Hegemony Impact Defense

US Hegemony solves every major impact, or so we are lead to believe. No matter what side you are, if the other team reads a hegemony impact you need to make sure you are on top of it. Teams get away with war crime level absurdity by reading a 1 sentence Khalilzhad card and then claiming their Heg impact solves for every other impact in the debate.
No other impact in the history of debate has been as exaggerated as the collapse of US leadership. So here are some ideas for answers that you should make.
1. Timeframe - the collapse of US leadership will not be quick. Since 9-11 Bush has been doing non stop damage to both our international credibility/soft power and our military readiness and yet we have not seen an apolar vacuum emerge. If recent events have not caused a rapid decline in US leadership it seems unlikely that failure to provide family planning assistance to Africa will.
2. Hyperbole - US hegemony impacts generally consist of a laundry list of every region in the world and every good thing from economic growth to ice cream and assert that a decline of leadership will cause hotspots to explode and ice cream to disappear. Personally I think a quick analytics about the lack of empirical proof for this argument, i.e. that we are a leader now and the world isn’t 100 percent perfect, is pretty damming. However, a quick card on this argument is pretty devastating to the other team as they will have to read a warranted, longer card in order to respond.
US Withdrawal Doesn’t Cause conflict
Eugene Gholz and Harvey Sapolsky, Department of Political Science at MIT, International Security, v21 n4, 1997, p. 30-32
Several prominent analysts favor a policy of selective engagement.[70] These analysts fear that American military retrenchment would increase the risk of great power war. A great power war today would be a calamity, even for those countries that manage to stay out of the fighting. The best way to prevent great power war, according to these analysts, is to remain engaged in Europe and East Asia. Twice in this century the United States has pulled out of Europe, and both times great power war followed. Then America chose to stay engaged, and the longest period of European great power peace ensued. In sum, selective engagers point to the costs of others' great power wars and the relative ease of preventing them. The selective engagers' strategy is wrong for two reasons. First, selective engagers overstate the effect of U.S. military presence as a positive force for great power peace. In today's world, disengagement will not cause great power war, and continued engagement will not reliably prevent it. In some circumstances, engagement may actually increase the likelihood of conflict. Second, selective engagers overstate the costs of distant wars and seriously understate the costs and risks of their strategies. Overseas deployments require a large force structure. Even worse, selective engagement will ensure that when a future great power war erupts, the United States will be in the thick of things. Although distant great power wars are bad for America, the only sure path to ruin is to step in the middle of a faraway fight. Selective engagers overstate America's effect on the likelihood of future great power wars. There is little reason to believe that withdrawal from Europe or Asia would lead to deterrence failures. With or without a forward U.S. presence, America's major allies have sufficient military strength to deter any potential aggressors. Conflict is far more likely to erupt from a sequence described in the spiral model. The danger of spirals leading to war in East Asia is remote. Spirals happen when states, seeking security; frighten their neighbors. The risk of spirals is great when offense is easier than defense, because any country's attempt to achieve security will give it an offensive capability against its neighbors. The neighbors' attempts to eliminate the vulnerability give them fleeting offensive capabilities and tempt them to launch preventive war.[71] But Asia, as discussed earlier, is blessed with inherent defensive advantages. Japan and Taiwan are islands, which makes them very difficult to invade. China has a long land border with Russia, but enjoys the protection of the East China Sea, which stands between it and Japan. The expanse of Siberia gives Russia, its ever-trusted ally, strategic depth. South Korea benefits from mountainous terrain which would channel an attacking force from the north. Offense is difficult in East Asia, so spirals should not be acute. In fact, no other region in which great powers interact offers more defensive advantage than East Asia. The prospect for spirals is greater in Europe, but continued U.S. engagement does not reduce that danger; rather, it exacerbates the risk. A West European military union, controlling more than 21 percent of the world's GDP, may worry Russia. But NATO, with 44 percent of the world's GDP, is far more threatening, especially if it expands eastward. The more NATO frightens Russia, the more likely it is that Russia will turn dangerously nationalist, redirect its economy toward the military, and try to re-absorb its old buffer states.[72] But if the U.S. military were to withdraw from Europe, even Germany, Europe's strongest advocate for NATO expansion, might become less enthusiastic, because it would be German rather than American troops standing guard on the new borders. Some advocates of selective engagement point to the past fifty years as evidence that America's forward military presence reduces the chance of war. The Cold War's great power peace, however, was over determined. Nuclear weapons brought a powerful restraining influence.[73] Furthermore, throughout the Cold War, European and Asian powers had a common foe which encouraged them to cooperate. After an American withdrawal, the Japanese, Koreans, and Russians would still have to worry about China; the Europeans would still need to keep an eye on Russia. These threats can be managed without U.S. assistance, and the challenge will encourage European and Asian regional cooperation.
I like this card because it also gives you the opportunity to sneakily make some offensive heg bad arguments in the 1AR.
3. Solvency - most aff’s on this topic will have no business claiming a heg advantage. Make sure you argue against the solvency with evidence and logical analytics. But in addition to this you need to make probability arguments when doing your impact comparisons. Though US hegemony may have a bigger impact than malthus, the likelihood that condom distribution to Uganda restores US leadership is very very low. So instead of emphasizing magnitude discuss probability. In addition to that, you should make arguments about why specific scenarios for conflict should be given more weight than nebulous regional or global stability arguments like the kind made in the short Khalilzhad impact card most teams read.
4. Impact turn - Hegemony bad made a comeback last year but is still somewhat of a black sheep in the debate community. However, if a team reads a 1 sentence Khalilzhad impact card and attempts to use it to solve all your disads you should make them pay. A quick frontline of 6-8 short cards can make the 2AC”s life miserable, especially if hegemony is their only advantage. In that instance you should also read defense so that you have a choice in the block of different arguments to go for.