part is neither in the plan nor thecounterplan, which is incidentally a reasonthe counterplan should only fiat consulta-tion on the plan and no more).

The permutation which essentiallyendorses the counterplan (do the plan butgive them a veto) is arguably an act of pureseverance, which is to say illegitimate sincethe affirmative is abdicating its advocacyof the entire, guaranteed adoption plan theyoriginally proposed. And the permutationto consult but then do the plan either wayonly risks adding insult to injury as alliancepartners realize we never meant it when wesaid we wanted their input.

There is one permutation which, inmy opinion, survives these theoretical dif-ficulties, and potentially achieves a uniquenet benefit for the affirmative. Consider apermutation where the affirmative says weshould adopt the plan and then meaning-fully consult, including a veto, on mecha-nisms for implementation. This permuta-tion does not constitute severance, since itincludes the mandated adoption of the plan.More importantly, the permutation is not anintrinsicness argument, a point that can be,in my view, convincingly demonstrated incross-examination.

After the counterplan is read, presum-ably in the first negative, the first affirma-tive might ask these questions (Ive putlikely negative responses in brackets): Isthe counterplan just a one-time, yes or no,up or down vote on the total plan? [No if the 1N says anything different s/he isconceding away their genuine consulta-tion benefit]. If Russia says yes to adopt-ing the plan, but then we implement the planin a way totally offensive to them, by letssay running roughshod over their concernsor violating their sovereignty, does thecounterplan provide Russia with an ongo-ing role in the plans implementation?[Yes if the 1N says different then thereis no solvency to the counterplan, since thegenuineness of the original consultation isimmediately suspended the first time theyexpress any problems with the policy in ac-tion].

If you can elicit a yes answer to thesecond question, then the permutation isnot an intrinsicness perm. In fact, the per-mutation is the same sort of logical permu-

tation universally accepted by debate theo-rists. Heres why: by responding no andthen yes, the negative concedes theircounterplan logically takes this form: (a)Consult over the plans adoption, with aveto. (b) Consult over ongoing implemen-tation, with a veto. Understood as such,the permutation simple affixes part (b) tothe plan.

Accepting the theoretical legitimacy

of the permutation still leaves open the ques-tion of whether it constitutes a net benefitfor the affirmative, and this is a closer call,for Russia would undoubtedly be even hap-pier to have the opportunity to consult atevery point along the way. The affirmativeanswer to this claim would go something asfollows: While it is true that we do notcapture the benefits of consultation in theirentirely, we capture almost all of them. Andthe very slight good will deficit between thecounterplan and the permutation is morethan justified by the major benefit to be de-rived by locking in the plans adoption. Inresponding to such a claim, the negativewill obviously want to revert to their evi-dence insisting that consultation has to begenuine, from the start, and theyll wantto emphasize that in these critical times(Putin instability, Japanese economic vul-nerability, NATO cohesion fragility) wemust do everything possible not to of-fend Russia or derail NATO or subvertJapans sense of mission in the world. Butthese claims are considerably weakened

when the affirmative is also defending aversion of consultation with a veto, and itcannot be so hard to read uniqueness an-swers to minimize the marginal risk of giv-ing offense (such as not unique, since wearent genuinely consulting on NMD).

By defending one permutation, I amnot advising you to abandon the others.You may find more success in defendingthe legitimacy of severance or intrinsicnessthan others on your circuit, and if so I wishyou luck (if only as someone more inclinedthan most to accept intrinsicness as theo-retically valid). Or you may simply want tolaundry list multiple permutations as a wayto bog down the second negative. Or youmay debate in an area more sympathetic tothem than appears the case nationally. Mypoint is that a redeemable permutation mayin fact exist, despite the possibly fatal short-comings which plague the others.

Concluding AdviceBy way of closing, Id like to offer

some practical advice, some of which reiter-

ates essential ideas stressed in DanShalmons essay.

First, on the affirmative you should never argue that Russia or NATO supportsthe plan . Doing so is a virtual suicide tac-tic, for the negative will immediately respondby saying, there is now no risk to votingnegative. Doing the counterplan will cer-tainly attain the benefits claimed on the case,and only we capture the additional benefit

of improving relations. To the contrary,affirmatives should do everything in theirpower to prove why the plan is likely to beopposed or subverted, so they can beef upa net benefit claim able to outweigh the ben-efits of genuine dialogue. While this canbe difficult NATO supports many of theseplans (although they would oppose poli-cies like no first use), and Russia andChina would probably support virtuallyevery plan being defended this year it isnot impossible, despite negative evidencethat Country X will do whatever we want.Consider the possibility that Russia orChina might well torpedo even a plan theysupport in principle as a way of assertingtheir own autonomy; since the counterplangives them the veto power, theyll be moreinclined than normal to use it since the veryoffer of a veto conveys how relatively low apriority the plan is for American decisionmakers.

Second, think about adding someversion of consultation to the plan text . Orat least you might consider adding language

which makes it explicit that as worded theplan does not foreclose consultation. Nega-tives will object this means youre not topi-cal theres no guaranteed action in theplan, and all the rest. But I think the affir-mative can reasonably argue that the limitthey implement is made specifically stron-ger by bringing others on board, and thatconsultation is necessarily part and parcelof what it means to make foreign policy.

Finally, a point that simply reiteratesthe main theme of this essay: Especiallygiven the careful scrutiny which permuta-tions will receive in the consultation con-text, it is particularly important that you de-vise your permutations (and responses)with care . Script them out, lest you createconfusion on the questions of severanceor intrinsicness. And on the negative, makesure you pin the affirmative down, so theywill not easily evade your responses.

( David M. Cheshier, Director of Debateat Georgia State University.)