“You gave us basketball and baseball, you gave us Jimi Hendrix,” said Greg Marsh of Cambridge University, explaining that U.S. exports are influential. “We gave you John Lennon and you shot him.”
Marsh and three of his Cambridge Union Society teammates invaded Northwestern Wednesday and battled members of its 1999 National Debate Tournament Championship team on how the United States should export its military power in the world.
About 120 people watched the four members of each debate team exchange occasionally heated banter during the nearly two-hour debate in Norris University Center’s Louis Room.
The British had an advantage from the outset, pummeling an unsuspecting NU team with constant requests for rebuttals — an option in the traditional British parliamentary format of debate — and diffused their aggressive tactics with humor.
The Cambridge team argued that the United States has an obligation to serve as a “federal police” that intervenes in world skirmishes in the interests of humanitarianism.
Marsh added that the United States has a moral obligation to use military power when sanctions and diplomatic avenues fail to stop human rights violations such as torture and genocide.
But Speech sophomore Jonathan Paul said there are “practical limitations on America acting as Robocop” and “blindly reacting to the crime of the week.”
Citing the embargo against Cuba as an example, Weinberg freshman Jackie Swiatek said the United States would be unable to garner enough international support for every military action Cambridge proposed.
“The Brits are too busy building resorts in Havana to support our sanctions,” she said.
Under Cambridge’s plan, the rest of the world wouldn’t be allowed to “sit for a cup of tea in front of the TV” while the United States fought battles alone, said Cambridge debater Debbie Newman.
Other coalitions would be “impotent” if they tried to act without the support of the “last superpower,” Newman added.
NU’s Swiatek said broad public support — vital to effective U.S. military engagement — would be impossible to garner for every conflict.
“If the humanitarian cause is just, the American public will see the moral duty and will want to (get involved),” Newman countered.
Ryan Sparacino, a Speech senior, said some intervention itself borders on inhumane.
“UNICEF has estimated that Iraq sanctions have killed 500,000 people,” he said. “That to me is genocide.”
NU debaters admitted that the United States has to allow some human rights violations to continue or risk spreading its military resources too thin.
“We have to tolerate some human rights violations,” said Weinberg senior Matthew Anderson. “We’re willing to concede (that) to avoid another Vietnam.”
But widespread U.S. interventionism would promote weapons proliferation among countries that feel threatened, NU’s Paul said.
“These states are put in a position to go nuclear or perish,” he said.
Cambridge’s James Action said fear of nuclear proliferation is unwarranted because countries will try to arm themselves anyway.
“Those countries are going to try to get those weapons whether you like it or not,” Action said.
At the end of the debate, British parliamentary procedure required a “division of the house,” where audience members were asked to vote on who presented the best arguments. A voice vote was indecisive, and a show of hands favored the European visitors.
Action thanked the crowd and NU on behalf of his colleagues and threw in one last jab before he left, pointing out that in British politics, “you only have to address heads of state on one knee.”
