Suggestion in absentia for First Debate Topic

Since I will likely not be at the 4th meeting, I wanted to take a second to propose a topic for our first debate. The resolved would read:

"This Society Believes that a Preventive War can be a Just War..."

I should be forthcoming and admit that this is a topic I have worked a great deal on both at my internship and as part of a Rice Fellowship project through GW. But this shouldn't deter us from seeing its great merits. This resolved manages to interface both with a pressing normative issue in foreign policy/international affairs (the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of preemption laid out in the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States), and with a philosophical tradition dating back to Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas (the venerable "Just War Theory" which aims to spell out the moral and political preconditions for justly making war). Another way to frame this is to say the debate is about the merits of Neoconservatism in American foreign policy (as it is opposed by, on the one hand political realism and liberal internationalism, and on the other hand isolationism). Still another way of framing this debate is to say it is about the right to act unilaterally on ostensibly moral imperatives versus the need to obey international "law" or at least international norms (namely via engagement with the UN). So, alternate resolves (and perhaps friendlier to non-philosophy majors) would be:

"This Society Believes that Neoconservatism is an Ideology whose Time has Come..."

or, to frame it negatively,

"This Society Believes that Political Realism (and Liberal Internationalism) are Obsolete..."

To follow the third framing, it might read:

"This Society Believes that UN Resolutions Ought not Guide U.S. Foreign Policy..."

Regardless of the exact wording, note the tendentiousness of this resolved, that is, its ability to inspire spirited support AND opposition. It is important to have this kind of resolved, one which makes a partisan claim but in the spirit of sparking discourse rather than giving a forum for chin-stroking, which resolutions like "This Society Believes Virtue is Glorious" or "This Society Believes Vice is Ignoble" would no doubt do.

As to potential speakers in proposition and opposition, I have come up with a few ideas.

VERY AMBITIOUS IDEAS:
-Charles Krauthammer
-Francis Fukuyama
-Zbigniew Brzezinski
-Ruth Wedgwood

SOMEWHAT AMBITIOUS IDEAS:
-Fouad Ajami
-Anthony Clark Arend
-Esther Brimmer
-Eliot Cohen
-Charles Fairbanks
-Michael Hudson
-Robert Leiber
-Michael Mandelbaum
-Gerald Mara
-Casimir Yost


LESS AMBITIOUS IDEAS:
-Daniel Byman
-Daniel Brumberg
-John Langan
-Marilyn McMorrow
-Richard Russell

The above are almost entirely SAIS and Walsh School people. Potential speakers from our own department include Deborah D. Avant, James H. Lebovic, Martha Finnemore, James Goldgeier, Henry Nau, Bernard Reich, Dean Michael Brown, Karl Inderfurth, Walter Reich, Merve Kavakci, Nathan Brown, George Moose, Ralph Steinhardt, Dane Kennedy, Andrew Zimmerman, Gordon Adams, Allida Black, M.E. Bowman, Jack Mendelsohn, Charles Cushman, George Fidas, Kim Thackuk, Ronald Spector, Robert Churchill, Stiv Fleishman, Jeffrey Brand-Ballard, David DeGrazia, John Rudisill, and Peter Caws, among, believe it or not, OTHERS.

I'm working on more ideas from outside of academia. Also, it might be a nice gesture to extend an invitation to a member of the Philodemic Society at Georgetown (I know, this name has hitherto gone unspoken) to speak at our debate. If not the Philodemic, then perhaps one of their other intellectual groups- the Edmund Burke society comes to mind.

Elsewise, let me know what you think (if you get to the end of this) and check out my comments in response to Brandon's last post.

Best,