Five Suggested Debate Topics for 2025-26
Sixty-one delegates from 22 states, the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues, the National Catholic Forensic League and the National Debate Coaches Association attended the NFHS Policy Debate Topic Selection Meeting August 2-4, 2024 in Des Moines, Iowa. Twelve topic reports were presented by authors who, for the past 12 months, researched each topic area.
State delegates and participants deliberated for three days to determine the final five topic areas: Arctic, India, Military Presence, Nation State Recognition, and South Asia.
Serving on the 2024 Wording Committee were: Jennifer Adams, Texas (Chairperson); Sam Normington, Washington; Debnil Sur, California; Brett Bricker, Kansas; Lauren Ivey, Georgia; Ruth Kay, Michigan; and Sheryl Kaczmarek, Massachusetts.
Balloting for the 2025-26 national high school debate topic will take place in a two-fold process. During the months of September and October, coaches and students will have the opportunity to discuss the five selected problem areas. The first ballot will narrow the topics to two. A second ballot will be distributed to determine the final topic. Each state, the NSDA, the NAUDL, the NCFL and the NDCA will conduct voting in November and December to determine the favored topic area. In January, the NFHS will announce the 2025-26 national high school debate topic and resolution. The final topic resolution will be posted on the NFHS website on the Speech, Debate, Theatre page and sent to state associations and affiliate members.
Synopsis of Problem Areas and Resolutions for 2025-2026
PROBLEM AREA I: ARCTIC
Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly increase its exploration and/or development of the Arctic.
Widely known as the “final frontier,” the Arctic is filled with current interest by geopolitical, economic, and environmental actors. The Arctic Ocean, and the different biodiversity and geopolitical arguments that it entails, is something that has been discussed around the margins in debates in the past, but not explicitly debated in policy debate despite past student interest. The Arctic has a wealth of projects occurring within it, including U.S. cooperation with the Arctic Council, NOAA and NSF research, and more. This allows the topic to be widely accessible through governmental websites and provides educational opportunities for novice and varsity debaters alike. Novices have an abundance of potential areas for debate including economic and environmental issues, while Varsity debaters can take the topic further by discussing geopolitical, economic, and Indigenous issues within the Arctic Circle.
On the affirmative, debaters will have the opportunity to take a deep dive into different exploration, biodiversity, scientific research, and trade opportunities. As glaciers melt and shift, there is opportunity for exploration of the Arctic Ocean and its borders, research of potential viruses and bacteria that may surface, and an ability to develop military bases to protect certain areas of the Arctic. The affirmative can also discuss different plans that can prioritize Indigenous voices and protections for that land.
On the negative, debaters will have the opportunity to discuss different agents that should explore and develop the Arctic instead, including but not limited to the Arctic Council, Arctic Peoples, and more. The negative will also be able to access countless disadvantages regarding the conservation of land, economic impacts and geopolitical fallout from different trade routes opening, and biodiversity implications of exploration of the Arctic Ocean. Debaters will also have the opportunity to critique development of Indigenous land, the redrawing of borders as glaciers shift and melt, and securitization.
PROBLEM AREA II: INDIA
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its diplomatic and/or economic engagement with the Republic of India in one or more of the following: environment, free trade agreements, technology.
India has positioned itself as a global swing state internationally. While some United States officials view this pairing as one of the most important bilateral relationships, India’s traditional commitment to nonalignment and maintaining some insulation from Western influences keeps the relationship ambiguous. Relationships with India during the Barack Obama administration may have declined while the United States focused more on China, the opportunities to focus on the largest country by population in the world is now. With Narendra Modi’s re-election, the state of US-India relations is in a unique position for focus. While influences outside of India worry about India’s declining democracy ratings and preservation of rights for all, India seeks the opportunity to expand their power and position, especially in the Global South. While the United States and India are cooperative, the time is now for a renewed commitment to expansion of the alliance. This resolution allows affirmatives to consider the impact of an expanded partnership with India in three key areas. We’ll see affirmatives explore the possibility of free trade and the lessening of India’s protectionist policies, how India and the United States can expand partnerships in supply chain diversification, pandemic response and preparedness, expanded climate change partnerships in the form of mitigation efforts, and the ever-present possibility of technological innovation, which could allow affirmatives to explore cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and even space exploration. Negatives will explore how India’s emergence out of the simply the Global South and an embracing of the United States as a true partner would impact the geopolitical landscape. China’s response to perceived and real expansions of Indian power in the region would be subject to an ample number of negative arguments. India is also involved in numerous and tenuous possible regional conflicts that would be impacted by an Indian embrace of the United States in any of these areas. Negatives also have a slew of tradeoff arguments to be utilized.
PROBLEM AREA III: MILITARY PRESENCE
Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly reduce its military presence in one or more of the following: Bahrain, Japan, Kuwait, South Korea.
The United States is the world’s military superpower. With a defense budget larger than the next 10 ten countries combined and over 170,000 troops in 178 countries, the United States military impacts every aspect of international relations. The impacts of the military are not just hypothetical;: overseas basing impacts the security, sovereignty, economy, and overall well-being of host countries, adversaries, and allies. Despite the military’s prominence, the high school debate community has not debated about military presence since the height of the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan 15 years ago. As global geopolitics has changed, so too have U.S. strategic priorities. Now more than ever, it is important for the debate community to robustly research and discuss national and international security through a stable mechanism that represents a large departure from the status quo: reducing military presence. In particular, this specific wording would focus on reducing military presence from four countries with very different histories housing the U.S. military: Japan, South Korea, Bahrain, and Kuwait. This topic strikes a balance of undoubtedly being an international topic that provides inroads to students learning about other countries while still maintaining a focus on the United States’s role in international affairs.
Military presence serves as an approachable yet unique entry point into important international relations debates. This specific wording will allow for students to have an adequate division of affirmative and negative ground that allows for in-depth debates focused on the affirmative case. Affirmative teams could choose to completely remove military presence from a country, or could instead to focus on particular bases, weapons systems, or units. Such mechanism flexibility provides the affirmative with a wide array of advantages they can access. Although the specifics will change by region, affirmatives will garner advantages from areas with large, accessible literature bases like containment, crisis escalation, burden-sharing, social justice, and structural violence. The negative will also have good entry points to a robust set of literature, arguing the affirmative could undermine the deterrence of adversaries, assurance of allies, U.S. diplomacy, or movements against broader imperialist and militarist structures. This topic has a clear core controversy and an accessible literature base that makes it an ideal topic to debate across the country.
PROBLEM AREA IV: NATION STATE RECOGNITION
Resolved: The United States federal government should grant state recognition to one or more de facto states.
Several areas around the world are in turmoil due to disputes over national sovereignty, a topic that has never been debated by the policy debate community despite it lurking beneath the surface year after year. Across the globe, religious and ethnic minorities are fighting for their independence, often from oppressive circumstances. A topic that would allow the United States to recognize these communities is overdue and would allow for a great balance of debate over a set of issues that generates tremendous student interest.
On this topic, the affirmative would be tasked with recognizing a new nation-state, a radical change that would generate awesome debates. The wording of the resolution allows for a wide swath of de facto states to be recognized, ranging from Palestine to Taiwan to Iraqi Kurdistan to indigenous populations within the United States. The breadth of affirmative areas will allow for affirmative creativity and will also force students to grapple with emerging issues and conflicts around the world, an opportunity that is unique in terms of the topics offered for this school year. Despite seeming like an expansive topic, debates over what constitutes a de facto state will also allow for affirmative creativity and lively debates over topicality.
Despite the scope of affirmative flexibility, this topic is perfectly suited for the negative. Each affirmative will have a robust literature base describing the response of other nations to the recognition of an emerging state. There are also unifying negative positions associated with diplomatic capital and the spillover effects of endorsing secessionist movements. The specific topic mechanism also allows the negative to access counterplans that fall short of recognition but avoid the core topic disadvantages. Kritik ground surrounding international sovereignty is also rich and frequently debating among international relations scholars, which will add even more flexibility to an already expansive set of negative arguments that will create an excellent balance on a new topic area.
The time has never been more ripe for discussions of America's role in supporting de facto states. Around the world, emerging states are eagerly awaiting the United States, and the international community more broadly, recognizing their struggles, and this topic allows students across the country to address those growing concerns.
PROBLEM AREA V: SOUTH ASIA
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its defense cooperation with one or more South Asian countries.
A South Asia topic would make for an incredibly deep and accessible year of debates. South Asian students are an enormous population in policy debate, and a topic about the region is long overdue. The region consists of (arguably) eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Only one, Afghanistan, has ever appeared in a resolution. Students will primarily investigate three major foreign policy issues: strategies to contain China’s rise, tensions between India and Pakistan, and instability in Afghanistan. This limited core set is perfect for novices, who have heard about all of these issues in the news for their entire lives. The topic also addresses other important global issues like terrorism and Russia's expansion throughout Europe and Asia..
Affirmatives can take many innovative approaches to these major global issues. They could expand cooperation with India broadly to contain China, or in specific defense sectors like nuclear, cyber, and space. American cooperation with India, Pakistan, or both could help address the long-standing tensions between the two. The Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan motivates many possible American responses, several of which fall under the auspices of defense cooperation. Whether it is security assistance or host nation support, the resolution allows for a variety of ways to engage with the government of Afghanistan. Remaining countries in the area will allow for flexible and innovative debates as the season progresses, and expand the scope of research to allow for student creativity.
On the other hand, the negative has a rich and reliable toolbox to counter military action. Disadvantages can discuss the downsides of containing China or the plan’s detriment to other regional relationships. Counterplans can advocate non-military cooperation, conditions attached to our foreign policy, and unilateral military policies. Kritikal debaters can explore how anti-blackness, settler colonialism, and capitalism intersect with the region’s legacy of colonialism. While some defense cooperation does exist now, it only makes both sides stronger, and is considerably less limited than economic interactions between the United States and South Asian states. There’s evolving and in-depth literature about the core controversies. Importantly, as affirmatives try to solve bigger issues in the region, other regional actors, like China, will respond in kind, thus strengthening disadvantages. And because the literature across countries discusses the same controversial areas from different angles, students that research those and develop nuanced negative positions will succeed on a topic with a never before debated mechanism (defense cooperation) in a never before debated region of the world (South Asia).
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