[WAR] Debate

[Lord Celebi]

"WAR Debate: Where pretentiousness meets intelligence." -Cicero^{[citation needed]}

Welcome to the WAR Debate section! WAR has been proud to host the Debate section since the original WAR on PE2K, all the way back in 2003. Within this section, participants are asked to put their wits and rhetoric to the test against other debaters using a variety of serious issues for topics. Participants will be rewarded for critical thinking, creativity, and well-researched points. It should be important to note that the point of Debate is not to find the correct answer to the issue at hand, but instead to win the Debate. This should be treated as a sport, not as an evaluation of who your fellow competitors are as people.

I have four points per week to award in this section, and I intend on switching it up a little bit. Gone are the "Pro" and "Con" side winners. As we all know (or should know by now), any problem contains far more than two sides. This section will not be enabling a forced-binary problem viewpoint, and instead, will be encouraging an infinite-sided view of issues. Any and all views on a subject are equally admissible. Likewise, do remember that you do not necessarily have to argue what you believe, just what you think you can argue well enough to win. I will give out one point each week to each of the top four debaters in the section. If we have less than four per week, I will redistribute point order based on the quality of debate.

The best posts are ones that make a clear argument and are well researched. Always post your sources in the event someone wishes to bring the ethos of one's source into question. I would like to note that Wikipedia is an admissible source, as numerous studies have shown that Wikipedia's content can contend with that of peer-reviewed and scholarly articles. If you plan on citing a scholarly article as a source, please ensure that it is not behind a paywall. I know that I have access to such articles through my University, but not everyone is as fortunate.

Week I

The Budpest Memorandum was an agreement signed in 1994 between Ukraine, the United States of America, Canada, and Russia. Ukraine agreed to relinquish their stockpile of nuclear weapons in exchange for defense from the other three parties in the agreement should Ukraine come under attack. With the 2014 Crimean Crisis, it is clear that Russia has breached the agreement that they made 20 years ago with Ukraine. Since, the response from the United States and Canada has been mum. Should the United States have upheld the Budapest Memorandum and gone to war with Russia last March?

Finally, as a request, if this is your first post in the Debate thread, please take the Political Compass test and post your results. This will come in handy later.