AlternateAgentCounterplan(Counterplans)

Picture this. You've wasted fifteen minutes of prep time on a wide open resolution fretting about the complete free reign it gives the government, and in the PMC all your worst fears are realized. Not only is the judge pounding the table at all the wrong moments, you don't even see how a reasonable human being could oppose plan, or plan is so obscure or technical you don't think there is a reasonable chance of you winning the case debate. Its a nightmare, its premeditated murder, so you start writing out your first several reasons why canned cases are bad and...

NO! Wrong answer!

Its a nightmare, its premeditated murder, so you start writing out your reasons why somebody else could do plan in an even better, mutually exclusive fashion. The alternate agent counterplan.


 * Why does the judge care about AACPs?**: Two possible reasons. An AACP which solves harms of case better than plan and is mutually exclusive with plan is reason to vote negative. An AACP which solves harms of case and avoids a disadvantage to plan is a reason to vote negative.


 * Why does the negative care about AACPs?**: They win a heck of a lot of rounds, by allowing you to focus the debate away from where the case is strong (harms) to where the case is weak (specific desirability of the actor) and where your knowledge is greater (your disad scenario -- which no longer has to be anywhere near commensurate to harms).

What should clue me in that I should be running an alternate agent CP: Well, there are a couple of trigger words (like "moral imperitive" to vote for a cessation of the harms of plan -- theoretically thats meaningless unless they win but in practice teams generally tag not-opposable-in-parli harms with it and these will sway more than a few judges), but there are a couple other things that would make it a good idea, like a poorly defined solvency scenario or the main bit of inherency being "nobody waved the fiat wand yet"


 * Alternate agent? Who do I use?**: Anybody you darn well feel like, but some agents work better than others. 95% of plans fall into one of two categories -- USFG working domestically, or USFG working internationally. Domestically, you can CP with any branch other than the one specified by the plan (see below), CP with the states (see below), CP with a private actor (generally not very successful but see below), etc. Internationally, you can CP with any other nation (I like Japan, see below), or the UN, EU, AU, or another international body.


 * What do I need to win with an AACP?**: Negatives need to win essentially three elements to win with an AACP. #1 -- AACPs are legitimate (often conceded by aff -- silly aff). #2 -- the particular AACP solves for harms of plan (generally conceded or argued ineffectually) #3 -- the AACP is competitive with plan (be prepared for a war here) OR AACP avoids a disadvantage of plan


 * Why are AACPs legitimate?**: First, if the first minute or so of the MG isn't an attack on negative fiat, plan-inclusive counterplans, alternate agent counterplans, or international counterplans, then you win this by default (mention this to start your MO to close the door -- "MG never argues that our counterplan is in any way illegitimate, do not make this argument for them or allow it in the PMR" -- takes 7 seconds, saves your hide frequently). If the legitimacy of the AACP gets attacked, you want to make offensive answers in favor of the AACP, and perhaps blunt the specific attacks (McKenzie's First Rule of Debate: Clash is overrated).

Some sample reasons:


 * AACPs are educational** -- teaches you about the internal workings of both the plan actor and the AA. Focuses policy debate on a real, useful technical question, enriching debate experience for both teams. All rounds should be so lucky as to be this educational. (Offensive answer)


 * AACPs are key to negative ground** -- affirmative plan has harms which are unopposable, forcing negative to stake out the SQ is a recipe for a loss. Dovetails well with topicality arguments. Removes necessity for neg to argue unsustainable harms/solvency indicts like "genocide really not so bad" or "gay marriage won't help gay people". (offensive answer)


 * AACPs are real-world** -- Federalism, separation of powers, international cooperation are not just key to discussions of, they ARE the discussion. Impossible to have debate about without discussing who will do the policy -- see gay marriage debate (judicial imperialism vs. tyranny of majoritarian legislature, etc), international anything (US hegemony desirable or not?, multilateral institutions worthwhile?, other nations shouldering global cop load). (offensive answer)


 * AACPs are not deleterious to aff ground** -- "You're not arguing against your own case, you're arguing against the failure of your case to justify its actor, the most key component" (I love this line, but a defensive answer). Affirmative still has unlimited flexibility in harms/advantages/solvency scenarios, don't punish the negative because affirmative ran stuff so generic that any well-equipped Boy Scout troop could implement the plan.


 * AACPs do not uphold the resolution** -- The aff actor was probably specified in the resolution -- if true, this is obvious. If the actor specified was "This House", as soon as you accept the affirmative definitions all other Houses are nontopical. If the res uses neither, argue parametricism (outside the scope of this paragraph, but roughly speaking "The case is the only instance of the resolution we care about").


 * How do I demonstrate solvency with an AACP?**: Easy, and you can start laying the groundwork in the PMC. First, you need to understand the PMC's solvency story (sometimes called a scenario). Then, you steal it. Successful AACPs generally have a CP mandate which is exactly identical to the plan mandate except for the actor (this is the cleanest way to do things). Vague, hand-wavy, or ignored PMC solvency scenarios are begging for cooption because they give the MG nothing to throw back in your face and say "Hah, your actor can't do this!" For example, take "US distributes AIDS drugs in Africa", a case which could conceivably be quite stacked on the harms and light on the solvency. Lets say the aff, oh, claims solvency based on the US pharmaceutical industry, international modeling, and very modest monetary expenditures. Either France or Japan could easily capture all three of these, and get 100% of the (poorly defined) solvency for case. If you sense your AA is weak on a specific area, challenge the actor on that area with a POI during the PMC. 99% of PMs will respond by minimizing the importance of that area -- try it, you'll like it! For example, "But hasn't the Bush administration hurt America's reputation in the eyes of the world, making modeling less likely?" will often provoke the response "Reputation isn't what makes modeling likely, RESULTS make modeling likely, and since we're going to absolutely win that our drugs will cure AIDS in Africa everyone will support the initiative regardless of what they think of the Chimp". Notice that this question is a feignt, because it suggests you are going for a line of argumentation you may not have any intention of going for, and the POI doesn't lock you in to anything, but that answer locks the aff out of saying "Uh, wait, Japan doesn't have US stature so won't get the modeling advantage".

You can also demonstrate better relative solvency than the plan by attacking the solvency scenario on-case and constrasting it to your AA's scenario. This is a losing hand, you probably do not want to argue this by itself. If the debate comes down to "Is it Japan or the US that is better equipped to fund AIDS drugs?", most judges will either side with the affirmative reflexively or become radically more receptive to taking the easy out and voting on the "both actors cooperate" perm. The reasons you would attack solvency on-case are to innoculate your own AACP against the same attack (see above), with the goal of making them comparitively indistinguishable, or to just try and burn the MG's minutes wasting time on issues which can't win them the debate round. Don't make the MG's poor time allocation a key part of your strategery.


 * How do I demonstrate competition?**: A lot of teams start out with the observation "Plan isn't topical and therefore it competes by definition". I think this is bunk and a waste of breathe. The real way to demonstrate competition is beat the perm. The most common perm you'll hear is two words: "Do both". How do you beat that?


 * Get it in writing**. The perm is a textual advocacy and you are entitled to 100% specificity of what it does in the MG, because otherwise it will shift all over the place in the PMC. (You should be ready to write out the CP too, if asked -- heck, it SHOULD be written somewhere on your flow just to make sure you have adequately repeated all parts of plan) Writing out the perm flusters a lot of MGs, and you will frequently get people who write, verbatim "Do both" or who mistranscribe the action which would happen if you "Did both". Minor typographic errors in the only authoritative text of the perm prove severance, and your MO cannot harp on that enough. If perm doesn't contain 100% of the plan mandates, some or all of the CP mandates, and nothing else it is severance -- basically, the MG has taken the opportunity to run a brand-spanking new plan halfway through the debate, and that destroys the most important neg speech (LOC, naturally), moots the entire negative strategy, forces you to debate two worlds against the original plan and Plan Mark II, steals neg ground, and the perm should both be thrown out on face AND its an independent voting issue on the abuse. Which means the judge can decide the perm is an insufficient reason to reject the CP due to its theoretical flaws (severence perms don't prove plan can co-exist with CP, thats the only reason the perm is relevant to the debate at all), and then vote for you on the CP > plan calculus, or just cut to the chase and vote for you on the abuse.


 * Keep to whats written**. How do CP and plan interact? It should be written in the perm -- if its not, they don't, and don't let the PMR make any abusive clarifications of this. If "US invades Iran" and "Multinational peacekeeping force invade Iran" gets "Do both"'ed, that DOES NOT mean, necessarily, that the US participates under the umbrella of the MPKF -- it means there are two hostile armies plus one invaded and terrorists to worry about, which should be enough for you to win a greater risk of your horrible death impact. Does the court case come before the federal action, causing your judicial imperialism/backlash DA to be fully functional? Well, what does the perm say? If its not written, a) reject it on face because its too vague to evaluate and if not b) construe it most favorably to the negative team, don't allow abusive PMR clarifications of their strategic vagueness (i.e. "my DA links, and arguing the link is an independent abuse voter").


 * Link the DA back to the perm** -- You've got to be smart on DA selection for your AACPs. Ideally, the link to the DA isn't "AACP actor is not acting", its "Plan actor is acting" -- thats a very important distinction, because perm dodges the link for the first but not for the second. This is also where you get to show off about your own DA scenario -- you can surely come up with reasons why joint US/X operations increase US hegemony, can't you? If not, why were you running hegemony?


 * What kind of DAs do I run to get the comparitive advantage?**:

A word first on the difference between a DA and a Net Benefit. They're essentially the same thing, so I'll use them interchangeably. Some people think that "another reason doing AACP would be better" is a NB if it doesn't involve the original actor -- no, its just a DA with a guaranteed uniqueness scenario ("passage of plan w/o CP"). For example, if Japanese action in Africa is key to peace in East Asia (the Stability NB) thats logically equivalent to the Japanese Inaction DA. DAs win more rounds than NBs, so phrase your arguments accordingly. Note, as above, that the perm solves for that DA -- try to avoid writing DAs which have that happy outcome for the gov.

Anyhow, back to DA selection. DA selection is driven by plan actor and your AACP actor. If plan is USFG and CP is States, then off the bat you have a federalism DA (blech), Bush DA, and anything else linking to politics at the national level. If plan is USFG and CP is Japan, the DAs are "anything that link to US action", like politics, hegemony, imperialism, Bush-is-the-Devil, etc (obviously, you'll want your "Japan is not a hegemony" or "Japanese hegemony, on the other hand, is good" answers ready).


 * Advanced topic in AACP theory**: Status of CP in world where judge votes for affirmative: This goes a little outside the scope of this article, but if judge votes for aff AACP doesn't happen. Congress has no authority to force Japanese Diet to act, etc. Yeah, great, what does this mean? Basically, its a way to hose the perm -- if the only thing which saves the affirmative from one of your DAs is the CP action takes place, the only way to get CP action is to vote for the negative. This gets into some thorny issues of what "advocacy" is and what the ballot means, and honestly it may not be productive to explore this in your MO because there will be only two speeches on it. Your call.


 * Arguments AACP plays well with**: Disads, obviously -- particularly ones it avoids. Topicality gets out a lot of reasons in the voters section which can be cross-applied as offensive reasons to prefer the legitimacy of your AACP, and (important!) a lot of judges who say "I will never vote for topicality" are willing to say "I never vote for topicality, but I think you're really pushing it here so I'm more inclined to give the negative some leeway on the CP". Case attacks, since the worst thing that happens is they get applied to the CP, too, and its a wash (granted, most case attacks are ineffectual, so consider whether thats a good use of your time rather than developing another decent disad). Ks for which the CP is an alternative ("So what do you do to take a stance against Eurocentrism while still affirming that harms of plan are a bad thing? Vote for the CP, even if you don't agree that the CP 'solves' the harms of case better.") -- careful, careful, careful of the perm.


 * Arguments the AACP plays poorly with**: A lot of Ks. If your K is a non-unique disad, like statism, and your CP actor is a state, then the smart MG will start out by linking your K back to you and then go off to the bloody races. As an MG, I'd just go for offense on the K at that point, because the performative contradiction exposes it as just a gameable strategem and probably just hosed your ethos as well, both of which will play well with my indictments of the cult of the K.


 * Nasty trick**: T, K, CP which doesn't conflict with K -- you're almost guaranteed to be able to kick two positions in the MO and crush the answers on the one the MG spent the least time on. Make sure you set up the voter hierarchy right, or this will blow up in your face (I've convinced a LOT of judges that K > T after the neg has stopped effectively responding to the K turns to focus on T).


 * A note on spec arguments.** AACP work very, very well with specification arguments -- forcing the aff to specify strengthens your competition answers (prevents aff from firing back "Plan is CP!"), and if the aff doesn't specify your abuse scenario is great because AACPs are, after all, key to your ground. But again, sometimes vagueness in the PMC works to your advantage -- nail down what actor they are using but if solvency is a little hazy it can frequently be to your advantage if it stays that way.