Creative adv

No link---GAI won’t replace creative professionals. At worst, AI will only replace the
subpar artists.
Andrea Koncz 23. Senior Research Manager at National Association of Colleges and Employers.
"Despite the fears, AI won't kill human creativity, here is why". Medical Futurist. 7-20-2023.
https://medicalfuturist.com/no-ai-wont-kill-creativity/
Recently, I had a conversation with a well-known illustrator friend who was expressing his discontent about artificial intelligence. As our
conversation escalated online, several creative professionals joined in, lamenting the supposed death of art,
creativity, and, consequently, our livelihoods.
creativity, noun

the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas

I added my two cents that AI

should not be perceived as competition, but rather as a tool to align with our
times. I argued that ChatGPT wouldn’t transform anyone into a journalist, just as Midjourney wouldn’t make
me a graphic designer, because I miss the skills to use it right. And then a graphic designer girl got very emotional. “Midjourney? You
are not a designer yourself, so you fail to see that what it does is a piece of shit”.

While I understand – and partially share some of – these worries, I don’t think AI is ready to kill art and/or creativity or
take our jobs.
Here’s why.

This could be a really short article, I should link this thread with ChatGPT. It unequivocally demonstrates how AI can’t perform a task if
you don’t know how to do it yourself. For those who’d rather not click: I asked ChatGPT to write this article, and the result was:
Dull

Superficial

Wordy

Even more dull

Despite using various trending prompt engineering techniques, the outcome remained the same. If I had devoted a few more hours to this
project, I might have generated a more satisfactory result. However, by then, I could have completed the article and hopefully be halfway
through my annual apricot jam project, given how many kilos of apricots are sitting on my kitchen counter.

I can use Large Language Models (LLMs) to aid my work – gathering facts, ideas, pros/cons, backgrounds, etc – but they can’t
do my work WELL. And this is true for all currently available AI models, from chatbots to image, video, music or sound generators.
Midjourney Supercomputer and human playing chess AI algorithm

A text-to-image generator will never make me an artist or a graphic designer, because I lack the vision, the background knowledge and the
visual culture. I could harness all the Midjourney server time in the world and still fail to produce impressive visuals.

If you don’t know what makes good written content, ChatGPT or Perplexity won’t save you. These tools are useful for composing
straightforward emails and communicating with Airbnb hosts in foreign languages, but they are far from writing the next Harry Potter.

AI can do your creative job if you suck at that job

Sure, AI will take over some jobs. I have seen job postings looking for AI content creators, to “write” dozens or hundreds of posts a
day. Yes, those technically will be blog posts, but I very much doubt we would want to read them. And I could make my own website and
illustrate it with Midjourney, but it would be nothing to write home about.
AI will take the job of subpar creatives. It is cheap, and some project owners want to make everything
as cheap as possible. They are the ones who used to ask the neighbour’s nephew to design their corporate website and paid 15 dollars
to a high school graduate for all the content. They are going to use AI – but they are the ones who didn’t pay for
good creative professionals in the past either.

Look at it, AI is already in the Museum of Modern Art

Have you seen “Unsupervised”, this monumental AI installation by Turkish new media artist Refik Anadol? He used AI to generate this
astonishing visual using 200 years of MoMa art as the prompt for this installation.

“Anadol trained a sophisticated machine-learning model to interpret the publicly available data of MoMA’s collection. As the model “walks”
through its conception of this vast range of works, it reimagines the history of modern art and dreams about what might have been—and what
might be to come. In turn, Anadol incorporates site-specific input from the environment of the Museum’s Gund Lobby—changes in light,
movement, acoustics, and the weather outside—to affect the continuously shifting imagery and sound.”

How on earth could we say AI kills creativity? How creative is this? What an awesome idea! And this is just one example of how
we, humans need to ask the right questions so the AI can provide the right answer . And asking the right
questions requires creativity and curiosity.

Turn---licensing hurts creativity.

Nicholas Garcia 23. J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, his M.A. in Ethics and Society
from Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education. "Generative AI is Disruptive, But More Copyright
Isn’t the Answer.". Public Knowledge. 5-11-2023. https://publicknowledge.org/generative-ai-is-
disruptive-but-more-copyright-isnt-the-answer/

And while some small and independent creators are on the frontlines of the fight against GAI right now,
it is important to remember that there are, and always have been, significant inequalities in what work is valued, whose
work is respected, and who will have the power and resources to aggressively defend their work. For instance, hip-hop music was initially
criticized for its use of sampling from other artists’ work and faced repeated copyright challenges which restricted the right of artists to use
samples without paying for licenses. Anti-sampling cases resulting in mandatory licensing transformed a counter-cultural, democratized,
method of making art into yet another tool that only established artists and record labels could leverage. Today, underground hip-hop artists
using uncleared samples and mashup artists still find themselves locked out of key revenue streams like streaming platforms because of these
restrictive copyright rules.

There are obvious parallels between sampling and artists using GAI tools today, but even artists working traditionally ought to
consider how existing industry power dynamics would play out if there were vastly expanded “stylistic”
copyright rules. Record labels, music studios, and established artists would have the resources and power to go after any creator that
encroached on their “style,” potentially locking up whole genres and aesthetics behind licensing structures. Reducing every shred of
human originality to copyrightable units that must be bought and sold is a far greater threat to
creativity than new automated tools will ever be.

No link and turn---generative AI augments human creativity.

Tojin T. Eapen et. al 23. Principal consultant at Innomantra and a senior fellow at the Conference
Board, Daniel J. Finkenstadt; principal at Wolf Stake Consulting, a military officer, and a former assistant
professor at the Naval Postgraduate School; Josh Folk, cofounder and the president of enterprise
solutions at IdeaScale, a cloud-based innovation-software platform; Lokesh Venkataswamy CEO and
managing director of Innomantra, an innovation and intellectual-property consulting firm in Bengaluru,
India. "How Generative AI Can Augment Human Creativity". Harvard Business Review. 8-1-2023.
https://archive.ph/MHTHW#selection-2427.5-2427.16
There is tremendous apprehension about the potential of generative AI—technologies that can create new content such
as audio, text, images, and video—to replace people in many jobs. But one of the biggest opportunities generative
AI offers to businesses and governments is to augment human creativity and overcome the challenges of
democratizing innovation.
The term “democratizing innovation” was coined by MIT’s Eric von Hippel, who, since the mid-1970s, has been researching and writing about
the potential for users of products and services to develop what they need themselves rather than simply relying on companies to do so. In the
past two decades or so, the notion of deeply involving users in the innovation process has taken off, and today companies use crowdsourcing
and innovation contests to generate a multitude of new ideas. However, many enterprises struggle to capitalize on these contributions because
of four challenges.

First, efforts to democratize innovation may result in evaluation overload. Crowdsourcing, for instance, may produce a flood of
ideas, many of which end up being dumped or disregarded because companies have no efficient way to evaluate them or merge incomplete
or minor ideas that could prove potent in combination.

Second, companies may fall prey to the curse of expertise. Domain experts who are best at generating and identifying
feasible ideas often struggle with generating or even accepting novel ideas.
Third, people who lack domain expertise may identify novel ideas but may be unable to provide the details that would make the ideas feasible.
They can’t translate messy ideas into coherent designs.

And finally, companies have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. Organizations focus on synthesizing a host of customer requirements but
struggle to produce a comprehensive solution that will appeal to the community at large.

Our research and our experience working with companies, academic institutions, governments, and militaries on hundreds of innovation
efforts—some with and some without the use of generative AI—have demonstrated that this technology can help
organizations overcome these challenges. It can augment the creativity of employees and customers
and help them generate and identify novel ideas—and improve the quality of raw ideas. We have observed
the following five ways.

EU ADV
US-EU cooperation on AI is high now.
John Leyden 24. Reporter, has written about computer networking and cyber-security for more than
20 years, holds an honors degree in electronic engineering from City, University of London. "EU and US
agree to chart common course on AI regulation". CIO. 4-5-2024.
https://www.cio.com/article/2083973/eu-and-us-agree-to-chart-common-course-on-ai-regulation.html

The European Union and the US have agreed to increase co-operation in the development of technologies
based on artificial intelligence (AI), placing a particular emphasis on safety and governance.
The announcement came at the end of a meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council in Leuven, Belgium, on Friday, and followed this
week’s broadly similar pact between the US and UK on AI safety.

The EU and US want to foster scientific information exchange between AI experts on either side of the Atlantic in areas such as developing
benchmarks and assessing potential risks. The emphasis is on developing “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI technologies.

Developing compatible regulatory environments

The two parties agreed to minimise divergence in their respective emerging AI governance and
regulatory systems.
In a statement, the EU and US sketched out area of existing collaboration on AI applications: “Working groups
jointly staffed by United States science agencies and European Commission departments and agencies have achieved substantial progress by
defining critical milestones for deliverables in the areas of extreme weather, energy, emergency response, and reconstruction.”

Working well together requires agreement on the meaning of terms, and to that end the two parties released an updated edition of their EU-US
Terminology and Taxonomy for Artificial Intelligence, now available for download.

The European Union is seeking to regulate the development of artificial intelligence in the region with a
recently approved AI Act.
Despite industry calls for AI regulations in the US from industry heavyweights such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, partisan splits in Congress
make it unlikely that agreement will be reached before fresh Congressional elections in November.

The US government has, however, taken steps to put its own house in order by developing a strategy on
the use of AI for federal agencies.
AI guardrails

Experts quizzed by CIO.com broadly welcomed the agreement between the EU and US as a positive development for the fast-moving field of
artificial intelligence technologies.

Gaurav Pal, CEO and Founder of stackArmor, an IT security consulting company and also a member of the US AI Safety Institute Consortium,
told CIO.com, “This
is an important step in helping develop a common set of AI guardrails and frameworks
between the EU and the US.”

Pal continued: “This

will hopefully avoid creating silos and friction in conducting business between the US
and EU for US AI companies.”
Business leaders should keep abreast of the rapidly emerging regulatory framework around AI because it is likely to impact business operations
across multiple sectors, perhaps akin to how GDPR has impacted US firms conducting business in the EU.

The desire to steer away from clashing AI regulatory regimes on either side of the Atlantic is therefore
welcome, according to Pal.
“The co-operation agreement is very important as it seeks to develop a common set of regulatory standards and frameworks thereby reducing
the cost and complexity of compliance,” Pal explained.

Researchers gave the development of US-EU coordination on AI a cautious welcome, while looking for more detail on the specifics.

“AI regulation necessitates joint efforts from the international community and governments to agree a set of regulatory processes and
agencies,” Angelo Cangelosi, professor of machine learning and robotics at the University of Manchester in England, told CIO.com.

“The latest UK-US agreement is a good step in this direction, though details on the practical steps are not fully clear at this stage, but we
hope that this will continue at a wider international level, for example with integration with the EU AI
agencies, as well as in the wider UN framework,” he added.

US-EU cooperation over climate change is unprecedentedly high.

Brian Picone 22. Senior Trade Analyst with White & Case's International Trade Group. MPP at Brown
University. BSBA in International Business and Management at Suffolk University. “United States and
European Union Outline Plans for Cooperation on Trade and Technology” May 24, 2022.
https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/united-states-and-european-union-outline-plans-
cooperation-trade-and-technology

On May 16, 2022, senior officials from the United States and the European Union concluded the second
meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Paris-Saclay, France. US Secretary of Commerce Gina
Raimondo, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, and European
Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis led the meeting as Co-Chairs of the TTC. Following
the meeting, the
parties issued a Joint Statement that outlines the progress of the TTC and its ten working groups since
last autumn, as well as plans for future cooperation on issues such as critical supply chains, technology
standards, export controls, climate, and unfair trade practices. In keeping with the TTC's status as forum for
consultations, rather than the negotiation of binding legal outcomes, the initiatives described in the Joint Statement focus primarily on
expanding information sharing between the two governments, articulating shared principles and concerns, working to voluntarily harmonize
standards and approaches where possible, and advancing shared interests on a global basis. Among other things, the Joint Statement broadly
affirms the participants' intentions to "continue to oppose actors who threaten the multilateral rules-based order and fundamental principles of
international law," and to continue "coordinating our actions to mitigate the negative impacts of Russia's aggression against Ukraine[.]" With
respect to trade, the participants have committed to "intensify our work to resolve trade disagreements
to our mutual advantage, reduce unnecessary barriers to bilateral trade and investment, and strive to
prevent new ones from emerging[.]" The parties also recognize "the need to reform the WTO," and to take "effective action to
address trade-distortive non-market policies and practices." Beyond these general principles, the Joint Statement
incorporates reports from the TTC's ten working groups outlining progress on specific issues . Some of the
most notable outcomes and commitments documented by the working groups include the following: Technology Standards
Recognizing that the establishment of "better aligned and interoperable technology standards" would facilitate trade, this working group seeks
to foster the development of such standards and to "reduce non-tariff barriers in key technology areas[.]" Accordingly,
as of May 16,
2022, the US and EU have established a "Strategic Standardisation Information" ("SSI") mechanism with
the aim to "encourage engagement in new standardization opportunities" and "explore taking
coordinated action if standardization activities pose a challenge to US-EU strategic interests and values."
The working group is also developing a list of critical and emerging technologies that it will prioritize in its efforts coordinate technology
standards. Such
technologies include additive manufacturing, megawatt charging systems for heavy-duty
recharging points, recycling of materials, "digital identity," and "Internet of Things." Global Trade
Challenges The working group on global trade challenges has focused on four general areas: (1) avoiding
unnecessary trade barriers; (2) cooperation on "non-market policies and practices;" (3) trade and labor;
and (4) trade and environment. Notable outcomes and commitments in these areas include the following: Avoiding unnecessary
trade barriers. The parties will seek to facilitate trade by (1) exploring the use of digital tools for regulatory approvals and conformity
assessments; (2) identifying specific areas or products where cooperation on conformity assessment could facilitate trade; (3) expanding
cooperation in the area of government procurement; (4) identifying measures that will facilitate trade with Ukraine; and (5) seeking to avoid
"unintended consequences of domestic requirements that could create unnecessary barriers to trade and investment, notably for critical
products/areas[.]" Cooperation on "non-market policies and practices." The parties plan to develop "joint or
coordinated strategies, using available policies and tools," aimed at countering the impact of "non-
market, trade-distortive policies and practices" on technological development and competitiveness in
key sectors, such as medical devices. Additional sectors may be prioritized in the future. When using domestic tools to address
unfair practices, the United States and the EU "will seek to consult or coordinate with each other, with a view
to avoiding or mitigating unintended consequences for each other, where possible." Labor. The parties intend
to collaborate on the promotion of internationally recognized labor rights in global supply chains, mostly through the exchange of information
on best practices (e.g., for combatting forced labor) and work in multilateral fora. They
have also announced the establishment
of a new tripartite trade and labor dialogue ("TALD"), involving relevant representatives of the US
Government, the European Commission, and US and EU trade unions and businesses. Environment. The
parties intend to "take a leading role in using trade policy and tools to support climate and
environmental policy goals[.]" In addition to exchanging information, they have agreed that these efforts should include cooperation
on the implementation of the WTO statement on the Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions. Such efforts will
focus on (1) enabling a "trade facilitative approach" to remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, and
direct reuse; and (2) "fostering better understanding of the role of trade" in disseminating goods and
services to meet environmental and climate goals. Climate and Clean Tech The climate and clean tech
working group is focused on three main areas: (1) promoting green public procurement policies; (2)
aligning methodologies for calculating the carbon footprint of selected products, and (3) advancing
electro-mobility and interoperability with smart grids. With respect to procurement, the parties "intend to work
towards a joint US-EU initiative incorporating sustainability considerations in public procurement," though
these discussions currently are limited to "joint mapping of policies and a joint catalogue of best practices[.]" The parties have also
begun "expert-level exchanges" on methodologies for measuring the carbon footprint of selected
products. Secure Supply Chains The working group on secure supply chains has focused on identifying and addressing shared
vulnerabilities in areas such as semiconductors, solar panels, rare earth magnets, and critical minerals. Key updates in these areas include the
following: Semiconductors. US
government agencies and the European Commission intend to participate in
a two-month pilot to develop an "early warning system" for semiconductor supply chain disruptions.
Additionally, the parties have articulated a "common goal" to limit semiconductor subsidies "to what is necessary, appropriate and
proportionate to achieve public policy objectives," in order to avoid subsidy races. The parties are "determined to provide any support for this
sector in line with WTO rules." Solar
products. The parties "pledge to cooperate on respective project
development and the design of financing tools" and on "bolstering solar manufacturing capacity that
adheres to shared environmental, social, and quality standards[.]" They also will aim to "alleviate existing
supply chain concentration, actively working together to address market access barriers and distortions
to US-EU trade and investments[.]" Additionally, the parties will "work to minimise the impact of any protective measures on their
respective industries[.]" Rare earth magnets. The parties plan on "redoubling and refocusing efforts" through
the TTC and relevant multilateral initiatives "to continue address rare earth elements supply chain
vulnerabilities and to promote undistorted trade throughout the rare earth supply chain." Such initiatives
include the Conference on Critical Materials and Minerals between the European Union, the United States, Japan, Australia and Canada. The
parties have expressed their resolve "to preserve the openness of the transatlantic supply chains" in this sector. ICTS
Security and
Competitiveness Among other initiatives, the parties have launched a dedicated task force on "joint US-EU
public financing for secure and resilient connectivity and ICTS supply chains in third countries." This task
force will promote the use of "trusted/non-high-risk suppliers" in third countries and share information
on US and EU efforts to support "secure, resilient, and rights-respecting ICTS projects" in third countries .
The task force's efforts will support US and EU "flagship infrastructure initiatives" by prioritizing "high-quality" ICTS infrastructure projects that
promote principles of security, transparency, and competition. Export
controls The export controls working group noted
that the United States and EU have achieved an "unprecedented" level of cooperation in limiting
exports of dual-use items and strategic technologies to Russia following its actions in Ukraine . Going forward,
the parties "intend[] to continue to regularly exchange pertinent information [on export controls], with an initial focus on Russia and other
potential sanctions evaders." They also will seek to work with third countries on export controls "in a joint and structured effort to uphold
international peace and security" and counter circumvention. The parties also plan to exchange information and pursue coordination with
respect to licensing practices, approaches to emerging technologies, and implementation of export controls. Investment Screening At
this stage, the working group on investment screening is focused primarily on sharing information and best practices. Information exchanges
thus far have focused on foreign direct investment trends, trends in investments from certain countries of origin, transaction structures of
interest, and implementation of the parties' respective investment screening regimes. Moving forward, the working group
intends to continue these information exchanges, and to develop a "holistic view" of security risks
related to specific sensitive technologies and policy tools for addressing them. Outlook The TTC's work
reflects important shifts in the format, substance, and ambition of transatlantic engagement on trade
issues. Prior initiatives such as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership focused on liberalizing trade in a comprehensive
and legally binding manner. By contrast, the TTC reflects a strong focus on mitigating shared vulnerabilities and
risks – including climate, geopolitical, national security, and supply chain risks – through mostly
voluntary initiatives and policy coordination. The TTC has yielded aspirational commitments to avoid "unnecessary" escalation
of transatlantic trade barriers, but has dedicated relatively little attention to expanding trade, compared to other priorities. Nevertheless, some
TTC initiatives such as the proposed alignment of technology standards and conformity assessments have the potential to facilitate trade, and
therefore are important priorities for the US business community. Additionally, there
are indications that the TTC's work may
feed into other important bilateral and plurilateral initiatives. For example, the TTC's efforts to align
methodologies for calculating the carbon footprint of key products may inform the ongoing US-EU
negotiation for a Global Arrangement on steel and aluminum trade, and subsequent policies developed
pursuant to that arrangement. Moreover, Secretary Raimondo has announced that the US and EU intend to work toward a
"concrete alignment" on export controls by the time of the next TTC ministerial at the end of this year, with a likely focus on semiconductors.
She suggested that this arrangement could be broadened to include additional countries such as Japan
in order to enhance its effectiveness. Commissioner Vestager has raised the possibility of other "TTC spinoffs," including a
potential "framework" to spur investment in critical minerals in countries such as Canada and Australia. These initiatives could
magnify the impact of the work done in the TTC.

European economy is resilient.

Christopher Smart 17. Senior Fellow, Center for Business and Government & Institute of Politics,
Harvard; Senior Fellow, Chatham House, former Special Assistant to Obama; former Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Europe and Eurasia at the Treasury, and PhD in IR, Columbia. “The Financial Education of
the Eurozone.” Center for Business and Government. Harvard. Working Paper No. 69. January.

The European Project looks in trouble once again. Mounting political extremism, feeble growth and the
loss of its second largest economy shape a convincing case that the integration of Europe’s political and economic institutions has
failed to deliver. The common currency, it appears, has created more mutual resentment among its members than mutual solidarity, and the
calls for more exits has led many to conclude it was all a terrible mistake. And
yet, it survives and in many ways prospers. The
reinforcement of euro area institutions following a sudden stop in global financial flows suggests a
surprising resilience. Indeed, the euro as a store of value did not suffer directly from the crisis. And for all
the gnashing of teeth, euro area governments were forced to double down on their commitments to
one another under the skeptical watch of global financial markets. Even in the face of certain voter rebellion, they
opted for measures for integration rather than separation or dissolution. For a project that is perennially on the
verge of collapse, it is worth re-examining how these leaders committed significant sums of taxpayer resources and
agreed to an unprecedented sharing of sovereignty.¶ This paper argues that the resilience comes from the
deep financial integration of the currency union that created both stronger links of interdependence
among its members as well as greater flexibility to absorb shocks. On the one hand, the financial market turmoil made
it painfully clear to European leaders that investors viewed Europe as more or less a single borrower notwithstanding a treaty that said
otherwise. On the other hand, this
integration, especially through the banking system, provided mechanisms to
reallocate resources throughout the currency union in order to absorb the asymmetric hocks through
liquidity injections, market purchases and the euro area payments system. Like the large noisy family they claim to
be, European leaders found themselves stuck with the costs of their relatives’ mistakes, yet able to reallocate
emergency resources under the table even as they sought to set up formal new rules to provide support
and enforce discipline. If there is an optimistic case to be made for the euro area, it may be that strengthening its Banking
Union can proceed even as the political climate makes structural reforms, fiscal pooling or labor mobility more
difficult.2 Moreover, financial market forces may encourage progress on banking supervision and stability in
spite of lingering voter doubts. Arguably, the European political calendar over the next year will put these ideas to their most
severe test yet in key national elections. Until now, however, the “Financial Education of the Eurozone” is both the story of global markets
forcing political leaders to take unpalatable steps to reinforce their monetary union, and the dawning realization that this very
interdependence through markets and banks will likely drive further integration . Steady progress on the technical steps required to
enshrine Banking Union and capital market integration may not be sufficient to secure the euro’s long-term survival, but they are necessary and realistic next steps amid the current political turmoil.¶ Europe still falls far short on
key elements of what constitutes an “optimum currency union” (Mundell 1961; McKinnon 1963; Kenen 1969). Roughly summarized, economists have cited four key criteria to achieve optimality: factor mobility, including especially
capital and labor, pooling of fiscal responsibility and synchronization of business cycles. Moreover, the political will to accept the economic policies of other members can make or break a currency union (Frankel 2004). While
capital mobility has been relatively free within the euro area--and this paper argues crucial in keeping the common currency together--labor mobility has been more constrained. The absence of a common language seems to be a
detail that many early champions of the common currency assumed away. As for fiscal integration, of course, the euro area has no central fiscal authority, with the EU budget itself representing only 1 percent of gross domestic
product. On business cycles, while Europe’s commercial links were deep, it became clear from the emerging imbalances that these economies were hardly synchronized.3 These failures, in the context of a single currency, have
substantially slowed the European recovery such that only in 2014 had it returned to its levels of output before the crisis.4 As for political will, even the successful summits have often come amid sniping and threats. Arguably, the
costs of membership have rapidly surged to exceed the potential benefits.5¶ Indeed, the classic cyclical shock to a monetary union tips some member states into recession and opens disparities in growth rates and unemployment
levels that are then locked in by a single currency. With other parts of the union relatively unaffected, there is no incentive to make the difficult decision to share resources for more than humanitarian needs. This leaves the only
path of adjustment through a grinding nominal decline in wages and prices that triggers recriminations, populism and ultimately the decision to exit. In the case of the global financial crisis, the shock to Europe revealed very
different problems in different places: a fiscal gap in Greece, a property bubble in Ireland, low growth in Portugal and myriad banking issues in Spain, Italy and Cyprus Left to fester individually, none of these disparate problems
would have forced a significant response from other European members, either in terms of new rules to bolster better policy or new money to soften the pain of adjustment. As such, it is not difficult to imagine a much more
 What early observers saw less clearly, however, was the surprising
turbulent series of events that included more than one euro member exiting the union¶

integration and interdependence of the member states through financial markets and their banking
systems.6 If trade and investment did not flourish as promised, the single currency did open enormous opportunities in banking and finance.
Banks rapidly expanded their exposures to other euro markets in search of higher returns where
currency risk had apparently disappeared.7 This led to European economies that were both more
integrated with one another and at the same time more susceptible to one another’s risks . Thus did isolated
national issues like Greek public payrolls and Irish overbuilding suddenly become everyone’s problem. Each of these qualitatively different
economic imbalances was quickly transmitted as large, undifferentiated potential losses through the financial system. Some of these potential
losses arose from direct lending by French and German banks, for example, to the periphery. Some appeared from nowhere as suspicion turned
to fear that much larger countries like Spain and Italy might lose market access. In any case, the
sudden transmission of the global
shock throughout the European financial system forced European leaders to pool resources and share
sovereignty in ways that would have been unimaginable before the crisis. Whenever the price of further
pooling of sovereignty and resources looked unacceptably high, euro governments determined that the
costs of dissolution would be even higher and could not be compartmentalized. Indeed, most leaders
chose policies that eventually lost them their own jobs over the prospect of immediate financial
calamity.8¶ This study reviews the historical and political context that shaped European monetary union through the financial crisis, and
then traces how unexpected financial market pressures forced European leaders to sweep aside treaty
restrictions in order to build a joint fiscal backstop and consent to active central bank intervention on
their joint accounts. A third section explores the efforts to encourage, and at times impose, structural reforms, which created a
framework to address the currency union’s structural imbalances, even if its credibility remains dubious. Fourth, the study examines the
financial interdependence of the currency union that, for all the concerns about fiscal transfers, actually provided a mechanism for financial
transfers that helped absorb the shocks. At the same time, these deep financial linkages also made each member vulnerable to the instability of
the others and prompted euro governments to impose unprecedented centralized supervision on their own largest banks. In a fifth and final
section, this paper assesses the resilience of what must for the foreseeable future remain a “suboptimum currency union” and suggests a policy
agenda to secure the recent gains. While further fiscal integration or structural reforms that boost labor mobility may be difficult to imagine
short of another crisis, steady and quiet progress on banking union may still be possible. The outcomes are hardly inevitable, as
political leaders could miscalculate and voter moods could sour further. Competitive adjustments and structural reforms do not immediately
boost growth, which creates fertile ground for populism and isolationism. 9 Still, the
lesson of the last several years suggests
that members of the euro area must either hang together or hang separately. Ironically, perhaps, the same
integration through financial markets and banks that makes members of Europe’s currency union
vulnerable to one another also makes the entire structure more likely to endure. As one journalist put it,
Europe finds itself in an unhappy marriage with prohibitive divorce costs (Walker 2016)

EU is obsolete and useless.

Sked 12—Professor of international history and former convener of European studies at the London
School of Economics [Alan, “Why would anyone want to join the EU?” Foreign Policy, 14 Mar,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/14/why-would-anyone-want-to-join-the-eu/, accessed 23 Nov 2016]

Superficially, the EU seems to have made great progress since the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Almost every aspect of policy is
now determined by bureaucrats in Brussels in combination with the European Council and the European Parliament. The EU even has its own
foreign service and is struggling to create its own intelligence and federal police services . No wonder it impresses
Arabs and Africans, whose own struggles for unity have, relatively speaking, gone nowhere. The trouble, however, is that the EU as a
whole is in absolute demographic decline and relative economic and technological decline, and its major
policies — whether the common fisheries and agriculture policies or the euro and monetary union — have
failed. In terms of foreign and security policies, it is an international joke. It spends next to nothing on
defense, and even its main contributors in this area, Britain and France, have seen their armed forces so severely cut
recently that in the Libyan war, where Europe "took the lead," they were entirely dependent on U.S.
logistics and supplies. If the EU boasts of its reliance on "soft power," that is because it has no choice. Its
head of foreign affairs, the British baroness Catherine Ashton, has been called "the world’s highest-paid female politician," yet she remains
anonymous and has no influence on world events whatsoever. Her position sums up everything that is wrong with the EU —
expensive but ineffective. The fundamental problem with the EU, however, is that the people of Europe have no faith in it and do not
identify with it. A 2010 Eurobarometer poll found that only 49 percent of EU citizens think their country’s EU
membership is a "good thing," while only 42 percent trust EU institutions. Meanwhile, those institutions, like
the EU’s whole ethos, are positively anti-democratic. Its key decision-making bodies — the European Council, Court of
Justice, and European Commission — are, for all practical purposes, unelected, unaccountable, and removed from the
people (commissioners are usually washed-up has-beens whose political careers in their home states have ended in failure). Their decisions
are irreversible in national parliaments, and the European Parliament, while vested with powers of co-decision-making with the European
Council, is also remote. The Parliament is a glorified debating society — not a government with an official
opposition — and its parties cannot promise any fundamental policy changes in their election manifestos; indeed, its election outcomes
rarely have an impact on the course of EU politics. Its members are unknown and despised as opportunists who merely seek inflated salaries,
perks, expenses, and pensions. Voter turnout in the EU’s parliamentary elections is low and falling, reflecting the widely held belief among EU
citizens that the EU doesn’t protect or represent their interests . One of the most egregious examples of the lack of
democracy in the EU is the practice of making small states that vote "no" in EU referenda vote again. Denmark had to vote twice on the
Maastricht Treaty, while Ireland was forced to go two rounds on the Nice Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty. Big states are not immune from this
kind of bullying treatment, either. When voters in France and the Netherlands rejected an EU constitution in 2005, European leaders tweaked
about 4 percent of the original wording, renamed the document the Lisbon Treaty, and then rammed it through the French and Dutch
parliaments despite the popular votes. When then Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou suggested a referendum on the Greek bailout last
year, he was maneuvered out of office within days. The EU does not believe in the tolerant British saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans
do." Instead, its policy is, "When in Rome, do as the Germans do." Altogether, the outlook in Brussels and Berlin is like that of Napoleon in
George Orwell’s Animal Farm: "He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the
wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" The official German attitude is summed up by the regular fury from German
politicians and the German media whenever an EU country calls for a referendum on initiatives from Brussels. When Ireland announced in
February that it would hold a referendum on the EU’s new fiscal treaty, Der Spiegel marveled, "The Irish Again!" while Süddeutsche Zeitung
declared that if the Irish fail to realize that the fiscal pact "is in their national interest," Germany "will not be able to help them." Perhaps
nothing captures Germany’s elitist attitude better than an essay last summer in Der Spiegel by German political scientist Herfried Münkler
titled, "Democratization Can’t Save Europe: The Need for a Centralization of Power." Münkler argues that elections and referenda
cannot be trusted in Europe because "the European population has never been and still is not a European people." EU elites, he adds, "need to
improve — and power has to be taken away from the periphery." Can you imagine a leading U.S. magazine printing such stuff about American
elites and voters in certain states? But this is exactly what is happening in Europe today. Power
is being taken away from the
periphery by centralizing elites. But these elites are failing. The EU’s key policy — monetary union — has
been a disaster. The simple fact is that you cannot have a successful monetary union without a political and
fiscal union, with monetary transfers between rich and poor areas legitimized by democratic institutions. (In a currency union of
disparate economies where changes of interest and exchange rates are forbidden to members, weaker
economies have no means of competing with stronger ones if there is no legal arrangement for
democratic agreement among members that stronger economies will bail out weaker ones when they
get into debt.)

No proliferation impact.
Jonas Schneider 20. Senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies, held post-doctoral
fellowships at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and at the CSS
and worked as a research associate at the Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel, holds a
PhD in Political Science from the University of Kiel. 2020. “Chapter 26 Nuclear Proliferation and
International Security.” Understanding Global Politics: Actors and Themes in International Affairs, edited
by Klaus Larres and Ruth Wittlinger, Routledge, pp. 409–425.

Other analysts have sounded a much less alarmist tone, however. Some scholars even suggested that an Iranian bomb held great
potential for stabilising an unbalanced and volatile Middle East (Waltz, 2012). Closer to the mainstream of Western
strategic discourse, various experts have argued that despite the risks of proliferation, nuclear weapons, and the
deterrent they provide should get (more) credit for contributing, in combination with other factors, to what has been
labelled ‘the Long Peace’ among the great powers since 1945 (Gaddis, 1999, p. 268–271; Gavin, 2012a, p. 164; Acton
2010, pp. 16–17). Still others have contended that because nuclear proliferation is such a rare phenomenon, and since
robust nonproliferation measures tend to be disruptive, the net destabilising effect of new nuclear
countries is quite small and, therefore, manageable (Mueller 2010, pp. 95–99; Hymans 2013, pp. 293–296).
The question of whether nuclear proliferation has stabilising or destabilising effects is not just fascinating for scholars of the nuclear age, but
also highly consequential for practical policy issues. For in order to debate the merits of particular policy choices – such as preventive military
strikes against nuclear facilities, grand bargains with potential proliferators or complete nuclear disarmament – we need to understand first
how the spread of nuclear weapons impacts regional and global security.

The chapter proceeds in three steps. The first section provides the foundation for the other parts by summarising what we know about
empirical patterns of proliferation and the utility of nuclear weapons for statecraft. The second section then engages the literature on the
consequences of proliferation, focusing in particular on how proliferation has influenced international stability. The final section explores
whether some states have been more affected than others, and what measures these states have taken to prevent proliferation, or at least
mitigate its negative consequences.

Patterns of nuclear proliferation and the utility of nuclear weapons

Nuclear proliferation is commonly defined as the spread of nuclear weapons to states that did not previously have them. Within a broader
conceptual framework that is rarely used by scholars, yet popular in the arms control community, this diffusion of nuclear weapons to
additional states is labelled horizontal proliferation. It is conceptually accompanied by the notion of vertical proliferation, which refers to
qualitative improvements and increases in the number of nuclear weapons in the stockpiles of existing nuclear weapon states. In accordance
with the typical usage of the term in the scholarly debate, this chapter focuses only on how the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons
affects international stability.

One important empirical pattern that has shaped how nuclear proliferation is understood concerns the way in which nuclear weapons have
spread. The word ‘spread’ appears to suggest that the established nuclear powers have provided other
interested nations with (at least a few) operational nuclear warheads. Yet such transfers have never
been undertaken. Certainly, states that sought nuclear weapons have often received significant assistance
from other nations (Schofield, 2014; Fuhrmann, 2012), sometimes in the form of highly sensitive technologies (Kroenig, 2010).
Nonetheless, since all these transfers remained well below the weapons threshold, nations seeking nuclear weapons
always had to build them indigenously. Hence, in reality, the spread of nuclear weapons has meant that merely the
ambition to possess a nuclear arsenal has spread to additional states, each of which then had to pursue that goal primarily
through indigenous efforts.

Importantly, since a state’s national efforts to turn its desire for nuclear weapons into reality naturally span
several (and sometimes many) years, nuclear proliferation must be conceived of as a process, as opposed to just a single
step (Meyer, 1986). This point is reinforced by the fact that 29 out of 39 states that have embarked upon that path (Müller and
Schmidt, 2010, p. 157; Mikoyan, 2012; Santoro, 2017) have not acquired a nuclear arsenal. Hence, a lot of nuclear proliferation
activity has been undertaken by nations that did not ultimately become nuclear weapon states. Three patterns explain this situation.

First, owing not just to

the technological, but also the institutional and managerial challenges of the task, some
nations simply failed in their efforts to build the bomb (Hymans, 2012; Braut-Hegghammer, 2016). Second, a few countries have
chosen a nuclear ‘hedging’ strategy, intentionally confining their efforts to developing the technological capability to build an arsenal quickly
while refraining from exercising that option (Narang, 2016–17, p. 134). Third, several states have undertaken a ‘nuclear
reversal’, abandoning their nuclear weapons activities before developing nuclear explosive devices (Müller and Schmidt,
2010).