Week 2 Discussion 1
“Developing Policy Arguments and Debate” Please respond to the following:
- Develop a policy argument or claim that is definitive, designative, evaluative, and advocative, using one of these terms: (a) crime, (b) pollution, (c) terrorism, (d) quality of life, (e) global warming, (f) fiscal crisis, (g) human rights, and (h) unemployment.
- Convert the argument in the first discussion into a policy debate by providing an objection and a rebuttal. Explain if and why the qualifier changed after introducing an objection and rebuttal. If the qualifier did not change, explain why it did not change.
This is the first discussion argument…
Propose two reasons argumentation mapping can help a policy maker become a critical thinker. Provide at least two examples to support your response.
Argument mapping is essentially a way of visually showing the logical structure of arguments. Argumentation is often structured into discussions, or debates, with contributions by individual participants responding to each other. Breaking up the argument into constituent claims is crucial in helping the policy maker establish the connection or relationship between the various parts. Argumentation maps support the discursive elements in decision-making by providing a visual access to the respective policy making process.
The outcome of the mapping enables the researcher to see exactly how each part of the argument is related to every other part. Argument mapping can show exactly where two sides may disagree on an issue. Therefore, having a clear understanding of the argument structure will help the policy maker to think critically on the core aspects of a given policy argument (Dunn, 2012).
Week 2 Discussion 2
“Policy Arguments” Please respond to the following:
- From the case study, Case 8.1, use the argument mapping procedures presented in the chapter and provide two pros and two cons (or strengths and weaknesses) of the recommendation that the United States should NOT intervene in the Balkans.
- From the e-Activity, discuss two different modes of argument and examples of formal and informal fallacies. Provide the source(s) of the modes of arguments and fallacies you identified.
Case 8.1 Pros and Cons of Balkan Intervention
“Must the agony of Bosnia-Herzegovina be regarded, with whatever regrets, as somebody else’s trouble? We don’t think so, but the arguments on behalf of that view deserve an answer. Among them are the following:
■The Balkan conflict is a civil war and unlikely to spread beyond the borders of the former Yugoslavia. Wrong. Belgrade has missiles trained on Vienna. Tito’s Yugoslavia claimed, by way of Macedonia, that northern Greece as far south as Thessaloniki belonged under its sovereignty. Those claims may return. “Civil” war pitting non-Slavic Albanians against Serbs could spread to Albania, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece.
■The United States has no strategic interest in the Balkans. Wrong. No peace, no peace dividend. Unless the West can impose the view that ethnic puriy can no longer be the basis for national sovereignty, then endless national wars will replace the Cold War. This threat has appeared in genocidal form in Bosnia. If it cannot be contained here, it will erupt elsewhere, and the Clinton administration’s domestic agenda will be an early casualty.
■If the West intervenes on behalf of the Bosnians, the Russians will do so on behalf of the Serbs, and the Cold War will be reborn. Wrong. The Russians have more to fear from “ethnic cleansing” than any people on Earth. Nothing would reassure them better than a new, post-Cold War Western policy of massive, early response against the persecution of national minorities, including the Russian minorities found in every post-Soviet republic. The Russian right may favor the Serbs, but Russian self-interest lies elsewhere.
■The Serbs also have their grievances. Wrong. They do, but their way of responding to these grievances, according to the State Department’s annual human rights report, issued this past week, “dwarfs anything seen in Europe since Nazi times.” Via the Genocide Convention, armed intervention is legal as well as justified.
■The UN peace plan is the only alternative. Wrong. Incredibly, the plan proposes the reorganization of Bosnia-Herzegovina followed by a cease-fire. A better first step would be a UN declaration that any nation or ethnic group proceeding to statehood on the principle of ethnic puriy is an outlaw state and will be treated as such. As now drafted, the UN peace plan, with a map of provinces that not one party to the conflict accepts, is really a plan for continued ‘ethnic cleansing.’” ■
Week 2 eActivity
- Use a major news publication or the Strayer Library to read a recent article or letter to the editor (published within the last 12 months) about the international affairs of any specific federal agency, and find at least two formal and informal fallacies in the article. Be prepared to discuss.