We have some wonderful choices this year for the new topic. We choose between the global food industry, Russia, or the WTO. All of these are rich with cases and clash.
At first, I rejected the global food industry resolution, but upon further research, this resolution offers some very nice ideas. We can look at the importation of food products or even the exportation. We can look at GMOs or feeding the hungry. We can look at the problems we have had with contamination of foods from China. This resolution would encompass our agriculture policy, our FDA policies, our importation policies, our trade policies, and our national security policies. This is a rich but pretty wide resolution to explore. Just enter into google “global food industry” site:.gov and see what comes up. It is always good to limit the information to that within the last year so you can see how timely the information is. This will give you an idea of US policy currently towards the “global food industry.”
My favorite is the Russia resolution. This topic has some interesting topicality aspects to it (is foreign policy the same as trade policy?) and yet is fairly narrow enough to allow for some really deep clash and exploration. I think that Russia is very timely as a topic. The bear is stirring. They have invested heavily in our battery industry. They are competing for oil supplies. They have population issues. There are a lot of interesting things going on in Russia right now.
My least favorite is the WTO option. This option is actually huge. We could be discussing domestic policies, foreign policies, food policies, drug policies, agriculture policies, trade policies, arbitration issues, court issues, etc. It also is a muli-actor resolution which is just difficult to deal with in a round. This also is the resolution that allows for the most bias. What I think is good about this resolution is that we will have good generics on unilateral vs multilateral or isolationism. Of course, these generics will come up with the other resolutions so these are not a reason to prefer. It is also another organization that utilizes consensus to make decisions (remember this from NATO year?) plus it has no control over the actual agreements which are negotiated and ratified between countries. The WTO has no hand in the process. In other words, abolish the WTO and you still have all the agreements (but no enforcement of them)