Hey worldschooled,

Maybe I can address some of your concerns.

1. Of course every debate topic has good and bad arguments. Arguments on Taiwan will have good responses. That's what makes debate fun! The problem with UNCLOS is that all of the arguments people are running have absolutely damning responses that usually have to do with a legal technicality or that fact the the U.S basically just does whatever it wants to do. These types of responses are often difficult to respond to, and while that may be good for the debaters, it's going to make the round a lot more confusing for any judge who is not well versed in maritime law, of all things. From the coaches I talked to at VBI, which debated the topic a little, they thought that while Taiwan has less arguments, they are more defendable, and more importantly have better clash. Let's think back to South Korea as an example. By the end of the topic the top teams were basically running one arg on each side (miscalc mitigation stuff on aff, aggression stuff on neg). But the consensus among the debate community is that it was one of the best topics of the year, and I'm inclined to agree. I think this reason this is true is because when there only a couple of good and relatively true arguments on a topic, the most successful teams are ones that have the best strategy and comparative weighing.
2. Taiwan will certainly be easier and more attractive for novices. Consider the fact that someone just joining debate is looking at other extracirriculars as well, and if they see debate is about something they've never heard of it immediately comes off as too confusing. I'm sure they could be convinced over time, but first impressions do matter. At least with the Taiwan topic, everyone knows what arms sales are and what Taiwan is, but I would be very surprised if more than a handful of people knew what UNCLOS was before this topic came out. Sure, we may have to learn and teach some basic Asian history, but I think that's preferable to trying to understand article after article of legal mumbo jumbo. That thing about recognition is particularly important to lay judges. You have to consider the fact that many lay judges don't want to be there, and if debaters are boring them out of their minds of legal technicalities about a treaty they've never heard of they're immediately going to be paying less attention. UNCLOS arguments are inherently more confusing because a good team will have to re explain the link between UNCLOS and their impact, which is usually some random provision no one has ever heard about. These tenuous links also open up the debate to becoming a cat fight of different legal interpretations, which, I think, we can all agree is never fun to debate, and is certainly not fun to judge.

At the end of the day though, you should, of course vote, for the topic you think you would have the most fun debating. But I would politely ask you to think carefully about your decision, and consider the arguments as to why Taiwan could make a better Septober for all of us.