Actors, Boundaries and Fiat

This year’s resolution (Resolved: That the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should be significantly reformed or abolished) leaves a lot of wiggle room. So who can the actors be? What exactly are the boundaries of this resolution? Who do we have fiat over? These are the questions I seek to answer here. Keep in mind this is purely based upon my bias.


First off, the actors. Unlike last year, where medical malpractice law was a state issue only in the United States, this year’s resolution provides no actor, however it does give us some ideas and guidelines for the actors. There are several possibilities (this doesn’t mean I’m advocating any of them, and I’ll discuss their pros and cons in a minute): 1) the NAC, or North Atlantic Council; 2) the legislatures of the member-nations; and 3) the UN, or United Nations.

The first one, the NAC, is probably the most reliable and hardest to challenge. If you are making a change to NATO, it should go through it’s governing body, right? This actor will only work if you aren’t changing the NAT (North Atlantic Treaty), though. If you are redirecting funds, or changing NATO’s mission or something of that vein, this is your actor.

The second one, the legislatures of member-nations, would be the hardest to fiat for obvious reasons – how often would all 26 nations agree? This actor would be necessary, however, if your plan included a change to the NAT.

The final one, the UN, would be a bit shaky, but if you think about it, it can be logical. I personally wouldn’t run that, but the UN is the "parent" of NATO (what I mean is NATO was born of the UN, Article 53). This would be necessary for a removing NATO from the UN type of case.

Obviously, there are more actors available to be used, but I believe these to be a) the most logical, and b) the most popular.


So now that we understand the actors of this resolution, we’ll look at the boundaries. Just what parts of NATO can be changed, anyways? There are five realms of change (or a combination of the three): 1) changing the structure of NATO (i.e. the NAT); 2) changing the mission of NATO; 3) adding to the current system; 4) abolishing the whole thing; and 5) a whole resolutional approach.

The first, changing the structure of NATO, will probably be the hardest to do if you have to change the actual treaty itself. If you are, for example, reforming the way military troops are given and the amount of money from each country, this would probably be an easy, and easily topical, approach.

Second, changing the mission of NATO. This would be the simplest change. You would just use the NAC, and everything would be great as far as boundaries and actors go.

Next, adding to the current system, wouldn’t really be a reform at all, but an addition. Topically, you might be able to get away with it. It would be hard, and a decent t-press could kill this case. But I know they’ll be run anyway.

The fourth, abolishing the whole thing, is as topical as anything. Probably the most topical case you can run. There’s not much else to say.

Finally, a whole resolutional approach. I personally am not an advocate of the whole resolution theory. However, it would be insanely hard to find any evidence that would say "NATO is perfect the way it is, it needs absolutely no changes whatsoever", and thus, this case is a huge advantage to the Affirmative team this year. This is a fairly simple resolution to prove true at face value.

The boundaries this year are pretty clear and clean cut. Of course, a lot depends on your definitions, but that’s always the case.


The last thing I’m writing about now is fiat. The silly, annoying, four letter word that puts a damper on the best of Affirmative cases, and the most pristine of Negative speeches. What can the Affirmative team claim fiat over this year? There are a few answers to this question: 1) any actors that can be remotely connected to the resolution (a very liberal, and unfair, position); 2) NATO specific actors (more narrow and reasonable); 3) resolution-specific actors (a good idea, but figure out what those are); and 4) NAC only (too narrow and silly).

First, any actor remotely connected to the resolution would include the EU, AU, any government entity of any member-nation (or even prospective member-nations)… and so on. This would be super easy to defeat logically, so I would advise against running it personally.

Second, this is probably the most reliable: if it’s connected to NATO, it would work. If you’re reforming the treaty, you have to fiat the member-nation’s legislatures. That’s just how this works. If you’re reforming the mission, you fiat the NAC. Things like that.

Third, this is probably too vague to be of any help. Of course, you can see the actors and boundaries above for my take on this, but it’s probably going to vary, so it’s unreliable.

Fourth, this is just ridiculous. It narrows the scope of the resolution so much, it’s almost a guaranteed Affirmative loss. The NAC is the legislative body of NATO, yes. But we didn’t use the USG to change state MML last year. It’s really illogical.


I hope this helped clarify some of the issues with these subjects under this resolution. Comments are encouraged, because I’m learning this along with the rest of you.

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