3/13-3/20: How to Slap the Counterplan: Affirming Against Different Types of Counterplans
Tournament Update
Due to the conclusion of the season, LD and PF debaters did not compete at bid tournaments this past weekend. Best of luck to everyone preparing for NDCA and the TOC, and stay tuned for future tournament results!
VBI 2024 Staff Announcement
We are so excited to start announcing our instructors for VBI 2024! Every week, you’ll get a chance to learn more about the talented staff working at VBI this summer. This week’s staff feature is LD instructor Charles Karcher.
Charles Karcher is a teacher and debate coach based in Manhattan. Previously, he was awarded the Fulbright Taiwan Debate Coach/Trainer grant, for which he lived in Taipei and helped establish English debate programs in high schools around the island. Over his six years of coaching, his students have reached late out-rounds of a number of major national tournaments. His teaching specializations are philosophy, the K debate, strategy, and research methods. Charles attended VBI as a student and is looking forward to returning for his second summer of teaching.
How to Slap the Counterplan: Affirming Against Different Types of Counterplans
by Amadea Datel
Since counterplans are among the most popular negative arguments in LD, learning effective strategies to counter them can be a valuable time investment for improving affirmative debating. This article will cover six common categories of counterplans and delve into the most strategic approaches against each one. Because the advice will assume background knowledge of the basic structure of a counterplan and the framework for responding to one, I recommend that newer debaters review these concepts before reading.
1. Advantage Counterplans: Advantage counterplans solve one or more aff advantages without doing the action of the plan and are coupled with an external net benefit (a DA that the counterplan avoids).
Since well-written advantage counterplans compete with the aff, perms are not worth extending: perm do both will link to the net benefit (since it involves doing the plan, which triggers the DA), and perm do the counterplan will be obvious severance because the counterplan does none of the aff.
Instead, solvency deficits are the best 2ARs against advantage counterplans—and should be built into the 1AC to leverage in the 1AR given the threatening nature of these counterplans (read a more in-depth explanation here—sorry, plugging my own article). Since the counterplan should be distinct enough from the aff to avoid the net benefit, the aff can explain the differences between the aff and the counterplan as a determining factor in solving their impacts. The 2AR should also choose which impacts to extend based on the magnitude of the corresponding solvency deficits because advantage counterplans tend to solve some much more than others.
Offense against an advantage counterplan might take longer to develop (since it involves reading a new DA against the counterplan instead of articulating the reasons it doesn’t solve the existing advantage) but can be worthwhile if one finds a solid DA that is well-supported by the topic literature. “Links to the net benefit” can also be an underrated argument because advantage counterplans can often be too similar to the aff and thus trigger the net benefit they attempt to avoid.
2. Plan Inclusive Counterplans (PICs): Plan inclusive counterplans, otherwise known as PICs, do all of the plan except for one portion and are coupled with a DA to that portion of the plan.
When aff debaters struggle to generate solvency deficits to excluding such a minuscule part of the plan (a common scenario), competition can become a viable option. Perm do both will be a nonstarter because PICs are mutually exclusive (it is impossible to do both the plan and the plan minus one part) and including the plan would link to the net benefit.
However, perm do the counterplan tends to be a stronger argument than debaters might recognize since the aff often does not require including the part of the plan the neg claims to PIC out of. For example, suppose an aff reads the following plan on the military presence topic: “The United States ought to substantially reduce its military presence in the Republic of Iraq.” The neg might read a PIC out of a particular form of presence e.g., “The United States ought to substantially reduce its military presence in the Republic of Iraq except for counterterrorism initiatives.” In this case, the aff could argue that the counterplan could be a form of doing the plan because the plan never mandates that the US reduce its counterterrorism efforts, just that it reduce military presence in general, so one could imagine a possible world in which the US substantially reduces presence in Iraq while maintaining its counterterrorism initiatives.
This situation might change if the neg argues that almost all of the US’s presence in Iraq could be classified as counterterrorism, but in that case, the PIC starts to appear less threatening: not doing most of the plan means the PIC cannot solve most of the aff's advantages. Thus, as perm do the counterplan becomes less viable, solvency deficits become more viable: the aff can argue that the counterplan just doesn’t do large swaths of the aff and weigh those against the net benefit.
If the aff is in the rare but unfortunate situation where a) the PIC does almost the entire plan; and b) the PIC is competitive (which could result either from mistakes in plan construction or issues with the resolution’s phrasing), the aff could attempt to straight turn the net benefit to generate offense and shift the debate to a different question.
3. Process Counterplans: Process counterplans do the plan through a different process, resulting in the aff (or a somewhat modified version of it), and involve an internal net benefit to doing that specific process.
These counterplans might also be difficult to generate solvency deficits against due to their similarities to the aff. In response, some debaters might choose to include a process advantage in their 1AC to leverage against these counterplans. I tend to find this approach unstrategic because such processes might be components of the plan but are not intrinsic to its action, so the neg can read advantage counterplans that do the aff’s particular process to solve the advantage, then extend both the advantage and process counterplans in the 2NR.
However, this situation should illustrate the odd discrepancies between aff and neg burdens: if the neg can point out that the reason a particular process might be good is not a reason the plan is good, why can’t the aff also point out that the reason the neg’s particular process might be good is not a reason the plan is bad? The aff can make this latter argument via an intrinsic perm—to do the process of the counterplan over another issue—which tests whether the internal net benefit is germane to the plan. Most of the time, the neg will not be able to defend that the process is germane (and will thus attempt to exclude the perm on theoretical grounds, a debate for which the aff should be prepared), but in the rare case that the neg presents a compelling “plan key” warrant, the 2AR should instead extend solvency deficits and responses to the internal net benefit.
At times, perm do both and perm do the counterplan could also be viable strategies against process counterplans. The aff might be able to argue that we can pass the plan through both the aff and the neg’s processes, which solves the internal net benefit, or that the plan does not commit the aff to a particular process so the counterplan could be a manner the aff could be done.
4. Consult Counterplans: Consult counterplans are a specific type of process counterplans, but due to their distinct features and recent prevalence in LD, I decided to include them in a separate section. These counterplans consult a particular actor over whether we should do the plan and argue that the actor would agree, which results in the aff while generating an internal net benefit about the merits of consultation. The counterplan competes off immediacy and certainty: the ideas that the aff must be immediate and certain, and the counterplan is not because the consultation would take extra time and the actor might oppose the plan.
Due to the inadequate competition arguments for consult counterplans, I don't think the 1AR even needs to dedicate time to the solvency and internal net benefit debate. Just like with most process counterplans, intrinsic perms should solve the internal net benefit due to the lack of a “plan key” warrant, but a more straightforward option allows debaters to avoid the intrinsicness debate altogether: perm do both, explained as the “lie perm.” The aff can argue that we could consult the counterplan’s actor over the plan and then pass the plan regardless such that the plan remains “certain” and the counterplan competes off immediacy alone. That simplifies the competition debate for the aff, who now just has to win that counterplans cannot compete off immediacy (which both the evidence—read a longer explanation here—and judges’ sympathies support, given that no one views delay counterplan in a positive light).
5. Agent Counterplans: Agent counterplans do the aff (or an alternative advocacy) with a different agent and are coupled with a DA to the aff’s actor doing the plan. One example (more common in policy than LD) is the states counterplan, which fiats that the 50 states rather than the federal government pass the plan.
Against these counterplans, perm do both becomes the most logical option because agent counterplans do not disprove the obligation of the aff actor. For example, if one were debating whether to provide first-aid to a stranger, claiming that another person had the obligation to help the stranger would not negate one’s obligation—the obligation exists regardless of whether another agent also holds it.
In some cases, the aff might be able to win perm do the counterplan—for example, the counterplan might fiat Congress while the plan fiats the United States, which the aff could argue would not be competitive because fiating the US as an actor does not require the entire US to pass the plan e.g., one could accurately state that “the United States ended affirmative action” without entailing that all three branches of the government contributed to the decision.
The aff could also generate solvency deficits based on the actor. Some or all of the aff’s advantages might be specific to the actor—for example, the federal government could have jurisdiction over issues in the aff that the states do not. However, pointing out the illogical basis of agent counterplans is the most strategic option when answering international actor counterplans that solve all international relations-related advantages, which just illustrates how these counterplans do not reflect the real-world decision calculus of moral or political actors.
6. Uniqueness Counterplans: Uniqueness counterplans generate uniqueness for a DA without attempting to solve the aff (in most cases). For example, if the neg wants to read a politics DA about how the plan will cause fights in Congress but Congress members are preparing to pass another, far more controversial bill, the neg can counterplan not to pass that bill to generate uniqueness for the DA.
Assuming that the counterplan does not solve the aff, the aff can pursue three approaches to answer this counterplan: 1) ignore it—the 1AR should still utter the words “perm do both” to solve residual offense from the counterplan, but if the 1AR isn’t planning on making a uniqueness push relevant to the counterplan, then answering it is not that important; 2) perm do both shields the link—the inclusion of the counterplan generates too much uniqueness such that the plan no longer triggers the DA (e.g., the controversial bill not passing generates enough goodwill in Congress that the plan would no longer cause fights); or 3) the opposite of that—structural issues still make the DA non-unique (e.g., it doesn’t matter if the controversial bill doesn’t pass because mere debates over that bill have generated irreparable animosity within Congress).
I hope this article helped explain some of the strongest arguments against each type of counterplan. I do believe it’s important to add that even though some arguments are better than others against counterplans (e.g., perm do the counterplan might be the obvious 2AR versus a specific PIC), the best 1ARs present a diverse set of arguments against counterplans—different perms, solvency, and offensive arguments—to force the 2NR to cover multiple bases and not lock the 2AR into one argument ahead of time (with a few exceptions—for example, if the particular counterplan is unthreatening relative to the other 1NC positions in a time-crunched 1AR). If you have any questions about the different types of counterplans, feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me!
Amadea Datel is a senior at Dartmouth College who debated college policy at both Columbia and Dartmouth. She reached the quarterfinals at the Gonzaga Jesuit Debates and won the University of Minnesota College Invitational, the Crowe Warken Debates at USNA, and the Mid America Championship, ranking as the 25th team nationally her sophomore year. In high school, she built and coached her school’s LD debate team, won several tournaments in Massachusetts, and was the top speaker and a semifinalist at the MSDL State Championship and the first student from her school to qualify for NSDA and NCFL Nationals, clearing at the former. She is currently the Co-Director of LD and Newsletter Editor at the Victory Briefs Institute and an Assistant Coach at Apple Valley High School.