Proliferation Good Samford
Proliferation Good Samford
Proliferation Good Samford
Proliferation Good DA
Proliferation Good DA
Proliferation Good DA
The Dear Leaders with Bombs. Proliferation Good DA 4 seriously. While we control for the strategic selection of serious threats within crises, we are unable to control for the non-random initial initiation of a crisis in which the actors may choose to enter a crisis based on some ex ante assessment of the out- comes. To account for possible selection bias caused by the use of a truncated sample that does not include any non-crisis cases, one would need to use another dataset in which the crisis cases are a subset and then run Heckman- type selection models (see Lemke & Reed, 2001). It would, however, be difficult to think of a different unit of analysis that might be employed, such that the set of crises is a subset of a larger category of interaction. While dyad- year datasets have often been employed to similar ends, the key independent variable here, which is specific to crises as the unit of analysis, does not lend itself to a dyadic setup. Moreover, selection bias concerns are likely not valid in disputing the claims of this analysis. If selection bias were present, it would tend to bias the effect of nuclear weapons downward, because the set of observed crises with nuclear actors likely has a disproportionate share of resolved actors that have chosen to take their chances against a nuclear opponent. Despite this potential mitigating bias, the results are statistically significant, which
Proliferation Good DA
those that took place in the earlier interwar periods of 1870-1914 and 1918-1939 supports such a conclusion. Therefore, war in the modern era is even less similar to World War II than that war was to War World I, and the latter in turn to the Franco-Prussian war. It is exceptionally difficult, if it is possible at all, to predict its course. But there is every justification to say that the numerous contradictions and paradoxes of a hypothetical new war would in practice have the most unexpected consequences, consequences most likely incompatible with the concept of "protracted" conventional combat on the European continent or on a global scale. This concerns, for example, the fact that
the sharply increased interdependence of different types of armed forces and troops, individual formations and units and various weapons systems is a distinguishing feature of the functioning of enormous and highly complex organizations, which is what modern armed forces are. A great spatial scope of operations (on the scale of entire TVDs), the rapidity and intensity of combat actions, and the multinational structure of opposing coalitions of states will characterize their actions. All of this poses unprecedently high demands for coordinating the actions of all elements of military potentials and for carefully planning operations, their priority, sequence of interaction and so on. At the same time, the character of modem warfare makes inevitable the constant and rapid change of the combat situation on the fronts, deep breakthroughs and envelopments, and the intermixing of one's own and others' formations. units and subunits. In view of the high maneuverability of troops even the traditional FBA may no longer exist. In place of it zones of combat contact of a depth of dozens of kilometers will arise and rapidly change and shift. The unpredictability, mutability and intensity
of probable combat actions would so overload the capabilities of a centralized command and control in the theater of war and the separate TVDs that they would most likely rapidly lead to total chaos. The intensity of the
anticipated combat also renders inevitable exceptionally great losses in arms and equipment. At the same time, because of the rapid increase in the cost of weapons systems, the quantitative levels of armed forces and arms on the whole have a tendency to decrease. Fewer but much improved and more powerful arms have a much lesser chance than in World War I/ of being used repeatedly in several battles. Their longevity will entirely depend on how successfully they may outstrip the opponent and destroy his forces and capabilities earlier than they will be destroyed by him. Therefore, combat actions will in any event most likely have a short-term character, if not for both, then at least for one of the sides. And this is not to mention the
enormous loss. among the civilian population and the damage to the economic infrastructure in the region of combat, which may now envelop the greatest and most densely populated portion of the European continent.
Neither the population, economy nor ecology of Europe can withstand a large-scale conventional war for any amount of timeeven in the improbable event that nuclear power stations, chemical enterprises and nuclear and chemical weapons depots are not destroyed. The limited capabilities of the "human factor" in conditions of modern battle are clearly demonstrated by the experience of the local wars of the 1970s and the 1980s. Thus, for maintaining the combat capability of troops at a "sufficiently high level" during the Falklands conflict (1982), the British command was forced to replace forward units every two days. Furthermore, the high sortie rate of Great Britain's air force and naval aviation M this period was guaranteed largely thanks to the use of special medicinal preparations. Naturally, it is impossible to compare and carry over the experience of individual local conflicts to potential large-scale combat operations on the European continent, where their character would be quite different both in terms of intensity and scope. This concerns the anticipated transient "fire contacts" with the rapid change of the tactical and operational situation, the threat of using nuclear weapons at any moment, the swift advance of enemy troops, the simultaneous envelopment of large territories with combat actions, the premeditated violation of lines of communication and CI, and the conduct of combat operations at any time of the day (including at night) and under any weather conditionsall of which maximally Morocco the physical and psychological stress on a person, and cannot be compared with what took place in the years of World War II, in the Middle East in aim or in the Falkland Islands in 1982. It is also necessary to observe that the replacement of the leading units by their withdrawal to the rear for rest and replenishment, as was done in the past, becomes practically impossible in the conditions of large-scale combat operations. Where to withdraw the units for rest, and at what time, if just 30-50 kilometers horn the front there would be a zone of combat operations just as intense as at the forward line? Any assessments of the losses of the sides participating in the conflict can only be
highly abstract. Only one thing is clearthe human and material losses in the event of a "general conventional war" will be characterized, undoubtedly, by a scale many hundreds of times greater than that in analogous conflicts of the past, and, what is especially important, by a significantly higher "attrition rate" of people and equipment, of the share of irreplaceable losses.
Proliferation Good DA
Proliferation Good DA
1.) The Cost of Deterrence Failure Is Too Great Advocates of deterrence seldom take the position that it will always work or that it cannot fail. Rather,
they take the position that if one can achieve the requisite elements required to achieve a stable deterrent relationship between parties, it vastly decreases the chances of miscalculation and resorting to wareven in contexts where it might otherwise be expected to occur (George and Smoke 1974; Harvey 1997a; Powell 1990, 2003; Goldstein 2000). Un- fortunately, critics of deterrence take the understandable, if unrealistic, posi-
tion that if deterrence cannot be 100 percent effective under all circum- stances, then it is an unsound strategic approach for states to rely upon, especially considering the immense destructiveness of nuclear weapons. Feaver
(1993, 162), for example, criticizes reliance on nuclear deterrence be- cause it can fail and that rational deterrence theory can only predict that peace should occur most of the time (e.g., Lebow and Stein 1989). Yet, were we to apply this standard of perfection to most other policy
ap- proaches concerning security matterswhether it be arms control or prolif- eration regime efforts, military procurement policies, alliance formation strategies, diplomacy, or sanctionsnone could be argued with any more cer- tainty to completely remove the threat of equally devastating wars either. In- deed, one could easily make the argument that these alternative means have shown themselves historically to be far less effective than nuclear arms in preventing wars. Certainly, the twentieth century was replete with examples of devastating conventional conflicts which were not deterred through non- nuclear measures. Although the potential costs of a nuclear exchange between small states would indeed cause a frightful loss of life, it would be no more costly (and likely far less so) than large-scale conventional conflicts have been for combatants. Moreover, if nuclear deterrence raises the potential
costs of war high enough for policy makers to want to avoid (rather than risk) conflict, it is just as legitimate (if not more so) for optimists to argue in favor of nuclear deterrence in terms of the lives saved through the avoidance of far more likely recourses to conventional wars, as it is for pessimists to warn of the potential costs of deterrence failure. And, while some accounts describing the im- mense weaknesses of
deterrence theory (Lebow and Stein 1989, 1990) would lead one to believe deterrence was almost impossible to either obtain or maintain, since 1945 there has not been one single historical instance of nuclear deterrence failure (especially when this notion is limited to threats to key central state interests like survival, and not to minor probing of periph- eral interests). Moreover, the actual costs of twentieth-century conventional conflicts have been staggeringly immense, especially when compared to the actual costs of nuclear conflicts (for example, 210,000 fatalities in the com- bined 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings compared to 62 mil- lion killed overall during World War II, over three million dead in both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, etc.) (McKinzie et al. 2001, 28).3
Further, as Gray (1999, 15859) observes, it is improbable that policy- makers anywhere need to be educated as to the extraordinary qualities and quantities of nuclear armaments. Indeed, the high costs and uncontestable, immense levels of destruction that would be
caused by nuclear weapons have been shown historically to be facts that have not only been readily apparent and salient to a wide range of policy makers, but ones that have clearly been demonstrated to moderate extreme policy or risk-taking behavior (Blight 1992; Preston 2001) Could it go wrong? Of course. There is always that po- tential
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Proliferation Good DA
with human beings in the loop. Nevertheless, it has also been shown to be effective at moderating policy maker behavior and introducing an element of constraint into situations that otherwise would likely have resulted in war (Hagerty 1998). 5. Uncertainty makes costs of war too high nuclear weapons deter all military aggression Karl 96 (David, PhD in International Relations from USC, International Security, Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter, p. 95-96) Optimists have relaxed views of the preventive-war dangers entailed in situ- ations in which a nuclear power confronts a nuclearizing rival. The practical difficulties of ensuring a disarming strike to preclude any possibility of nuclear retaliation make preventive actions a military gamble that states are very unlikely to take. As Waltz explains, "prevention and pre-emption are difficult games because the costs are so high if the games are not perfectly played.... Ultimately, the inhibitions [against such attacks] lie in the impossibility of knowing for sure that a disarming strike will totally destroy an opposing force and in the immense destruction even a few warheads can wreak."25To opti- mists, states will have to learn to live with a rival's emerging nuclear armory Because strategic uncertainty is seen as having a powerful dissuasive effect, optimists usually view the very increase in the numbers of nuclear-armed states as an additional element of stability Dagobert Brito and Michael Intrili- gator, for instance, argue that uncertainty over the reaction of other nuclear powers will make all hesitant to strike individually26 As an example, they point to the restraint the superpowers exercised on each other in the 1960s, when first the United States and then the Soviet Union contemplated military action against China's nascent nuclear weapon sites. The net effect of the uncertain reaction of others is that "the probability of deliberate nuclear attack falls to near zero with three, four, or more nuclear nations."27Similarly, Waltz reasons that even in cases of asymmetric proliferation within conflict dyads, nuclear weapons will prove "poor instruments for blackmail" because a "country that takes the nuclear offensive has to fear an appropriately punishing strike by someone. Far from lowering the expected cost of aggression, a nuclear offense even against a non-nuclear state raises the possible costs of aggression to incalculable heights because the aggressor cannot be sure of the reaction of other nuclear powers."28 6. No risk of fast proliferation nuclear weapons are too technical and expensive to spread rapidly Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 The risk of an arms racewith, say, other Persian Gulf states rushing to build a bomb after Iran got oneis a bit harder to dispel. Once again, however, history is instructive. "In 64 years, the most nuclear-weapons states we've ever had is 12," says Waltz. "Now with North Korea we're at nine. That's not proliferation; that's spread at glacial pace." Nuclear weapons are so controversial and expensive that only countries that deem them absolutely critical to their survival go through the extreme trouble of acquiring them. That's why South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan voluntarily gave theirs up in the early '90s, and why other countries like Brazil and Argentina dropped nascent programs. This doesn't guarantee that one or more of Iran's neighborsEgypt or Saudi Arabia, say might not still go for the bomb if Iran manages to build one. But the risks of a rapid spread are low, especially given Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent suggestion that the United States would extend a nuclear umbrella over the region, as Washington has over South Korea and Japan, if Iran does complete a bomb. If one or two Gulf states nonetheless decided to pursue their own weapon, that still might not be so disastrous, given the way that bombs tend to mellow behavior.
Proliferation Good DA
Proliferation Good DA
10
Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC Bio-Shift
Making nuclear prolif more difficult shifts to Bioweapons. Roberts 96 (Brad, Ed. Washington Quarterly and Research Fellow CSIS, Weapons Proliferation and World Order: After the Cold War, p. 59) The factors stimulating such proliferation probably closely parallel those in the chamical area. Declining barriers to acquisition have played a role, particularly with the steady diffusion of dual-use technologies. The revolution in the bioengineering since the entry into force of the BTWC has raised concern about the ease with which bw agents can be produced, stockpiled, and used in war and about the new threats posed by novel, highly virulent agents. Regional conflict and strategic need may also have provided incentives as regional leaders have south the means to deter well-armed neighbors or outside inventers, to coerce regional adversaries, or to seek victory in war. The difficulty of acquiring nuclear capabilities and the increasing political costs of chemical weapons, as well as their not inconsequential fiscal costs, may have stimulated specific interest in countries that pose a general proliferation risk. Mere curiosity may also explain some of the research work as some developing countries seek to understand the possible military application of the new biological sciences increasingly within reach. Solving nuclear weapons cause bio-shift Zilinskas '00 (Raymond A., Former Clinical Microbiologist and Dir. Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program Center for Nonproliferation Studies of Monterey Institute of International Studies, in Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense, Ed. Raymond A. Zilinskas, p. 1-2, Google Print) There are many who believe that today's bioscientists and chemical engineers working in unison and wielding the techniques of molecular biology developed since the early 1970s could, if so commanded, develop military effective biological weapons within a fairly short time. If this supposition is correct, our perception of biological weapons as being undependable, uncontrollable, and unreliable must change. The reason is simple: if these weapons are demonstrated to possess properties that make it possible for commanders to effect controlled, confined mass destruction on command, all government would be forced to construct defenses against them and some undoubtedly would be tempted to arm their military with these weapons that would be both powerful and relatively inexpensive to acquire. Ironically, as tougher international controls are put into place to deter nations from seeking to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons, leaders may even be more drawn to biological arms as the most accessible form of weapon of mass destruction.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC Heg
Heg transition inevitable Haass 8 [Richard N, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Foreign Affairs, Bottom of Form: The Age of Nonpoliarity What Will Follow U.S> Dominance May/June] But even if great-power rivals have not emerged, unipolarity has ended. Three explanations for its demise stand out. The first is historical. States develop; they get better at generating and piecing together the human, financial, and technological resources that lead to productivity and prosperity. The same holds for corporations and other organizations. The rise of these new powers cannot be stopped. The result is an ever larger number of actors able to exert influence regionally or globally. A second cause is U.S. policy. To paraphrase Walt Kelly's Pogo, the post-World War II comic hero, we have met the explanation and it is us. By both what it has done and what it has failed to do, the United States has accelerated the emergence of alternative power centers in the world and has weakened its own position relative to them. U.S. energy policy (or the lack thereof) is a driving force behind the end of unipolarity. Since the first oil shocks of the 1970s, U.S. consumption of oil has grown by approximately 20 percent, and, more important, U.S. imports of petroleum products have more than doubled in volume and nearly doubled as a percentage of consumption. This growth in demand for foreign oil has helped drive up the world price of oil from just over $20 a barrel to over $100 a barrel in less than a decade. The result is an enormous transfer of wealth and leverage to those states with energy reserves. In short, U.S. energy policy has helped bring about the emergence of oil and gas producers as major power centers. U.S. economic policy has played a role as well. President Lyndon Johnson was widely criticized for simultaneously fighting a war in Vietnam and increasing domestic spending. President Bush has fought costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, allowed discretionary spending to increase by an annual rate of eight percent, and cut taxes. As a result, the United States' fiscal position declined from a surplus of over $100 billion in 2001 to an estimated deficit of approximately $250 billion in 2007. Perhaps more relevant is the ballooning current account deficit, which is now more than six percent of GDP. This places downward pressure on the dollar, stimulates inflation, and contributes to the accumulation of wealth and power elsewhere in the world. Poor regulation of the U.S. mortgage market and and the credit crisis it has spawned have exacerbated these problems. The war in Iraq has also contributed to the dilution of the United States' position in the world. The war in Iraq has proved to be an expensive war of choice -- militarily, economically, and diplomatically as well as in human terms. Years ago, the historian Paul Kennedy outlined his thesis about "imperial overstretch," which posited that the United States would eventually decline by overreaching, just as other great powers had in the past. Kennedy's theory turned out to apply most immediately to the Soviet Union, but the United States -- for all its corrective mechanisms and dynamism -- has not proved to be immune. It is not simply that the U.S. military will take a generation to recover from Iraq; it is also that the United States lacks sufficient military assets to continue doing what it is doing in Iraq, much less assume new burdens of any scale elsewhere. Finally, today's nonpolar world is not simply a result of the rise of other states and organizations or of the failures and follies of U.S. policy. It is also an inevitable consequence of globalization. Globalization has increased the volume, velocity, and importance of cross-border flows of just about everything, from drugs, emails, greenhouse gases, manufactured goods, and people to television and radio signals, viruses (virtual and real), and weapons. Globalization reinforces nonpolarity in two fundamental ways. First, many cross-border flows take place outside the control of governments and without their knowledge. As a result, globalization dilutes the influence of the major powers. Second, these same flows often strengthen the capacities of nonstate actors, such as energy exporters (who are experiencing a dramatic increase in wealth owing to transfers from importers), terrorists (who use the Internet to recruit and train, the international banking system to move resources, and the global transport system to move people), rogue states (who can exploit black and gray markets), and Fortune 500 firms (who quickly move personnel and investments). It is increasingly apparent that being the strongest state no longer means having a near monopoly on power. It is easier than ever before for individuals and groups to accumulate and project substantial power. NONPOLAR DISORDER The increasingly nonpolar world will have mostly negative consequences for the United States -- and for much of the rest of the world as well. It will
Samford Debate Camp 2k10 17
Proliferation Good DA
18
make it more difficult for Washington to lead on those occasions when it seeks to promote collective responses to regional and global challenges. One reason has to do with simple arithmetic. With so many more actors possessing meaningful power and trying to assert influence, it will be more difficult to build collective responses and make institutions work. Herding dozens is harder than herding a few. The inability to reach agreement in the Doha Round of global trade talks is a telling example. Nonpolarity will also increase the number of threats and vulnerabilities facing a country such as the United States. These threats can take the form of rogue states, terrorist groups, energy producers that choose to reduce their output, or central banks whose action or inaction can create conditions that affect the role and strength of the U.S. dollar. The Federal Reserve might want to think twice before continuing to lower interest rates, lest it precipitate a further move away from the dollar. There can be worse things than a recession. Iran is a case in point. Its effort to become a nuclear power is a result of nonpolarity. Thanks more than anything to the surge in oil prices, it has become another meaningful concentration of power, one able to exert influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and beyond, as well as within OPEC. It has many sources of technology and finance and numerous markets for its energy exports. And due to nonpolarity, the United States cannot manage Iran alone. Rather, Washington is dependent on others to support political and economic sanctions or block Tehran's access to nuclear technology and materials. Nonpolarity begets nonpolarity.
18
Proliferation Good DA
19
war in the modern era is even less similar to World War II than that war was to War World I, and the latter in turn to the Franco-Prussian war. It is exceptionally difficult, if it is possible at all, to predict its course. But there is every justification to say that the numerous contradictions and paradoxes of a
periods of 1870-1914 and 1918-1939 supports such a conclusion. Therefore, hypothetical new war would in practice have the most unexpected consequences, consequences most likely incompatible with the concept of "protracted" conventional combat on the European continent or on a global scale. This concerns, for example, the fact that the sharply increased interdependence of different types of armed forces and troops, individual formations and units and various weapons systems is a distinguishing feature of the functioning of enormous and highly complex organizations, which is what modern armed forces are. A great spacial scope of operations (on the scale of entire TVDs), the rapidity and intensity of combat actions, and the multinational structure of opposing coalitions of states will characterize their actions. All of this poses unprecedently high demands for coordinating the actions of all elements of military potentials and for carefully planning operations, their priority, sequence of interaction and so on. At the same time, the character of modern warfare makes inevitable the constant and rapid change of the combat situation on the fronts, deep breakthroughs and envelopments, and the intermixing of one's own and others' formations, units and subunits. In view of the high maneuverability of troops even the traditional FEBA may no longer exist. In place of it zones of combat contact of a depth of dozens of kilometers will arise and rapidly change and shift. The unpredictability, mutability and intensity of probable combat actions would so overload the capabilities of a centralized command and control in the theater of war and the separate TVDs that they would most likely rapidly lead to total chaos. The intensity of the anticipated combat also renders inevitable exceptionally great losses in arms and equipment. At the same time, because of the rapid increase in the cost of weapons systems, the quantitative levels of armed forces and arms on the whole have a tendency to decrease. Fewer but much improved and more powerful arms have a much lesser chance than in World War II of being used repeatedly in several battles. Their longevity will entirely depend on how successfully they may outstrip the opponent and destroy his forces and capabilities earlier than they will be destroyed by him. Therefore, combat actions will in any event most likely have a short-term character, if not for both, then at least for one of the sides. And this is not to mention the enormous losses among the civilian
Neither the population, economy nor ecology of Europe can withstand a large-scale conventional war for any amount of timeeven in the improbable event that nuclear power stations, chemical enterprises and nuclear and chemical weapons depots are not destroyed. The limited capabilities of the "human
population and the damage to the economic infrastructure in the region of combat, which may now envelop the greatest and most densely populated portion of the European continent. factor" in conditions of modern battle are clearly demonstrated by the experience of the local wars of the 197os and the 198os. Thus, for maintaining the combat capability of troops at a "sufficiently high level" during the Falklands conflict (1982), the British command was forced to replace forward units every two days. Furthermore, the high sortie rate of Great Britain's air force and naval aviation in this period was guaranteed largely thanks to the use of special medicinal preparations. Naturally, it is impossible to compare and carry over the experience of individual local conflicts to potential large-scale combat operations on the European continent, where their character would be quite different both in terms of intensity and scope. This concerns the anticipated transient "fire contacts" with the rapid change of the tactical and operational situation, the threat of using nuclear weapons at any moment, the swift advance of enemy troops, the simultaneous envelopment of large territories with combat actions, the premeditated violation of lines of communication and C3I, and the conduct of combat operations at any time of the day (including at night) and under any weather conditionsall of which maximally increase the physical and psychological stress on a person, and cannot be compared with what took place in the years of World War II, in the Middle East in 1973 or in the Falkland Islands in 1982. It is also necessary to observe that the replacement of the leading units by their withdrawal to the rear for rest and replenishment, as was done in the past, becomes practically impossible in the conditions of large-scale combat operations. Where to withdraw the units for rest, and at what time, if just 3o-5o kilometers from the front there would be a zone of combat operations just as
Only one thing is clearthe human and material losses in the event of a "general conventional war" will be characterized, undoubtedly, by a scale many hundreds of times greater than that in analogous conflicts of the past, and, what is especially important, by a significantly higher "attrition rate" of people and equipment, of the share of irreplaceable losses.
intense as at the forward line? Any assessments of the losses of the sides participating in the conflict can only be highly abstract.
19
Proliferation Good DA
20
Other, more optimistic, scholars see benefits to nuclear proliferation or, perhaps not actively advocating the development of more nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapon states, see that the presence of nuclear weapons has at least been stabilizing in the past. For example, some scholars are confident of the promise of the nuclear peace.4 While those who oppose proliferation present a number of arguments, those who contend that nuclear weapons would reduce interstate wars are fairly consistent in focusing on one key argument: nuclear weapons make the risk of war unacceptable for states. As Waltz argues, the higher the stakes and the closer a country moves toward winning them, the more surely that country invites retaliation and risks its own destruction. States are not likely to run major risks for minor gains. War between nuclear states may escalate as the loser uses larger and larger warheads. Fearing that, states will want to draw back. Not escalation but deescalation becomes likely. War remains possible, but victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. (Sagan & Waltz, 2003: 67) Nuclear war simply makes the risks of war much higher and shrinks the chance that a country will go to war (Snyder & Diesing, 1977: 450). Using similar logic, Bueno de Mesquita & Riker (1982) demonstrate formally that a world with almost universal membership in the nuclear club will be much less likely to experience nuclear war than a world with only a few members. Counterforce strikes mean that twenty million would die at most in a full-scale nuclear war Mueller, 09 (John, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. Atomic Obsession:
Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda p. 8)
To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify applying such extreme characterizations as societal annihilation, a full-out attack with hundreds, probably thousands, of thermonuclear bombs would be required. Even in such extreme cases, the area actually devastated by the bombs' blast and thermal pulse effects would be limited: 2,000 I-MT explosions with a destructive radius of 5 miles each would directly demolish less than 5 percent of the territory of the United States, for example. Obviously, if major population centers were targeted, this sort of attack could inflict massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events sometimes seemed uncomfortably likely, a number of studies were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive thermonuclear attacks. One of the most prominent of these considered several possibilities. The most likely scenario --one that could be perhaps be considered at least to begin to approach the rational- was a "counterforce" strike in which well over 1,000 thermonuclear weapons would be targeted at America's ballistic missile silos, strategic airfields, and nuclear submarine bases in an effort to destroy the country's strategic ability to retaliate. Since the attack would not directly target population centers, most of the ensuing deaths would be from radioactive fallout, and the study estimates that from 2 to 20 million , depending mostly on wind, weather, and sheltering, would perish during the first month.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Sagan
et al indicated that at the very least, 100 million tons of smoke particles would have to be injected into the atmosphere if the nuclear winter mechanism were to be triggered. They also indicated that cities are the primary source of that smoke. They therefore proposed a nuclear war scenario in which cities are the primary tar- gets. Since the mid 1960s, the primary targets for both U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles and nuclear bombs have not been population centers or cities. They have been the other guy's nuclear missile launch sites, nuclear bomber bases and other military targets. If those can be eliminated, the cities will be held hostage. The current list of ten target classes ascribed to Soviet planners by DOD and FEMA, does not specifically contain any population centers. The list does of course include target classes that in many instances will be located in or adjacent to metropolitan areas. But, even in those instances, the nuclear weapons employed will not be the huge multi- megaton area destruction bombs of the late 1950s and early 1960s. ICBM systems and MIRVs are now so accurate that a target may be pin- pointed even within a metropolitan area, by a relatively small weapon. This is not in any way to say that the effects will not be catastro- phic. It is to say though that the city wide firestorms necessary for the onset of nuclear winter as described by Sagan and associates, are less than predictable. In fact, they are improbable.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
23
Quantitative studies prove deterrence solves high level conflicts Asal and Beardsley 9 [Victor, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rockefeller College at the University at Albany, Kyle, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Emory University, Conflict Management and Peace Science, 26:235, Nuclear Weapons as Shields. Table 2 presents the coefficients from the probit models of crisis aggression and participation.6 We start with a baseline model and then add the previous crisis rate and enduring rivalry variables to get a sense for the endogeneity issues in the data. Models 1 through 6 reveal, seen in the bolded coefficients (Row 2), that nonnuclear actors facing nuclear actors are less likely to be aggressive in the crises in which they participate. This relationship holds as statistically significant however aggression is measured and whether conflict history is controlled for or not.The findings strongly confirm the proposed hypothesis. For calculation of substantive effects, shown in Figure 1, we use Clarify (Tomz et al., 2003; King et al., 2000) to generate the predicted probabilities using the models with all the variables set at their median values, such that all the nuclear-weapon and nuclear-program variables are set at 0. Substantively, when a non-nuclear state faces a nuclear state, its probability of relying on violence to manage its crises is 60% less than against a non-nuclear opponent. Nuclear weapons thus, on average, increase a possessors security from major violence by almost threefold. An actors willingness to also manage its crises militarily or respond militarily to a crisis trigger similarly falls by 29% and 32% respectively when facing a nuclear opponent.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing exchange, with each side rushing to overreaction amid confusion and uncertainty, is implausible. It fails to consider what the situation of the decisionmakers would really be. Neither side could want escalation. Both would be appalled at what was going on. Both would be desperately looking for signs that the other was ready to call a halt. Both, given the capacity for evasion or concealment which modem delivery platforms and vehicles can possess, could have in reserve significant forces invulnerable enough not to entail use-or-lose pressures. (It may be more open to
question, as noted earlier, whether newer nuclearweapon possessors can be immediately in that position; but it is within reach of any substantial state with advanced technological capabilities, and attaining it is certain to be a high priority in the development of forces.) As a result, neither side can have any predisposition
to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of fearful risk, that the right course when in doubt is to go on copiously launching weapons. And none of this analysis rests on any presumption of highly subtle or pre-concerted rationality. The rationality required is plain. The argument is reinforced if we consider the possible reasoning of an aggressor at a more dispassionate level. Any substantial nuclear armoury can inflict destruction outweighing any possible prize that aggression could hope to seize. A state attacking the possessor of such an armoury must therefore be doing so (once given that it cannot count upon destroying the armoury pre-emptively) on a judgement that the possessor would be found lacking in the will to use it. If the attacked possessor used nuclear weapons, whether first or in response to the aggressor's own first
use, this judgement would begin to look dangerously precarious. There must be at least a substantial possibility of the aggressor leaders' concluding that their initial judgement had been mistakenthat the risks were after all greater than whatever prize they had been seeking, and that for their own country's , survival they must call off the aggression. Deterrence planning such as that of NATO was directed in the first place to preventing the initial
But there was no ground for assuming in advance, for all possible scenarios, that the chance of its working must be negligible. An aggressor state would itself be at huge risk if nuclear war developed, as its leaders would know. It may be argued that a policy which abandons hope of physically
misjudgement and in the second, if it were nevertheless made, to compelling such a reappraisal. The former aim had to have primacy, because it could not be taken for granted that the latter was certain to work.
defeating theznemy and simply hopes to get him to desist is pure gamble, a matter of who blinks first; and that the political and moral nature of most likely aggressors, almost ex hypothesi, makes them the less likely to blink. One response to this is to ask what is the alternativeit can only be surrender. But a more positive and
hopeful answer lies in the fact that the criticism is posed in a political vacuum. Real-life conflict would have a political context. The context which concerned NATO during the cold war, for example, was one of defending vital interests against a postlated aggressor whose own vital interests would not be engaged, or would be less engaged. Certainty is not possible, but a clear asymmetry of vital interest is a legitimate basis for expecting an asymmetry, credible to both sides, of resolve in conflict. That places upon statesmen, as page 23 has noted, the key
task in deterrence of building up in advance a clear and shared grasp of where limits lie. That was plainly achieved in cold-war Europe. If vital interests have been defined in a way that is dear, and also clearly not overlapping or incompatible with those of the adversary, a credible basis has been laid for the likelihood of greater resolve in resistance. It was also sometimes suggested by critics that whatever might be indicated by theoretical discussion of political will and interests, the military environment of nuclear warfareparticularly difficulties of communication and controlwould drive escalation with overwhelming probability to the limit. But it is obscure why matters should be regarded as inevitably .so for every possible level and setting of action. Even if the history of war suggested (as it scarcely does) that military decision-makers are mostly apt to work on the principle 'When in doubt, lash out', the nuclear revolution creates an utterly new situation. The pervasive reality, always plain to both sides during the cold war, is `If this goes on to the end, we are all ruined'. Given that inexorable escalation would mean catastrophe for both, it would be perverse to suppose them permanently incapable of framing arrangements which avoid it. As page 16 has noted, NATO gave its military commanders no widespread delegated authority, in peace or war, to launch nuclear weapons without specific political direction. Many types of weapon moreover had physical safeguards such as PALs incorporated to reinforce organizational ones. There were multiple communication and control systems for passing information, orders, and prohibitions. Such systems could not be totally guaranteed against disruption if at a fairly intense level of strategic exchangewhich was only one of many possible levels of conflict an adversary judged it to be in his interest to weaken political control. It was far from clear why he necessarily should so judge. Even then, however, it remained possible to operate on a general fail-safe presumption: no authorization, no use. That was the basis on which NATO operated. If it is feared that the arrangements which 1 a nuclear-weapon possessor has in place do not meet such standards in some respects, the logical course is to continue to improve them rather than to assume escalation to be certain and uncontrollable, with all the enormous inferences that would have to flow from such an assumption. The likelihood of escalation can never be 100 per cent, and never zero. Where between those two extremes it may lie can never be precisely calculable in advance; and even were it so calculable, it would not be uniquely fixedit would stand to vary hugely with circumstances. That there should be any risk at all of escalation to widespread nuclear war must be deeply disturbing, and decision-makers would always have to weigh it most anxiously. But a pair of key truths about it need to be recognized. The first is that the risk of escalation to large-scale nuclear war is inescapably present in any significant armed conflict between nuclear-capable powers, whoever may have started the conflict and whoever may first have used any particular category of weapon. The initiator of the conflict will always have physically available to him options for applying more force if he meets effective resistance. If the risk of escalation, whatever its degree of probability, is to be regarded as absolutely unacceptable, the necessary inference is that a state attacked by a substantial nuclear power must forgo military resistance. It must surrender, even if it has a nuclear armoury of its own. But the companion truth is that, as page 47 has noted, the risk of escalation is an inescapable burden also upon the aggressor. The exploitation of that burden is the crucial route, if conflict does break out, for managing it, to a tolerable outcome--the only route, indeed, intermediate between surrender and holocaust, and so the necessary basis for deterrence beforehand. The working out of plans to exploit escalation risk most effectively in deterring potential aggression entails further and complex issues. It is for example plainly desirable, wherever geography, politics, and available resources so permit without triggering arms races, to make provisions and dispositions that are likely to place the onus of making the bigger, and more evidently dangerous steps in escalation upon the aggressor volib wishes to maintain his attack, rather than upon the defender. (The customary shorthand for this desirable posture used to be 'escalation dominance'.) These issues are not further discussed here. But addressing them needs to start from acknowledgement that there are in any event no certainties or absolutes available, no options guaranteed to be risk-free and cost-free. Deterrence is not possible without escalation risk; and its presence can point to no automatic policy conclusion save for those who espouse outright pacifism and accept its consequences. Accident and Miscalculation Ensuring the safety and security of nuclear weapons plainly needs to be taken most seriously. Detailed information is understandably not published, but such direct evidence as there is suggests that it always has
Critics have nevertheless from time to time argued that the possibility of accident involving nuclear weapons is so substantial that it must weigh heavily in the entire evaluation of whether war-prevention structures entailing their existence should be tolerated at all. Two sorts of scenario are usually in question. The first is that of a single grave event involving an unintended nuclear explosiona technical disaster at a storage site, for example, Dr the accidental or unauthorized launch of a delivery system with a live nuclear warhead. The second is that of some eventperhaps such an explosion or launch, or some other mishap such as malfunction or misinterpretation of radar signals or computer systemsinitiating a sequence of response and counter-response that culminated in a nuclear exchange which no one had truly intended. No event that is physically possible can be said to be of absolutely zero probability (just as at an opposite extreme it is absurd to claim, as has been heard from distinguished figures, that nuclear-weapon use can be guaranteed to happen within some finite future span despite not having happened for over sixty years). But human affairs cannot be managed to the standard of either zero or total probability. We have to assess levels between those theoretical limits and weigh their reality and implications against other factors, in security planning as in everyday life. There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known accidents involving nuclear weapons, from transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried (in past days when such carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements----it no longer is). A few of these accidents may have released into the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has entailed a nuclear detonation. Some commentators suggest that this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and deployment over so many years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience would however be that the probability of any accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low. It might be further noted that the
been so taken in every possessor state, with the inevitable occasional failures to follow strict procedures dealt with rigorously.
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The Dear Leaders with Bombs. Proliferation Good DA 25 mechanisms needed to set off such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a large number of ways the past sixty years have seen extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both the design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years which the world has come through entirely without accidental or unauthorized detonation have included early decades in which knowledge was sketchier, precautions were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultra-safe than they later became, as well as substantial periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments more widespread and diverse, movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness arrangements more tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by, indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In none of these instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear launch--extraordinary good fortune again, critics have suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of experience presents itself once more: that the probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear-weapon possessor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release sequences have many steps, and human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To convey that because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that he was nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers any ready example of major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an orderof-magnitude increase in caution. It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential adversary. No such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years. The probability of it is therefore very low. But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of it initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers as pages 63-4 have brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to science fiction.
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Proliferation Good DA
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INADVERTENT WAR. Another possibility is inadvertent war. This is the notion that during a future crisis India and Pakistan might stumble into a conflict neither side actually wants. This fear of inadvertence stems from the supposedly inherent logic of preemption, each side's stated conventional military doctrine of "offensive-defense," and the shaky intelligence estimates of India's Research and Analysis Wing and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. From this perspective, miscalculation of the adversary's intentions by one or both sides might lead inexorably to a shooting war. As the fighting progresses, either or both sides (but most likely Pakistan) might ready nuclear weapons for last-resort use. At this point, goes this reasoning, all bets are off and a nuclear exchange is a real possibility. While compelling on the surface, this logic does not hold up to sustained scrutiny. None of the three Indo-Pakistani wars began inadvertently; indeed, all of the major international wars since the end of World War II have been premeditated. It is even less likely that two nuclear powers would slide down the slippery slope into war, given the additional margin of caution induced by nuclear weapons Proliferation stops accidental launch Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 A politically tougher but equally important step would be to make sure that any nuclear weapons state has what's called a "survivable second strike option," a means of ensuring that even if attacked, it could still shoot back, since this is the best way to persuade its enemies not to bother trying to incapacitate it through a surprise attack (as Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund points out, this can be done with a small arsenal and need not necessitate a big buildup). Finally, Washington should continue doing what it's done with Russia and Pakistan to help those regimes keep their weapons safe. The administration has announced plans to help secure loose nukes, and that's all to the good. But it should be prepared to offer the same technology and training to other new nuclear states if they emergeeven if they're U.S. enemies. Critics will scream that doing so would reward bad behavior and encourage it in others. It might. But it would also help keep everyone safe from an accidental launch, which seems a lot more important. None of these steps will be easy to pitch to the public, even for a president as gifted and nimble as Obama. But as he heads into a rare nuclear summit in late September, the least he could do is hold a frank debate on what's really the best strategy for securing the world fromor withthese weapons. Given the stakes, he can hardly afford not to. Miscalculation is only possible when risks are not explicit nuclear weapons solve this Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 To understand whyand why the next 64 years are likely to play out the same wayyou need to start by recognizing that all states are rational on some basic level. Their leaders may be stupid, petty, venal, even evil, but they tend to do things only when they're pretty sure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a fight only when it's almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price. Not even Hitler or Saddam waged wars they didn't think they could win. The problem historically has been that leaders often make the wrong gamble and underestimate the other sideand millions of innocents pay the price. Nuclear weapons change all that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and unacceptable. Suddenly, when both sides have the ability to turn the other to ashes with the push of a buttonand everybody knows itthe basic math shifts. Even the craziest tin-pot dictator is forced to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not worth the effort. As Waltz puts it, "Why fight if you can't win and might lose everything?"
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Are hardy political survivors in the Third World likely to run the greatest of all risks by drawing the wrath of the world down on them by accidentally or in anger exploding nuclear weapons they may have? At least some of the rulers of new and prospective nuclear states are thought to be ruthless, reckless, and war-prone. Ruthless, yes; war-prone, seldom; reckless, hardly. They do not, as many seem to believe, have fixed images of the world and unbending aims within it. Instead they have to adjust constantly to a shifting configuration of forces around them. Our images of leaders of Third World states vary remarkably little, yet their agility is remarkable. The preceding points are important and often overlooked. Whatever the identity of rulers, and whatever the characteristics of their states, the national behaviors they produce are strongly conditioned by the world outside. With conventional weapons, a status-quo country must ask itself how much power it must
harness to its policy in order to dissuade an aggressive state from striking. Countries willing to run high risks are hard to dissuade. The characteristics of governments and the temperaments of leaders have to be carefully weighed. With nuclear weapons, any state
will be deterred by another state's second-strike forces. One need not be preoccupied with the qualities of the state that is to be deterred or scrutinize its leaders.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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behavior of Iraqs leadership, a statistical anomaly when compared to the rest of the international community, rather than a confirmation of the rogue concept. The only other rhetorical rogue whose conflict behavior deviates from the norm is North Korea, which, like Iraq, is more likely to become involved in militarized inter- state disputes. But tellingly, and as with Iraq, it was no more likely to initiate disputes than any other state during the period in question, further calling into question policy maker assumptions that rogues constitute an aggressive military threat to their neigh- bors and to international order. What, then, accounts for the finding that Iraq and North Korea were more likely to become involved in a militarized dispute but not necessarily as initiators? A partial explanation may lie in the intense American focus on rogues that began in the 1980s and emerged to dominate foreign and defense policy in the 1990s. For the next decade, this policy focus resulted in active policies of confrontation and containment of rogue states, with the vigorous enforcement of no-fly zones over Iraq being the most visible example of such efforts. While dyadic analysis will be necessary to confirm our suspi- cions about the role that U.S. policies surrounding the rogue doctrine played in Iraqs and North Koreas dispute involvement, we believe that possibility cannot be dismissed. In sum, and contrary to policy makers assessment of rogue states, their behavior as a group appears no more militarily aggressive or defiant than that of any other member of the international community. The results of our analysis show that rogue states have not posed a generalized threat to international security as measured by interstate con- flict behavior. As its critics have long suspected, the rogue concept seems to be at best a questionable foundation on which to build general foreign and defense policies. Proliferation is not dangerous China was one thought to be the ultimate rogue Mueller, '10. [John, Professor of political science at Ohio State University "Think Again: Nuclear Weapons" Foreign Policy, January/February 10 The confrontations with Iran and North Korea over their prospective or actual nukes are more problematic. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have already contributed big time to the hysteria that has become common coin within the foreign-policy establishment on this issue. It is fine to apply diplomacy and bribery in an effort to dissuade those countries from pursuing nuclear weapons programs: We'd be doing them a favor, in fact. But, though it may be heresy to say so, the world can live with a nuclear Iran or North Korea, as it has lived now for 45 years with a nuclear China, a country once viewed as the ultimate rogue. If push eventually comes to shove in these areas, the solution will be a familiar one: to establish orderly deterrent and containment strategies and avoid the temptation to lash out mindlessly at phantom threats.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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in organizational critiques of nuclear command and control sysrems.9 The more complex the organization is, the more likely these secondary effects are, and the less likely they are to be foreseen, noticed, and well-managed. So, for instance, an American commander that gives the order to scramble nuclear bombers over [he U.S. as a defensive measure may find that he has unwittingly given the order co scramble bombers in Europe as well. A recall order to the American bombers may overlook the European theater, and nuclear misuse could result. However, when numbers of nuclear weapons can be measured in the dozens rather than the hundreds or thousands, and when deployment of those weapons does not involve multiple theaters and forward based delivery vehicles of numerous types, right coupling is unlikely to cause unforeseen and unnoticeable organizational events. Other things being equal, it is just a lot easier to know all of what is going on. In short, while Third World states may nor have the electronic use-control devices chat help ensure that peripheral commanders do not 'get our of control,' they have other advantages that make the challenge of centralized control easier than it was for the superpowers. The small numbers of personnel and organizational simplicity of launch bureaucracies means that even if a few more people have their fingers on the button than in the case of the superpowers, there will be less of a chance that weapons will be launched without a definite, informed and unambiguous decision to press that button. New powers have better C and C Seng 98 (Jordan, PhD Candidate in Pol. Sci. U. Chicago, Dissertation, STRATEGY FOR PANDORA'S CHILDREN: STABLE NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AMONG MINOR STATES, p. 200-201) Third World proliferators will have two important advantages in terms of command and control that help alleviate the concerns of analysts. One, because their arsenals will be so small, their launch bureaucracies and control organizations can be very small. Third World proliferators may well cultivate positive control by delegating launch capability to peripheral commanders, and/or the lack of electronic use-control devices may make it 4ifficulr for central commanders to physically prevent peripheral commanders from launching weapons inappropriately. However, the limited numbers of weapons in Third World arsenals will mean that there need not be more than a handful of peripheral launch commanders. There may be more than one 'finger on the button' in Third World nuclear states, bur not many more. Peripheral commanders can be carefully screened and tightly supervised by central command. Moreover, because the numbers of personnel involved in nuclear launches will be very small, Third World proliferators will not suffer the dangers of large and complicated organizational routines and standard operating procedures that plagued the superpowers. The organizational simplicity of launch bureaucracies means that even if a few more people have their fingers on the button than in the case of the superpowers, there will be less o f a chance that weapons will be launched without a definite and unambiguous decision to press that button. Finally, small arsenals Third World proliferators will be able to protect their weapons from first strikes by simply concealing them. Concealment strategies will give proliferators the luxury of time in their launch procedures, which means that proliferators need not eschew negative control features to ensure that nuclear counter-launches happen quickly and automatically. A quick reaction time is not crucial to concealment strategies; if adversaries cannot find weapons in the weeks and months before launching an arrack, they will not be able to find them in the few days following. Counter-launches can proceed slowly. Launch commanders and operators can take their time in doublechecking the appropriateness of launches by confirming that arrack alarms are not false and/or waiting to get 'go-aheads' from higher authorities. Also, because peripheral commanders and launch operators in the Third World will probably have launch capability (i.e., because they will not be restricted by electronic use-control devices or because they may be given launch capability by design), central authorities do not have to worry about decapitation strikes thwarting their counter-launches. If central command is destroyed, peripheral launch delegates can launch on their own-after taking the time to confirm that central command is indeed gone.
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC De-escalation
Nuclear weapons causes de-escalation of conflicts Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 Take the mother of all nuclear standoffs: the Cuban missile crisis. For 13 days in October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union each threatened the other with destruction. But both countries soon stepped back from the brink when they recognized that a war would have meant curtains for everyone. As important as the fact that they did is the reason why: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's aide Fyodor Burlatsky said later on, "It is impossible to win a nuclear war, and both sides realized that, maybe for the first time." The record since then shows the same pattern repeating: nuclear-armed enemies slide toward war, then pull back, always for the same reasons. The best recent example is India and Pakistan, which fought three bloody wars after independence before acquiring their own nukes in 1998. Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didn't do anything to lessen their animosity. But it did dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomic weapons, the two sides have never fought another war, despite severe provocations (like Pakistani-based terrorist attacks on India in 2001 and 2008). They have skirmished once. But during that flare-up, in Kashmir in 1999, both countries were careful to keep the fighting limited and to avoid threatening the other's vital interests. Sumit Ganguly, an Indiana University professor and coauthor of the forthcoming India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, has found that on both sides, officials' thinking was strikingly similar to that of the Russians and Americans in 1962. The prospect of war brought Delhi and Islamabad face to face with a nuclear holocaust, and leaders in each country did what they had to do to avoid it.
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC De-escalation
Proliferation stops war by raising the costs of conflict Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations. First, nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there's never been a nuclear, or even a nonnuclear, war between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second and think about that: it's hard to overstate how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the leading "nuclear optimist" and a professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, "We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states." Proliferation prevents great power wars Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 Why indeed? The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so compelling, it's led to what's known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch since the end of World War II in which all the world's major powers have avoided coming to blows. They did fight proxy wars, ranging from Korea to Vietnam to Angola to Latin America. But these never matched the furious destruction of full-on, great-power war (World War II alone was responsible for some 50 million to 70 million deaths). And since the end of the Cold War, such bloodshed has declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the nuclear powers have scrupulously avoided direct combat, and there's very good reason to think they always will. There have been some near misses, but a close look at these cases is fundamentally reassuringbecause in each instance, very different leaders all came to the same safe conclusion. Nuclear weapons have historically de-escalated conflicts Roth 7 [ Ariel Ilan, Johns Hopkins University, Reflection, Evaluation, Integration: Nuclear Weapons in NeoRealist Theory International Studies Review, Vol 9:3. While critics of Waltz's "more are better" approach have pointed out flaws in his logic, among them, the risks of nuclear weapons in the hands of irrational leaders and instability during the phases of their development leading to efforts to preempt, such criticisms do not question the internal consistency of his theoretical logic (see Waltz and Sagan 2003:4687). They are, rather, concerns about the junction between theory and practice. What might hold true on paper may still be something not to be risked in practice, especially when the costs of reality failing to live up to theory's predictions can be so dire. Nonetheless, the behavior of states since the end of World War II has conformed more closely with the expectations of Waltz's defensive neo-realism than with those of Mearsheimer's more expansionist offensive realism. And while there are many good reasons to be cautious in applying Waltz's suggestions about horizontal nuclear proliferation, the fact is that the enduring peace between the great powers continues despite the fact that the logic of bipolarity to which it was once ascribed no longer pertains. And, indeed, who can say that the crossing of the nuclear threshold by India and Pakistan in 1998 has not brought them to a greater sobriety. While sabers have rattled on the sub-continent over the last years, they have not been drawn in war. Might the awareness that any military escalation could lead to a nuclear exchange not have been a factor in diffusing crisis? It certainly could be.
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC De-escalation
Uncertainty makes the costs too high Karl 96 proliferation pessimism and emerging nuclear powers Optimists have relaxed views of the preventive-war dangers entailed in situ- ations in which a nuclear power confronts a nuclearizing rival. The practical difficulties of ensuring a disarming strike to preclude any possibility of nuclear retaliation make preventive actions a military gamble that states are very unlikely to take. As Waltz explains, "prevention and pre-emption are difficult games because the costs are so high if the games are not perfectly played.... Ultimately, the inhibitions [against such attacks] lie in the impossibility of knowing for sure that a disarming strike will totally destroy an opposing force and in the immense destruction even a few warheads can wreak."25To opti- mists, states will have to learn to live with a rival's emerging nuclear armory. Because strategic uncertainty is seen as having a powerful dissuasive effect, optimists usually view the very increase in the numbers of nuclear-armed states as an additional element of stability Dagobert Brito and Michael Intrili- gator, for instance, argue that uncertainty over the reaction of other nuclear powers will make all hesitant to strike individually26 As an example, they point to the restraint the superpowers exercised on each other in the 1960s, when first the United States and then the Soviet Union contemplated military action against China's nascent nuclear weapon sites. The net effect of the uncertain reaction of others is that "the probability of deliberate nuclear attack falls to near zero with three, four, or more nuclear nations."27Similarly, Waltz reasons that even in cases of asymmetric proliferation within conflict dyads, nuclear weapons will prove "poor instruments for blackmail" because a "country that takes the nuclear offensive has to fear an appropriately punishing strike by someone. Far from lowering the expected cost of aggression, a nuclear offense even against a non-nuclear state raises the possible costs of aggression to incalculable heights because the aggressor cannot be sure of the reaction of other nuclear powers."28 Nuclear weapons reduce the risk of nuclear war Asal and Beardsley 7 Proliferation and International Crisis Behavior Other, more optimistic, scholars see benefits to nuclear proliferation or, perhaps not actively advocating the development of more nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapon states, see that the presence of nuclear weapons has at least been stabilizing in the past. For example, some scholars are confident of the promise of the nuclear peace.4 While those who oppose pro- liferation present a number of arguments, those who contend that nuclear weapons would reduce interstate wars are fairly consis- tent in focusing on one key argument: nuclear weapons make the risk of war unacceptable for states. As Waltz argues, the higher the stakes and the closer a country moves toward winning them, the more surely that country invites retaliation and risks its own destruction. States are not likely to run major risks for minor gains. War between nuclear states may escalate as the loser uses larger and larger warheads. Fearing that, states will want to draw back. Not escalation but deescalation becomes likely. War remains pos- sible, but victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. (Sagan & Waltz, 2003: 67) Nuclear war simply makes the risks of war much higher and shrinks the chance that a country will go to war (Snyder & Diesing, 1977: 450). Using similar logic, Bueno de Mesquita & Riker (1982) demonstrate formally that a world with almost universal membership in the nuclear club will be much less likely to experience nuclear war than a world with only a few members.
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC Terrorism
Nations would not supply terrorists with weapons Jason Tepperman, September 7, 2k9. Reporter, Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/214248/page/1 Still, even if Iran or North Korea are deterrable, nuclear pessimists fear they'll give or sell their deadly toys to terrorists, who aren'tfor it's hard to bomb a group with no return address. Yet look closely, and the risk of a WMD handoff starts to seem overblown. For one thing, assuming Iran is able to actually build a nuke, Desch explains that "it doesn't make sense that they'd then give something they regard as central to their survival to groups like Hizbullah, over which they have limited control. As for Al Qaeda, they don't even share common interests. Why would the mullahs give Osama bin Laden the crown jewels?" To do so would be fatal, for Washington has made it very clear that it would regard any terrorist use of a WMD as an attack by the country that supplied itand would respond accordingly. Nations won't pass off nuclear material Kraig, 9. [Michael, Senior Fellow at the Stanley Foundation "Nuclear Network Theory" Foreign Policy, October 30.] The key question, then, is how would terrorist groups get their hands on raw nuclear goods? Contrary to popular belief, a state like Iran is extremely unlikely to pass along its HEU to a nonstate group. States value nuclear material for its strategic prestige and deterrent value within the context of a central government arsenal; even the roguest of rogue states aren't in the business of giving highly coveted nukes to a group whose actions they cannot predict or control.
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Proliferation Good DA
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2NC Al-Qaeda
Al Qaeda is not seeking the bomb Mueller, '10. [John, Professor of political science at Ohio State University "Think Again: Nuclear Weapons" Foreign Policy, January/February 10 Al Qaeda Is Searching for a Nuclear Capability." Prove it. Al Qaeda may have had some interest in atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). For instance, a man who defected from al Qaeda after he was caught stealing $110,000 from the organization -- "a lovable rogue," "fixated on money," who "likes to please," as one FBI debriefer described Jamal al-Fadl -- has testified that members tried to purchase uranium in the mid-1990s, though they were scammed and purchased bogus material. There are also reports that bin Laden had "academic" discussions about WMD in 2001 with Pakistani nuclear scientists who did not actually know how to build a bomb. But the Afghanistan invasion seems to have cut any schemes off at the knees. As analyst Anne Stenersen notes, evidence from an al Qaeda computer left behind in Afghanistan when the group beat a hasty retreat indicates that only some $2,000 to $4,000 was earmarked for WMD research, and that was mainly for very crude work on chemical weapons. For comparison, she points out that the Japanese millennial terrorist group, Aum Shinrikyo, appears to have invested $30 million in its sarin gas manufacturing program. Milton Leitenberg of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland-College Park quotes Ayman al-Zawahiri as saying that the project was "wasted time and effort." Even former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector David Albright, who is more impressed with the evidence found in Afghanistan, concludes that any al Qaeda atomic efforts were "seriously disrupted" -- indeed, "nipped in the bud" -- by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and that after the invasion the "chance of al Qaeda detonating a nuclear explosive appears on reflection to be low."
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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Proliferation Good DA
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