Evidence Files

The Forensics Files
September/October 2013
THE FORENSICS FILES
The PFD File

Unilateral Military Force
THE PFD FILE
Resolved:
Unilateral military force by the United States is
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation.
MEGAFILE
1
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Table of Contents
Topic Overview
Definitions
Pro Cases
10
Con Cases
19
Pro Extensions
27
Con Extensions
70
Pro Blocks
124
Con Blocks
130
Preflows
137
The Forensics Files

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Topic Overview
Resolved: Unilateral military force by the United States is justified
to prevent nuclear proliferation.
In 2013, for the first time ever, the National Forensics League (NFL) has
determined that the first Public Forum Debate topic for the year will be for two months,
September and October. There are several plausible explanations for this. The first is that
the NFL is experimenting with how competitors and coaches feel about two month topics
to perhaps prepare for a transition to one topic for every two months, as is the LincolnDouglas (LD) debate topic. A second explanation is the nature of this particular topic that
was selected: Its a big one.
Because this topic will be two months, and because this topic is so big, this File is
actually twice the size of other topic files.
The September/October 2013 topic is an incredibly large topic. In the past, PFD
topics generally have focused on very discrete current events. This topic for debate
actually includes several large subtopics. There is a lot of evidence on each of these
subtopics. Debate camps usually produce files with several hundred pages. Each of those
four topic areas is revealed by starting with the wording of the topic.
The first word that brings up a subtopic is unilateral. There is a very significant
amount of writing on the sensibility of unilateral U.S. action. The flip side to
unilateralism is called multilateralism. This words generally means that instead of
acting alone, the U.S. would attempt to consult or get the support of its allies or potential
allies prior to taking any sort of adverse action with regard to another country
The term military force brings to a light a second huge subtopic. This subtopic
is the debate between hard power and soft power. Hard power generally refers to
the use of military force against another country and military power projection. Soft
power generally refers to the U.S. using more diplomatic and economic measures to
attempt to influence another countrys policy choices. The hard-power/soft-power debate
is, like the unilateralism/multilateralism debate very big in terms of literature and
possible sources of evidence on the topic. However, the use of U.S. military force can be
unilateral or multilateral. If the U.S. military is acting unilaterally, it is acting without the
substantial assistance of other countries. If the U.S. military is acting multilaterally, this
means that the U.S. military is cooperating with other countries militaries to accomplish
a mission.
The phrase by the United States, viewed in light of the prior two terms
unilateral and military force, raises another very big debate: the value of U.S.
hegemony. There is a big academic debate about the policy impacts of U.S. hegemony.
The impacts are very numerous on both sides.
The Forensics Files

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Finally, nuclear proliferation is another huge subtopic. Nuclear proliferation

implicates other policies like disarmament, accidental launch, nuclear terrorism,
deterrence, etc. There are probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pages
written on this very topic. Because cross-examination debate has focused on nuclear war
in almost every round for over the past decade, there is a lot of evidence available out
there.
This file contains a good variety, but yet, only a few of the many, many policy
issues raised by this topic. No topic file will be able to get you all of the evidence
available on this topic. This File, however, gives you several things you cant get from
many other Files: (1) new evidence on the topic; (2) evidence from actual books, rather
than stuff you can just get on the Internet; and (3) cases and analyses written by an
attorney who has over a decade of experience in this activity.
The Forensics Files

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Definitions
Unilateral
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Of, on, relating to, involving, or affecting only one side: "a unilateral
advantage in defense" (New Republic).
Performed or undertaken by only one side: unilateral disarmament.
Obligating only one of two or more parties, nations, or persons, as a
contract or an agreement.
Emphasizing or recognizing only one side of a subject.
Having only one side.
Source: American Heritage Dictionary 2013
Unilateral
1.
2.
3.
of, having, affecting, or occurring on only one side

involving or performed by only one party of several unilateral
disarmament
(law) (of contracts, obligations, etc) made by, affecting, or binding one
party only and not involving the other party in reciprocal obligations
Source: Collins English Dictionary 2013
Unilateral
1.
done or decided by one country, group, or person, often without

considering what other countries, etc. think or want
Source: MacMillan Dictionary 2013
Unilateral
1.
2.
done or undertaken by one person or party

of, relating to, or affecting one side of a subject
Source: Merriam Websters Online Dictionary 2013
Military
The Forensics Files

1.
2.
3.
4.
The PFD File

Of, relating to, or characteristic of members of the armed forces: a

military bearing; military attire.
Performed or supported by the armed forces: military service.
Of or relating to war: military operations.
Of or relating to land forces.
Military
1.
2.
of or relating to the armed forces (esp the army), warlike matters, etc
of, characteristic of, or about soldiers
Military
1.
relating to armies or armed forces and the way in which they are
organized
Military
1.
2.
3.
4.
of or relating to soldiers, arms, or war

of or relating to armed forces; especially : of or relating to ground or
sometimes ground and air forces as opposed to naval forces
performed or made by armed forces
supported by armed force
Source: Merriam Websters Online Dictionary 2013
Force
1.
2.
Power made operative against resistance; exertion: use force in driving a

nail.
The use of physical power or violence to compel or restrain: a confession
obtained by force.
Force
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1.
The PFD File

exertion or the use of exertion against a person or thing that resists;

coercion
Force
1.
physical strength, or violence
United States
1. A republic in the N Western Hemisphere comprising 48 conterminous states, the
District of Columbia, and Alaska in North America, and Hawaii in the N Pacific
Source: Infoplease Dictionary 2013
United States
1. Country North America bordering on Atlantic, Pacific, & Arctic oceans; a federal
republic capital Washington
Source: Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 12th Edition 2013
United States
1. Country in central North America, consisting of 50 states.
Source: Encarta World English Dictionary, North American Edition 2013
Justified
1.
if you describe a decision, action, or idea as justified, you think it is
reasonable and acceptable
2.
justified in doing something if you think that someone is justified in doing
something, you think that their reasons for doing it are good and valid
Justified
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1.
if you are justified in doing something, you have a good reason for doing
it and it is right that you should do it
Source: Macmillan Dictionary
Justified
1.
having a good reason for something
Source: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Justified
1 to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right: The end does not
always justify the means.
2 to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded
Source: Random House Dictionary
Prevent
1.
2
To keep from happening: took steps to prevent the strike

To keep (someone) from doing something; impede: prevented us
from winning.
Prevent
1.
2.
3.
4.
tr to keep from happening, esp by taking precautionary action

tr often foll by from to keep (someone from doing something); hinder; impede
intr to interpose or act as a hindrance
tr (archaic) to anticipate or precede
Prevent
1.
2.
3.
to deprive of power or hope of acting or succeeding

to keep from happening or existing <steps to prevent war>
to hold or keep back
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Source: Merriam Websters Dictionary 2013
Nuclear Proliferation
Wikipedia.com 2013
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weaponsapplicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "Nuclear
Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known
as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or NPT.
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Pro Cases
PRO CASE #1
[North Korea 1 of 2]
The resolution is true: Resolved: Unilateral military force by the United States is
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that North Korea is
developing nuclear weapons, contributing to nuclear proliferation. The US should use
unilateral military force to prevent North Korea from proliferating.
First, North Korea is building a nuclear weapons program. Kuhner, president of the
Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank, writes in 2009:1
North Korea threatens to engulf the Korean Peninsula in an all-out war. Pyongyang's
recent test of a nuclear bomb poses a serious threat to international security and regional
stability. Dictator Kim Jong-il continues to thumb his nose at global leaders, especially
President Obama. The ailing strongman has denuded Mr. Obama on the world stage,
revealing his soft-power strategy to be ineffective and reckless. Washington's emphasis
on diplomacy was supposed to facilitate rogue states into increased cooperation. Instead,
it has only emboldened the likes of North Korea (and Iran) to press ahead with their
nuclear-weapons programs. Mr. Obama's "open hand" has been met with Mr. Kim's iron
fist - one that has smashed Uncle Sam in the face.
Second, a nuclear North Korea would result in nuclear war. The New York Times
2013:2
As North Korea warned foreigners on Tuesday that they might want to leave South Korea
because the peninsula was on the brink of nuclear war a statement that analysts
dismissed as hyperbole the American commander in the Pacific expressed worries that
the Norths young leader, Kim Jong-un, might not have left himself an easy exit to reduce
tensions.
(Jeffrey T., June 6, 2009, Washington Times, Another Korean War?,

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/06/another-korean-war/)
2
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/world/asia/south-korean-leader-seeks-to-end-vicious-cycle-withnorth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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PRO CASE #1
[North Korea 2 of 2]
Third, US military intervention would be effective in stopping North Korean

proliferation. Dr John Janzekovic writes in 2004:3
It is technically feasible for military intervention to be successful and to have good
humanitarian outcomes providing such an engagement is conducted with speed, vigour
and determination. Elliot Abrams (1999, 18) argues that it is crucial that intervention is
militarily realistic and achievable in the first place. If one or more of these elements is
absent then military intervention will cause more suffering and death than it tries to stop.
Under these circumstances intervention will not be successful and it must not proceed.
Interventionists must maximise and concentrate their use of force to be militarily
successful. They must have the resources and the will to assert military superiority over
an opponent. An opponent or the opponents must be disarmed after conflict. These are
simple military maxims as identified during the early 1800s by the military strategist Carl
Von Clausewitz (1984, 80-89) and others. If interventionists apply less than the
maximum use of concentrated force against an opponent this provides a military
advantage to the opposition with predictable outcomes. One predictable outcome is a
protracted and bloody military campaign.
Because using military force against North Korea would prevent nuclear war, the U.S.s
use of military force to prevent North Koreas proliferation is justified. (Thank you for
your time and attention; I am now open for crossfire.)
(Politics and International Relations/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/University of the Sunshine
Coast), Forcible Humanitarian Intervention: practical Objections to the Ethical Principles and
Applications, Refereed paper presented to the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference
University of Adelaide 29 September 1 October 2004
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PRO CASE #2
[Iran 1 of 2]
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that Iran is developing
nuclear weapons, contributing to nuclear proliferation. The US should use unilateral
military force to prevent Iran from proliferating.
First, Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Jerusalem Post 2013:4
Beyond the immediate short-term tactical situation, many view Iran and North Koreas
return to negotiations and engagement after the USs invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and
Libyas dismantling of its nuclear program) as a sign that each viewed the American
aggression as a reason both to press forward with a nuclear program for self-preservation
and to show greater readiness to negotiate, fearing possible action by Washington. There
is also evidence over the years that sometimes Iran has retreated from possible
concessions after watching North Korea get away with various provocations, such as
missile launches and its three nuclear weapons tests. Commentators debate how much
reciprocal impact there is between the countries. Some note that Irans main reason at this
point for developing nuclear weapons may be to achieve greater regional hegemony,
while North Korea is much weaker than its neighbors if one were to discount the
nuclear issue and does not appear to have ambitions toward unseating or replacing other
powers in the region. But it is hard to argue, in the age of globalization, that the two
rogue states do not watch each others tactics and the subsequent reactions from the
West. Moreover, while their negotiating strategies with the US and other countries urging
them to end their nuclear programs have differed, both in their own ways have succeeded
in extracting various concessions over the years while continuing to advance their nuclear
programs whatever the costs in sanctions.
Second, a nuclear war between Iran and its most likely targetIsraelwould be
devastating; it would result in 20 million deaths. Fox News 2007: 5
An estimated 16-20 million Iranians would die in a nuclear war with Israel, according to
a report issued by a respected Washington think tank. The Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) also estimates that between 200,000 and 800,000 Israelis
would be killed, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Analysis: The nuclear diplomacy of North Korea and Iran, August 19, 2013,
www.jpost.com/International/Analysis-The-nuclear-diplomacy-of-North-Korea-and-Iran-323609
5
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/12/24/report-iran-would-suffer-up-to-20-million-casualties-innuclear-war-with-israel/
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PRO CASE #2
[Iran 2 of 2]
Third, US military intervention would be effective in stopping Iranian proliferation.

Dr John Janzekovic writes in 2004:6
Because using military force against Iran would prevent nuclear war, the U.S.s use of
military force to prevent Irans proliferation is justified. (Thank you for your time and
attention; I am now open for crossfire.)
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PRO CASE #3
[Nuclear Terrorism 1 of 2]
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that nuclear
proliferation will result in nuclear terrorism. The US should use unilateral military force
to prevent other states from getting nuclear weapons.
First, preventing nuclear proliferation prevents nuclear terrorism. Harold Brown
writes for the Washington Quartler in 20077
The possibility of nuclear weapons acquisition by transnational terrorists creates dangers
of a new dimension. Acquisition might occur through deliberate transfer from a state for
its own ends, through transfer from some group within a fractured state, by theft of
bombs or of fissile material of a sort that can be made into a bomb with modest technical
and industrial facilities, or, much less feasibly, by building a bomb from scratch. That
argues for greatly increased efforts to prevent to the extent possible further proliferation
and to safeguard existing stocks of fissile material.
Second, nuclear terrorism would result in extinction. Dr. Jermoe Corse wrote in a
book called the Atomic Iran, in 2005:8
The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that
the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. Still, the
president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another
attack by our known enemy Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a
nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be
added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we
gain? The apocalypse would be upon us.T hen, too, we would face an immediate threat
from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union. Many in the Kremlin would see this
as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them by Ronald
Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of
American cities could possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense system
be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible? Hardliners in Moscow
might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America. In China, our
newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population
already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not concentrated in a few major
cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States.
(Harold, CSIS counselor and trustee and served as secretary of defense from 1977 to 1981, New Nuclear
Realities, Washington Quarterly, 31.1 7-22))
8
(Jerome, Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University (Atomic Iran, p. 176-8)).
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PRO CASE #3
[Nuclear Terrorism 2 of 2]
Third, US military intervention would be effective in stopping Iranian proliferation.

Dr John Janzekovic writes in 2004:9
Based on the foregoing, the US should use unilateral military force to prevent nuclear
proliferation to solve for human extinction. (Thank you for your time and attention. I am
now open for crossfire.)
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PRO CASE #4
[Crazy Util Case/Policy 1 of 3]
(Caution: This case is for more advanced debaters in front of judges who are policy
debate judges. Its strategic because it turns all of the Cons potential arguments. Some
judges might find it offense, so make sure you know who your judge is before running
this case. Hence, the name Crazy Util Case/Policy.)
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that extinction now is
better than extinction later. U.S. unilateral military force to prevent nuclear proliferation
would result in extinction sooner rather than later.
Framework: Under the theory of utilitarianism, you should maximize the greatest good
for the greatest number of people. The converse is also true, minimizing harm for the
greatest number of people. For example, if you had the option of either saving one
persons life or saving two peoples lives, you should save two peoples lives. Dr.
Rakowski 1993:10 On one side, it presses toward the consequentialist view that
individuals' status as moral equals requires that the number of people kept alive [life] be
maximized. Only in this way, the thought runs, can we give due weight to the
fundamental equality of persons; to allow more deaths when we can ensure fewer is to
treat[s] some people as less valuable than others. Further, killing some to save others, or
letting some die for that purpose, does not entail that those who are killed or left to their
fate are being used merely as means to the well-being of others, as would be true if they
were slain or left to drown merely to please people who would live anyway. They do, of
course, in some cases serve as means. But they do not act merely as means. Those who
die are no less ends than those who live. It is because they are also no more ends than
others whose lives are in the balance that [one] an impartial decision-maker must choose
to save the more numerous group, even if she must kill to do so.
First, the human population is increasing day by day. United Nations Population
Fund:11 The world population of 7.2 billion in mid-2013 is projected to increase by
almost one billion people within the next twelve years, according to official United
Nations population estimates (medium variant, 2012 Revision). It is projected to reach
8.1 billion in 2025, and to further increase to 9.6 billion in 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100
10
Taking and Saving Lives Columbia Law Review, Vol. 93, No. 5, (Jun., 1993), pp. 1063-1156
Published by: Columbia Law Review Association, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1122960
11
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/trends.htm
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PRO CASE #4
Second, human extinction is inevitable in the future. This means that the longer we
delay the inevitable the more people will be harmed. The Atlantic 2012:12
Unthinkable as it may be, humanity, every last person, could someday be wiped from the
face of the Earth. We have learned to worry about asteroids and supervolcanoes, but the
more-likely scenario, according to Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at Oxford, is
that we humans will destroy ourselves. Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of
Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of several papers that human extinction
risks are poorly understood and, worse still, severely underestimated by society. Some of
these existential risks are fairly well known, especially the natural ones. But others are
obscure or even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that
arise from human technology, a subset that he expects to grow in number and potency
over the next century.
Third, US use of unilateral military force to try to stop nuclear proliferation would
result in extinction now.
A. Anti nuclear proliferation efforts results in the development and use of
bioweapons. Zilinskas 2000:13 There are many who believe that todays bioscientists
and chemical engineers are working in unison and wielding the techniques of molecular
biology developed since the early 1970s could, if so commanded, develop militarily
effective biological weapons within a fairly short time. If this supposition is correct, our
perception of biological weapons are being undependable, uncontrollable, and unreliable
must change. The reason is simple: if these weapons are demonstrated to possess
properties that make I possible for commanders to effect controlled, confined mass
destruction on command, all governments 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 be even more drawn to biological arms as the most
accessible form of weapon of mass destruction.
12
We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction March 6, 2012,

www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-humanextinction/253821/
13
Raymond A., formerly a clinical microbiologist, is the director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons
Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Biological Warfare: modern Offense
and Defense, p. 1-2)
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PRO CASE #4
B. Biological weapons result in extinction. Steinbruner 1997:14 The use of a pathogen,

by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely
controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they
would not act swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few
pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely
to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the other direction. A
lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable
of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire
world population.
In conclusion, you have the obligation to do the least harm to the least number of people.
If you vote Pro, only the current number of humans, about 7 billion, will be killed. If we
delay the inevitable, then even more people will die. Therefore, US use of military force
is justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. (Thank you for your time and attention. I am
now open for crossfire.)
14
John, Senior Fellow Brookings, Foreign Policy, 12-22-1997, Lexis)
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Con Cases
CON CASE #1
[Morality1 of 2]
The resolution is false: Resolved: Unilateral military force by the United States is not
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that nuclear
proliferation promotes deterrence and deterrence prevents nuclear war, which is the
biggest immorality.
First, permitting nuclear war is the ultimate immorality. Nye 1988:15
While the cosmopolitan approach has the virtue of accepting transnational realities and
avoids the sanctification of the nation-state, an unsophisticated cosmopolitanism also has
serious drawbacks. First, if morality is about choice, then to underestimate the
significance of states and boundaries is to fail to take into account the main features of
the real setting in which choices must be made. To pursue individual justice at the cost of
survival or to launch human rights crusades that cannot hope to be fulfilled, yet interfere
with prudential concerns about order, may lead to immoral consequences. And if such
actions, for example the promotion of human rights in Eastern Europe, were to lead to
crises and an unintended nuclear war, the consequences might be the ultimate immorality.
Applying ethics to foreign policy is more than merely constructing philosophical
arguments; it much be relevant to the international domain in which moral choice is to be
exercised.
Nuclear deterrence is necessary. Anything else allows atrocities worse than the
threats of nuclear use. Lewis 2006:16
If the consequence of possessing a lethal weapon is that nobody uses lethal weapons,
while the consequence of not possessing a lethal weapon is that someone else uses his
lethal weapons against you, which is the more moral thing to do: to possess the weapons
and avoid anyone being attacked, or to renounce them and lay yourself open to
aggression? The central problem that has to be faced by those who argue that the mere
possession of nuclear weapons, or the threat to use them in retaliation, is morally
unacceptable is the extreme level of destructiveness that conventional warfare had
reached before the atomic bomb was invented. If it is the case that possessing a deadly
weapon or being willing to threaten to use it in retaliation will avert a confl ict in which
millions would otherwise die, can it seriously be claimed that the more ethical policy is to
renounce the weapon and let the millions meet their fate? Even if one argues that the
threat to retaliate is itself immoral, is it as immoral as the failure to forestall so many
15
(Joseph S., former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government, Nuclear Ethics, Pg. 33)
16
(Julian, Nuclear disarmament versus peace in the twenty-first century, International Affairs, 82.4)
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CON CASE #1
[Morality 2 of 2]
preventable casualties? This is, in reality, a variation on the argument against absolute
pacifism which the late Leonard Cheshire illustrated when such issues were being
debated 20 years ago. According to most peoples values, not only is it morally correct
for him to shoot the armed terrorist, it would be profoundly unethical for him to decline
to do so. Moral choices are, as often as not, choices between the lesser of two evils. In the
case of possessing and threatening to use a horrifying weapon, or renouncing it with the
result that such weapons are actually used against ones own society, only the purest
pacifist can be in any doubt as to which course to follow.
Third, nuclear possession deters wars because it increases the likelihood of
cooperation. Spulak 9717:
The possession of a robust nuclear arsenal confers real diplomatic advantages on the
United States. It is a vital symbol and part of the substance of our world leadership.
Diplomacy is always performed against the backdrop of military capability. There has
been widespread speculation that allusions to nuclear use may have deterred Iraq from
using chemical weapons in the 1990-91 Gulf War. And, the US carefully refrained for
several days from ruling out a nuclear strike against a Libyan underground chemical
weapons facility to increase the diplomatic pressure to stop construction. Nuclear
weapons make it easier for the United States to cooperate with other nations since they
make it difficult for other nations to threaten central US security interests. In the past, it
has been very important in international relations to avoid a relative gain by a partner in
cooperation lest that relative gain translate into a shift in relative military power that
threatens one of the partners. This creates a barrier to cooperation in trade, economic
policy, arms control, or other activities that result in absolute economic or other gains.
Nuclear weapons lower this barrier to cooperation. (Thank you for your time and
attention. I am now open for crossfire.)
17
Spulak 1997 (Robert G. Jr., senior analyst at the Strategic Studies Center, Sandia National Laboratories,
Albuquerque, The case in favor of US nuclear weapons, Parameters, Spring,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/97spring/spulak.htm)
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CON CASE #2
[Multilateralism Good1 of 2]
The resolution is false. Resolved: Unilateral military force by the United States is not
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that only multilateral
military force should be used. This solves back other countries aggression against the
U.S.
First, US unilateralism is unsustainable and will cause nations to become hostile to
the US. Hass 199918:
It must be said at the outset that America's economic and military advantages, while
great, are neither unqualified nor permanent. The country's strength is limited by the
amount of resources (money, time, political capital) it can spend, which in turn reflects a
lack of domestic support for some kind of American global empire. De Tocqueville's
observation that democracy is ill suited for conducting foreign policy is even more true in
a world without a mortal enemy like the Soviet Union against which to rally the public.
Moreover, U.S. superiority will not last. As power diffuses around the world, America's
position relative to others will inevitably erode. It may not seem this way at a moment
when the American economy is in full bloom and many countries around the world are
sclerotic, but the long-term trend is unmistakable. Other nations are rising, and non-state
actors , ranging from Usama bin Ladin to Amnesty International to the International
Criminal Court to George Soros, are increasing in number and acquiring power. For all
these reasons, an effort to assert or expand U.S. hegemony will fail.
The world is becoming more multipolar. The U.S. needs to fall in line. Hass 199919:
Meanwhile, the world is becoming more multipolar. American foreign policy should not
resist such multipolarity (which would be futile) but define it. Like unipolarity,
multipolarity is simply a description. It tells us about the distribution of power in the
world, not about the character or quality of international relations. A multipolar world
could be one in which several hostile but roughly equal states confront one another, or
one in which a number of states, each possessing significant power, work together in
common. The U.S. objective should be to persuade other centers of political, economic,
and military power, including but not limited to nation-states, to believe it is in their selfinterest to support constructive notions of how international society should be organized
and should operate.
18
Richard Haass, VP and director of foreign policy studies at Brookings, and Sydney Stein Jr., chair in intl
security, the Record, September 19, 1999
19
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CON CASE #2
[Multilateralism Good2 of 2]
Multilateralism solves for other countries aggression towards the US. Hass 199920:
The proper goal for American foreign policy, then, is to encourage a multipolarity
characterized by cooperation and concert rather than competition and conflict. In such a
world, order would not be limited to peace based on a balance of power or a fear of
escalation, but would be founded in a broader agreement on global purposes and
problems. Without great-power agreement, international relations could easily revert to a
much more hostile system than the one that exists today. With such cooperation,
however, we can ameliorate (though never abolish) some of the dangers of great-power
competition and war that have plagued the world for much of its history.
Because multilateralism is the solution, the US should not use unilateral military action to
prevent other nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. (Thank you for your time and
attention. I am now open for crossfire.)
20
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CON CASE #3
[Soft Power1 of 2]
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that only unilateralism
undermines U.S. soft power. Soft power prevents international conflict. Therefore, the
US should not take unilateral military action.
First, Unilateralism erodes soft power, which is key to leadership. Greenway 2002:21
Nye articulated the concept of "soft power," arguing that America's real strength lay not
only in military prowess but in the attractions of its open society, its universities, its
popular culture, and economic opportunities that had become a world magnet. Then, at
century's end, when the United States had reached a zenith of power and authority, Nye
started a new book to warn against hubris and unilateralism - the soon-to-be-published
"The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It
Alone." Before the book was finished the events of Sept. 11 came along and underscored
his thesis. As the 21st century dawned, Americans had forgotten their fears of being
overtaken by the Far East and instead had become "arrogant about our power, arguing
that we did not need to heed other nations," according to Nye. "We seemed both
invincible and invulnerable." Then came September to put paid to all that. To some, the
very freedoms that make up our soft power are "repulsive," particularly to
fundamentalists. But "hard nuggets of hate are unlikely to catalyze broader hatred unless
we abandon our values and pursue arrogant and overbearing policies that let the
extremists appeal to the majority in the middle," Nye argues. There are world problems
that simply cannot be tackled by one country alone, no matter how powerful: financial
instability, climate change, drugs, infectious diseases, and terrorism. If the United States
is bound to lead, it is also bound to cooperate, Nye writes. With the end of the Cold War
America went too quickly from declinism to triumphalism. All the trends of globalization
and the information age favor the growing soft power of the United States, "but only if
we avoid stepping on our own message." Nye writes that "isolationists who think we can
avoid vulnerability to terrorism by drawing inward fail to understand the realities of a
global information age." As for going it alone, unilateralism is not a viable option; it risks
undermining our soft power and invites coalitions to form against us, which would
eventually limit our hard power.
21
H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe, January 25, 2002
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CON CASE #3
[Soft Power 2 of 2]
Second, unilateralism hurts US soft power while multilateralism rebuilds it. Nye
2003:22
There is considerable evidence that the new unilateralists' policies tend to squander U.S.
soft power. Before the war, a Pew Charitable Trust poll found that U.S. policies (not
American culture) led to less favorable attitudes toward the United States over the past
two years in 19 of 27 countries, including the Islamic countries so crucial to the
prosecution of the war on terrorism. Other polls showed an average drop of 30 points in
the popularity of the United States in major European countries. No large country can
afford to be purely multilateralist, and sometimes the United States must take the lead by
itself, as it did in Afghanistan. And the credible threat to exercise the unilateral option
was probably essential to getting the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 1441,
which brought the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. But the United States should
incline toward multilateralism whenever possible as a way to legitimize its power and to
gain broad acceptance of its new strategy. Preemption that is legitimized by multilateral
sanction is far less costly and sets a far less dangerous precedent than the United States
asserting that it alone can act as judge, jury, and executioner. Granted, multilateralism
can be used by smaller states to restrict American freedom of action, but this downside
does not detract from its overall usefulness. Whether Washington learns to listen to others
and to define U.S. national interests more broadly to include global interests will be
crucial to the success of the new strategy and to whether others see the American
preponderance the strategy proclaims as benign or not. To implement the new strategy
successfully, therefore, the United States will need to pay more attention to soft power
and multilateral cooperation than the new unilateralists would like.
Third, soft power prevents international conflict, whereas soft power can preserve a
legitimate U.S. Leadership. Borchert 200223:
[I]f the United States as the world's most powerful state "exercises its power on behalf of
goals and values that others shareliberty, democracy, prosperitythe United States will
be supported, not always but much of the time." In short, the less multilateralist the
United States becomes, the more self-promoting, and therefore the less willing to lead
responsibly, the less diffuse reciprocity will characterize its relationships with others, and
the more others will try to fill the leadership void. Simply put, the challenge for the
United States is to "be a hegemon without acting like one."
Because unilateral action hurts softpower and results in international conflict, the topic is
false. (Thank you for your time and attention, I am now open for cross-fire).
22
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Dean of Harvards Kennedy School of Government, Foreign Affairs, July/August
2003.
23
Heiko Borchert, business and political consultant, and Mary Hampton, associate professor of political
science at the University of Utah, The Lessons of Kosovo: Boon or Bust for Transatlantic Security?
Orbis, v46 issue 2, Spring, 2002
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CON CASE #4
[Iran1 of 2]
justified to prevent nuclear proliferation. The thesis of our case is that attempting to
denuclearize countries will cause global nuclear war.
A. Iranian nuclearization doesnt cause war and prevents Israeli strikes. Morrison
200924:
Rulers of Iran don't want their cities devastated and they know that if Iran were to make a
nuclear strike on Israel, it is absolutely certain that Israel would retaliate by making
multiple nuclear strikes on Iran and raze many Iranian cities to the ground -- so Iran won't
do it. Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal, and the ruthlessness to use it, that is more than
adequate to deter Iran from making a nuclear strike on the country. Likewise, it is
unimaginable that Iran would attack the US, or US interests abroad, for fear of
overwhelming retaliation. However, taking account of the elephant in the room puts a
very different perspective on the impact of a nuclear-armed Iran. The significance of Iran
acquiring nuclear weapons is not that Iran would become a threat to Israel and the US,
but that Israel and the US would no longer contemplate attacking Iran. Nuclear weapons
are the ultimate weapons of self-defense -- a state that possesses nuclear weapons doesn't
get attacked by other states. One thing is certain: attacking Iran, ostensibly to prevent it
from acquiring nuclear weapons, would make the case for it acquiring them like nothing
else. It would then be abundantly clear that Iran could not protect itself by other means -and it can be guaranteed that it would then make a supreme effort to acquire them.
24
[David Morrison. political officer for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The elephant in the
room: Israel's nuclear weapons The Electronic Intifada, 29 June 2009.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10621.shtml]
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CON CASE #4
[Iran 2 of 2]
B. The impact is global nuclear war. Ivashov 200725

What might cause the force major event of the required scale? Everything seems to
indicate that Israel will be sacrificed. Its involvement in a war with Iran - especially in a
nuclear war - is bound to trigger a global catastrophe. The statehoods of Israel and Iran
are based on the countries' official religions. A military conflict between Israel and Iran
will immediately evolve into a religious one, a conflict between Judaism and Islam. Due
to the presence of numerous Jewish and Muslim populations in the developed countries,
this would make a global bloodbath inevitable. All of the active forces of most of the
countries of the world would end up fighting, with almost no room for neutrality left.
Judging by the increasingly massive acquisitions of the residential housing for the Israeli
citizens, especially in Russia and Ukraine, a lot of people already have an idea of what
the future holds. However, it is hard to imagine a quiet heaven where one might hide
from the coming doom. Forecasts of the territorial distribution of the fighting, the
quantities and the efficiency of the armaments involved, the profound character of the
underlying roots of the conflict and the severity of the religious strife all leave no doubt
that this clash will be in all respects much more nightmarish than WWII.
Because attempting to denuclearize countries, like Iran, unilaterally will cause global
nuclear war, the US is not justified in using unilateral military force. (Thank you for your
time and attention, I am now open for cross-fire).
25
[General Leonid Ivashov vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the
department for General affairs in the Soviet Unions ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of
defense ministers of the Community of independant states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation
department at the Russian federations Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies.
Iran: the Threat of a Nuclear War Global Research April 9, 2007.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5309]
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Pro Extensions
More and more countries will get nuclear weapons in the near future.
Blechman 2008 (Barry, Co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center and a Stimson
Distinguished Fellow focused on nuclear disarmament, Barry, Nuclear Proliferation:
Avoiding a Pandemic, Stimson Center, 9/28, http://www.stimson.org/Presidential_Inbox
_2009/BBlechman_Final_Format.pdf )
There is serious risk that the international agreements and processes that have kept the
number of nations armed with nuclear weapons fairly low are breaking down. Over the
past ten years, three nations joined the six previously declared nuclear powers and a tenth
is in the offing. Unless strong actions are taken during the first 18 months of the
administration, we could see a world of twenty or even thirty nuclear-armed states by the
2020s. The Non-Proliferation Treaty has never been accepted universally. Three nuclear
weapon states -- India, Israel, and Pakistan -- are not signatories. The Treaty also has
notable flaws, demonstrated by North Koreas swift withdrawal from the Treaty, removal
of IAEA safeguards on its civilian nuclear facility, and quick building and testing of a
nuclear device. Moreover, after 40 years, the NPTs central tenet, a promise by China,
France, UK, US, and the USSR to eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons in
exchange for a pledge by all other countries not to seek weapon capabilities, is becoming
increasingly difficult to sustain. At the 2000 and 2005 Review Conferences and in a
preparatory meeting for the 2010 Conference, the tensions between the two classes of
countries were difficult to manage and little, if anything, was accomplished. The Nuclear
Suppliers Group, meanwhile, is challenged by the US-India Agreement on Civil Nuclear
Cooperation. [I]f proliferation begins to accelerate, countries that are competent in
nuclear technologies, but which have refrained from building a weapons program, could
well join the bandwagon. These proliferators might include Brazil, South Africa, South
Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, and others.
The U.S. needs to send a strong international message that nuclear prolif is bad.
OHanlon 2008 (Michael, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Specialized in
nuclear-weapons issues for five years at the Congressional Budget Office, Resurrecting
the Test-Ban Treaty, Survival 50:1, February/March)
While regional security conditions do matter more than global arguments for most
countries contemplating the bomb, a strong international message against proliferation
can still affect their calculations. If there is a sense that everyone is doing it, leaders
teetering on the edge of going nuclear will feel less restraint about doing so, and perhaps
even an obligation to protect their own countries from the potential nuclear weapons of
their neighbours. In this regard, maintaining a strong international dissuasive force
against nuclearisation is important, for it affects perceptions of the likelihood of
proliferation. Indeed, efforts to delegitimise the bomb over the past half century, and
efforts to reduce testing and reduce arsenals over the last four decades, have helped
convince governments in places such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Germany not to pursue these weapons.
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State possession of nukes motivates rouge nations to proliferate, too.

Weber 2007 (Steven, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of
International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, et. Al (Naazneen Barma,
Matthew Kroenig, and Ely Ratner are Ph.D. candidates at U.C., Berkeley), Jan/Feb 2007,
Foreign Policy, How Globalization went bad Proquest)
In Tehran, Pyongyang, and many other capitals, including Beijing, the bottom line is
simple: The U.S. military could, with conventional force, end those regimes tomorrow if
it chose to do so. No country in the world can dream of challenging U.S. conventional
military power. But they can certainly hope to deter America from using it. And the best
deterrent yet invented is the threat of nuclear retaliation. Having your own nuclear
weapon used to be a luxury. Today, it is fast becoming a necessity. North Korea is the
clearest example. How would things be different in a multipolar world? For starters, great
powers could split the job of policing proliferation, and even collaborate on some
particularly hard cases. It's often forgotten now that, during the Cold War, the only state
with a tougher nonproliferation policy than the United States was the Soviet Union.
Preventing nuclear proliferation prevents nuclear terrorism.
Brown 2007 (Harold, CSIS counselor and trustee and served as secretary of defense from
1977 to 1981, New Nuclear Realities, Washington Quarterly, 31.1 7-22)
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Nuclear terrorism would result in extinction.

Corse 2005 (Jerome, Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University (Atomic Iran, p.
176-8)
The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that
the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. Still, the
president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another
attack by our known enemy Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a
nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be
added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we
gain? The apocalypse would be upon us.T hen, too, we would face an immediate threat
from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union. Many in the Kremlin would see this
as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them by Ronald
Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of
American cities could possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense system
be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible? Hardliners in Moscow
might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America. In China, our
newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population
already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not concentrated in a few major
cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States.
States empirically have lax security over nuclear weapons.
Busch 2004 (Nathan, Associate Professor Govt. @ Christopher Newport U, No End in
Sight, p 292-3)
What is equally troubling is that most of the countries examined in this study have
demonstrated little interest in improving their MPC&A. In Russia, even after the United
States has helped them upgrade the MPC&A at their facilities, there have been repeated
instances of personnel bypassing safeguards procedures and even turning off alarm
systems because they were perceived to be nuisances. China has demonstrated similar
reluctance to improving its MPC&A. All of these countries appear to lack developed
"safeguards cultures," where all personnel at a nuclear facility view fissile material
controls as a higher priority than other objectives, such as meeting production timetables.
Because there is no evidence that emerging NWSs will view MPC&A as a higher priority
than current NWSs have, it is quite likely that a further spread of nuclear weapons will
increase risks that fissile materials will be stolen or diverted, and will increase
opportunities for the sabotage of nuclear facilities. In fact, the evidence from pre-2003
Iraq, North Korea, and Iran suggests that they may view issues such as safety and
security as lower priorities than the current NWSs. In order to conceal the existence of
their nuclear programs, these countries have adopted denial and deception techniques that
could provide even greater obstacles to rigorous fissile material controls.
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Terrorists have motives to use nuclear weapons.

Sight, p 292-3)
Although Waltz's arguments may have been convincing in the past, it is now clear that
the goals of some terrorist groups have changed. [S]ome terrorists, such as some Islamic
groups and "millenarian" groups, do in fact want to cause widespread death and
destruction, . . . . One such group is the Japanese millenarian cult Aum Shinrikyo. In
efforts to bring about their views of the apocalypse, this group is believed to have
attempted to purchase nuclear weapons and fissile materials from Russian scientists." But
the more well-known group to have an active interest in nuclear weapons is the Islamic
terrorist group al Qaeda. As the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency reported in April 2003,
"We also know that al-Qa'ida has ambitions to acquire or develop nuclear weapons and
has been receptive to any outside nuclear assistance that might become available.""
Indeed, Osama Bin Laden has declared obtaining nuclear weapons to be a religious duty
and has reportedly attempted to obtain stolen fissile materials on several occasions.67
Documents seized in al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan also reportedly contained crude
designs for nuclear weapons and blueprints of U.S. nuclear plants." The September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon clearly demonstrate
that Bin Laden and al Qaeda would have few qualms about using such weapons if they
were able to acquire them. While al Qaeda's activities may have been disrupted by U.S.
military ictions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it may take years to eradicate al Qaeda's
?resence. Al Qaeda is believed to have infiltrated nearly sixty countries and has been
linked with terror plots in such diverse locations as Egypt, France, Germany, Italy,
Singapore, and the Philippines. Furthermore, al Qaeda appears to be much better
organized and funded than previously believed, with an established chain of command
and numerous sources of funding other than Bin Laden." Therefore, even if Bin Laden is
captured or killed, it is possible that al Qaeda could continue to function without him.
Moreover, there are other groups besides al Qaeda that may be interested in nuclear
terrorism. According to George Tenet, U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, "Bin
Laden's organization is just one of about a dozen terrorist groups that have expressed an
interest in or have sought chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents."77
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Lack of technological knowledge on how to manage nuclear weapons makes

accidental launch highly likely.
Mozley 98 (Robert, Experimental Particle Physicist and Prof. @ the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center, The Politics and Technology of Nuclear Proliferation, p 12)
A lack of technical proficiency in less-developed nations can result in unstable bombs.
Normally, a nuclear weapon is made to produce a nuclear explosion by the detonation of
conventional explosives, which in turn compresses a shell or sphere of uranium or
plutonium to a much higher density, of supercritical value. This conventional explosion
must be brought about with very accurate timing. A nation unable to master this
technology can compensate by using more fissile material, which makes the weapon
more nearly critical before detonation. Such a weapon will of necessity be more easily set
off by a detonation of its conventional explosive, which could occur if it were dropped
and would certainly happen if a plane carrying a weapon were to crash. A New York
Times Magazine article reported on the findings of U.N. inspectors when they examined
the design of the nuclear bomb the Iraqis had developed: The inspectors found out one
other thing about the Iraqi bombit is highly unstable. The design calls for cramming so
much weapon-grade uranium into the core, they say, that the bomb would inevitably be
on the verge of going offeven while sitting on the workbench. "It could go off if a rifle
bullet hit it," one inspector says, adding: "I wouldn't want to be around if it fell off the
edge of this desk."9
Accidental explosions would be as devastating as dropping the bomb.
The explosion of a weapon, even one's own, can seem like a nuclear strike by an enemy.
Nuclear explosions leave nothing behind to indicate who was responsible.
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Accidental explosions would make retaliation against any suspected country likely
because there would be no evidence of what happened to cause the accident.
Also, the satellite and radar technology helpful in making informed decisions about such
events is not readily available to less-developed nations..
Internal organizational politics in managing nuclear stockpiles increase the
likelihood of accidental war.
Sagan 1994 (Scott, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University , Scott,
The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of
Nuclear Weapons, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring, 1994), pp. 66-107).
[T]here are inherent limits to the degree to which any large organization can understand
the technical systems it creates to manage hazardous technologies, . . . Conflicting
objectives inevitably exist inside any large organization that manages hazardous
technology: top-level authorities may place a high priority on safety, but others may place
a higher value on more parochial objectives, such as increasing production levels,
enhancing the size of their subunit, or promoting their individual careers, which can lead
to risky behaviors. From a structural perspective, adding redundant back-up systems can
be counterproductive, since redundancy makes the system both more complex and more
opaque and therefore can create hidden common-mode errors. The politics of blame
inside organizations also reduces trial and error learning from accidents because
organizational leaders often find operators at lower levels in the hierarchy at fault, both
because this absolves them from responsibility, and because it is usually cheaper to fire
the operator than to change accident-prone procedures or structures. Knowing this,
however, field-level operators have great incentives not to report safety incidents
whenever possible. Finally, from a "normal accidents" perspective, strong culture and
socialization can have negative effects on organizational reliability since they encourage
excessive concern about the organization's reputation, disdain for outsiders' and internal
dissenters' opinions, and even organizational coverups. From the perspective of normal
accidents theory, there are strong reasons to expect that the safety of modern nuclear
arsenals is inherently limited: large-scale arsenals and command systems are highly
complex, by necessity, and are tightly-coupled, by design, to ensure prompt retaliation
under attack; the military organizations that manage them are inevitably politicized, with
numerous conflicting interests between commands and the broader society and within the
organizations themselves. Moreover, the U.S. military's reaction to these safety problems
shows how only limited degrees of organizational learning took place.
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Financial limits make arsenals unsafe.

Sight, p 8)
As we have seen, optimists are confident that NWSs will implement adequate controls
against the unauthorized use of their nuclear weapons because it is so clearly in their
interest to do so." Pessimists argue that use-control devices are still necessary for
preventing terrorist seizure of nuclear weapons and unauthorized launches. These
problems will remain even if there are fewer weapons to control." In addition, pessimists
argue, even though financial constraints will make arsenals smaller, the arsenals will tend
to be "untested, unproven, and probably unsafe.' And finally, pessimists argue, even
though emerging NWSs will initially have smaller arsenals, there is no guarantee that
they will remain satisfied with the "minimal deterrence" that small arsenals provide." If
the emerging NWSs decide to build up their arsenals, they could then encounter the
organizational problems that pessimists have associated with large arsenals.")
Emerging nuclear states will adopt launch on warning policies that cause accidental
nuclear war.
Sight, p 8-9)
[I]f NWSs (nuclear weapons states) do in fact tend to develop rapid-response capabilities
and policies of LOW, then the risks of inadvertent use would be quite high, since these
doctrines greatly reduce the time that leaders have to decide whether to launch their
nuclear weapons. As a number of pessimists have pointed out, however, a doctrine of ride
out and delayed retaliation increases a state's vulnerability to decapitation (where those
authorized to order a retaliation are killed or the communication networks necessary for
disseminating a launch command are severely disrupted or destroyed) and to counterforce
strikes (where large numbers of the state's nuclear forces are destroyed), both of which
significantly reduce the state's retaliatory capability. Pessimists have therefore argued that
emerging NWSs will not be satisfied with such doctrines, and will instead develop rapidresponse capabilities and even adopt policies that allow for LOW.7
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Nuclear proliferation risks that regional conflicts spin out of control to include the
use of a nuclear weapon.
Muller 2008 (Herald, Executive Director, Head of Research Department (RD) Peace
Research Institute of Frankfurt, The Future of Nuclear Weapons in an Interdependent
World The Washington Quarterly, Spring, http://www.twq.com/08spring/docs/
08spring_muller.pdf)
A world populated by many nuclear-weapon states poses grave dangers. Regional
conflicts could escalate to the nuclear level. The optimistic expectation of a universal law
according to which nuclear deterrence prevents all wars rests on scant historical evidence
and is dangerously naive. Nuclear uses in one part of the world could trigger catalytic
war between greater powers, drawing them into smaller regional conflicts, particularly if
tensions are high. This was always a fear during the Cold War, and it motivated
nonproliferation policy in the first place. Moreover, the more states that possess nuclear
weapons and related facilities, the more points of access are available to terrorists
Proliferation increases likelihood of escalation of petty conflicts into global nuclear
war.
Sokolski 2009 (Henry, Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education
Center and serves on the US congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of
Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, Avoiding a nuclear crowd, Policy
Review, June/July)
So far, the U.S. has tried to cope with independent nuclear powers by making them
"strategic partners" (e.g., India and Russia), NATO nuclear allies (France and the UK),
"non-NATO allies" (e.g., Israel and Pakistan), and strategic stakeholders (China); or by
fudging if a nation actually has attained full nuclear status (e.g., Iran or North Korea,
which, we insist, will either not get nuclear weapons or will give them up). In this world,
every nuclear power center (our European nuclear NATO allies), the U.S., Russia, China,
Israel, India, and Pakistan could have significant diplomatic security relations or ties with
one another but none of these ties is viewed by Washington (and, one hopes, by no one
else) as being as important as the ties between Washington and each of these nucleararmed entities (see Figure 3). There are limits, however, to what this approach can
accomplish. Such a weak alliance system, with its expanding set of loose affiliations,
risks becoming analogous to the international system that failed to contain offensive
actions prior to World War I. . Small differences between nuclear competitors that
would put all actors on edge; an overhang of nuclear materials that could be called upon
to break out or significantly ramp up existing nuclear deployments; and a variety of
potential new nuclear actors developing weapons options in the wings. In such a setting,
the military and nuclear rivalries between states could easily be much more intense than
before. Relatively small developments could easily prompt nuclear weapons deployments
with "strategic" consequences (arms races, strategic miscues, and even nuclear war).
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Proliferation causes nuclear war.

Evans 2009 (Gareth, Co-Chair, Former Foreign Minister of Australia, and Yoriko
Kawaguchi, Former Foreign Minister of Japan, 3. The Risks from New Nuclear-armed
states, Eliminating Nuclear Threats, INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON
NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION AND DISARMAMENT, http://www.icnnd.org/
reference/reports/ent/part-ii-3.html)
Ensuring that no new states join the ranks of those already nuclear-armed must continue
to be one of the worlds top international security priorities. Every new nuclear-armed
state will add significantly to the inherent risks of accident or miscalculation as well as
deliberate use involved in any possession of these weapons, and potentially encourage
more states to acquire nuclear weapons to avoid being left behind. Any scramble for
nuclear capabilities is bound to generate severe instability in bilateral, regional and
international relations. The carefully worked checks and balances of interstate relations
will come under severe stress. There will be enhanced fears of nuclear blackmail, and of
irresponsible and unpredictable leadership behaviour. 3.2 In conditions of inadequate
command and control systems, absence of confidence building measures and multiple
agencies in the nuclear weapons chain of authority, the possibility of an accidental or
maverick usage of nuclear weapons will remain high. Unpredictable elements of risk and
reward will impact on decision making processes. The dangers are compounded if the
new and aspiring nuclear weapons states have, as is likely to be the case, ongoing interstate disputes with ideological, territorial, historical and for all those reasons, strongly
emotive dimensions. 3.3 The transitional period is likely to be most dangerous of all,
with the arrival of nuclear weapons tending to be accompanied by sabre rattling and
competitive nuclear chauvinism. For example, as between Pakistan and India a degree of
stability might have now evolved, but 19982002 was a period of disturbingly fragile
interstate relations. Command and control and risk management of nuclear weapons takes
time to evolve. Whatever the chances of stable deterrence prevailing in a Cold War or
IndiaPakistan setting, the prospects are significantly less in a regional setting with
multiple nuclear power centres divided by multiple and cross-cutting sources of conflict.
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Proliferation results in a rapid arms race and conventional wars to try to prevent
other states from getting ahead.
Utgoff 20022 (Vitor, Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of
the Institute for Defense Analyses, Summer, Proliferation, Missile Defence, and
American Ambitions, Survival, V. 44)
First, the dynamics of getting to a highly proliferated world could be very dangerous.
Proliferating states will feel great pressures to obtain nuclear weapons and delivery
systems before any potential opponent does. Those who succeed in outracing an
opponent may consider preemptive nuclear war before the opponent becomes capable of
nuclear retaliation. Those who lag behind might try to preempt their opponents nuclear
programme or defeat the opponent using conventional forces. And those who feel
threatened but are incapable of building nuclear weapons may still be able to join in this
arms race by building other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as biological
weapons.
Proliferation results in a rapid arms race and conventional wars to try to prevent
other states from getting ahead.
Second, as the world approaches complete proliferation, the hazards posed by nuclear
weapons today will be magnified many times over. Fifty or more nations capable of
launching nuclear weapons means that the risk of nuclear accidents that could cause
serious damage not only to their own populations and environments, but those of others,
is hugely increased.
Proliferation increases the risk of nuclear terrorism.
The chances of such weapons falling into the hands of renegade military units or
terrorists is far greater, as is the number of nations carrying out hazardous manufacturing
and storage activities. Increased prospects for the occasional nuclear shootout Worse still,
in a highly proliferated world there would be more frequent opportunities for the use of
nuclear weapons.
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Nuclear conflicts would escalate worldwide.

Utgoff 20022 (Victor, Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division
of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Summer, Proliferation, Missile Defense, and
Once the violence starts, retaliatory exchanges of violent acts can escalate to levels
unimagined by the participants beforehand.8 Intense and blinding anger is a common
response to fear or humiliation or abuse. And such anger can lead us to impose on our
opponents whatever levels of violence are readily accessible. In sum, widespread
proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that
such shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum
destruction possible with the weapons at hand.
Nuclear proliferation would result in a American wild west worldwide, but with
nukes.
Utgoff 20022 (Victor, Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division
of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Summer, Proliferation, Missile Defense, and
Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the
American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear
six-shooters on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today,
but every once in a while we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or
even whole nations.
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Evolutionary psychology proves that states are not rational actors with nukes.
Thayer 2007 (Bradley A., Missouri State University Department of Defense and
Strategic Studies, Comparative Strategy, 26:311323, July 2007 Thinking about Nuclear
Deterrence Theory: Why Evolutionary Psychology Undermines Its Rational Actor
Assumptions)
These sources of failure for rationality cannot be turned off, they can only be overridden
if individuals are sensitive to them, or if there are countervailing pressures on the
individual. Ultimately, they arise because of the manner in which the human brain
evolved. The brain evolved not seamlessly, but modularly. Each module was created by
evolutionary pressures, with each modular building over evolutionary time upon one
another, and connecting to the rest imperfectly. Students of psychology and nuclear
deterrence theory must always keep in mind that the human brain evolved not for the
present conditions in which humans in modern societies find themselves in the last few
generations. Drawing on evolutionary psychology allows deterrence theorists to
understand that there is great variation in the human brain and that it is influenced by
heretofore unappreciated factors, and these insights allow deterrence theorists to grasp
that deterrence may fail for solid biological reasons (cognitive, somatic), as well as for
environmental (political/cultural, etc.) or other causes. That recognition, in turn, should
force deterrence theorists to abandon sanguine assumptions about rationality based on the
Cartesian brain that economists have used for generations and upon which rational
deterrence theory is anchored. This recognition also compels us to understand that the
rationality of political decision makers, particularly in authoritarian and totalitarian states.
Evolutionary psychology allows us to understand what most deterrence theorists would
label as flawed decisions taken by imperfect leaders, and to understand that imperfect
leaders are inevitable since they are the product of human evolution, which has produced
variations among people in many physical respects. And it allows students of nuclear
deterrence to appreciate the importance of having checks on political decision making, as
democracies do. The threat of annihilation due to nuclear weapons is real and potent. But
it is equally true that minds vary. And that threat is not sufficient to deter all people.
Since threat is a product of mind, mind depends on the brain, the brain on neural events
and somatic inputs such as hormones. And good health always helps the functioning of
each. Each of these elements varies across populations. In leaders, certain traits are going
to be overrepresentedmany of these traits are necessary for good leadership. But they
may also lead to deterrence failures since leaders may react rashly or precipitously, or in
the face of reality, as did Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein.
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Deterrence is based on a rational actor theory, which is just inaccurate because

emotions can easily overcome logic.
Payne 2003 (Keith, National Institute for Public Policy, The Fallacies of Cold War
Deterrence and a New Direction, Comparative Strategy, 22:41128,
http://www.unm.edu/~gleasong/300/su2006/keith_payne_fallacies.pdf)
The assumption of the Cold War deterrence framework, that deterrence will work in
the context of secure and severe mutual threats because decision-making will be
wellinformed, dispassionate, and rational cum reasonable, ignores or discounts the
variety of factors illustrated above. A comparison of the Cold War deterrence framework
with the incredibly broad spectrum of human motivations, goals, thought and values
highlights the point that this framework cannot capture the reality of human decisionmaking. As a result, it is inadequate at best, and potentially grossly misleading. The
introduction of nuclear weapons to the mix of factors operating does not fix this
problem. The tremendous lethality of nuclear weapons may usefully focus leadership
attention on occasion. Even very lethal threats, however, cannot bring to an end the
enormous capacity of leaders to have poor judgment, impaired rationality, to pursue
unreasonable goals and embrace unreasonable values, to be ignorant, passionate,
foolish, arrogant, or selectively attentive to risks and costs, and to base their actions on
severely distorted perceptions of reality.
Drug abuse can result in rational actors becoming irrational.
Payne 2003 (Keith, National Institute for Public Policy, The Fallacies of Cold War
In addition to surprising personal characteristics, a willingness to except great risk to
preserve a threatened value or achieve a cherished goal, and cognitive distortions, other
factors may limit the informed, rational and reasonable decision-making necessary for
deterrence to operate predictably. One little-noted such factor is drug usage. This may, at
first, seem not to be a serious concern with regard to national decision-makers. Yet it
must be recognized that leaders under the influence of a variety of drugs have governed
small and great powers, sometimes with dictatorial authority. According to recently
declassified U.S. State Department documents, senior U.S. officials considered former
South Korean President Park Chung Hee to be dangerously unstable, largely because of
his heavy use of alcohol.
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Past examples of nuclear deterrence being effective arent forward-looking.

Hellman 2009 (Martin, Member of the National Academy of Engineering and Professor
Emeritus at Stanford University, How Confident Should a Nuclear Optimist Be?,
Defusing the Nuclear Threat, 9/7, http://nuclearrisk.org/email23.php)
In the same way that life-insurance companies utilize statistical analysis to produce cold
blooded projections of fatality rates for individuals, statistics tells us that, to be 95%
confident of our statements, we cannot project the last 64 years of nuclear non-use more
than 21 years into the future. And, with the fate of the earth at stake, a higher confidence
level would seem appropriate. To be 99% confident about our statements, nuclear
optimism can only be justified for another 14 years. Statistics does not rule out that we
might survive significantly longer than these time horizons, but it does say that the data
thus far cannot be used to justify such hopes with any degree of confidence. To
understand why we can only be confident of surviving time horizons significantly shorter
than the 64 years of non-use already experienced, it helps to consider related "space
shuttle optimism" arguments that led to the loss of Challenger and her crew. Even 23
perfect launches would not have provided sufficient evidence to confidently predict
success for launch number 24, and previous near misses, in the form of partial O-ring
burn through, made optimism even more outrageous and unsupportable. The
unassailable, cold blooded conclusion provided by statistics and Challenger's deadly
lesson is that 64 years of nuclear non-use, particularly with near misses such as the Cuban
missile crisis, is no cause for nuclear optimism.
Nuclear war would effect future generations, which makes it worse than all other
weapons.
Rendall 2007 (Matthew, Lecturer in Politics International Relations at the University of
Nottingham, Nuclear Weapons and Intergenerational Exploitation, Security Studies 16,
no. 4 (Octoberand December 2007): 52554)
Utilitarians might hope the benefits that preceding generations A through G enjoyed from
the nuclear peace would outweigh the suffering of generation H. A nuclear war, however,
would penalize not only the generation that drew the short straw, but all generations that
lived after it. We take a small risk of a nuclear conflict and enjoy a low risk of
conventional war. Wartime generation H enjoys the benefits of nuclear deterrence until it
breaks down, but its descendants are left picking up the pieces. Here, if the optimists are
right, is where the exploitation comes in. Should the first few wars remain limited, their
survivors may continue to benefit from the lower incidence of war nuclear weapons
provide. As wars recur, the costs of deterrence will mount compared to its benefits, and
those benefits will be wiped out almost completely when at last the big one arrives.
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Nuclear war is the most dangerous because the effects of it would last for thousands
of years.
John Rawls argued that those institutions are just which rational egoists would choose if
they were ignorant of the position in society they would occupy. If such egoists were to
choose a rule which they wished all previous generations had followed, it would be in
their interest to avoid intergenerational exploitation.61 If we did not know whether we
would be born in 1960, 2400, or 3700, surely we would not agree to our present
squandering of fossil fuels that is heating up the planet. The risk of being born into a later
generation would be too great. Nor would we agree to rely on thousands of nuclear
weapons that may leave, by 3700, little planet to inherit. This is all the more true because
the benefits of nuclear deterrence may last for only a century or two before it breaks
down, while a nuclear wars survivors will have to deal with the consequences for
thousands of years. Even if we assume that the earths population would be much smaller
after a war, the odds of being born into a post-holocaust generation would be high indeed.
Nuclear war is the most dangerous because it exploits future generations.
If this is a Faustian bargain, it is an odd one. If the nuclear optimists are right, these
weapons make the risk of war very small. We ourselves, maybe even our children and
grandchildren, are unlikely to pay any costs at all. That does not mean the bill will never
come due. Even leading nuclear optimists do not claim nuclear weapons bring the risk of
war down to zero. Many also hold that competition and war will persist.5 In the long run,
barring vast changes of a sort that most optimists consider utopian, deterrence must thus
break down. Claims that nuclear deterrence provides the United States with security and
stability6 or there is no inevitability of nuclear accident or miscalculation between the
United States, Russia, or any other nuclear power7 are true at best in the short to
medium term. Nuclear weapons may make us safer, but at the expense of our
descendants. Every generation benefits until war breaks out; every postwar generation
will pay the bill. Analysts have long recognized nuclear weapons threaten future people.8
To say, for example, that nuclear disarmament could reduce U.S. security by making
conventional war more likely10 is misleading because it fails to specify which
Americans. Compared with the status quo, disarmament might well reduce present
peoples security, while benefiting those born three hundred years from now.
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Nuclear proliferation encourages small conflicts.

Cimbala 2008 (Stephen, Professor, Penn State Brandywine, Anticipatory Attacks:
Nuclear Crisis Stability in Future Asia, Comparative Strategy, 27:11332)
This potpourri of possibilities challenges conventional wisdom about nuclear deterrence
and proliferation on the part of policymakers and academic theorists. For policymakers in
the United States and NATO, spreading nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in
Asia could profoundly shift the geopolitics of mass destruction from a European center of
gravity (in the twentieth century) to an Asian and/or Middle Eastern center of gravity (in
the present century).14 This would profoundly shake up prognostications to the effect
that wars of mass destruction are now passe, on account of the emergence of the
Revolution in Military Affairs and its encouragement of information-based warfare.15
Together with this, there has emerged the argument that large-scale war between states or
coalitions of states, as opposed to varieties of unconventional warfare and failed states,
are exceptional and potentially obsolete.16 The spread of WMD and ballistic missiles in
Asia could overturn these expectations for the obsolescence or marginalization of major
interstate warfare.
Nuclear proliferation increases conventional wars.
Rauchhaus 2007 (Robert, Asst Prof PoliSci UC Santa Barbra, EVALUATING THE
NUCLEAR PEACE HYPOTHESIS: A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH, Oct,
http://iicas.ucsd.edu/papers/PIA/rauchhaus_paper.pdf)
Both proliferation optimists and proliferation pessimists will find confirmation of some
of their positions, but where proliferation optimists will be comforted, pessimists will
find even more reason for more gloom. Waltz and other proponents of nuclear deterrence
find strong empirical support for their claims that nuclear powers are less likely to fight
one another. Nuclear weapons may indeed help explain the Long Peace. Nevertheless,
proliferation optimists will find elements of their argument supported, although for
pessimists being right is nothing to be happy about. When a nuclear asymmetry exists
between two states, there is a greater chance of militarized disputes, uses of force,
fatalities, and war. Thus, aside from reducing the chance of war between two nuclear
powers, all of the other effects of nuclear weapons may be destabilizing.
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Nuclear proliferation causes conventional conflicts to go nuclear.

Horowitz 2009 (Michael, Dept. PoliSci @ U of Pennsylvania, The Spread of Nuclear
Weapons and International Conflict: Does Experience Matter?, Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 53.2, 2/10)
Both of these arguments, however, are mostly about nuclear-armed challengers. What
about the flip side, when a state initiates a militarized dispute against a nuclear-armed
actor? The reduction over time in uncertainty about the behavior of nuclear states should
also affect nuclear-armed defenders. In defending situations, the inexperience of new
nuclear states means it is possible that they will conceptualize their interests differently
than more experienced nuclear states in ways that make reciprocation more likely. New
nuclear states might place the highest emphasis on the importance of nuclear weapons,
meaning they will reciprocate more than experienced nuclear states with a better idea of
how nuclear bargaining works.5 Basic deterrence logic would suggest nuclear states in
general should experience fewer challenges since their new capabilities will deter many
potential challengers from even initiating dispute. However, as Fearon argues, nonnuclear
states that initiate against nuclear states are likely to be highly resolute, since they select
into the conflict with knowledge of the nuclear capabilities of the defender, meaning
those disputes should be more likely to escalate (Fearon 1994).
Proliferation causes isolation and eliminates social spending.
Cirincione 2007 (Joe, Ploughshares Fund Pres. And Prolif Mastermind, Bomb Scare, 81)
Clearly, nuclear weapons are costly. Billions of dollars are required to produce and
maintain a nuclear arsenal. Political and economic isolation is now the likely result of
clandestinely pursuing nuclear weapons and materials. Still, there are even more costs to
a nuclear weapons program. One of these is the opportunity costwhat the state could
otherwise be doing with the resources poured into the nuclear program. Sweden is an
interesting case in this regard. Scholars still debate why Sweden ultimately decided not to
pursue a nuclear weapons programoffering sound analyses that emphasize national
defense strategy, international prestige concerns, or domestic political sensitivities. No
one can deny, however, that economic limitations also played a role in keeping Sweden
non-nuclear. Scholar Jan Prawitz explains that Sweden viewed spending for nuclear
weapons and conventional weapons as zero-sum: Realistic defense planning dictated
that a nuclear strike force in addition to the necessary conventional defense would not be
possible within any conceivable peacetime level of Swedish defense expenditures.99 In
other words, Sweden had to choose between a conventional defense and a nuclear one.
They chose to build SAAB jet fighters, not nuclear missiles.
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An arms race would cause pre-emptive nuclear war.

Heurlin 2005 (Jean Monnet Professor of European Security and Integration at the
Department of Political Science of the University of Copenhagen, and Sten Rynning,
"Missile defence", p 162-3)
Arms control and non-proliferation regimes have often been criticized for delaying but
not preventing proliferation. However, delay may be worth while, as rapid proliferation
in principle creates the most dangerous situations. Kenneth Waltz argued, in his famous
and controversial |981 article, that more nuclear proliferation might be a better option
than less, because the possession of nuclear weapons tends to make the politicians in
charge more responsible and reduce the risk of war. Yet Waltz also argued that rapid
proliferation is extremely dangerous, as it encourages pre-emptive strikes in order to
prevent the proliferation as well as leaving the nuclear newcomers without the necessary
security measures. By 2004, the basic Waltzian argument on the positive effects of
proliferation still holds for major powers. However, we have had negative experiences in
the Middle East with respect to the use of non-nuclear WMD, and terrorists have
appeared on the international stage. Terrorists are actors different from states and
governments, and except for nationalist terrorist groups, they do not have territories to
defend. They are thus comparatively free to act in the era of proliferation, and a broad
range of counter-proliferation measures are therefore to be preferred in addition to the
cost-enhancing MD project.
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Proliferation would likely lead to a fast arms race because of the availability of
information technology.
Roberts 1999 (Brad, member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses in
Alexandria, Virginia, and a member of the editorial board of The Nonproliferation
Review, VIEWPOINT: PROLIFERATION AND NONPROLIFERATION IN THE
1990S: LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT LESSONS, Nonproliferation Review, fall,
http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/robert64.pdf)
But there is an historical inevitability to the latency phenomenon. Beneath the patterns of
conventional and unconventional weapons proliferation is a much more substantial
pattern of technology diffusion. Reflecting the globalization of the industrial revolution,
this diffusion has been greatly accelerated by the emergence over the last couple of
decades of a transnational economy in which technologies, materials, capital, and
expertise flow rapidly across international borders, typically from firm to firm rather than
from state to state. Many of these technologies and materials are dual-use in nature,
meaning they have both civil and military applications. In fact, the number of civil
technologies with military applications appears to be growing ever larger and includes today, for example, biotechnology, commercial observation satellites, and the Internet.
Also increasingly available internationally are so-called enabling technologies that
facilitate the production, integration, and use of weaponry.3 In short, more and more
countries are acquiring the ability to produce strategic military capabilities. This potential
to create long-reach weapons with the ability to inflict mass casualties could supply these
countries with great political leverage in time of war and crisis. These latent capabilities
are strategic hedges. One of the least measurable indices of proliferation, but also one of
the most important, is the degree to which states consciously develop those hedges so that
they are in a position to compete successfully if they enter a disintegrating international
environment that calls for rapid break-out.
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Rapid proliferation would cause a violent power transition away from unipolarity.
Review, VIEWPOINT: PROLIFERATION AND NONPROLIFERATION IN THE
But let us also set aside the complacent assumption that the current distribution of NBC
assets is somehow fixed in perpetuityor that a radical erosion of the current order
would not have serious consequences. Among many US policymakers and analysts, there
is still great resistance to the notion that the collapse of the antiproliferation project would
have far-reaching implications. Most analysts seem to believe that international politics
would then proceed much as they do today. Per- haps some partial collapse would have
this effect some further loss of credibility of one or two instruments of arms control,
for example, might not actually precipitate the collapse of the treaty regime. But if wildfire-like proliferation somehow comes to pass, it seems likely that a lot would be up for
grabs in international politics. Basic relations of power would be in great flux. New
coalitions would form, with new forms of competition among those seeking to lead them.
American influence abroad could be eclipsedand quite rapidly. Americans might like
to believe that, in such a world, they could retreat into a Fortress America. Whether
others would allow us this luxury is very much an open question, especially if Americas
retreat occasions some particular pain on their part that motivates them to seek revenge.
And even if the United States somehow remained secure, many long-time US friends
and allies, and millions of civilians in conflict-prone regions, might not.
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A rapid arms race would collapses multilateral economic and security institutions.
Review. VIEWPOINT: PROLIFERATION AND NONPROLIFERATION IN THE
This stake isnt just Americas stake. Any country whose security depends to some extent
on a regional or global order guaranteed by Washington has a stake in preventing such
wildfire-like proliferation. This is truest of Americas closest security partners, but it is
true of the many small and medium-sized states that depend, to some degree, on
collective mechanisms for their security. It seems reasonable to expect that many of these
states would respond to a loss of US credibility and to the fear of greater regional
instability by moving up the latency curve. If they were also to cross the threshold to
weapons production, the international system would have a hard time coping. It seems
likely that such proliferation would cause the collapse of nonproliferation and arms
control mechanisms. This, in turn, would precipitate a broader crisis of confidence in the
other institutions of multilateral political and economic activity that depend on some
modicum of global stability and cooperation to function. The consequences could be very
far-reaching. These international mechanisms and institutions have been a primary means
of giving order to an anarchic international system. The United States, in particular, has
found them useful for exercising influence and power. Whats at stake, then, is the
international order built up over the last half centurythe multilateral institutions of
economic and security governance, the patterns of cooperation among states, and the
expectations of a more orderly future. This is an order that the United States played a
central role in creating and sustaining. It is built largely on American-style liberal
political and economic values. It is run by and through formal and informal institutions
that operate according to rules Washington helped formulate. This is an order backed by
US secrity guarantees in those regions where the threat of interstate war remains real and
system-threateningand more generally by collective security principles safe- guarded at
the United Nations by the United States, among others. Were it to unravel, the world
would change fundamentally.
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Nuclear proliferation increases conventional wars and escalates them, as sates will
put their confidence in nuclear deterrence theory.
Sight, p 302)
Finally, there is reason to question whether nuclear weapons will in fact increase
stability. Although nuclear weapons can cause states to be cautious about undertaking
actions that can be interpreted as aggressive and can prevent states from attacking one
another, this may not always be the case. While the presence of nuclear weapons did
appear to help constrain U.S. and Soviet actions during the Cold War, this has generally
not held true in South Asia. Many analysts conclude that Pakistan invaded Indiancontrolled Kargil in 1999, at least in part, because it was confident that its nuclear
weapons would deter a large-scale Indian retaliation. The Kargil war was thus in part
caused by the presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia. Thus, the optimist argument
that nuclear weapons will help prevent conventional war has not ways held true.
Moreover, this weakness in the optimist argument should so cause us to question the
second part of their argument, that nuclear weapons help prevent nuclear war as well.
Conventional wars between nuclear powers can run serious risks of escalating to nuclear
war.
Nuclear weapons embolden conventional challengers who think escalation is not
possible.
Horowitz 2009 (Michael, Dept. PoliSci @ U of Pennsylvania and Former NDT Winner
for Emory, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons and International Conflict: Does
Experience Matter?, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 53.2, 2/10)
Another plausible alternative worth mentioning is the idea that experienced nuclear states
may be viewed as more responsible in dealing with nuclear issues too responsible.
Older nuclear states safe experience with nuclear weapons may undermine their ability
to credibly leverage nuclear capabilities in militarized disputes, especially in disputes
involving nonvital areas of interest. Adversaries will discount the possibility of nuclear
escalation if the issue does not affect the vital interests of the nuclear state. Nuclear
experience could therefore lead to the opposite result as that hypothesized above.7
However, the logic of experience drawn from Sagan and the information provided to all
sides after dispute participation by new nuclear states would seem to suggest that nuclear
learning should help experienced nuclear powers more effectively leverage their
weapons, which will also influence adversary perceptions rather than undermine their
credibility.
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Escalation of wars is likely because of the propensity for miscalculation.

Salik 2004 (Brigadier Naeem Ahmad Salik is Security and Defence analyst working with
Arms Control and Disarmament Affairs Directorate, Rawalpindi, PERILS OF
'LIMITED WAR' IN A NUCLEAR ENVIRONMENT, http://www.issi.org.pk/journal/
2004_files/no_4/article/1a.htm)
'Limited War' can be criticised on many counts. The fundamental problem is that while a
war may be planned as a 'limited war' it is difficult to guarantee that it would remain
limited once it is executed. As Clausewitz rightly pointed out all war plans are only good
enough till the first bullet is fired, then the fog of war and friction takes over. Moreover,
once the battle is joined the events it generates acquire a momentum of their own and,
above all, one cannot realistically predict with any degree of accuracy the intensity and
persistence of the likely responses of the adversary. The chances of events spinning out
of control and escalating to a level beyond the 'limited war' cannot be ruled out. He
forwards some key arguments militating against the concept of 'limited war' as follows:
*'that ideas of 'limited war' are dangerous because they undermine rather than
complement the strategy of deterrence. *that such ideas brought war back into the
realm of political practicability. *that the whole body of reasoning implied a level of
rationality on the part of decision takers that was quite unrealistic and a degree of control
over the battlefield that was technically impossible.'26 The biggest paradox of 'limited
war' is that the escalation it is intended to avoid may become a necessary requirement for
its termination. Another very serious practical problem is based on the reality that any
decision to use nuclear weapons would have to be taken in the midst of ongoing
conventional operations in an environment where, due to the fog of war, accurate and
timely intelligence about the adversary would be a rare commodity and the stressful
conditions which the decision makers would already be enduring would make any
rational decision-making even more difficult.
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Proliferation draws great powers into conflicts, which outweighs on probability.

Below 2008 (Tim, Wing Commander for the Royal Air Force, OPTIONS FOR US
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: EXEMPLARY LEADERSHIP OR EXTRAORDINARY
LUNACY?, A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF
ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES FOR COMPLETION OF GRADUATION
REQUIREMENTS, AIR UNIVERSITY MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALABAMA,
JUNE,
https://www.afresearch.org/skins/rims/q_mod_be0e99f3-fc56-4ccb-8dfe670c0822a153/q_act_downloadpaper/q_obj_5cd8bc33-01ca-4efc-9def-842aaa95dd8c/
display.aspx?rs=enginespage)
Proliferation. Roger Molander, of RAND Corporation, asserts that in the near future, a
large number of countries are each going to develop a small number of nuclear weapons.
50 The Union of Concerned Scientists considers this to be the greatest long term danger
confronting both US and international security today. 51 Proliferation increases risk in a
number of ways. First, the more states that hold nuclear weapons, the more likely it is
that one will have an insufficiently mature or robust nuclear doctrine to manage its
capability responsibly. Second, the more widely proliferated nuclear weapons become,
the more theoretical opportunities may be presented for theft of nuclear material. Third,
proliferation increases the risk of nuclear intervention by an established nuclear power,
including the five NWSs. Stephen Younger envisages several scenarios in which
currently established nuclear powers might feel a need to intervene with nuclear
weapons in present regional conflicts, especially if WMD are being employed or
threatened. Moreover, since proliferation is frequently associated with reaction to nuclear
development either within a bordering nation or regional counterpart, further proliferation
is n turn likely to generate a quasi-exponential expansion of similar regional scenarios. 53
Ambassador Lehman envisages a scenario in which proliferation may induce a chain
reaction of related regional arms races that could result in unintended and unexpected
consequences far removed from the objectives of the proliferating nations, and in the
United States specific case, a risk that the nation could get sucked into a conventional
regional conflict which is subsequently escalated into nuclear warfare by its allies or their
opponents.
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Proliferation results in the preemptive use of nukes and will escalate globally.
Blank 2009 (Dr. Stephen Blank, Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the
Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, Prospects for Russo-American
Cooperation
in
Halting
Nuclear
Proliferation,
March,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=892)
Thus one of the major dangers of nuclear proliferation is the possibility of lowering the
threshold of decisive attacks against a states armed forces, political leadership, command
and control system, or economy without requiring weapons of intercontinental or even
intermediate range. In addition, contiguous nuclear wars, as opposed to nuclear
exchanges between distant powers like the United States and Russia or the United States
and China, allow comparatively shorter times for the defender for launch detection,
processing of information, and decisionmaking prior to the impact of a first strike.
Realizing this, contiguous states, fearing the opponents prompt launch or preemption,
might be driven toward hair triggers that bias their options towards preemption in first
use or first strike.152 Surely the great powers should have little interest in fostering this
kind of strategic environment that threatens to entangle them as well in these webs of
regional rivalries.
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Military is strongly biased in favor of pre-emption for four reasons.

Sagan 1994 (Scott, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University ,
Scott, The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the
Spread of Nuclear Weapons, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring, 1994), pp.
66-107)
Yet there are four strong reasons to expect that military officers are predisposed to view
preventive war, in particular, in a much more favorable light than are civilian
authorities.26 First, military officers, because of self-selection into the profession and
socialization afterwards, are more inclined than the rest of the population to see war as
likely in the near term and inevitable in the long run.27 The professional focus of
attention on warfare also makes military officers skeptical of non-military alternatives to
war, whereas civilian leaders often place stronger hopes on diplomatic and economic
methods of long-term conflict resolution.28 Such beliefs make military officers
particularly susceptible to "better now than later" logic. Second, officers are trained to
focus on pure military logic when analyzing security problems. Diplomatic, moral, or
domestic political inhibitions against preventive war options are therefore less likely to be
influential. Third, military officers display strong biases in favor of offensive doctrines
and decisive operations.29 Offensive doctrines enable military organizations to take the
initiative, utilizing their standard plans under conditions they control while forcing
adversaries to react to their favored strategies. Decisive operations utilize the principle of
mass, may reduce casualties, and are more likely to lead to a military decision rather than
a political stalemate. Preventive war would clearly have these desired characteristics.
Finally, the military, like most organizations, tends to plan incrementally, leading it to
focus on immediate plans for war and not the subsequent problems of managing the
postwar world. Moreover, since managing the postwar world is the diplomats' job, not
part of military officers' operational responsibility, the professional military is likely to be
shortsighted, not examining the long-term political and diplomatic consequences of
preventive war. In theory, these factors should make military officers more likely to
advocate preventive war.
The United States proves that nuclear militaries are pre-emptive.
Sagan 1994 (Scott, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University , ,
The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of
Nuclear Weapons, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring, 1994), pp. 66-107)
What differences existed between U.S. civilian and military advice on the use of nuclear
weapons during the early Cold War? During major crises, few disagreements emerged.
For example, after the Chinese military intervention in the Korean War in late November
1950, both Truman's senior military advisors and his senior civilian advisors
recommended against the use of the atomic bomb on the Korean peninsula.30 If one
focuses specifically on the issue of preventive war, however, strong differences between
civilian and military opinions can be seen. During both the Truman and Eisenhower
administrations, senior U.S. military officers seriously advocated preventive war options
and, in both cases, continued favoring such ideas well after civilian leaders ruled against
them.
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Pakistan proves militaries will pursue preemptive options.

Sagan 1994 (Scott, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, The
Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of
Nuclear Weapons, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring, 1994), pp. 66-107)
Pakistani military leaders have repeatedly advocated and initiated preventive war against
India. The Pakistani attack on India in December 1971 was also strongly influenced by
the parochial biases and organizational interests of senior army and air force leaders
since, as Richard Sisson and Leo Rose have stressed, the ruling military viewed threats to
Bengal as "threats to their image, threats to the welfare of the military in a successor
state, and threats in the way of charges that the military was prepared to barter away
Pakistani sovereignty."5 Finally, unconfirmed reports that Pakistan's Air Force made
initial preparations for a nuclear first strike during the May 1990 crisis over Kashmir are
alarming not only because of the potential for miscalculated escalation, but also because
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was reportedly cut out of the dangerous crisis
decision-making.
Geographically close borders cause preemption pressures.
Mozley 1998 (Rober, Experimental Particle Physicist and Prof. @ the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center, Robert, The Politics and Technology of Nuclear Proliferation, p. 11)
Most of these nations are in close proximity to their antagonists. Although many of them
are still able to deliver weapons only by bombers, missiles are now commercially
available, and the accuracy of these missiles is improving. With the short distances
involved, even a relatively inaccurate guidance system might be sufficient to make
possible a first strike that could destroy an opponent's nuclear forces. In almost any kind
of conflict, the need for a preemptive strike may be compelling for both sides.
Nuclear proliferation incentivizes anonymous nuclear attacks.
Accelerator Center, The Politics and Technology of Nuclear Proliferation, p 13-4)
However, if two or more nations that possessed nuclear weapons could be viewed as the
initiators, the target country would be faced with the difficult choice of not responding at
all or of striking multiple attackers. The anonymous use of nuclear weapons, even by
stable democratic nations, is possible whenever such use would appear to be in a nation's
interest. The advantage of an anonymous attack over a missile or regular air attack is the
possibility of denying responsibility. The denial would not have to convince the victim
(unless it were itself a nuclear power), but it would have to be plausible enough to cast
serious doubt in the international community as to who was responsible.
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Proliferation emboldens offensive strategies, which causes war.

Horowitz 1999 (Michael, Dept. PoliSci @ U of Pennsylvania, The Spread of Nuclear
Weapons and International Conflict: Does Experience Matter?, Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 53.2, 2/10)
This section focuses on how acquiring nuclear weapons influences both the new nuclear
state and potential adversaries. However, each new nuclear state has to resolve its own
particular civilmilitary issues surrounding operational control and plan its national
strategy in light of its new capabilities. Empirical research by Sagan (1993), Feaver
(1992), and Blair (1993) suggests that viewing the behavior of other states does not create
the necessary tacit knowledge; there is no substitute for experience when it comes to
handling a nuclear arsenal, even if experience itself cannot totally prevent accidents.
Sagan contends that civilmilitary instability in many likely new proliferators and
pressures generated by the requirements to handle the responsibility of dealing with
nuclear weapons will skew decision making toward more offensive strategies (Sagan
1995). Inexperienced operators and the bureaucratic desire to justify the costs spent
developing nuclear weapons, combined with organizational biases that may favor
escalation to avoid decapitationthe use it or lose it mind-set may cause new
nuclear states to adopt riskier launch postures, such as launch on warning, or at least be
perceived that way by other states (Blair 1993; Feaver 1992; Sagan 1995).3 Acquiring
nuclear weapons could alter state preferences and make states more likely to escalate
disputes once they start, given their new capabilities.4 But their general lack of
experience at leveraging their nuclear arsenal and effectively communicating nuclear
threats could mean new nuclear states will be more likely to select adversaries poorly and
to find themselves in disputes with resolved adversaries that will reciprocate militarized
challenges.
Empirical research is superior to abstract theories.
Busch 2004 (Nathan, Associate Professor Govt. @ Christopher Newport U, Nathan, No
End in Sight, p 312-3)
Until now, the proliferation debate has largely taken place on an abstract, theoretical
level. Instead of building theories on solid evidence gathered from rigorous empirical
studies, they have too often predicted future state actions only on the basis of preexisting
theories. From a scholarly point of view, one of the most important lessons from the
present study is that we cannot afford anything other than a relentlessly empirical
foundation forand testing of social science theory. On the contrary, the proper
approach to theory would begin with wonder about whether states do, in fact, always act
with such rational incentives in mind.
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Nuclear terrorism is the biggest threat facing current nation states.

Freilich 2010 (Chuck, "Armageddon and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism" Jewish Policy
Center, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer, http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1745/threat-ofnuclear-terrorism)
President Obama recently convened a global summit on the threat of nuclear terrorism, an
issue that he considers to be the greatest danger currently facing the U.S. and the
international community. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak similarly believes that the
gravest threat is not posed by rogue states, such as Iran, even if it acquires nuclear
weapons, but rather "a nuclear weapon reach[ing] a terrorist group, which will not
hesitate to use it immediately. They will send it in a container with a GPS to a leading
port in the U.S., Europe, or Israel."
Nuclear terrorism would be devastating.
Unlike traditional terrorism, nuclear terrorism would pose a potentially catastrophic
threat to states across the world. Even a bomb considered to be relatively small would
have devastating consequences, with estimates ranging from tens to hundreds of
thousands of dead. Although Israel would survive such a strike as a state, the
consequences would be devastating and this scenario is based on the optimistic
assumption that terrorists would detonate only one nuclear bomb. Should nuclear
terrorists strike the U.S., the consequences while not existential, would nevertheless be
extreme.
Nuclear terrorist are nihilistic. Deterrence does not work against them.
Nuclear terrorism poses a unique threat not only because of the magnitude of the
destruction, but because those most likely to perpetrate an attack may be fundamentally
nihilistic and therefore undeterrable prepared to pay any cost in loss of life in pursuit of
their objectives. As millennial movements for whom the crippling and even destruction
of the U.S. and Israel are sacred missions, a nuclear terrorist attack where even a
devastating response is assumed may be a worthy means of ushering in a messianic era.
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Terrorists have many reasons to use nuclear weapons.

There are several reasons why nuclear terrorism, whether against the U.S. or Israel, could
serve strategic objectives and benefit those states and groups contemplating such actions.
First, there is the actual use of nuclear weapons with the designed goal of dealing their
victim a devastating blow. However, nuclear possession may also be used as a deterrent
against an attack from the U.S. or Israel in order to counter their overwhelming military
superiority. In this way, nuclear terrorism would provide an umbrella enabling the state
or group to conduct lower level hostilities with the assumption that they would be spared
the threat of massive retaliation.
Nuclear terrorism would exert too much influence over nation states in a time of
crisis. Freilich 2010 (Chuck, "Armageddon and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism" Jewish
Policy Center, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer, http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1745/threat-ofnuclear-terrorism)
Possessing nuclear weapons would also allow the group or country to exercise decisive
influence over U.S. and Israeli decision-making in times of crisis. It could prove to be a
deciding factor on fundamental policy issues as the two countries could be held hostage
by the very threat of a nuclear terrorist attack. It also would serve to weaken the
resilience of American and Israeli society as a result of the need to live under the shadow
of nuclear terrorism. In turn, it would severely undermine public confidence in either
government's ability to provide a safe environment in which to live.
There are many means by which terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear
attack. Freilich 2010 (Chuck, "Armageddon and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism"
Jewish
Policy
Center,
Vol.
4,
No.
2,
Summer,
http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1745/threat-of-nuclear-terrorism)
A nuclear terrorist attack against either the United States or Israel could be carried out by
sea, air, and land-based operations. Israel, however, faces the additional threat of rocket
attacks, such as those already in Hezbollah's possession that could be fitted with nuclear
warheads. Though unsuited for ordinary military purposes, these rockets could be
effective weapons of terror.
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Intervention is likely to succeed if it is done with speed, vigor and determination.

Dr John Janzekovic (Politics and International Relations/Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences/University of the Sunshine Coast), Forcible Humanitarian Intervention:
practical Objections to the Ethical Principles and Applications, Refereed paper presented
to the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference University of Adelaide 29
September 1 October 2004
Military intervention is effective if done at the right time.
The timing of military intervention is vital to success. Military engagement, whether for
humanitarian purposes or for any other reason, is much more successful before opponents
are fully dug in, before they have time to lay high explosives around critical civil
infrastructure, and before they are able to round up and use their victims as human
shields. Sooner is better than later because military success is enhanced from striking first
and striking hard. Just-war concepts support the idea that force should only be used as a
last resort option, but this limits the effectiveness of military operations because it gives
an opponent crucial time to prepare for an assault. Waiting until other humanitarian
policies and strategies are exhausted and have failed often forfeits the opportunity to use
force effectively. The timing of a military response to counter severe human rights abuses
is an emotive issue. Most people prefer to use non-violent means to resolve conflict and
to apply all other strategies before the direct use of force is even contemplated (if it is
contemplated at all). The stark military reality is that if a determined use of coercive force
is only used as a last resort the outcome will most likely be many casualties on all sides.
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Policy makers can take into account odds of success and wouldnt act if it would
result in nuclear backlash.
There may be serious strategic disadvantages facing potential interventionists. For
example, superior numbers of opposing military forces which cannot be offset by home
team technological advantage, populations to be immediately slaughtered the instant
interventionists move in, human shields placed in front of opponent's military structures
and so on. In these cases there is no military or moral point in sacrificing interventionists
lives and the lives of the abused by intervening. Other means must immediately be found
and applied to address situations where the use of military force is simply not possible
without significant loss of life on all sides. An important objection to the use of coercive
force in humanitarian situations is that such action may cause interventionist casualties.
The reality is that one must expect casualties to interventionists who are in lethal combat
zones. Concentrating on casualty aversion to the exclusion of the achievement of military
or humanitarian objectives severely restricts the effective use of coercive force to address
man-made humanitarian crises. Karl Eikenberry (1996, 109-118) argues that since World
War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, Western military planners have
increasingly concentrated on risk aversion as a deliberate political and military strategy.
Focusing on collateral damage is a tool used by rogue countries to continue their
programs.
An obsession with casualty aversion also sends the message to oppressive regimes around
the globe that they need not fear accountability because those who could act will
probably fail to act because they fear taking casualties (Dunlap 30-31 January 1997).
Oppressors are often quite willing to accept high casualty numbers of their own people in
order to achieve their goals. During the Gulf war/s Saddam Hussein was counting on
Americas aversion to casualties.
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There is no evidence that non-violent strategies works better than military

interventionthe humanitarian context proves this.
I shall not strictly try to define what people believe when they assert non-violence "works
better" because this will vary according to the views and beliefs of those who make such
a claim. Similar to the assertion that the use of force cannot promote humanitarian values,
this is an implied objection. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that nonviolent
intervention works better than anything else in the resolution of international conflicts.
There is empirical evidence to suggest that genocide and other serious crimes against
humanity have increased dramatically during the twentieth century. This is despite the
fact that the majority of these conflicts were addressed (where they were addressed at all)
by nonviolent means. Trade embargos, mediation, conflict resolution strategies, peace
monitoring, UN Resolutions demanding that the killing stops and so on are nonviolent
means of humanitarian intervention.
Nuclear proliferation causes nuclear terrorism.
Brown 2007 (Harold Brown is a CSIS counselor and trustee and served as secretary of
defense from 1977 to 1981, New Nuclear Realities, Washington Quarterly, 31.1 (2007)
7-22).
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Nuclear terrorism would result in extinction.

Corsi 2005 (Jerome, Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University (Atomic Iran, p.
176-8)
The United States retaliates: 'End of the world' scenarios The combination of horror and
outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the
incomprehensible damage done by the attack. Still, the president, members of Congress,
the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known enemy
Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to
destroy the whole religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just
to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and
Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world more than 1 billion human beings in
countless different nations would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a
war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us.Then, too,
we would face an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union.
Many in the Kremlin would see this as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been
snatched from them by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile
strike by the Russians on a score of American cities could possibly be pre-emptive.
Would the U.S. strategic defense system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would
not be possible? Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a better
opportunity to destroy America. In China, our newer Communist enemies might not care
if we could retaliate. With a population already over 1.3 billion people and with their
population not concentrated in a few major cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a
nuclear blow on the United States. If the French did not start launching nuclear weapons
themselves, they might be happy to fan the diplomatic fire beginning to burn under the
Russians and the Chinese. Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited
nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be the most rational option in the attempt to
retaliate but still communicate restraint. But for the president not to retaliate might be
unacceptable to the American people. That the president might think politically at this
instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician. The political
party in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated
with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to
be paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge.
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Counterforce strikes are a credible threat, states believe it and intelligence proves.
Sagan 1997 (Carl, Professor in the Department of Political Science and Co-Director o the
Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, Scott,
Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers, International Security, Vol. 22,
No. 2 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 185-207, jstor).
Finally, Karl claims that in South Asia "unless counterforce attacks are executed with
improbable accuracy and effectivenessall the more improbable in view of the
rudimentary intelligence capabilities possessed by new proliferatorsthey are
impossible using the sparse arsenal that emerging states are likely to deploy against each
other" (pp. 104-105). What matters of course is what Indian and Pakistani decision
makers think about counterforce strikes: their recent efforts to develop advanced
conventional counterforce capabilities (such as the Indian purchase of U.S. Paveway II
laser-guidance bomb kits) hardly suggest that they believe such attacks are impossible.2
Moreover, Karl's statement about "rudimentary intelligence capabilities" underestimates
the likelihood that Indian and Pakistani agencies could determine the "secret" locations
of otherwise survivable military forces, an absolutely critical issue with small or opaque
nuclear arsenals. The history of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan demonstrates
that both states' intelligence agencies were able to intercept critical classified messages
sent by and to the other side: for example, the Pakistanis learned immediately when the
Indian army commander issued operational orders to prepare for military intervention
against East Pakistan; and before the war Indian intelligence agencies acquired a copy of
the critical message from Beijing to Rawalpindi informing the Pakistanis that China
would not intervene militarily in any Indo-Pakistani war.21 Perhaps most dramatically,
on December 12, 1971, the Indians intercepted a radio message scheduling a meeting of
high-level Pakistani officials at Government House in Dacca, which led to an immediate
air force attack on the building in the middle of the meeting 22 In short, Karl's statement
that "first strikes are ruled out as a practical option because of the difficulty of success"
(pp. 106-107) is an overconfident assertion, not a statement of fact based on thorough
evidence of the proliferator states' current beliefs or past behavior.
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Evolution means rational deterrence theory is wrong.

Thayer 2007 (Bradley A., Missouri State University Department of Defense and
Strategic Studies, Comparative Strategy, 26:311323, July 2007 Thinking about Nuclear
Deterrence Theory: Why Evolutionary Psychology Undermines Its Rational Actor
Assumptions)
These sources of failure for rationality cannot be turned off, they can only be overridden
if individuals are sensitive to them, or if there are countervailing pressures on the
individual. Ultimately, they arise because of the manner in which the human brain
evolved. The brain evolved not seamlessly, but modularly. Each module was created by
evolutionary pressures, with each modular building over evolutionary time upon one
another, and connecting to the rest imperfectly. Students of psychology and nuclear
deterrence theory must always keep in mind that the human brain evolved not for the
present conditions in which humans in modern societies find themselves in the last few
generations. Rather, humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of generations in
radically different conditions marked by resource scarcity and omnipresent threats from
the natural world and from conspecifics. Conclusion Humans do not have a Cartesian
brain. They have a human brain. Its cognitive capabilities are equally impressive and
imperfect, as is everything produced by evolution. Drawing on evolutionary psychology
allows deterrence theorists to understand that there is great variation in the human brain
and that it is influenced by heretofore unappreciated factors, and these insights allow
deterrence theorists to grasp that deterrence may fail for solid biological reasons
(cognitive, somatic), as well as for environmental (political/cultural, etc.) or other causes.
That recognition, in turn, should force deterrence theorists to abandon sanguine
assumptions about rationality based on the Cartesian brain that economists have used for
generations and upon which rational deterrence theory is anchored. This recognition also
compels us to understand that the rationality of political decision makers, particularly in
authoritarian and totalitarian states. Evolutionary psychology allows us to understand
what most deterrence theorists would label as flawed decisions taken by imperfect
leaders, and to understand that imperfect leaders are inevitable since they are the product
of human evolution, which has produced variations among people in many physical
respects. And it allows students of nuclear deterrence to appreciate the importance of
having checks on political decision making, as democracies do. The threat of annihilation
due to nuclear weapons is real and potent. But it is equally true that minds vary. And that
threat is not sufficient to deter all people. Since threat is a product of mind, mind depends
on the brain, the brain on neural events and somatic inputs such as hormones. And good
health always helps the functioning of each. Each of these elements varies across
populations. In leaders, certain traits are going to be overrepresentedmany of these
traits are necessary for good leadership. But they may also lead to deterrence failures
since leaders may react rashly or precipitously, or in the face of reality, as did Adolf
Hitler or Saddam Hussein. The greatest impact is where decisions are taken by a
dictatorial leader. Understanding that his [or her] mind may interpret data differently than
you would is the beginning of comprehension.
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Rational deterrence theory is wrong because leaders are frequently irrational.

Payne 2003 (National Institute for Public Policy, Keith, The Fallacies of Cold War
The assumption of the Cold War deterrence framework, that deterrence will work in
the context of secure and severe mutual threats because decision-making will be
wellinformed, dispassionate, and rational cum reasonable, ignores or discounts the
variety of factors illustrated above. A comparison of the Cold War deterrence framework
with the incredibly broad spectrum of human motivations, goals, thought and values
highlights the point that this framework cannot capture the reality of human decisionmaking. As a result, it is inadequate at best, and potentially grossly misleading. The
introduction of nuclear weapons to the mix of factors operating does not fix this
problem. The tremendous lethality of nuclear weapons may usefully focus leadership
attention on occasion. Even very lethal threats, however, cannot bring to an end the
enormous capacity of leaders to have poor judgment, impaired rationality, to pursue
unreasonable goals and embrace unreasonable values, to be ignorant, passionate,
foolish, arrogant, or selectively attentive to risks and costs, and to base their actions on
severely distorted perceptions of reality. As much as we might wish it not to be so, these
factors play to some degree in virtually all crisis decision-making, and in some crises,
they not the particular character of the nuclear balancewill dominate decisionmaking. This conclusion ultimately calls into question confidence in the Cold War
deterrence framework. Even the most hard-headed practitioners of realpolitikassuming
their opponent to be driven by rational, pragmatic, predictable calculationwill be
vulnerable to gross surprise if they do not recognize that rational decision-making may be
shaped by surprising goals and values, and by such imponderables as belief in astrology,
dreams, or an inner voice.
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Theres no universal standard for what a reasonable choice ishistorically causes

miscalculation.
There are numerous additional past examples of how the convenient assumption that a
rational opponent would also prove reasonableas defined by the observercontributed
to surprises.16 From Japans decision to attack Imperial Russia in 1904,17 to
Washingtons underestimation of Serbias tenacity under NATOs 1999 bombing
campaign,18 the mistaken expectation that foreign leaders would be reasonable,
according to familiar norms, appears to have played a significant role in lethal surprises
and costly mistakes. In the latter case, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic did not
intend to be reasonable by Washingtons standards, and considered this to be an
advantage: I am ready to walk on corpses, and the West is not. That is why I shall
win.19 The expectation that foreign leaders will behave predictably fits well with the
theory, particularly prevalent in the study of international relations, that national
decision-making should be viewed as that of a rational and pragmatic, and thus
presumably predictable, individual. The historical anecdotes noted above, however,
illustrate well that decisionmaking and behavior considered scarcely plausible in
Washington can appear entirely reasonable to a foreign leadership, not because foreign
leaders are irrational, but because the definition of what constitutes reasonable can
differ so dramatically. Consequently, surprises frequently are in store for those who
believe that a foes basic rationality permits confident prediction of its behavior.
Historical studies disprove that state leaders are always rational actors.
How is it possible to reach conclusions that question much of what has for years passed
for accepted wisdom regarding deterrence? Studies of deterrence based on evidence
drawn from centuries of actual politico-military case studies validate the proposition that
a wide variety of factors typically shape leadership decision-making, factors that cannot
be derived from a methodology that simply assumes states and leaders to be similarly
motivated, rational and reasonable.22
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Drug use is widespread among leaders and ensures deterrence failures.

In addition to surprising personal characteristics, a willingness to except great risk to
preserve a threatened value or achieve a cherished goal, and cognitive distortions, other
factors may limit the informed, rational and reasonable decision-making necessary for
deterrence to operate predictably. One little-noted such factor is drug usage. This may, at
first, seem not to be a serious concern with regard to national decision-makers. Yet it
must be recognized that leaders under the influence of a variety of Rs have governed
small and great powers, sometimes with dictatorial authority. According to recently
declassified U.S. State Department documents, senior U.S. officials considered former
South Korean President Park Chung Hee to be dangerously unstable, largely because of
his heavy use of alcohol. They were particularly concerned in 1965, following an
unsuccessful North Korean terrorist attack against President Park himself, that he was
almost irrationally obsessed with the desire to retaliate militarily against North Korea.
Parks drinking was so heavy at the time that President Johnsons special envoy, Cyrus
Vance, described him as a danger and rather unsafe. Vance went on to observe that,
President Park will issue all sorts of orders when he begins drinking. . . . His generals
will delay any action on them until the next morning. If he says nothing about those
orders the following morning, then they just forget what he told them the night before.37
In this case, sensible South Korean generals apparently provided a barrier to the
implementation of presidential decision-making obviously skewed by alcohol
consumption. In other past cases, as is discussed below, subordinates have had less
leeway to ignore suspect orders. Chinas Chairman Mao Zedong suffered from severe
insomnia. As a result, according to his personal physician, Dr. Li Zhisui, Mao became
addicted to barbiturates. At one point he was taking ten times the normal dosage of
sleeping pills, enough to kill a person. According to Dr. Li, Mao initially used chloral
hydrate to relieve his insomnia, but became addicted, often mixing it with sodium
seconal. Ultimately, Mao used drugs when receiving guests and attending meetings. He
also took them for his dance parties.38 How Maos drug addiction may have shaped his
decision-making is unclear, but that it could have done so is certain. One possibly
significant case occurred in 1971. Just before falling asleep, and in a drowsy, slurred
directive to his private nurse, Wu Xujun, Mao countermanded an earlier decision agreed
to with Zhou Enlai. In doing so, Mao may have changed the course of history. In that
earlier decision Mao and Zhou had agreed to deny the request from the U.S. table tennis
team, then in Japan, for a sporting engagement in China. Through the fog of barbiturates,
Mao rescinded that decision and approved the American teams request. The Chinese
invitation thus extended led to the famous ping-pong diplomacy of the 1970s and
facilitated an historic opening to Washington.39 Whether or not barbiturates shaped
Maos decision to rescind the position he had earlier agreed to with Zhou obviously
cannot be known with certainty.
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The risk that deterrence will fail is high: statistical analysis proves that past
examples of deterrence dont adequately extrapolate to future situations.
Hellman 2009 (Member of the National Academy of Engineering and Professor
Emeritus at Stanford University, Martin, How Confident Should a Nuclear Optimist
Be?, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, 9/7, http://nuclearrisk.org/email23.php)
In a five-page essay in the September 7 issue of Newsweek, Jonathan Tepperman
explains Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb by quoting the dean of nuclear
optimism, Prof. Kenneth Waltz: "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." Tepperman calls for "coldblooded calculations
about just how dangerous possessing them [nuclear weapons] actually is." This response
rises to that challenge and shows that the data used to justify nuclear optimism is highly
misleading. In the same way that life-insurance companies utilize statistical analysis to
produce cold blooded projections of fatality rates for individuals, statistics tells us that, to
be 95% confident of our statements, we cannot project the last 64 years of nuclear nonuse more than 21 years into the future. And, with the fate of the earth at stake, a higher
confidence level would seem appropriate. To be 99% confident about our statements,
nuclear optimism can only be justified for another 14 years. Statistics does not rule out
that we might survive significantly longer than these time horizons, but it does say that
the data thus far cannot be used to justify such hopes with any degree of confidence. To
understand why we can only be confident of surviving time horizons significantly shorter
than the 64 years of non-use already experienced, it helps to consider related "space
shuttle optimism" arguments that led to the loss of Challenger and her crew. The
engineers who had designed the shuttle's booster engine tried to delay Challenger's final
launch because the weather that morning was unusually cold, and previous cold weather
launches had a higher incidence of partial "burn through" on O-rings designed to seal the
booster. But those at NASA responsible for the launch decision suffered from the
common misperception that the shuttle's prior 23 successful launches provided ample
evidence that it was safe to proceed with launch number 24. Instead, as we now know,
that launch suffered catastrophic burn through of the O-rings, with resultant loss of the
shuttle and her entire crew. NASA's optimistic reasoning was literally dead wrong. Even
23 perfect launches would not have provided sufficient evidence to confidently predict
success for launch number 24, and previous near misses, in the form of partial O-ring
burn through, made optimism even more outrageous and unsupportable. The
unassailable, cold blooded conclusion provided by statistics and Challenger's deadly
lesson is that 64 years of nuclear non-use, particularly with near misses such as the Cuban
missile crisis, is no cause for nuclear optimism.
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Nuclear deterrence is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with the entire
world population.
Rendall 2007 (Lecturer in Politics International Relations at the University of
Nottingham, Matthew, Nuclear Weapons and Intergenerational Exploitation, Security
Studies 16, no. 4 (Octoberand December 2007): 525554, Ebsco)
Waltz mocks such calculations, pointing out that in 1960 C. P. Snow claimed it was a
statistical fact that nuclear weapons would be used in the next ten years. Apparently,
Waltz scoffs, fifty-some years is not a long enough run to confirm the stability of
nuclear deterrence.33 Indeed, it is not. A few decades of uneasy peace are far too short a
time to show the probability of nuclear war at all. Was the risk over the last half century
forty percent, or was it merely fifteen? We have no way to tell.34 Even if nuclear
deterrence is like Russian roulette, Joseph Nye argues, there is a great difference between
games when the pistol has six chambers and when it has a hundred.35 That is trueif
one plays only a few times. Nuclear deterrence, however, is Russian roulette played every
day for decades. Even if relations among the nuclear powers are good, on any day of the
year there is some chance of nuclear war, as Russias 1995 activation of its nuclear
suitcases showed.36 The risk of being shot need not rise over time. Still, one cannot
play Russian roulette indefinitely. Seen from the perspective of a human lifespan,
whether a pistol goes off within a few days or a few weeks makes little difference.
Similarly, whether large-scale nuclear war comes next year or in two centuries matters
little over the long haul of the earths history, though it makes a difference to us.
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The process of proliferation causes conventional war in the interimlast shot logic.
Sobek 2009 (Asst Prof PoliSci @ Louisiana State U, Dennis Foster, Asst Prof PoliSci @
Virginia Military Institute, Samuel Robinson, PhD Candidate @ LSU, Conventional
Wisdom? The Effect of Nuclear Proliferation on Armed Conflict, 1945-2001, Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association 67th
Annual National Conference, The Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, 4/2,
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/6/2/1/3/p362138_inde
x.html)
Conventional wisdom holds that the possession of nuclear weapons offers states security
from a number of international threats. In particular, the possession of nuclear weapons
insulates a state from challenges to its most salient concerns (such as territorial
integrity). While ultimately beneficial to proliferators, the path to nuclear status is
generally neither instantaneous nor undetectable. As such, it behooves states that wish
to challenge proliferators to realize their political goals sooner rather than later.
Proliferators, on the other hand, have an incentive to delay the resolution of the
contentious issue until the deployment of their nuclear weapons. In this paper, we use
this set of interacting incentives as a point of departure in delineating a theory of the
relationship between the nuclear proliferation process and the frequency with which
proliferators are targeted in conventional militarized conflicts. Though much previous
scholarship has been devoted to this question, we believe that extant views have focused
too narrowly on one subset of that relationship: the preemptive employment of
conventional capabilities by status quo powers in order to physically disable or destroy
proliferators nascent nuclear programs. In developing a broader treatment of the
strategic interaction between states, we posit that the various stages of deterrent nuclear
proliferation are best conceived of as sequential steps in a bargaining process over
preexisting disputes that were instrumental in spurring proliferators to consider nuclear
options. As such, we contend that the primary rationale for status quo states
conventional targeting of proliferators should derive not from the desire to physically
disrupt nuclear development (which is, at best, a difficult task), but from the desire to
reach favorable conclusions to underlying disputes before the deployment of nuclear
weapons drastically complicates the issue.
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Nukes increase total military spending.

Cirincione 2007 (Ploughshares Fund Pres. And Prolif Mastermind, Joe, Bomb Scare, 778)
Proponents also often argue that developing nuclear weapons is more affordable than
building up conventional defenses to enhance national security. In the 950s, for
instance, U.S. nuclear policy was driven in part by the belief that nuclear weapons were a
cost-effective deterrent, that they provided a bigger bang for a buck. As William Weida
wrote in the comprehensive Atomic Audit, Basing the nations defenses on nuclear
weapons appeared to be less expensive because it was considered easier to implement
than alternative strategies for deterring the Soviet threat, principally the perceived
imbalance of conventional forces in Europe.85 A proposed Senate resolution introduced
by Senator McMahon in 95 illustrates Weidas point: The cost of military fire power
based upon atomic bombs is hundreds of times cheaper, dollar for dollar, than
conventional explosives.86 These arguments are misleading. Nuclear weapons are very
expensive, and are always deployed in addition to conventional forces, not as substitutes
for those forces. The United States spent approximately $7.5 trillion developing,
producing, deploying, and maintaining tens of thousands of nuclear weapons from 1940
to 2005.87 No country should take on these programs with the illusion that they are
somehow going to save defense dollars.
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Con Extensions
Nuclear weapons will always proliferate. Its impossible to stop everyone from
getting nuclear weapons.
Welsh 2003 (John J., Commander in the United States Navy, Nuclear Deterrence is Here
to stay, Report for the US Army War College, USAWC Strategy Research Project)
First is the cost of physically destroying all nuclear weapons in a rapid manner. In todays
fiscally constrained environment, it would be prohibitively more expensive to destroy
these weapons than to maintain them. In addition to the cost, there is a related issue
which is a loss of technical experience and the corresponding infrastructure to destroy
them in a reasonable time. The strategic infrastructure personnel base is shrinking due to
high retirement rates of senior personnel, inability to recruit junior personnel, and the
attractiveness of private-sector employment. The bottom line is that without skilled,
knowledgeable individuals in the infrastructure, the destruction of weapons will take a
prolonged time, accompanied by a hefty price tag. 27 Second, a worldwide binding
resolution would have to be agreed on by every nation who possesses or aspires to
possess nuclear weapons to destroy them simultaneously, so as prevent a power shift in
global powers due to differing rates of the complete nuclear draw down. Despite the Non
Proliferation and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaties being in existence, both Pakistan and
India developed and tested nuclear weapons. Even the most effective verification system
that can be envisioned would not produce complete confidence that a small number of
nuclear weapons had not been hidden or fabricated in secret. More fundamentally, the
knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons cannot be erased from the human mind.
Even if every nuclear warhead were destroyed, the current nuclear weapons states, and a
growing number of other technologically advanced states, would be able to build nuclear
weapons within a few months or few years of a national decision to do so. 28
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Unilateral action alienates allies and shatters other areas of cooperation

Sabathier 2006 (Senior associate with the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program
and former senior fellow and director of CSIS space initiative (September 18,
2006;,Vincent G. Sabathier, D.A. Broniatowski, G. Ryan Faith, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, The Case for Managed International Cooperation in Space
Exploration,
http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/060918_managed_international_
cooperation.pdf )
International cooperation is valuable to a given nation in that it tends to increase political
sustainability. Within the United States, a program is made safer from cancellation to the
extent that Congress and the administration are not willing to break international
agreements. Indeed, the integration of Russia into the ISS program may well have saved
the program from cancellation (consider that the year before Russia was introduced as a
partner, the ISS was saved by one vote in Congress). Once cooperation has commenced,
canceling a program becomes inconsistent with political sustainability as long as the
utility cost associated with the loss of diplomatic benefits and the negative effects on
reputation of terminating an international agreement is larger in magnitude than the utility
cost that must be paid to maintain the system. In the case of the ISS, international
cooperation does provide a rationale for sustaining the pro-gram, because canceling the
program would result in a net loss in utility. The corollary to this is that there is a high
cost to be paid by any nation that chooses to unilaterally withdraw from an existing
cooperative endeavor. This cost comes in the form of damage to the departing nations
reputation or credibility. In general, any unilateral action sends a signal that the actor is
an unpredictable and therefore an unreliable and possibly disrespectful partner. This tends
to sabotage the possibility of future cooperation. As such, there is a long-term benefit to
maintaining cooperation, even when the immediate cost may seem to call for terminating
it. If cooperation has never occurred (as is the case be-tween China and the United
States), the advent of cooperation is a significant event, likely delivering a lot of
diplomatic utility. On the other hand, if cooperation is the norm (as is the case between
Canada and the United States), it is to be expected. The diplomatic utility of maintaining
this cooperation is often not recognized. Nevertheless, the diplomatic utility cost of
terminating this cooperation is large, because it would alienate a key ally. If it were
necessary to cease cooperation, a mutual choice to do so would likely mitigate many of
the negative reputation effects, because there would be no unilateral actor to whom one
could assign blame. Indeed, if both parties choose to cease cooperating simultaneously,
this would mitigate the negative-reputation effectrather, there would be a mutual
divorce. Such a mutual decision would be significantly more tenable, in a diplomatic
sense, because each party might outline a set of grievances and conditions for the
termination of cooperation. Furthermore, since the agreement would be termi-nated in a
spirit of mutual understanding, the possibility of future beneficial cooperation would be
more likely.
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Attempting to get rid of other nations nukes would result in nuclear war.
Welsh 2003 (John J., Commander in the United States Navy, Nuclear Deterrence is
Here to stay, Report for the US Army War College, USAWC Strategy Research Project)
The third reason against the total abolition of nuclear weapons is, despite a new sense of
friendship and cooperation between the Cold War rivals, the democratization of Russia is
still in its early stages, with indications of high internal tensions. Consequently, if
Communist hardliners were to affect a coup and restore the former Communist party to
power, the U.S. would once again present a threat to the Russian Communist norms and
ideals. Additionally, It is not now obvious, for example, whether Russia, China, or some
combination thereof will be politically benign or quite hostile even in the near future.
Looking out over the coming decades, it is quite plausible that a variety of other regional
aggressors armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could arise to challenge the
United States. The dizzying pace of change in the international system over the past two
decades, from the rapid transition of Iran from ally to foe, to the significant shifts in U.S.Russian and U.S.-Chinese relations since the 1980s, demonstrates that the future shape of
the international security environment is anything but highly predictable. Similarly, the
current pace of proliferation makes predictions about the future level of WMD threat to
the United States highly speculative. 29 Finally, the nuclear era represents the longest
period without war among major powers since the emergence of the modern nation state
in the sixteenth century. Thus, it is argued that, if the major powers believed the risk of
nuclear war had been eliminated, they might initiate or intensify conflicts that might
otherwise have been avoided or limited.
Effective deterrence prevents war due to public support.
Monroe 2009 (Robert R., Vice Admiral in the US Navy, A Perfect storm over nuclear
weapons, Air and Space Power Journal, Volume 23, Number 3, Fall,
http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA507407&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf)
[S]uccessful completion of a difficult negotiation on any major issue has always required
a threat of force in the background. The greatest benefit of deterrence is the high
probability of achieving our objective without resorting to violence. Nuclear deterrence
has been with us since the dawn of the nuclear era. It works! Were all here today
because it works. Our nuclear deterrence brought about the end of the Soviet Union and
the defeat of communism without violence. Now fast-forward to the twenty-first century.
Deterrence is nowhere to be found.
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Nuclear weapons deter and prevent major wars.

Spulak 1997 (Robert G. Jr., senior analyst at the Strategic Studies Center, Sandia
National Laboratories, Albuquerque, The case in favor of US nuclear weapons,
Parameters,
Spring,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/97spring/
spulak.htm)
Nuclear weapons are uniquely effective for deterrence because they are enormously
destructive and can be delivered in swift retaliation. In addition, for effective deterrence,
the image of a single aircraft bunker in the cross hairs of a guided bomb is no match for
the evocative image of a mushroom cloud. Although the Cold War is over, Russia still
has the capability to destroy the United States; the strong showing of the nationalists and
communists in the Russian elections, the obvious failure of reforms, the desire of Russia
to be recognized as a great power, and replacement of the reformers in the Russian
government with officials from the communist era have refocused our concerns on this
point. In a few years Japan, a Western European state, or China could pose a strategic
threat to our broad security interests; China is rapidly modernizing its arsenal and could
soon be a strategic nuclear threat. Since we will be cautious about attacking any nuclear
power with conventional forces, it will be difficult to deter even smaller nuclear powers
such as North Korea, Iran, or Iraq if our nuclear threat to them is not credible.
Arms races wont happen because nuclear weapons have lasting effectiveness.
Parameters,
Spring,
spulak.htm)
Another way in which nuclear deterrence is robust is that nuclear weapons are less
sensitive to technical advances by potential enemies, possibly reducing pressure for arms
races. Advances in nuclear weapons by a potential adversary do not necessarily decrease
the effectiveness of our own. Advances in defenses, such as a ballistic missile defense or
improved submarine detection, may require adjustments to our deterrent forces, but since
nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, their overall effectiveness does not
depend on easily negated incremental advantages.
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Nuclear possession deters wars because it increases the likelihood of cooperation.

Parameters,
Spring,
The possession of a robust nuclear arsenal confers real diplomatic advantages on the
United States. It is a vital symbol and part of the substance of our world leadership.
Diplomacy is always performed against the backdrop of military capability. There has
been widespread speculation that allusions to nuclear use may have deterred Iraq from
using chemical weapons in the 1990-91 Gulf War. And, the US carefully refrained for
several days from ruling out a nuclear strike against a Libyan underground chemical
weapons facility to increase the diplomatic pressure to stop construction. Nuclear
weapons make it easier for the United States to cooperate with other nations since they
make it difficult for other nations to threaten central US security interests. In the past, it
has been very important in international relations to avoid a relative gain by a partner in
cooperation lest that relative gain translate into a shift in relative military power that
threatens one of the partners. This creates a barrier to cooperation in trade, economic
policy, arms control, or other activities that result in absolute economic or other gains.
Nuclear weapons lower this barrier to cooperation.
Nuclear deterrence is key to US influence, which prevents the rise of authoritarian
powers
Parameters,
Spring,
By virtue of their enormous destructive potential, the possession of nuclear weapons
creates a quantum increase in power and influence for the United States. Possession
creates a threshold of antagonism which no nation can cross. Global awareness of the
existence of this threshold allows the United States to exercise influence without the
threshold ever being approached. Just as important, the opposite is also true: stigmatizing
and minimizing our nuclear weapons can undermine, to some extent, our international
status and therefore our ability to influence world events and to protect and promote our
interests. This is important because it matters which states exercise power in the world.
(Suppose Nazi Germany had won World War II or the Soviet Union had won the Cold
War.) The collapse of the Soviet Union leaves the United States as the only major power
whose national identity is defined by a set of universal political and economic values.[11]
Sustained US power is central to the future of freedom, democracy, open economies, and
international order in the world.
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Nuclear deterrence is the only way to prevent nuclear war, an impact that outweighs
and disproves the their claims that proliferation is bad.
Lewis 2006 (Julian, Nuclear disarmament versus peace in the twenty-first century,
International Affairs, 82.4)
The fact that the Third World War did not break out is not, of itself, conclusive proof that
containment by deterrence was successful. It is of the nature of deterrence that, whenever
it works, its opponents can always argue that the war would not have happened in any
case. Yet the fact that there were so many small but deadly wars fought between client
states of the superpowers (but not between the superpowers themselves) strongly
suggests that the mutual threat of nuclear annihilation had something to do with the
restraint exercised by the two superpowers. The purpose of the British nuclear deterrent
remains what it has always been: to minimize the prospect of the United Kingdom being
attacked by mass destruction weapons. It is not a panacea and it is not designed to
forestall every type of threat. Nevertheless, the threat which it is designed to counter is so
overwhelming that no other form of military capability could manage to avert it. The
possession of the deterrent may be unpleasant, but it is an unpleasant necessity, the
purpose of which lies not in its actual use but in its nature as the ultimate stalemate
weaponand, in the nuclear age, stalemate is the most reliable source of security
available to us all.
Nuclear deterrence satisfies just war criteria
Nye 1988 (Joseph S., former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Dean of Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Nuclear Ethics, Pg. 50-51)
Catastrophe is not necessarily inherent in nuclear technology. It is quite possible to think
of uses of nuclear weapons that do not violate the jus in bello criteria. As for
proportionality of destruction, nuclear warheads such as the neutron bomb can be
coupled with precision guided delivery systems and airburst above tanks so that they
would do less damage than some conventional shells used in the two world wars and
deposit very little radioactive fallout. And nuclear weapons used at sea on naval warfare
targets could absolutely observe the principle of discrimination between combatants and
noncombatants.
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Permitting nuclear war is the ultimate immorality.

Nye 1988 (Joseph S., former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Dean of Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Nuclear Ethics, Pg. 33)
While the cosmopolitan approach has the virtue of accepting transnational realities and
avoids the sanctification of the nation-state, an unsophisticated cosmopolitanism also has
serious drawbacks. First, if morality is about choice, then to underestimate the
significance of states and boundaries is to fail to take into account the main features of
the real setting in which choices must be made. To pursue individual justice at the cost of
survival or to launch human rights crusades that cannot hope to be fulfilled, yet interfere
with prudential concerns about order, may lead to immoral consequences. And if such
actions, for example the promotion of human rights in Eastern Europe, were to lead to
crises and an unintended nuclear war, the consequences might be the ultimate immorality.
Applying ethics to foreign policy is more than merely constructing philosophical
arguments; it much be relevant to the international domain in which moral choice is to be
exercised.
Nuclear deterrence is necessary. Anything else allows atrocities worse than the
threats of nuclear use.
If the consequence of possessing a lethal weapon is that nobody uses lethal weapons,
while the consequence of not possessing a lethal weapon is that someone else uses his
lethal weapons against you, which is the more moral thing to do: to possess the weapons
and avoid anyone being attacked, or to renounce them and lay yourself open to
aggression? The central problem that has to be faced by those who argue that the mere
possession of nuclear weapons, or the threat to use them in retaliation, is morally
unacceptable is the extreme level of destructiveness that conventional warfare had
reached before the atomic bomb was invented. If it is the case that possessing a deadly
weapon or being willing to threaten to use it in retaliation will avert a confl ict in which
millions would otherwise die, can it seriously be claimed that the more ethical policy is to
renounce the weapon and let the millions meet their fate? Even if one argues that the
threat to retaliate is itself immoral, is it as immoral as the failure to forestall so many
preventable casualties? This is, in reality, a variation on the argument against absolute
pacifism which the late Leonard Cheshire illustrated when such issues were being
debated 20 years ago. According to most peoples values, not only is it morally correct
for him to shoot the armed terrorist, it would be profoundly unethical for him to decline
to do so. Moral choices are, as often as not, choices between the lesser of two evils. In the
case of possessing and threatening to use a horrifying weapon, or renouncing it with the
result that such weapons are actually used against ones own society, only the purest
pacifist can be in any doubt as to which course to follow.
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Vietnam proves the massive taboo against first use of nuclear weapons is effective
and will prevent pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons.
Tannenwald 2006 (Nina, Associate Research Professor of International Relations at the
Watson Institute for International Relations at Brown University, Nuclear Weapons and
the Vietnam War, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4, August)
Had US leaders wished to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam, there was no lack of
warheads nor any shortage of suitable targets. Indeed, following the costs and frustrations
of fighting the limited Korean War ten years earlier with conventional weapons only,
many thought that the United States should or would employ nuclear weapons in any
subsequent similar war. Additionally, doctrines of limited nuclear war developed in the
mid-tolate 1950s elaborated the necessity of being willing and able to employ nuclear
weapons in a local or regional conflict, and in something less than an all-out nuclear
exchange.5 Given this context, one of the remarkable features of the Vietnam War is how
little serious consideration US leaders gave to nuclear options. Although they made some
veiled nuclear threats, top political leaders did not come close to using nuclear weapons.
To date there has been no systematic study of US decisionmaking on nuclear weapons
during the Vietnam War. This article offers an initial analysis. The conventional
explanation for the nonuse of nuclear weapons during Cold War crises is deterrence. Yet
this factor is insufficient to explain fully the Vietnam case. Drawing on primary sources,
including recently declassified documents and memoir accounts of most of the major
participants, this article argues that while military and political factors, including
escalation concerns, help to account for the nonuse of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, a
taboo against first use of nuclear weapons played a critical role. American leaders fear
of uncontrolled escalation to war with Russia or China helped to keep the war limited.
Such risks were highly disputed throughout the war, however, and military and most key
political leaders endorsed policies that involved risking war with China if necessary.
Given this situation, political and normative constraints on the use of nuclear weapons
became particularly salient. Ultimately, while nuclear weapons might have been
militarily useful in the war, it was clear that, by the time the war was fought, they were
politically unusable, and for some officials, even morally unacceptable. The constraining
effects of a nuclear taboo operated powerfully for US leaders during the Vietnam War,
both for the majority who shared the taboo and for the minority of those who did not.
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Vietnam proves that proliferation does not result increased risk of use.
Tannenwald 2006 (Nina, Associate Research Professor of International Relations at the
Watson Institute for International Relations at Brown University, Nuclear Weapons and
the Vietnam War, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4, August)
The tradition of nonuse of nuclear weapons held throughout the conflict in Vietnam.
During the war, three US administrations progressively upped the level of violence and
engaged in tremendously controversial policies. Yet, despite the enormous costs and
frustrations of the war, all drew the line at use of nuclear weapons. Several considerations
motivated nonuse of nuclear weapons in Vietnam: the possibility of inadvertent and
uncontrolled escalation with the consequences this entailed for US vulnerabilities,
preservation of the tradition of nonuse, and finally a taboo, a normative belief that using
nuclear weapons would be wrong. For many US leaders, nuclear weapons were morally
repugnant. To be militarily decisive, such weapons would probably have to have been
used in large numbers, and this would have been politically and normatively
unacceptable. It thus appears that the chances the Johnson administration would have
used nuclear weapons in Vietnam were nearly zero, no matter what General
Westmoreland, Wheeler or Admiral Sharp thought. In contrast, for Nixon and Kissinger
less influenced by personal moral convictions the taboo operated primarily as an
instrumental constraint on resort to nuclear weapons. Although Nixon talked a tough line,
and sent notes to the North Vietnamese threatening massive uses of force if they did not
agree to negotiate, in the end he and Kissinger were repeatedly rolled back from their
aspirations for knockout blows by anticipated domestic and world public condemnation.
Nixon probably did not personally share the nuclear taboo he did not think it was
wrong to use nuclear weapons but he was constrained because others, including
members of his own bureaucracy, held it. The taboo, by helping to define what
constituted escalation in the first place, contributed to heightening decision-makers
perception of such risks during the war. Even Henry Kissinger was forced to confront the
normative limitations on material power. Although he had written a book extolling the
use of tactical nuclear weapons, once in the White House he found to his regret that
nuclear nations could not necessarily use this power to impose their will. The capacity to
destroy proved difficult to translate into a plausible threat even against countries with no
capacity for retaliation.186
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If states dont have nukes, they will seek bioweapons

Zilinskas 2000 (Raymond A., formerly a clinical microbiologist, is the director of the
Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies, Biological Warfare: modern Offense and Defense, p. 1-2)
There are many who believe that todays bioscientists and chemical engineers are
working in unison and wielding the techniques of molecular biology developed since the
early 1970s could, if so commanded, develop militarily effective biological weapons
within a fairly short time. If this supposition is correct, our perception of biological
weapons are being undependable, uncontrollable, and unreliable must change. The reason
is simple: if these weapons are demonstrated to possess properties that make I possible
for commanders to effect controlled, confined mass destruction on command, all
governments 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 be even more drawn to biological arms as the most accessible form of weapon of
mass destruction.
Biological weapons result in extinction
Steinbruner 1997 (John, Senior Fellow Brookings, Foreign Policy, 12-22-1997, Lexis)
Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal
chemicals as potential weapons of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally
important difference: Pathogens are alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical
weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in adaptive
behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has
immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the
damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over
time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is
detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and
the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for
tactical military planning. The use of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process
whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. For most potential biological
agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly or decisively enough
to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive
effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use the risk runs in the other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from
one victim to another would be capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease
that might ultimately threaten the entire world population. The 1918 influenza epidemic
demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer
limit.
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Use of bioweapons is guaranteed because bioweapons cant produce stable

deterrence.
Preston 2007 (Thomas, associate professor of international relations in the Department
of Political Science at Washington State University, From Lambs to Lions, Pages 251252)
Although bioweapons are legitimately viewed as weapons of mass destructionand do
possess the potential to rival nuclear weapons in terms of casualties producedtheir
application to notions of deterrence are not nearly so straightforward. The reason for this
is simply that if the essence of deterrence is to present opponents with the threat of
inescapable, unavoidable levels of damage far exceeding any potential benefit they may
receive from taking aggressive actions, then the degree to which this damage could be
viewed as "contestable" (subject to preemption or limitation) seriously undermines the
effectiveness of any deterrent threat. This notion of contestability, described by Harknett
(1998) as the primary difference between conventional and nuclear deterrence, also
distinguishes between deterrence built around biological as opposed to nuclear weapons.
In terms of pure destructive power, nuclear weapons trump all other weapons since they
destroy both people and propertya city attacked with nuclear weapons is utterly destroyed. Further, in the absence of a futuristic, functioning missile defense that could
somehow prevent nuclear weapons from being delivered and detonated over cities, the
ability of a nuclear opponent to inflict unacceptable levels of damage are for the
foreseeable future uncontestable. This makes a deterrent threat based upon the assured
destructive potential of nuclear weapons far more robust than ones based upon only
conventional military threats. In contrast, bioweapons do not cause the "physical
destruction" of cities though they may cause similar numbers of casualties as their
nuclear cousins. This "lesser" level of destruction will always lack, at least in the minds
of some opponents, the perceived "completeness" of destruction produced by nuclear
attacks. Neither are bioweapons instantaneous in their effects, providing a defender with
at least the possibility of protecting their populations or military forces against the agents
through the use of antibiotics, vaccines, or quarantines. In other words, costs are
potentially contestable when bioweapons are used. This results in a fundamentally
different type of security relationship arising from these kinds of weapons, since the
assured nature of the resulting destruction is often essential for the credibility of deterrent
threats.
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Scientists can create especially virulent and contagious diseases

Preston, 2007 (Thomas, associate professor of international relations in the Department
In their "natural" unaltered forms, so-called classical BW agents (such as smallpox,
plague, anthrax, etc.) were always considered fearsome and deadly potential weapons of
war. The science of the bioweaponeer advanced as the decades passed, and though the
U.S. program changed course toward a more "defensive" form after the 1972 treaty,
advances in the "dark arts" of biowarfare continued inside the massive Soviet program
including the beginnings of what would become a revolution in military affairs in the BW
field, namely, genetic engineering. New biowarfare work made possible by advances in
biotechnology provided the ability to create novel, "designer" pathogens (unknown to
nature) that would couple antibiotic resistance with characteristics of multiple disease
organisms. Yet, as disturbing as this work was, it merely foreshadowed a far more
sinister future stage in biowarfare researchone in which advances in biotechnology and
genetic engineering will provide current and future bioweaponeers the ability to make
bioweapons either highly effective and limited in scope (for tactical applications) or
potentially unstoppable (for strategic use) (Dando 1994, 41). The resulting diversity of
new BW agents could enable such a broad range of attack scenarios that it would be
virtually impossible to anticipate and defend against" them all (Central Intelligence
Agency 2003). Unfortunately, this "revolution in biowarfare" renders all previous
calculations about the viability or effectiveness of bioweapons in war dangerously
outdated and obsolete.... Advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering may
facilitate the development of potentially new and more deadly biological warfare agents.
Genetically engineered micro-organisms also raise the technological hurdle that must be
overcome to provide for effective detection, identification, and early warning of
biological warfare attacks. (Department of Defense January 2001) Since the complete
genome sequence for smallpox is freely available on the Internet, the theoretical
possibility exists genetic engineers could use this blueprint to transform a related virus,
such as camelpox or mousepox, into smallpox itself. This finding was particularly
worrisome to many experts because it suggested unethical biologists might adopt similar
methods to strengthen other human viruses, potentially rendering a newly weaponized
smallpox immune to vaccines or even turn the common cold into a killer (Broad January
2001; Cookson 2001). During the same period, Soviet bioweaponeers succeeded in
placing a virus inside bacteria, so the virus would be activated when the bacteria were
killed by antibioticsthereby creating combination pathogens (or chimera) that would
combine the lethality of one pathogen with the infectiousness of another (Pollack "With
Biotechnology" 2001). Any steps to reduce a BW agent's rate aerobiological decay (or
half-life) increases its offensive potential by allowing an agent to remain lethal over
target for longer periods of time, create lengthier disruption of military operations, and
allow for effective employment of weapons under what would normally be poor
environmental conditions (such as daytime). The length of time over a target can increase
dramatically using such techniques.
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Development of bioweapons will be easy information and technology are

spreading. Zilinskas 2000 (Raymond A., formerly a clinical microbiologist, is the
director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center
for Nonproliferation Studies, Biological Warfare: modern Offense and Defense, p. 1-2)
As dramatic progress in civilian biotechnology goes forward, technical obstacles that
have prevented development of enhanced BW agents continue to fall. The expanding
reaches of global information resources, such as the Internet, compound the risk.
Scientists in all fields benefit enormously from broadened opportunities for
communication with their peers and instantaneous access to new developments, but the
downside is that it is impossible to guard the secrets of dual-use technologies that could
be exploited in clandestine BW programs. Even countries or organizations with modest
means and relatively unsophisticated scientific resources can master the technologies
needed to produce biological weapons for military or terrorist purposes. The potential
danger posed by the synergy of these two revolutions biotechnology and computerized
information has yet to be fully recognized or assessed by those charged with monitoring
BW proliferation.
States can easily produce biological weapons
Preston 2007 (Thomas, associate professor of international relations in the Department of
Political Science at Washington State University, From Lambs to Lions, Pages 187)
A March 1997 DoD report to Congress noted: "For chemical and biological weapons in
particular, the potential for proliferation is almost unlimited. Any state with a basic
chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnological, or related industry can
produce basic chemical or biological agents (Technical Annex 1997). Similarly, a more
recent U.S. Defense Department report from October 2001 noted that any country
possessing a sufficient munitions-production infrastructure (like Iran, North Korea, or
China) also possessed the ability to accomplish weaponization of BW agents
(Department of Defense October 2001, 20-21). Virtually all the equipment, technology,
and materials needed for biological agent production are dual use. . . . Very little
differentiates a facility producing vaccines or antibiotics from one that produces lethal
pathogens or toxins. Therefore, any facility being used for the good of mankind could
also be used to produce these lethal agents, and could be disguised as a legitimate
business.
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Insufficient infrastructure exacerbates bioterrorism.

Khan and Ashford 2001 (Ali S., M.D. and M.P.H., and David A., D.V.M., D.Sc.,
M.P.H., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ready or Not preparedness for
bioterrorism, New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 345: 287-289, July 26)
Despite these strides, deficiencies remain in the medical care delivery infrastructure that
would be necessary to mount a response to bioterrorism or other, more predictable, public
health emergencies. The challenges that would face the health care delivery system are
already evident in routine emergency room diversions, and the problem is exacerbated by
the shortage of nurses and the fiscal goal of hospitals to eliminate unused beds. In an oftcited example of such inadequacy, the health care delivery system was unable to handle
an increase in cases of influenza in northern California in 1998. This shortcoming bodes
ill for our ability to respond to the predictable recurrence of pandemic influenza; the
19181919 outbreak killed 0.5 percent of the population of the United States, which
would amount to about 1.4 million people if it happened today. It bodes worse for our
ability to respond to the unpredictable occurrence of bioterrorism.
Bioweapons outweigh nuclear weapons: they are easier to build and deliver covertly.
Croco 2001 (Sarah E., graduate student pursuing a doctorate in the Department of
Political Science at the University of Michigan, Dealing with the Biological Weapons
Threat: Thinking Beyond Unilateral Action, Bulletin of the program in Arms Control
Disarmament, and International Security, 13:1, Swords and Ploughshares,
http://acdis.illinois.edu/assets/docs/312/WillMankindSurvivetheMillennium.pdf)
When trying to prioritize the threats to U.S. national security for the twenty-first century,
biological weapons often receive top billing because of their alleged destructive potential.
Indeed a well-known calculation by the U.S. Congress Office of Technology
Assessment in 1993 suggested that 100 kilograms of Anthrax spores spread effectively on
the wind and allowed to drift over Washington D.C. could, in the right conditions, cause
3 million fatalities (Dando 1999, 311). Estimates like these make for eye-catching
headlines and fuel public paranoia. Biological weapons are particularly scary since they
are relatively easy to manufacture and distribute when compared to nuclear weapons.
While a nuclear weapons capability requires a fairly sophisticated technical capacity, a
biological weapons capability can be achieved by modifying basic pharmaceutical
technology. The possible (and some would argue, probable) damage a biological attack
would inflict on the U.S. population also weighs heavily on policy makers minds.
According to some, biological agents are far and away the most dangerous: they could
kill hundreds of thousands and chemicals might only kill thousands (Laqueur 1996, 11).
Biological weapons carry with them a terrifying mystique: a biological agent could very
possibly go undetected, spreading stealthily through a population, infecting thousands
before authorities were aware of its presence. Certainly the perceived ease of production
and distribution combined with the covertness and destructive potential of biological
weapons has generated a massive response on the part of the federal government.
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Biological weapons will cause extinction, whereas nuclear weapons cannot.

Singer 2001 (Clifford E., professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Program in
Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security at the University of Illinois at
Urbana Champaign, Will mankind survive the millennium? Bulletin of the program
in Arms Control Disarmament, and International Security, 13:1, Swords and
Ploughshares,
http://acdis.illinois.edu/assets/docs/312/WillMankindSurvivetheMillennium.pdf)
However fear of annihilation of the human species through nuclear warfare was confused
with the admittedly terrifying, but much different matter of destruction of a dominant
civilization. The destruction of a third or more of much of the globes population through
the disruption from the direct consequences of nuclear blast and fire damage was
certainly possible. There was, and still is, what is now known to be a rather small chance
that dust raised by an all-out nuclear war would cause a socalled nuclear winter,
substantially reducing agricultural yields especially in temperate regions for a year or
more. The epidemiological lethal results of well over a hundred atmospheric nuclear tests
are barely statistically detectable except in immediate fallout plumes. Nor is there any
reason to believe that global warming or other insults to our physical environment
resulting from currently used technologies will challenge the survival of mankind as a
whole beyond what it has already handily survived through the past fifty thousand years.
There are, however, two technologies currently under development that may pose a more
serious threat to human survival. The first and most immediate is biological warfare
combined with genetic engineering. Smallpox is the most fearsome of natural biological
warfare agents in existence. With development of new biological technology, however,
there is a possibility that a variety of infectious agents may be engineered for
combinations of greater than natural virulence and mortality, rather than just to
overwhelm currently available antibiotics or vaccines. There is no a priori known upper
limit to the power of this type of technology base, and thus the survival of a globally
connected human family may be in question when and if this is achieved.
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Nuclear weapons preserve the status quo and prevent violence

Alagappa 2008 (Muthiah, Distinguished senior fellow at the East-West Center, The Long
Shadow, pg. 98)
Jervis argues that nuclear weapons enhanced stability because they favor preservation of
the status quo. Traditionally the threat and use of military force have been deployed along
with other instruments to alter the status quo through war. Because of the mutual
vulnerability of the two superpowers, nuclear weapons were more relevant during the
Cold War in the deterrence role than in the coercive diplomacy or forcible use roles.
Jervis (1989: 29-35) argues that the status quo country has a higher stake and therefore
higher resolve in defending it; and the country seeking to alter the status quo bears the
onus of moving first, knowing full well that its action could cause a conflict to escalate to
a full-scale war. The status quo advantage applied in the prenuclear era as well. Nuclear
weapons have magnified the effect. A firmly established status quo in the nuclear era
favors the state practicing deterrence and is difficult to alter. Mutual vulnerability and the
desire to avoid undesirable outcomes also provided incentives for Soviet-American
cooperation. Such cooperation was designed to strengthen strategic stability and reduce
the risk of unintended war.
Proliferation will be slow and will induce cautious behavior regardless of the actor
Waltz, Sagan & Betts 2007 (Emeritus Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley
and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University, past President of the
American Political Science Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences; Professor of Political Science at Stanford; & Ph.D. Harvard. Specialist on
national security policy and military strateg, A NUCLEAR IRAN: PROMOTING
STABILITY OR COURTING DISASTER? Journal of International Affairs,
Spring/Summer2007, Vol. 60 Issue 2, p135-150, 16p.)
First, nuclear proliferation is not a problem because nuclear weapons have not
proliferated. "Proliferation" means to spread like wildfire. We have had nuclear military
capability for over fifty years, and we have a total of nine militarily capable nuclear
states. That's hardly proliferation; that is, indeed, glacial spread. Conversely, the spread
of conventional weapons makes a great deal of difference. For instance, if a Hitler-type
begins to establish conventional superiority, it becomes very difficult to contain and deter
him. But, with nuclear weapons, it's been proven without exception that whoever gets
nuclear weapons behaves with caution and moderation. Every country--whether they are
countries we trust and think of as being highly responsible, like Britain, or countries that
we distrust greatly, and for very good reasons, like China during the Cultural Revolution-behaves with such caution.
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New proliferation will be by weak states that have every incentive to protect their
weapons and prevent accidental shootouts proliferation would increase global
deterrence.
Goldberg & Khanna 2000 (Communications Director for AMGlobal Consulting.
Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American
Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Expert on geopolitics, global
governance, and Asian and European affairs, and was most recently the Global
Governance Fellow at The Brookings Institution. He has worked at the World Economic
Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, where he specialized in scenario and risk planning, and at
the Council on Foreign Relations, where he conducted research on terrorism and conflict
resolution, Interview: Is Kenneth Waltz still M.A.D. about Nukes? Georgetown Journal
of International Affairs. Volume 1, Number 1, Winter/Spring)
Waltz The new proliferants are mainly, but not entirely, weak states. Pakistan and India
are good examples of new nuclear powers that are going to have only a small number of
nuclear warheads. The United States has at least seven thousand strategic nuclear
warheads. If you have thousands of nuclear warheads* then you need elaborate
bureaucracies to control the arsenal. But if you have ten nuclear warheads or fifty, you
are going to cherish those nuclear warheads. You obviously feel that you need them, and
therefore you have every reason to be very careful. The accidents and nearaccidents that
have taken place with nuclear warheads have been, as far as I know, accidents on the part
of the major nuclear powers and not the small ones. Now, nuclear weapons do not deter
everybody from doing everything. They do not deter forays. They do not deter, for
example, Arab countries from starting wars over the disputed territories. But they did
dissuade the Egyptians and Syrians from trying to divide Israel during the 1973 Yom
Kippur War. They pulled back for fear that the threat of the destruction of the Israeli
State would prompt the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons deter threats to the
vital interests of the state, and they have done so in every case that comes to mind.
Proliferation is slow: countries dont want weapons
Waltz 1995 (Kenneth, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley and
Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University, past President of the American
Political Science Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Science Peace, Stability, and Nuclear Weapons. Institute on Global Conflict and
Cooperation. August)
Nuclear weapons continue to spread ever so slowly, and the world seems to fare better as
they do so. Yet the rapid spread--that is, the proliferation--of nuclear weapons remains a
frightening prospect; the mind boggles at the thought of all or most countries having
them. Whatever the policies of the United States and other countries may be, that
prospect is hardly even a distant one. Many more countries can make nuclear weapons
than do. One can believe that American opposition to nuclear arming stays the deluge
only by overlooking the complications of international life. Any state has to examine
many conditions before deciding whether or not to develop nuclear weapons. Our
opposition is only one factor and is not likely to dissuade a determined state from seeking
the weapons. Many states feel fairly secure living with their neighbors.
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Proliferation prevents war. All states are fundamentally rational and will be
deterred with nuclear proliferation.
Tepperman 2009 (Jonathan, formerly Deputy Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, is
Assistant Managing Editor at Newsweek, Why Obama should learn to love the bomb,
September 7, http://jonathantepperman.com/Welcome_files/nukes_Final.pdf)
[Countries] leaders may be stupid, petty, venal, even evil, but they tend to do things only
when theyre pretty sure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a
fight only when its almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price. Not
even Hitler or Saddam waged wars they didnt 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 button and 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. And since the end of
the Cold War, such bloodshed has declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the nuclear powers
have scrupulously avoided direct combat, and theres 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. Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didnt 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 others 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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Adversaries incorrectly think they can control conventional warfare, which

necessitates nuclear deterrence.
Political Science at Washington State University, From Lambs to Lions, Pages 64-66)
Further, many scholars have noted that nuclear weapons clearly provide smaller states
with a deterrence capability versus larger states that is far more attainable and less
expensive than would be comparable levels obtained through developing conventional
military capabilities (Betts 1993; Goldstein 1992). The enduring ability of the most basic
nuclear weapons quickly to annihilate military forces or inflict catastrophic damage on
society, even in the teeth of massive deployments of technologically sophisticated
defenses, remains unchallenged. Until this changes, nuclear weapons will be an
economical hedge against obsolescence for states seeking an affordable way to fulfill the
requirements of strategies for dissuading highly capable adversaries. As Harknett (1994,
88-89) explains: Conventional deterrence is hampered by the nature of the weapons upon
which it is based. The ability of conventional forces to inflict pain on an opponent is
highly dependent on the skill shown in their application, on the capabilities possessed,
and on the counter-capabilities employed by an opponent. The destructiveness of
conventional weapons, and thus the cost that can be threatened, will only be felt over
time after achieving military victory. . In the mind of a potential challenger, therefore,
conventional weapons and their attendant costs hold out the prospect of technical,
tactical, or operational solution, and it is this prospect that makes them less effective
deterrents to war. The fundamental point that strategists devising a conventional
deterrence approach must recognize is that conventional deterrents represent contestable
costs. Nuclear weapons produce a "reliability of effect" with regard to the immense
damage they are likely to inflict, which unlike more contestable conventional weapons,
"overshadow small differences," making potential gaps in power that in a conventional
environment might translate into relative advantage, not sufficient in a nuclear one to
provide military opportunity (Harknett 1998, 61). " Rather than focusing upon credibility,
resolve, or signaling, George and Smoke argue the single factor of greatest importance
for deterrence given their historical research was nearly always "the initiator's possession
of multiple options" (1974, 532). Clearly, the nuclear realm provides far fewer of those
than the conventional one.
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Nuclear proliferation increases global deterrence conventional weapons are

insufficient.
Rajagopalan 2000 (Rajesh, PhD, Professor in International Politics at Centre for
International Politics, Organization and Disarmament, School of International
Studies Prospects for Stability in a WMD Environment. Strategic Analysis: A Monthly
Journal of the IDSA. January 2000 Vol.XXIII No.10. CIAO)
The main difference between nuclear deterrence and conventional deterrence is that
conventional deterrence tends to be far more difficult to achieve than nuclear deterrence.
Kenneth Waltz has suggested several reasons why nuclear deterrence makes war less
likely. 8 First, in the presence of nuclear weapons, states will hesitate before pushing
towards victory in war because the closer they come to victory, the greater the risk of
nuclear retaliation by the losing side. Though war is still possible in the presence of
nuclear weapons, victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. In such circumstances,
when states can only score small gains, because large ones risk retaliation, they have
little incentive to fight. 9 Second, states with less care if the expected costs of war are
low and with more care if they are high. 10 Third, nuclear weapons make it unnecessary
to fight for increasing security, thus removing a major cause of insecurity among
nations. A critical distinction between nuclear and conventional deterrence that Waltz
points out is that nuclear deterrence makes miscalculations of the military balance and the
prospects for victory less likely. His explanation is instructive: Uncertainty about
outcomes does not work decisively against fighting wars in conventional worlds.
Countries armed with conventional weapons go to war knowing that in defeat their
suffering will be limited. Calculations about nuclear war are made differently...If
countries armed with nuclear weapons go to war, they do so knowing that their suffering
may be unlimited...In a conventional world, one is uncertain about winning or losing. In a
nuclear world, one is uncertain about surviving or being annihilated.
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Nuclear deterrence prevents the use of bioweapons because non-nuclear threats

arent a credible-enough threat.
Payne 2009 (Keith B., President of the National Institute for public policy, professor and
department head at the Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri
State, On nuclear deterrence and assurance, Strategic studies quarterly, spring,
http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2009/Spring/payne.pdf)
This proposition is logical but artificially narrow. It misses other severe nonnuclear
threats to the United States and allies that may not be deterred reliably absent US nuclear
capabilities, such as threats posed by chemical and biological weapons (CBW).
Commentators can claim for political reasons that US nuclear capabilities should be
considered pertinent for deterring only nuclear threats but CBW threats are real and
growing and there is no basis to conclude that US nonnuclear capabilities would suffice
to deter them. Even if the vision of the complete worldwide elimination of nuclear
weapons were to be realized, CBW threats would remain. Nuclear weapons may be so
much more lethal and distinguishable from nonnuclear threats that, on occasion, they can
deter an opponent who would not otherwise be susceptible to control. Strategic nuclear
threats have the potentially important advantages of extreme lethality from afar and a
relatively obvious firebreak. These could be important qualities to deter CBW first or
second use and to help deter future third-party CBW use. Clinton administration secretary
of defense Les Aspin rightly pointed to the prospective value of US nuclear weapons for
the deterrence of CBW threats given the proliferation of the latter: Since the United
States has forsworn chemical and biological weapons, the role of US nuclear forces in
deterring or responding to such nonnuclear threats must be considered.3
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Nuclear weapons are key to deterring use of bioweapons: conventional weapons fail
Utgoff 2001 (Victor A., Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division
of the Institute for Defense Analyses, The Role of Nuclear Weapons in Deterring
Chemical and Biological Attacks, October 10, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fnews/544343/posts)
The populations of the United States and most of its allies are not protected against largescale CB attacks. If retaliation cannot be at least equally painful, the opponent can hope
that the greater threat posed by its CB capabilities could lead the alliance to make
important concessions or try to avoid confronting it altogether. And, of course, retaliation
with nuclear weapons must be credible. The issue of credibility will be addressed below.
Can conventional retaliation meet these needs? In some cases, it may be able to, but we
cannot expect it to. The opponent will do its best to hide its leadership and reserve CB
capabilities. Conventional weapons cannot be counted on quickly to defeat the opponent's
military forces or to match the levels of damage that it can do with large-scale CBW
attacks. *** The prospect of nuclear retaliation thus seems necessary if the allies are to
realize the full potential of deterrence through punishment to protect themselves from CB
attack. Nuclear weapons also bring with them an extra measure of deterrence. In contrast
to conventional bombing, history has no examples of a state that has fought on despite
nuclear attacks. Furthermore, nuclear weapons share an awe-inspiring and fearful
mystique with plagues and poisons. They promise at least commensurate punishment for
CBW attacks in ways that conventional weapons cannot match.
Nuclear weapons deter chemical/biological weapons, as proven by Gulf War I.
Payne 2009 (Keith B., President of the National Institute for public policy, professor and
department head at the Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri
State, On nuclear deterrence and assurance, Strategic studies quarterly, spring,
http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2009/Spring/payne.pdf)
UN officials have stated that Iraqi bombs and missiles contained enough biological
agents to kill hundred of thousands,11 and US officials have confirmed that if Iraq had
used available biological weapons, the military and civilian casualty levels could have
been horrific.12 Saddam Hussein was neither a philanthropist nor particularly humane.
Why then did he not use the available chemical or biological weapons? Was he deterred
by the prospect of nuclear retaliation? Israeli commentators frequently suggest that the
apparent Israeli nuclear threat deterred Iraqi chemical use. The possible direct US role in
nuclear deterrence in this case should be highlighted. Some of the Scud missiles were
loaded with chemical warheads, but they were not used. They were kept hidden
throughout the war. We didnt use them because the other side had a deterrent force.20
The allied troops were certain to use nuclear arms and the price will be too dear and too
high.
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Bioweapons attacks are highly likely

Utgoff 2001 (Victor A., Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division
of the Institute for Defense Analyses, The Role of Nuclear Weapons in Deterring
Chemical and Biological Attacks, October 10, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fnews/544343/posts)
While proliferation of BW weapons in particular has been a rising concern for many
years, a variety of CBW-related events during the last decade have been particularly
disturbing. These include: Discovery after the 1990-91 Gulf War that Iraq had a welldeveloped capability to make large-scale BW attacks; emerging evidence of the size and
sophistication of the longstanding Russian BW program; CW attacks on the Tokyo
subway by the Aum Shinrikyo, together with subsequent discoveries that it had also
attempted a series of BW attacks; and evidence of CBW development programs in many
states. Some observers have expressed skepticism about how real the BW threat is. I am
afraid these sentiments are wishful thinking. That no one has employed CBW to cause
mass destruction in the last hundred years is not in itself a good argument that this horror
will not be visited on us in the future, particularly as additional states and organizations
obtain CBW capabilities. Creation of CBW is not particularly difficult. Finally, the
amount of potential damage that might be done with a well-planned and executed BW
attack is enormous. Covert attacks against a dozen large unprotected cities over a few
days could kill millions. Use of highly contagious agents could do even more damage.
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Nuclear deterrence has empirically been the most effective preventative tool.
Political Science at Washington State University, From Lambs to Lions, Pages 31-32)
Indeed, 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 nonnuclear 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 "immense 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 peripheral
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 combined 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki
atomic bombings compared to 62 million 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, 158-59) 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 potential
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
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Leaders will always use caution in terms of nuclear weapons

Preston 2007 (Thomas, associate professor of international relations in the Department
of Political Science at Washington State University, From Lambs to Lions, Pages 55-57)
As a result, such policy makers would be exceedingly unlikely to "rush to judgment" and
misperceive the relatively simple cost/loss equation created by nuclear weapons. They
also would he highly attentive to signaling from potential adversaries in such a nuclear
deterrence environment. Historically, American presidents scoring both high and low in
complexity, sensitive ones like Eisenhower and Kennedy, as well as less sensitive ones
such as Truman, Johnson, and Reagan, have all (despite their rhetoric) shown great
caution when making foreign policy decisions that could in any way provoke a true
nuclear response from an opponent. The reactions of policy makers under the immense
stress of nuclear crises has also been pointed to by deterrence skeptics as likely leading to
greater chances for decisional pathologies (e.g., misperception, motivated misperceptions, avoidance of value trade-offs, groupthink) to impact decision making and lead
to deterrence failure (Janis 1972; Janis and Mann 1977; Jervis 1976; Lebow 1981, 1987;
Lebow and Stein 1989, 1990). In fact, it is only in cases of conventional deterrence
relationshipscharacterized by far less clear-cut and ambiguous cost/benefit equations
that one routinely sees these kinds of decisional pathologies. [T]he fear of nuclear war (a
"shattered crystal ball") served as an "adaptive device" preventing JFK and the ExComm
from taking reckless actions and seeking every possible means to avoid a nuclear
exchange.
Nuclear Proliferation makes conventional warfare undesirable. These are far more
likely and devastating than a nuclear war
Sciences, Peace, Stability, and Nuclear Weapons. Institute on Global Conflict and
Cooperation. August 1995. CIAO)
Nuclear weapons continue to spread slowly, while conventional weapons proliferate and
become ever more destructive. Nuclear weapons are relatively cheap, and they work
against the fighting of major wars. For some countries, the alternative to nuclear weapons
is to run ever-more expensive conventional arms races, with increased risk of fighting
highly destructive wars. Not all choices are happy ones, and for some counties nuclear
weapons may be the best choice available.
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Proliferation prevents war and escalation if war occurs. The risks are too high
regardless of both the actor and the arsenal size.
Asal & Beardsley 2007 (Victor, Department of Political Science, State University of New
York, and Kyle, Department of Political Science, Emory University, Proliferation and
International Crisis Behavior, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 44, No. 2)
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. [E]ven a
modest nuclear arsenal should have some existential deterrent effect on regional enemies,
precisely because decapitation is so difficult.
Prolif decreases violence by 4000%.
De Mesquita & Riker 1982 (Bruce Bueno and William H., Both in the Department of
Political Science at the University of Rochester, An assessment of the merits of selective
nuclear proliferation, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 26:2, June)
One might object further. Conceding that the likelihood of miscalculation does diminish
as proliferation occurs, one might still contend that the costs of such a miscalculation are
so large that they cannot conceivably justify even the diminished risk of war. Using
expected utility calculations similar to the one suggested here, one of us (Bueno de
Mesquita 1981b) found that 65 of approximately 70,000 opportunities to initiate war
rationally were seized in the period 1816 to 1974, with hundreds of other opportunities
being used to threaten war. In that same study it was also found that only 11 of nearly
500,000 opportunities to initiate war were seized in violation of the expectations arising
from the expected utility framework. In other words, the ratio of seemingly rational and
correct calculations to either irrational calculations or miscalculations that have led to war
is over 40 to 1. This implies that through symmetry-producing nuclear proliferation, we
may expect to prevent approximately 40 conventional or one- sided nuclear wars for
every one miscalculated or irrational bilateral nuclear exchange. It seems to us unlikely
that one such miscalculated or irrational act among third world countries, each with a
very few warheads, could produce this level of loss.
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More nuclear powers decreases the chance of escalation in any conflict

As we can see, the impact of an increase in the number of nuclear actors is substantial.
Starting from a crisis situation without any nuclear actors, including one nuclear actor
(out of five) reduces the likelihood of fullscale war by nine percentage points. As we
continue to add nuclear actors, the likelihood of full-scale war declines sharply, so that
the probability of a war with the maximum number of nuclear actors is about three times
less than the probability with no nuclear actors. In addition, the probabilities of no
violence and only minor clashes increase substantially as the number of nuclear actors
increases. The probability of serious clashes is relatively constant. Overall, the analysis
lends significant support to the more optimistic proliferation argument related to the
expectation of violent conflict when nuclear actors are involved. While the presence of
nuclear powers does not prevent war, it significantly reduces the probability of full-scale
war, with more reduction as the number of nuclear powers involved in the conflict
increases. 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 strengthens the case for the explanations provided in this study.
Nuclear weapons are prevent major power wars. Europe has remained peaceful
because of them.
Miller 2009 (Frank, former Pentagon official, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate,
Disarmament
and
Deterrence:
A
Practitioners
View,
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/abolishing_nuclear_weapons_debate.pdf)
Deterring conventional aggression, however, is and has always been a key rationale for
the existence of nuclear weapons. The nature of governments has not changed; rather, the
stakes of going to war became too great. No longer could an aggressor look to his
militarys genius to defeat the enemy quickly and decisively; nuclear weapons gave the
attacked party the capability to turn an aggressors victory into massive defeat. The fact is
that possession of nuclear weapons has moderated the behavior of the great powers
toward one another. This does not suggest that deterrence can never fail, or that if it did
nuclear weapons would not be used without horrendous consequence. But it does suggest
that more attention needs to be paid to how the great powers have acted since 1945 and
why. The devastation in Europe during World War II is a stark reminder that nuclear
weapons are not the
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Nuclear weapons empirically make wars less violent.

Murdock 2008 (Clark A., senior adviser in the CSIS international security program, The
Department of Defense and the nuclear mission in the 21st century, Center for Strategic
and International Studies, March, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/080305-murdocknuclearmission.pdf)
From a systemic perspective, nuclear deterrence suppressed the level of violence
associated with major power competition: wartime fatalities consumed 2 percent of the
worlds population in the 1600s and 1700s, about 1 percent in the 1800s, about 1.5
percent in World War I and 2.5 percent in World War II, but about one-tenth during the
Cold War (minus the Korean War, which pushed fatalities up to 0.5 percent). Noted Cold
War deterrent theorist and Nobel economics laureate Thomas Schelling told a recent
World Economic Forum retreat (according to Thomas Barnett, the Pentagons favorite
futurist) that (1) no state that has developed nuclear weapons has ever been attacked by
another state and (2) no state armed with nuclear weapons has ever attacked another state
similarly armed.18 With his characteristic flair, Barnett observes that the United States
and the Soviet Union learned that nuclear weapons are for having and not using. Due to
the equalizing threats of mutually assured destruction, these devices cannot win wars but
only prevent them. The same logic has heldall these decadesfor powers as diverse as
the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel, with North Korea
stepping up to the plate and Iran on deck.
Focusing on striking countries with nuclear weapons will encourage more
conventional warfare.
Sislin 1998 (John, Lentz Postdoctoral Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Center
for International Studies, University of Missouri, St. Louis, A Convergence of
weapons, Peace Review, Volume 10, Issue 3, September)
Acting on one type of weapon may push states to acquire the other. Efforts to control
WMD may induce states to acquire conventional arms, and vice versa. In some cases,
policy maker's have seen the linkage. First, conventional arms can resemble WMD in
their destructiveness. Conflicts almost universally have been fought with conventional
arms. But priorities based on weapons' actual damage draw us to conventional arms,
which every year do destroy whole cities, a few people at a time. Likewise, the arms
trade literature could help proliferation scholars since conventional arms proliferate too,
as in the spread of advanced combat aircraft to new countries.
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Proliferation guarantees peaceful conflict resolution by making use of force too

costly. Alagappa 2008 (Muthiah, Distinguished senior fellow at the East-West Center,
The Long Shadow, pg. 523-525)
The three key conflicts in Asia (on the Korean peninsula, across the Taiwan Strait, and
over Kashmir) cannot be settled by force without huge costs. By dramatically increasing
the speed and scale of destruction that can occur from their use, nuclear weapons have
made the barrier to settlement by force prohibitive. In this sense, it is possible to argue
that they have helped freeze conflicts. However, nuclear weapons are not a barrier to
peaceful settlement. In fact, the impossibility of military victory and the grave risks
associated with nuclear war may have led states to alter their immediate goals and
explore a diplomatic settlement. Nuclear weapons constrain Chinese use of force to alter
the status quo and achieve its unification goal. On the Korean peninsula, recognizing the
limits and risks of attempting an offensive strategy, the United States altered course to
seek a diplomatic settlement of the nuclear problem and other disputes there. In IndiaPakistan relations as well, the grave risks associated with the military standoff between
the two countries have forced them to explore negotiated settlement of the multiple
disputes, including the status and control of Kashmir. It is pertinent to observe here that
nuclear weapons may have helped freeze the Cold War confrontation, but they did not
prevent its termination.
Nuclear weapons help resolve inevitable tensions peacefully.
Shadow, pg. 510)
Third, on conflict resolution, the study posits that the enormous destructive power of
nuclear weapons argues against dispute resolution through the physical use of violence.
At the same time, nuclear weapons are not a barrier to peaceful conflict resolution. In
fact, the grave risks associated with escalation to nuclear war have occasionally induced
parties to explore a diplomatic settlement. The settlement of disputes, however, requires
conflicting parties to negotiate compromises on political differences. In the absence of
such compromise, nuclear weapons can freeze and intensify conflicts.
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Involvement of at least one nuclear actor in any conflict prevents it from escalating.
Asal & Beardsley 2007 (Victor, Department of Political Science, State University of
New York, and Kyle, Department of Political Science, Emory University, Proliferation
and International Crisis Behavior, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 44, No. 2)
Also in Table IV, Model 2 demonstrates that the effect of a nuclear dyad is only
approaching statistical significance, but does have a sign that indicates higher levels of
violence are less likely in crises with opponents that have nuclear weapons than other
crises. This lukewarm result suggests that it might not be necessary for nuclear actors to
face each other in order to get the effect of decreased propensity for violence. All actors
should tend to be more cautious in escalation when there is a nuclear opponent,
regardless of their own capabilities. While this might weaken support for focusing on
specifically a balance of terror as a source of stability (see Gaddis, 1986; Waltz, 1990;
Sagan & Waltz, 2003; Mearsheimer, 1990), it supports the logic in this article that
nuclear weapons can serve as a deterrent of aggression from both nuclear and nonnuclear opponents.
Conventional warfare outweighs nuclear warfare based on probability
Goldberg & Khanna 2000 (Jeremy, Communications Director for AMGlobal Consulting,
Parag, Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the
American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Interview: Is Kenneth
Waltz still M.A.D. about Nukes? Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Volume
1, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2000)
It is conventional weapons that have proliferated. And conventional weapons are of ever
greater lethality, and, unlike nuclear weapons, are frequently used. We have had nuclear
weapons since 1945, and never has a nuclear weapon been fired in anger in a world in
which two or more countries had nuclear capabilities. Now that is a good and
unparalleled record. Can you think of any other weapon in the history of the world with
such a record? In other words, nuclear deterrence has worked. It has worked both for big
nuclear powers, like the United States and the Soviet Union, and for small nuclear
countries.
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Conventional warfare outweighs nuclear warfare based on magnitude. The illusion

of control makes ruthless killing more likely.
Goldberg & Khanna 2000 (Jeremy, Communications Director for AMGlobal Consulting,
Parag, Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the
American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Interview: Is Kenneth
Waltz still M.A.D. about Nukes? Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Volume
1, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2000)
Waltz Youve got to be sure that in an attack, whether with nuclear weapons or
conventional weapons, youre attacking weapons. Now, its hardnuclear weapons are
smallto be sure that youre going to destroy those weapons quickly and completely.
With conventional weapons you at least have the illusion of control; that is, you can
defend, you can delay, and you can exact a toll from the enemy. The ultimate question is
whether you are going to win or lose. If you are fighting with nuclear weapons the issue
is survival, not necessarily physically, but as a political entity. Military commanders are
well aware of how many things can go wrong: failed intelligence, undetected warheads in
an unexpected location. If Pakistan has two dozen nuclear weapons spread around and at
least four or five India does not know about, is India going to attack and risk four or five
warheads blowing up Indian cities? While the attack might not destroy India, what could
be at stake that would be worth that price? Its a risk to their regime, its a risk to rulers,
and its a risk to the military. You dont get much enthusiasm out of the military for
fighting wars its going to lose.
Non-proliferation causes a shift to biological weapons
Zilinskas 2000 (Raymond A., formerly a clinical microbiologist, is the director of the
Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies, Biological Warfare: modern Offense and Defense, p. 1-2)
There are many who believe that todays bioscientists and chemical engineers are
working in unison and wielding the techniques of molecular biology developed since the
early 1970s could, if so commanded, develop militarily effective biological weapons
within a fairly short time. If this supposition is correct, our perception of biological
weapons are being undependable, uncontrollable, and unreliable must change. The reason
is simple: if these weapons are demonstrated to possess properties that make I possible
for commanders to effect controlled, confined mass destruction on command, all
governments 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 be even more drawn to biological arms as the most accessible form of weapon of
mass destruction.
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Control over nuclear weapons forces shift to biological weapons

Cordesman 2000 (Andrew, senior fellow for Strategic Assessment and Co-Director of
the Middle East Program, Center for strategic International Studies, Hearing before the
senate
foreign
relations
committee,
March
28,
http://www.iranwatch.org/government/US/Congress/Hearings/sfrc-032800/us-sfrccordesman-032800.htm)
New, critical technologies are escaping our control One of the problems I have noticed in
US government efforts to analyze proliferation is that they focus on past and current
threats. As result, our studies tend to give primary weight to ballistic missiles and nuclear
weapons. Advances in genetic engineering, biotechnology, medicine, pharmaceuticals,
and food processing, however, are making it progressively easier to manufacture
biological weapons with nuclear lethalities, to do so under breakout conditions, and do so
with little or no warning of the precise nature of the threat. The engines and guidance
systems needed for cruise missiles are becoming industrial devices like GPS, sensortriggered fuses, cluster munitions, drones, crop sprayers, cellular phones interaction with
the steady growth in global commerce, shipping, and labor migration to make covert and
proxy attacks steadily more effective. Ironically, controlling ballistic missiles and nuclear
weapons alone tends to simply push proliferation into other weapons systems and modes
of delivery.
Nuclear controls cause shift to bioweapons.
Roberts, 1996 (Brad, member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analysis in
Alexandria, Virginia, Weapons proliferation and world order: after the Cold War, Page
59)
The factors stimulating such proliferation probably closely parallel those in the chemical
area. Declining barriers to acquisition have played a role, particularly with the steady
diffusion of dual-use technologies. The revolution in 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 sought the means to deter well-armed neighbors or outside
interveners, 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
applications of the new biological sciences increasingly within their reach
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Multiple factors make the collapse of hegemony inevitable

Richard Haass 08 President of the Council on Foreign Relations (Bottom of Form The
Age of Nonpolarity What Will Follow U.S. Dominance, Foreign Affairs, 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 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,
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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
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. 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.
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Proliferation prevents war in the transition period

Alagappa, 2008 (Muthiah, Distinguished Senior Fellow, East-West Center. PhD,
International Affairs, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, The Long
Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia, 484)
The fear of escalation to nuclear war conditions the role of force in major power relations
and circumscribes strategic interaction among them. By restraining measures and actions
that could lead to conflict escalation, nuclear weapons limit the competitive strategic
interaction of major powers to internal and external balancing for deterrence purposes;
constrain their resort to coercive diplomacy and compellence; and shift the burden of
international competition and adjustment in status and influence to the economic,
political, and diplomatic arenas. They also render remote the possibility of a hegemonic
war should a power transition occur in the region. More immediately, nuclear weapons
enable Russia and China to deter the much stronger United States and mitigate the
negative consequences of the imbalance in conventional military capability. Nuclear
weapons reinforce Indias confidence in dealing with China. By reducing military
vulnerabilities and providing insurance against unexpected contingencies, nuclear
weapons enable major powers to take a long view and engage in competition as well as
cooperation with potential adversaries. Differences and disputes among them are frozen
or settled through negotiations. Though they are not the only or even primary factor
driving strategic visions and policies, nuclear weapons are an important consideration,
especially in the role of force in major power strategic interaction. They prevent the
outbreak of large-scale war. Military clashes when they occur tend to be limited.
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Nuclear weapons preserve the status quo prevents violent challenges to hegemony.
Shadow, pg. 98)
Jervis argues that nuclear weapons enhanced stability because they favor preservation of
the status quo. Traditionally the threat and use of military force have been deployed along
with other instruments to alter the status quo through war. Because of the mutual
vulnerability of the two superpowers, nuclear weapons were more relevant during the
Cold War in the deterrence role than in the coercive diplomacy or forcible use roles.
Further, the state protecting a firmly entrenched status quo through deterrence enjoys
certain bargaining advantages. Jervis (1989: 29-35) argues that the status quo country has
a higher stake and therefore higher resolve in defending it; and the country seeking to
alter the status quo bears the onus of moving first, knowing full well that its action could
cause a conflict to escalate to a full-scale war. The status quo advantage applied in the
prenuclear era as well. Nuclear weapons have magnified the effect. A firmly established
status quo in the nuclear era favors the state practicing deterrence and is difficult to alter.
Crisis should also be infrequent in a condition of mutual, secure second-strike capability
and when the status quo is firm ( Jervis 1989: 35-38). Prenuclear causes of crisis, such as
adventures in the expectation of victory and defection by significant allies that could
change the distribution of power, are not valid in a situation of mutual vulnerability
where security is provided by secure second-strike capability. The Cuban missile crisis
occurred when the Soviets were weak and still seeking parity. Although there were
conflicts on the periphery since then, they did not generate a crisis between the
superpowers. As long as both sides were satisfied with the status quo, generating a crisis
to gain something was not attractive enough to outweigh the costs. Should a crisis occur
in the nuclear era, it will not be due to misreading enemy military strength as in the past;
it will be based on the importance of the issue at stake, each state's willingness to run
risks, and judgment of each other's resolve. Mutual vulnerability and the desire to avoid
undesirable outcomes also provided incentives for Soviet-American cooperation. Such
cooperation was designed to strengthen strategic stability and reduce the risk of
unintended war.
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Absurdly low risk of proliferation dominos

Shadow, pg. 521-522)
It will be useful at this juncture to address more directly the set of instability arguments
advanced by certain policy makers and scholars: the domino effect of new nuclear
weapon states, the probability of preventive action against new nuclear weapon states,
and the compulsion of these states to use their small arsenals early for fear of losing them
in a preventive or preemptive strike by a stronger nuclear adversary. On the domino
effect, India's and Pakistan's nuclear weapon programs have not fueled new programs in
South Asia or beyond. Iran's quest for nuclear weapons is not a reaction to the Indian or
Pakistani programs. It is grounded in that country's security concerns about the United
States and Tehran's regional aspirations. The North Korean test has evoked mixed
reactions in Northeast Asia. Tokyo is certainly concerned; its reaction, though, has not
been to initiate its own nuclear weapon program but to reaffirm and strengthen the
American extended deterrence commitment to Japan. Even if the U.S.-Japan security
treaty were to weaken, it is not certain that Japan would embark on a nuclear weapon
program. Likewise, South Korea has sought reaffirmation of the American extended
deterrence commitment, but has firmly held to its nonnuclear posture. Without dramatic
change in its political, economic, and security circumstances, South Korea is highly
unlikely to embark on a covert (or overt) nuclear weapon program as it did in the 1970s.
South Korea could still become a nuclear weapon state by inheriting the nuclear weapons
of North Korea should the Kim Jong Il regime collapse. Whether it retains or gives up
that capability will hinge on the security circumstances of a unified Korea. The North
Korean nuclear test has not spurred Taiwan or Mongolia to develop nuclear weapon
capability. The point is that each country's decision to embark on and sustain nuclear
weapon programs is contingent on its particular security and other circumstances. Though
appealing, the domino theory is not predictive; often it is employed to justify policy on
the basis of alarmist predictions. The loss of South Vietnam, for example, did not lead to
the predicted domino effect in Southeast Asia. In fact the so-called dominos became
drivers of a vibrant Southeast Asia and brought about a fundamental transformation in
that subregion (Lord 1993, 1996). In the nuclear arena, the nuclear programs of China,
India, and Pakistan were part of a security chain reaction, not mechanically falling
dominos. However, as observed earlier the Indian, Pakistani, and North Korean nuclear
tests have thus far not had the domino effect predicted by alarmist analysts and policy
makers. Great caution should be exercised in accepting at face value the sensational
predictions of individuals who have a vested interest in accentuating the dangers of
nuclear proliferation. Such analysts are now focused on the dangers of a nuclear Iran. A
nuclear Iran may or may not have destabilizing effects. Such claims must be assessed on
the basis of an objective reading of the drivers of national and regional security in Iran
and the Middle East.
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Arms races dont necessitate war they can lead to cooperation

Tertrais 2001 (Bruno, senior research fellow for strategic studies at the paris-based
Foundation pour la Recherche Strategique, was special assistant to the director of
strategic affairs at the French Ministry of Defense, Do arms races matter? The
Washington Quarterly, 24.4)
Do arms races cause wars? This classic international relations question is almost a
century old. After World War I, scholars and politicians were tempted to label the
extraordinary military buildup that developed between 1870 and 1914 as a major cause, if
not the major cause, of the conflict. Subsequent historical studies, however, have shed
considerable doubt on this theory. 6 Moreover, arms racing may in fact have positive
aspects. NATO's 1979 decision to deploy Pershing-2 and ground-launched cruise missiles
(GLCMs) in response to the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20s and Backfire bombers,
which undoubtedly was part of an action-reaction process, made the "zero option" and the
INF Treaty possible. When competition spirals out of control, states may feel that
engaging in a dialogue to control it is in their common interest--thereby creating an
atmosphere conducive to a better understanding of the other party. In other words, to the
extent that arms races create arms control, and arms control fosters confidence-building,
then arms races ultimately can have a positive effect. Some policymakers and analysts
have posited that massive U.S. defense spending and the "Star Wars" program brought
the Soviet Union to its knees. That claim rests on shaky grounds and is heavily disputed.
7 British historian Sir Michael Howard makes a more convincing argument, suggesting
that arms racing can in fact be "almost a necessary surrogate for war." 8 [End Page 125]
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Regardless of irrationality, all leaders respond to the logic of deterrence.

Tepperman 2009 (Jonathan, formerly Deputy Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, is
Nuclear pessimistsand there are manyinsist that even if this pattern has held in the
past, its crazy to rely on it in the future, for several reasons. The first is that todays
nuclear wannabes are so completely unhinged, youd be mad to trust them with a bomb.
Take the sybaritic Kim Jong Il, whos never missed a chance to demonstrate his battiness,
or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and promised the destruction
of Israel, and who, according to some respected Middle East scholars, runs a messianic
martyrdom cult that would welcome nuclear obliteration. These regimes are the ultimate
rogues, the thinking goes and theres no deterring rogues. But are Kim and
Ahmadinejad really scarier and crazier than were Stalin and Mao? It might look that way
from Seoul or Tel Aviv, but history says otherwise. Khrushchev, remember, threatened to
bury the United States, and in 1957, Mao blithely declared that a nuclear war with
America wouldnt be so bad because even if half of mankind died . . . the whole world
would become socialist. Pyongyang and Tehran support terrorismbut so did Moscow
and Beijing. And as for seeming suicidal, Michael Desch of the University of Notre
Dame points out that Stalin and Mao are the real recordholders here: both were
responsible for the deaths of some 20 million of their own citizens. Yet when push came
to shove, their regimes balked at nuclear suicide, and so would todays international
bogeymen. For all of Ahmadinejads antics, his power is limited, and the clerical regime
has always proved rational and pragmatic when its life is on the line. Revolutionary Iran
has never started a war, has done deals with both Washington and Jerusalem, and sued
for peace in its war with Iraq (which Saddam started) once it realized it couldnt win.
North Korea, meanwhile, is a tiny, impoverished, family-run country with a history of
being invaded; its overwhelming preoccupation is survival, and every time it becomes
more belligerent it reverses itself a few months later (witness last week, when Pyongyang
told Seoul and Washington it was ready to return to the bargaining table). These countries
may be brutally oppressive, but nothing in their behavior suggests they have a death wish.
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Actor is irrelevant all radical leaders will act cautiously abroad

Waltz, 95 Emeritus Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley and Adjunct Senior
Research Scholar at Columbia University, past President of the American Political
Science Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(Kenneth N. Waltz. Peace, Stability, and Nuclear Weapons. Institute on Global
Conflict and Cooperation. August 1995. CIAO)
Second, many fear that states that are radical at home will recklessly use their nuclear
weapons in pursuit of revolutionary ends abroad. States that are radical at home,
however, may not be radical abroad. Few states have been radical in the conduct of their
foreign policy, and fewer have remained so for long. Think of the Soviet Union and the
People's Republic of China. States coexist in a competitive arena. The pressures of
competition cause them to behave in ways that make the threats they face manageable, in
ways that enable them to get along. States can remain radical in foreign policy only if
they are overwhelmingly strong--as none of the new nuclear states will be--or if their acts
fall short of damaging vital interests of other nuclear powers. States that acquire nuclear
weapons are not regarded with indifference. States that want to be freewheelers have to
stay out of the nuclear business. A nuclear Libya, for example, would have to show
caution, even in rhetoric, lest it suffer retaliation in response to someone else's
anonymous attack on a third state. That state, ignorant of who attacked, might claim that
its intelligence agents had identified Libya as the culprit and take the opportunity to
silence it by striking a heavy conventional blow. Nuclear weapons induce caution in any
state, especially in weak ones.
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Conventional war will result in attacks on power plants.

Jianguo, 1995 (Wu, former Associate Professor and Dean of the Antichemical Warfare
Academy, Nuclear Shadows on High-Tech Warfare, China Military Science, No. 4,
Winter, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/jianguo.htm)
What merits our attention is that in a high-tech conventional war, a nuclear environment
may still emerge even if nuclear weapons are not used. The more society advances, the
greater the demands for energy will be. In order to satisfy the demands for energy,
nuclear power stations were built. According to the data released by the International
Atomic Energy Agency in March 1994, at the end of 1993 there were 430 nuclear power
plants with a total installed capacity of approximately 345 million kw operating in
various places throughout the world; these accounted for more than 17 percent of the
world's gross power generation. It is predicted that by 2001, there will be 558 nuclear
power generating units with a total installed capacity of approximately 460 million kw all
worldwide, which will account for 24 percent of the world's gross power generation. The
peaceful utilization of nuclear energy is a piece of joyous news to mankind. Meanwhile,
the extensive use of nuclear energy also constitutes a latent threat to peace and the
existence of human beings. The accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that
occurred in April 1986 inflicted air pollution on 16 Russian oblasts and victimized
250,000 people. In Ukraine, 370,000 people suffered injuries in varying degrees as land
covering 40,000 square meters was polluted, and more than 2,000 residential areas were
evacuated. In future high-tech warfare, if an enemy intentionally or unintentionally
attacks nuclear power plants or other facilities using nuclear energy with high-tech
conventional weapons, the secondary nuclear radiation produced and the nuclear
environment brought about would likewise do harm. In June 1981, Israel dispatched four
aircraft to launch a sudden attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor southeast of the capital
Baghdad, dropping 16 tons of bombs in two minutes and hitting all the targets.
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Even the most irrational leaders will use nuclear weapons exclusively defensively
Preston, 2007 (Thomas, associate professor of international relations in the Department
As a result, though proliferation pessimists warn of the "irrationality" of many state
actors, it is far more likely that state actorsnot immune to concerns for their own wellbeingwould behave in a more considered, rational manner regarding resort to such
weapons. Although miscalculation and misperception will always be with us, and often
play a role in political leaders making decisions not in their best interests, the
monumental levels of destruction and the high costs (political, economic, personal)
accompanying any use of nuclear weapons would likely "focus" policy makers on the
extreme costs rather than the limited benefits of taking aggressive actions. As prospect
theory suggests, this should result in less risk-taking behavior on their part. Only outside
threats to a state's key central interests (sovereignty, regime survival, etc.), where policy
makers faced the prospect of losing everything, would the situation likely be dire enough
to take such extreme risks and engage in WMD warfare. This returns us to the notion of
"credibility of the threat" which is key for deterrence relationships. It is not only the
WMD capabilities of a state that matters, but the nature of the threat posed to their national interests that make their threats of use either believable or incredible to opponents.
For state actors, a variety of security relationshipsincluding those centered around
deterrenceare possible.
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States wont adopt early use postures

Alagappa, 2008 (Muthiah, Distinguished senior fellow at the East-West Center, The
Long Shadow, pg. 523-524
It has been argued that states with small or nascent nuclear arsenals might have strategic
incentive to use them early in a conflict to secure a military advantage in an impending
full-scale war or to prevent the crippling of their nuclear arsenals in the event of a
preventive strike. Without survivable nuclear forces, these considerations would
encourage launch-on-warning postures that could produce crisis situations and undermine
stability. Park and Lee (Chapter 9 of this volume) discuss this theme in relation to North
Korea. Although uncertain how this theoretical possibility might materialize, they posit
that North Korea's nuclear armaments will generate continuous crises and threats to peace
on the Korean peninsula. That North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons and the
American responses have generated crisis situations and may do so in the future is not the
issue. The question is whether nascent and small nuclear weapon states will adopt earlylaunch postures that produce crisis and undermine stability. There is little empirical evidence to support such a claim. In the abstract, it would be illogical for a nascent or small
nuclear power to adopt such a posture against a much superior adversary, as for
example in the standoff between North Korea and the United States. Even if North Korea
were to inflict substantial damage on the United States or its allies, it is unclear what
coercive value would accrue to it. It is almost certain, though, that it would not survive a
massive retaliatory strike by the United States. An early use posture can only be
rationalized on the basis of an irrational regime, as has been the case with North Korea.
However, if North Korea develops a partially survivable nuclear force, early use could
have sonic value; but still such use is likely to be deterred by the possibility of massive
retaliation and destruction by the more powerful adversary. Early use postures may make
more sense between powers of roughly equal capability with partially survivable nuclear
forces. However, evidence from the India-Pakistan dyad, which has a relatively longer
nuclear history, does not support this abstract possibility. Despite Pakistan's refusal to
embrace an NFU policy and its attempt to exploit the risk of escalation to nuclear war,
Islamabad has not opted for an early use posture (see Khan and Lavoy, Chapter 7 of this
volume). India, which is committed to an NFU policy, has also not adopted an early use
posture. As Devin Hagerty (1998) points out, despite the tensions between them, both
countries have taken unilateral and bilateral measures to avoid early use. Deterrence, not
early use, characterizes their nuclear postures. Evidence from Asia offers little support for
the instability arguments. On the contrary, the claim that nuclear weapons have thus far
contributed to security and stability rests on a relatively stronger empirical foundation.
Stability has also been enhanced by the further circumscription due to nuclear weapons of
the role of force in Asian international politics.
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Leaders would place survival of the regime above just irrational action
Goldberg and Khanna, 2K *Communications Director for AMGlobal Consulting.
**Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the
American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Expert on geopolitics,
global governance, and Asian and European affairs, and was most recently the Global
Governance Fellow at The Brookings Institution. He has worked at the World Economic
Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, where he specialized in scenario and risk planning, and at
the Council on Foreign Relations, where he conducted research on terrorism and conflict
resolution.
We have this peculiar notion about the irrationality of rogue states. When he was
Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin said these rogue leaders might be undeterrable. Others
contend that some states may undertake courses of action even if they know that
catastrophe may result. But who would do that? Not Saddam Hussein. Not Kim Il Sung
when he was ruler of North Korea. What is a key characteristic of all those rulers? They
are survivors, as they struggle to live in a harsh environmentboth internally, with the
constant danger of assassination, and externally, as theyre surrounded by enemies. And
they survive for decades until they are carried out in a box. Are they irrational? Their
behavior is ugly and nasty to be sure, but irrational? How could they survive? If they
were not deterrable, how would they ever have survived? They dont run the kind of risks
that would put their regime into question. Kim Il Sung wanted to pass his reign onto his
son, Kim Jong Il. They obviously love to rule, but theyve got to have a country. Theyre
not going to risk the existence of their country. For example, Saddam Hussein was
deterred during the Persian Gulf War. He did not arm the SCUD missiles with lethal
warheads and shoot them at Israel. They were nuisance attacks. Why? Because he didnt
want us to pound him more heavily than he was being pounded. The allies, led by the
United States, could have substantially destroyed that country without ever using nuclear
weapons, and he knew it. Sure he was deterred. So how can we say irrational or
undeterrable? But we do say it.
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Opposition to US strikes on North Korea proves there wont be preemptive war

Long Shadow, pg. 522
The prospect of military action to destroy nuclear weapons and facilities in East and
South Asia has declined markedly. The Soviet Union contemplated preventive military
action against China's nuclear facilities in 1969, but the United States refused to support
such action. Several years ago there was concern that India might attack Pakistan's
nuclear installations. Even if this was a serious possibility, its probability has declined
sharply. The two countries entered into an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear
facilities. This agreement held even during the crisis situations in the 1999-2002 period.
Since then, India and Pakistan have taken additional measures to prevent an accidental
outbreak or escalation of conflict. More germane to the contemporary context is the
emphasis in the U.S. 2002 Nuclear Posture Review on offensive military action against
rogue states. The United States seriously contemplated a preventive strike against North
Korea's nuclear weapon facilities during the first nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula
in 1993-94 (Perry 2006). And the George W. Bush administration threatened preventive
action against North Korea during its first term.3 However, that policy has lost traction
and has no support among states in Northeast Asia, including U.S. allies. Neighboring
countries oppose any preventive strike, fearing that it could result in a general war
that would have negative consequences for their own national security and regional
stability. Although the United States has the military capability to undertake such an
action it is unlikely to act without the support of its regional allies. The force option is
still on the table, but the approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem has
decidedly shifted to the diplomatic arena.
Proliferators value nuclear weapons too much to give them to terrorists
Tepperman, 2009 (Jonathan, formerly Deputy Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, is
Still, even if Iran or North Korea are deterrable, nuclear pessimists fear theyll give or
sell their deadly toys to terrorists, who arentfor its 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 doesnt make sense that theyd 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 dont 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 it
and would respond accordingly.
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Rogue State is a meaningless term. No state has a higher propensity for violence
than other states.
Caprioli and Trumbore, 2005 (Mary, Department of Political Science at the University
of Minnesota, and Peter F., Department of Political Science at Oakland University,
Rhetoric versus Reality: Rogue States in Interstate Conflict, Journal of Conflict
Resolution,
We sought to determine whether rogue states were more likely to become involved in
militarized interstate disputes (hypothesis 1), more likely to be the initiators of such
disputes (hypothesis 2), or more likely to use force first when such disputes turn violent
than nonrogues (hypothesis 3). For each hypothesis, two models were developed, with
the first testing the behavior of the five countries that have consistently been described as
rogues by policy makers since the early 1980sCuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North
Koreaand the second testing the behavior of all states meeting the objective rogue
criteria of state sponsorship of terrorism and/or pursuing illicit possession of weapons of
mass destruction. Taken as a whole, we find no evidence to support the idea that rogue
states as a group, either those named by policy makers or those that meet the objective
criteria for rogue status, are any different from nonrogues when it comes to
involvement in and behavior during interstate disputes. That said, however, the
results of our tests do indicate that there are differences between individual rogue states
and other international actors. Specifically, out of the five rhetorical rogues, we find that
Iraq and North Korea were both more likely to be involved in militarized interstate
disputes than other states during the period from 1980 to 2001 and that only Iraq was
more likely to use force first once involved in such disputes. None of the rogues was
more likely to be dispute initiators than nonrogue states. In sum, the results of our tests
tend to support the principal objections of critics who dismiss rogue state as a category of
analysis. But at the same time, we find that some of the assumptions made by policy
makers about the behavior of rogue states may have a basis in reality. These results6 are
discussed in more detail below. Table 2 shows the results of the models for rogue state
involvement in militarized interstate disputes. When we consider the behavior of states
meeting the objective rogue criteria, model B, we find they are no different as a group
than other international actors; they are no more or less likely to become involved in a
militarized dispute in any given year than any other state. This finding is confirmed when
we examine patterns of dispute initiation and first use of force. As shown in Table 3,
model D, states meeting the objective rogue criteria were no more likely as a group to be
the initiator when involved in a militarized interstate dispute than any other state.
Likewise, as shown in Table 4, model F, objective rogues were no more likely as a group
to use force first when interstate disputes turn violent.
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Iran wont attack Hormus it would destroy the Iranian economy

Schake 2007, Research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Bradley Professor of
International Security Studies at the US Military Academy at West Point, 2007
(Kori, Dealing with a Nuclear Iran, Hoover Institution, April/May,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/6848072.html)
Iran could also disrupt the flow of oil by closing the Straits of Hormuz or attacking Gulf
platforms or shipping. As Edward Luttwak points out, all of the offshore oil- and gasproduction platforms in the gulf, all the traffic of oil and gas tankers originating from the
jetties of the Arabian peninsula and Iraq, are within easy reach of the Iranian coast.
However, this, too, seems improbable beyond a short duration, since oil accounts for 80
percent of the Iranian economy. Attacks on gcc oil facilities are a greater likelihood, since
they would increase the value of Iranian oil, but if gcc states were not involved in or
supporting the strikes against Iran, such attacks would have long-term detrimental
consequences for Irans relations with the gcc states.
Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.
Haaretz 2008 [IAEA chief: Iran not close to developing nuclear weapons Haaretz
Service. 21/10/2008. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1030167.html]
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday that Iran
remains far from acquiring capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. In an interview
broadcast on Channel 10, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
Mohammed ElBaradei, said the Islamic Republic is still lacking the key components to
produce an atomic weapon. "They do not have even the nuclear material, the raw
unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so," ElBaradei
said. "Even if you decide to walk out tomorrow from the non-proliferation treaty and you
go into a lot of scenarios, we're still not going to see Iran tomorrow having nuclear
weapons."
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There is no evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons

Morrison 2009 [David Morrison. political officer for the Ireland Palestine Solidarity
Campaign. The elephant in the room: Israel's nuclear weapons The Electronic Intifada,
29 June 2009. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10621.shtml]
Has Iran got a nuclear weapons program, in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? Iran has repeatedly denied that it has such a program.
Furthermore, the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa on
September 2004 that "the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are
forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these
weapons" ("Iran's Statement at IAEA Emergency Meeting," Mehr News Agency, 10
August 2005) . In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of his predecessor and
founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini. That's what Iran says. As required
by the NPT, Iran's nuclear facilities are subject to inspection by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA). And, despite many years of inspection and investigation, the
IAEA has found no evidence that Iran has, or ever had, a nuclear weapons program,
though Western media consistently give the opposite impression. True, the possibility
exists that Iran has nuclear facilities for military purposes, which it hasn't declared to the
IAEA. The IAEA has found no evidence for this, but the possibility cannot be completely
ruled out. Iran's possession of uranium enrichment facilities is not in breach of the NPT,
so long as they are for civil nuclear purposes. The operation of these facilities at Natanz
is subject to rigorous IAEA scrutiny. The IAEA has testified that only low enriched
uranium suitable for a power generation reactor is being produced there and that none of
it is being diverted from the plant for other purposes, for example, to further enrich
uranium to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon. That being so, the ongoing
demands that Iran suspend these enrichment facilities is a denial of its "inalienable right"
under Article IV(1) of the NPT to engage in nuclear activities for peaceful purposes.
What is the current US intelligence assessment? A US National Intelligence Estimate, the
key judgments of which were published in December 2007, concluded that Iran halted its
nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003, and hadn't restarted its program in the
interim (see David Morrison, "Iran hasn't a nuclear weapons programme says US
intelligence," Labour and Trade Union Review, 14 December 2007). Commenting on
this, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, noted on 4 December 2007 that:
"[T]he Estimate tallies with the Agency's consistent statements over the last few years
that, although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present
nuclear activities, the Agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons
program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
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Iran halted nuclear weapon development in 2003.

CNN 2007 [U.S. report: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 CNN. Dec 3,
2007. http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/03/iran.nuclear/index.html]
Iran halted work toward a nuclear weapon under international scrutiny in 2003 and is
unlikely to be able to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb until 2010 to 2015, a
U.S. intelligence report says. A declassified summary of the latest National Intelligence
Estimate found with "high confidence" that the Islamic republic stopped an effort to
develop nuclear weapons in the fall of 2003. The estimate is less severe than a 2005
report that judged the Iranian leadership was "determined to develop nuclear weapons
despite its international obligations and international pressure." But the latest report says
Iran -- which declared its ability to produce enriched uranium for a civilian energy
program in 2006 -- could reverse that decision and eventually produce a nuclear weapon
if it wanted to do so. Enriched uranium at low concentrations can be used to fuel nuclear
power plants, but much higher concentrations are needed to yield a nuclear explosion.
"We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be
technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon is late
2009, but that this is very unlikely," the report says. A more likely time frame for that
production is between 2010 and 2015, it concludes. Iran has insisted its nuclear program
is strictly aimed at producing electricity, and the country has refused the U.N. Security
Council's demand to halt its enrichment program.
If Iran wanted nuclear weapons they could have gotten them by now
The Canberra Times, 2006 (The Phoney crisis over Iran, August 31)
Then the war ended, and work on Iranian nuclear weapons stopped too, at the latest after
UN inspectors dismantled Saddam's nuclear program in the early 1990s. We can be sure
of this because Iran would have had nuclear weapons long ago if it had wanted them
badly enough: it doesn't take over 18 years for a country with Iran's resources. The
undeclared nuclear facilities remained secret because it was embarrassing to admit that
Iran had concealed them, but no great effort went into finishing them. (In fact, President
Ahmedinejad finally opened one of them, the heavy water facility at Arak, only this
month.) But the fact that Iran hid them for so long is the only reason that anybody has for
doubting the legitimacy of its current actions, since it is quite legal for a signatory of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop the technologies and facilities for enriching
nuclear fuels for power plants.
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Iran wont proliferate it wont use nuclear material for bombs

Rohani, representative of the Supreme Leader of Iran on the Supreme National Security
Council (SNSC) and Iran's former top nuclear negotiator, 06
(Hassan,
Iran's
Nuclear
Program:
The
Way
Out
May
9.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1192435,00.html)
Iran is intent on producing nuclear fuel domestically for reasons both historic and longterm economic. The U.S. and some Europeans argue that they cannot trust Iran's
intentions. They argue that they cannot accept Iran's promise to remain committed to its
treaty obligation once it gains the capability to enrich uranium for fuel production. They
ask Iran to give up its right under the NPT, and instead accept their promise to supply it
with nuclear fuel. This is illogical and crudely self-serving: I do not trust you, even
though what you are doing is legal and can be verified to remain legal, but you must trust
me when I promise to do that which I have no obligation to do and cannot be enforced. It
is this simple and this unfair. There must be a better way out of this than to top this
travesty with threatening Iran in the Security Council with possible sanctions and perhaps
even use of force. This path can potentially cause harm and suffering at differing degrees
to all parties to the conflict.
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Nuclear weapons wont be transferred to terrorists no strategic purpose, invites

retaliation and it cannot be controlled
Posen, Professor of Political Science at MIT, 2006 (Barry, New York Times, "We Can
live with a Nuclear Iran", Feb. 27)
Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, many have been concerned
that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists. One way this could occur, it is
feared, would be for a state with a weapons program to give or sell one to a terrorist
group. Such action seems unlikely in the case of Iran, or any state, because it serves no
strategic purpose, invites retaliation, and cannot be controlled. It is perhaps the most selfdestructive thing that any nation state can do. What strategic purpose, other than pure
destruction, could such an action serve? A single nuclear weapon exploded in the United
States, or any other state, would be a truly horrible event. But it would not destroy the
existence of that state, or destroy its political power. And it would enrage that state, and
no doubt cause extraordinary efforts to discover, and punish, the source of the attack. If
the weapon is tracked back to the source, the source country will be blamed. It will be
blamed not only by the victim, but by other states, terrified by the implications of the
action. The victim surely will try to punish the supplier, and it is likely that this
punishment would involve nuclear strikes. Iran or any other nuclear weapons provider
might hope to avoid detection, but they could only hopethey could not count on it. The
characteristics of the explosion may provide some indications of the origin of the
weapon.11 Moreover, once the explosion occurs, intelligence collected and either ignored
or misunderstood prior to the event will be reviewed in light of the event, and may have
new meaning. Additionally, there are not all that many potential sources of a nuclear
weaponwherever an explosion occurs one can be sure that intelligence would quickly
focus on nuclear problem states such as North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. Indeed, these
states are so likely to end up in the spotlight for a terrorist use of a nuclear weapon, they
probably have an interest in stopping any conspiracies of this kind that they discover.
Once a weapon is supplied to the nonstate actor, the supplying state has no guarantee that
it will be used for the original agreed purpose. The nonstate actor may have promised to
attack Israel, but instead may attack France, or the United States. Alternatively, that actor
may simply be a middleman, and sell or trade the device to someone else. The risks
cannot be controlled by the supplying state.
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Only multilateral action can solve proliferation.

Richard Haass, VP and director of foreign policy studies at Brookings, and Sydney Stein
Jr., chair in intl security, the Record, September 19, 1999
The other extreme, unilateralism, likewise has little appeal. On its own, the United States
can do little to promote order. Too many of today's challenges -- protectionism,
proliferation, genocide -- cannot be solved by one nation alone, either because
cooperation is necessary to combat the problem, resources are limited, or both. The
benefits of multilateralism outweigh its tendency to constrain American means and dilute
American goals. In addition to distributing the burden of promoting order, multilateralism
can restrain the impulses of others, reduce opposition to U.S. actions, and increase the
chances of policy success.
The US cant solve problems alone cooperation is necessary
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 8, 2002
Still, even the United States can't fight a war without others' help, if only because it needs
political support and other countries' permission to base U.S. forces. "We can't go to war
unilaterally on any scale," said a senior State Department official, requesting anonymity.
Washington also needs foreign help to shut down terrorist financial networks, deny
weapons technology to adversaries, and deal with a range of challenges from AIDS and
the environment to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the official said. The United States
may be pre-eminent, "but we are not a hegemonic power," he said.
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International cooperation is necessary for effective leadership

Robert Tucker, professor emeritus of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins
University, Commentary, January 2000, p. 46
During the long period of the cold war, the justification of American power was the
defense of the independence of states from the threat posed by a hostile and expansionist
Soviet Union. The policy of containment responded by and large to the time-honored
compulsions of the balance of power. The order defended by American power was
inseparable from containment. It is the case that the identification of threats to this order
provoked periodic disputes with allies. Unilateral action taken by the principal guarantor
of containment did not go without criticisms, at times even harsh criticism. On balance,
though, disaffection was limited by the visible threat of Soviet power. The
understandings of this earlier period no longer hold. Although the United States remains
the principal guarantor of the post-cold-war order, this order, save for its economic
dimension, no longer has the compelling character that the Soviet threat gave to the
cold-war order. Our difficulties in obtaining support for more effective sanctions against
Iraq testify to this. Unless we are very lucky, a sustainable foreign policy in the years
ahead will require either increasing the means of policy or invoking the greater
cooperation of others. And since there is little reason for believing that the means of
policy will be increased, we are left to rely on the greater cooperation of others. But the
greater cooperation of others will mean that our freedom of action is narrowed. This
would already appear to be the price in Europe of greater mutuality, as the Balkan wars
have shown. In turn, European cooperation has been a necessary condition of American
domestic support. Unilateralism would forfeit this cooperation.
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Coalitions are more likely to solve than unilateral leadership

Jonathan Clarke, guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Foreign Policy, December 22, 1995
First and foremost, American foreign policy attitudes need to be reviewed. Barring the
(improbable) appropriation of increased resources, American leadership will never again
be as widely or as unquestioningly accepted as it was during the Cold War. It will,
therefore, no longer be possible to believe that policy can be independently formulated in
Washington and then dispensed to the outside world like a papal bull. Just as this
autocratic style no longer works domestically, so it will not work overseas. This
development means that, in terms of foreign policy attitudes, the United States should
place more emphasis on collegiality, teamwork, and coalition-building - in short, what
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has called "partnerships." The skills of international
"triangulation" - meaning to navigate with reference to other important points - should be
dusted off. In the domestic arena, these skills are second nature to all successful
politicians, but to date they have been neglected in foreign affairs. A simple example is
trade with Japan. The European Union (EU) shares many of the American complaints
about market access, particularly with regard to agricultural products. A greater
American disposition to build on European grievances would have strengthened the
American case. Similarly, the United States's partners among the smaller Asian members
of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum share American concerns about
predatory Japanese trade practices. They form a pool of potential support for the United
States. As it is, the United States finds itself unnecessarily isolated on this issue. It should
be noted that a willingness to regard itself as primus inter pares rather than as paramount
chief does not mean that the United States needs to abandon any core national interests.
Indeed, this more realistic attitude affords greater probability that these interests will be
protected.
Coalitions are necessary for power projection
New York Times, April 14, 2002
Such newfound friends would hardly make an honor roll of civic role models, one senior
administration official conceded. But he added: "It's not like people have been howling.
There's now an overriding first question, which is President Bush's first question: are you
with us or against us when it comes to terrorism?" What does the administration hope to
get out of these coalitions? On the battlefield, the answer is: not much. The United States,
with its vast superiority, doesn't need much help in fighting conventional wars. But it
does need bases and overflight rights in front-line states like Pakistan. And coalitions
share the burden. As America contemplates getting involved in military action elsewhere,
it is now looking to longstanding allies in Europe to take the lead in peacekeeping and
reconstructing Afghanistan. That expectation has led to some grumbling from European
members of NATO.
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Collateral Damage
1. There will be collateral damage in any kind of military conflict. This is not specific to
unilateral military action, so it is not a reason why the resolution is not true.
2. The collateral damage from a rogue state or terrorist group using nukes would be much
worse because it would target civilian populations and not military bases.
3. Focusing on collateral damage is a tool used by rogue countries to continue their
programs.
An obsession with casualty aversion also sends the message to oppressive regimes around
the globe that they need not fear accountability because those who could act will
probably fail to act because they fear taking casualties (Dunlap 30-31 January 1997).
Oppressors are often quite willing to accept high casualty numbers of their own people in
order to achieve their goals. During the Gulf war/s Saddam Hussein was counting on
Americas aversion to casualties.
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Going after Middle Eastern Countries Is Racist
1. The topic is not specific to Iran or North Korea or any specific country.
2. Turn: we can use unilateral military force against any country that attempts to acquire
nuclear weapons. This would solve their racism claims because the US in status quo
racistly targets only certain countries.
3. Its not racism to care more about dictatorships having nuclear weapons than
democracies, the statistics support this policy
One concept which advocates of nuclear disarmament have traditionally ignored is the
propensity for dictatorships to go to war with dictatorships, and for democracies and
dictatorships to clash, while fewif anyexamples exist of liberal democracies
attacking each other. This suggests that it is quite right to have fewer qualms about the
possession of deadly weapons by democracies, and yet to regard their possession by
dictatorships as wholly unacceptable. There is no comparison between the two, and it is a
constant failing of the disarmament lobby to try to ascribe values of reasonableness,
tolerance, goodwill and peaceful intent to states under the control of despots, fanatics and
dictators.
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Deterrence is Better for Future Generations
Proliferation exploits future generationsdeterrence failure is inevitable in the long

run. Rendall 2007 (Lecturer in Politics International Relations at the University of
Nottingham, Matthew, Nuclear Weapons and Intergenerational Exploitation, Security
Studies 16, no. 4 (Octoberand December 2007): 525554, Ebsco)
If this is a Faustian bargain, it is an odd one. If the nuclear optimists are right, these
weapons make the risk of war very small. We ourselves, maybe even our children and
grandchildren, are unlikely to pay any costs at all. That does not mean the bill will never
come due. Even leading nuclear optimists do not claim nuclear weapons bring the risk of
war down to zero. Many also hold that competition and war will persist.5 In the long run,
barring vast changes of a sort that most optimists consider utopian, deterrence must thus
break down. Claims that nuclear deterrence provides the United States with security and
stability6 or there is no inevitability of nuclear accident or miscalculation between the
United States, Russia, or any other nuclear power7 are true at best in the short to
medium term. Nuclear weapons may make us safer, but at the expense of our
descendants. Every generation benefits until war breaks out; every postwar generation
will pay the bill. Analysts have long recognized nuclear weapons threaten future people.8
Contemporary debates over disarmament and proliferation nearly always assume,
however, that they are good or bad for a given country in general. In fact, we can no more
assume a harmony of interests among generations than among nations. Just as the belief
that all states benefit from the international status quo muddles analysis,9 so too does the
assumption that all generations gain or lose from nuclear deterrence. To say, for example,
that nuclear disarmament could reduce U.S. security by making conventional war more
likely10 is misleading because it fails to specify which Americans. Compared with the
status quo, disarmament might well reduce present peoples security, while benefiting
those born three hundred years from now. Similarly, if Ukraine had retained its nuclear
weapons, as John Mearsheimer urged, this might have discouraged Russian attack.11 If
he is right, however, that war is endemic to international politics, it would surely have
meant losing Kiev later. Seen like that, nuclear deterrence seems a less savory bargain.
Unlike Faust, who took his sins on his own head, we are sending our descendants to hell.
This article builds a bridge between recent nuclear debates and philosophical writings on
intergenerational justice.12 Most critics of nuclear deterrence and proliferation have
argued that either that it is intrinsically wrong to target civilians or war is more likely
than we think. Here I assume that enemy civilians are fair game and show that nuclear
deterrence leads to morally rotten consequences if the nuclear optimists are right. First, I
summarize the logic of optimism and argue that, even if these weapons reduce the risk of
conflict, under realist assumptions catastrophic war remains inevitable. Next, I outline
three theories of intergenerational justicebased in social contract theory, distributive
justice, and utilitarianismand show that in each case nuclear deterrence fails the test.
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Multilateralism Is Better
1. Unilateralism is better because getting international support and military forces

together would waste too much time. Extend that timing is key and must controlled. This
means that its better to attack with just one country instead of all of them.
2. Multilateralism complicates military procedures because it requires too much
coordination among varying countries with various legal restrictions on their military
issues.
3. Theres no reason the US cannot get multilateral support for its use of unilateral
military force.
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Peaceful Options Are Better
1. Many times peaceful options dont work better. Other countries could be tricking us by
saying they want peaceful resolution while they are building up their nuclear arsenal for
an attack.
2. Peaceful options dont necessarily work because theres no reason why the US would
have credibility because it has nuclear weapons. So any rationalizing with other countries
would be undermined by the USs own stockpile.
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Cold War Proves Detterence Workds
Cold war had unique factors that made deterrence feasible/Large nukes = large
amount of power.
Basrur 2k (Rajesh, Enduring Contradictions Deterrence Theory and Draft Nuclear
Doctrine, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 35., February 26th, 2000, JSTOR.)
Assured Destruction, the basis of American and Soviet/Russian nuclear strategy, has its
roots partly in the enormous economic resources available to countries of continental
proportions. It was also shaped by the magnitude of the Second World War, in which
Germany and Japan withstood immense damage before surrendering. Consequently, both
the US and the Soviet Union based their deterrence doctrines on large forces with great
destructive capacity. Today, with no enemies to speak of, these forces are retained as a
hedge against the unknown. But their still large size reflects the symbolic significance (to
their possessors) of their arsenals as attributes of a distinctive status on the stage of world
politics.
Alt cause for cold war peace/almost nuke war a bunch of times.
Hanson 02 (Marianne, Nuclear Weapons as obstacles to International Security,
International Relations, Sage, 2002.)
Moreover, it is by no means accepted universally that it was nuclear weapons and their
deterrent qualities that kept the peace between the Great Powers after 1945. The
avoidance of war between those states can be attributed to a number of factors other than
deterrence. It is salutary also to remember that there are numerous documented instances
during the Cold War period which record a perilously close descent into a nuclear
exchange because of miscalculation or misperception. There is no guarantee that we will
be as lucky in preventing accidental war in the future. To use the Cold War experience to
argue a usefulness of nuclear weapons at once attributes too much to their deterrent
qualities and pays not enough attention to the dangers attendant on their very existence
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Con Blocks
A/T
Arms Race / Rapid Prolif
Arms Race Arms races wont happen because nuclear weapons have lasting
effectiveness.
Parameters,
Spring,
spulak.htm)
Another way in which nuclear deterrence is robust is that nuclear weapons are less
sensitive to technical advances by potential enemies, possibly reducing pressure for arms
races. Advances in nuclear weapons by a potential adversary do not necessarily decrease
the effectiveness of our own. Advances in defenses, such as a ballistic missile defense or
improved submarine detection, may require adjustments to our deterrent forces, but since
nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, their overall effectiveness does not
depend on easily negated incremental advantages.
Proliferation is slow: countries really dont want nuclear weapons.
Science Peace, Stability, and Nuclear Weapons. Institute on Global Conflict and
Cooperation. August)
Nuclear weapons continue to spread ever so slowly, and the world seems to fare better as
they do so. Yet the rapid spread--that is, the proliferation--of nuclear weapons remains a
frightening prospect; the mind boggles at the thought of all or most countries having
them. Whatever the policies of the United States and other countries may be, that
prospect is hardly even a distant one. Many more countries can make nuclear weapons
than do. One can believe that American opposition to nuclear arming stays the deluge
only by overlooking the complications of international life. Any state has to examine
many conditions before deciding whether or not to develop nuclear weapons. Our
opposition is only one factor and is not likely to dissuade a determined state from seeking
the weapons. Many states feel fairly secure living with their neighbors.
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Escalation
Proliferation prevents war and escalation if war occurs. The risks are too high
regardless of both the actor and the arsenal size.
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. [E]ven a
modest nuclear arsenal should have some existential deterrent effect on regional enemies,
precisely because decapitation is so difficult.
Nuclear weapons empirically make wars less violent.
Murdock 2008 (Clark A., senior adviser in the CSIS international security program, The
Department of Defense and the nuclear mission in the 21st century, Center for Strategic
and International Studies, March, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/080305-murdocknuclearmission.pdf)
From a systemic perspective, nuclear deterrence suppressed the level of violence
associated with major power competition: wartime fatalities consumed 2 percent of the
worlds population in the 1600s and 1700s, about 1 percent in the 1800s, about 1.5
percent in World War I and 2.5 percent in World War II, but about one-tenth during the
Cold. Noted Cold War deterrent theorist and Nobel economics laureate Thomas Schelling
told a recent World Economic Forum retreat (according to Thomas Barnett, the
Pentagons favorite futurist) that (1) no state that has developed nuclear weapons has ever
been attacked by another state and (2) no state armed with nuclear weapons has ever
attacked another state similarly armed.18 With his characteristic flair, Barnett observes
that the United States and the Soviet Union learned that nuclear weapons are for having
and not using. Due to the equalizing threats of mutually assured destruction, these
devices cannot win wars but only prevent them. The same logic has heldall these
decadesfor powers as diverse as the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan
and Israel, with North Korea stepping up to the plate and Iran on deck.
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Launch On Warring
1. There is no evidence that states that are developing nuclear weapons will adopt a
launch on warning posture for nuclear weapons.
2. This is empirically disproven by Israeli conflicts: countries that have developed
nuclear weapons have not used them in military in the past.
3. States wont adopt early use postures
Long Shadow, pg. 523-524
The question is whether nascent and small nuclear weapon states will adopt early-launch
postures that produce crisis and undermine stability. There is little empirical evidence to
support such a claim. In the abstract, it would be illogical for a nascent or small nuclear
power to adopt such a posture against a much superior adversary, as for example in the
standoff between North Korea and the United States. Even if North Korea were to inflict
substantial damage on the United States or its allies, it is unclear what coercive value
would accrue to it. It is almost certain, though, that it would not survive a massive
retaliatory strike by the United States. An early use posture can only be rationalized on
the basis of an irrational regime, as has been the case with North Korea. However, if
North Korea develops a partially survivable nuclear force, early use could have sonic
value; but still such use is likely to be deterred by the possibility of massive retaliation
and destruction by the more powerful adversary. Early use postures may make more
sense between powers of roughly equal capability with partially survivable nuclear
forces. However, evidence from the India-Pakistan dyad, which has a relatively longer
nuclear history, does not support this abstract possibility. Despite Pakistan's refusal to
embrace an NFU policy and its attempt to exploit the risk of escalation to nuclear war,
Islamabad has not opted for an early use posture (see Khan and Lavoy, Chapter 7 of this
volume). India, which is committed to an NFU policy, has also not adopted an early use
posture. As Devin Hagerty (1998) points out, despite the tensions between them, both
countries have taken unilateral and bilateral measures to avoid early use. Deterrence, not
early use, characterizes their nuclear postures. Evidence from Asia offers little support for
the instability arguments. On the contrary, the claim that nuclear weapons have thus far
contributed to security and stability rests on a relatively stronger empirical foundation.
Stability has also been enhanced by the further circumscription due to nuclear weapons of
the role of force in Asian international politics.
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Nuclear Terrorism
Proliferators value nuclear weapons too much to give them to terrorists

Tepperman, 2009 (Jonathan, formerly Deputy Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, is
Still, even if Iran or North Korea are deterrable, nuclear pessimists fear theyll give or
sell their deadly toys to terrorists, who arentfor its 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 doesnt make sense that theyd 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 dont 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 it
and would respond accordingly.
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Nuclear Terrorism
Nuclear weapons wont be transferred to terrorists no strategic purpose, invites

retaliation and it cannot be controlled
Posen, Professor of Political Science at MIT, 2006 (Barry, New York Times, "We Can
live with a Nuclear Iran", Feb. 27)
Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, many have been concerned
that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists. One way this could occur, it is
feared, would be for a state with a weapons program to give or sell one to a terrorist
group. Such action seems unlikely in the case of Iran, or any state, because it serves no
strategic purpose, invites retaliation, and cannot be controlled. It is perhaps the most selfdestructive thing that any nation state can do. What strategic purpose, other than pure
destruction, could such an action serve? A single nuclear weapon exploded in the United
States, or any other state, would be a truly horrible event. But it would not destroy the
existence of that state, or destroy its political power. And it would enrage that state, and
no doubt cause extraordinary efforts to discover, and punish, the source of the attack. If
the weapon is tracked back to the source, the source country will be blamed. It will be
blamed not only by the victim, but by other states, terrified by the implications of the
action. The victim surely will try to punish the supplier, and it is likely that this
punishment would involve nuclear strikes. Iran or any other nuclear weapons provider
might hope to avoid detection, but they could only hopethey could not count on it. The
characteristics of the explosion may provide some indications of the origin of the
weapon.11 Moreover, once the explosion occurs, intelligence collected and either ignored
or misunderstood prior to the event will be reviewed in light of the event, and may have
new meaning. Additionally, there are not all that many potential sources of a nuclear
weaponwherever an explosion occurs one can be sure that intelligence would quickly
focus on nuclear problem states such as North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. Indeed, these
states are so likely to end up in the spotlight for a terrorist use of a nuclear weapon, they
probably have an interest in stopping any conspiracies of this kind that they discover.
Once a weapon is supplied to the nonstate actor, the supplying state has no guarantee that
it will be used for the original agreed purpose. The nonstate actor may have promised to
attack Israel, but instead may attack France, or the United States. Alternatively, that actor
may simply be a middleman, and sell or trade the device to someone else. The risks
cannot be controlled by the supplying state.
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Rogue States
1. Not all states that develop nuclear weapons are rogue nations. If that was true then
the US would be a rogue nation too.
2. Rogue State is a meaningless term. No state has a higher propensity for violence
than other states. Caprioli and Trumbore, 2005 (Mary, Department of Political
Science at the University of Minnesota, and Peter F., Department of Political Science at
Oakland University, Rhetoric versus Reality: Rogue States in Interstate Conflict,
Journal of Conflict Resolution,
We sought to determine whether rogue states were more likely to become involved in
militarized interstate disputes (hypothesis 1), more likely to be the initiators of such
disputes (hypothesis 2), or more likely to use force first when such disputes turn violent
than nonrogues (hypothesis 3). For each hypothesis, two models were developed, with
the first testing the behavior of the five countries that have consistently been described as
rogues by policy makers since the early 1980sCuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North
Koreaand the second testing the behavior of all states meeting the objective rogue
criteria of state sponsorship of terrorism and/or pursuing illicit possession of weapons of
mass destruction. Taken as a whole, we find no evidence to support the idea that rogue
states as a group, either those named by policy makers or those that meet the objective
criteria for rogue status, are any different from nonrogues when it comes to involvement
in and behavior during interstate disputes. That said, however, the results of our tests do
indicate that there are differences between individual rogue states and other international
actors. Specifically, out of the five rhetorical rogues, we find that Iraq and North Korea
were both more likely to be involved in militarized interstate disputes than other states
during the period from 1980 to 2001 and that only Iraq was more likely to use force first
once involved in such disputes. None of the rogues was more likely to be dispute
initiators than nonrogue states. In sum, the results of our tests tend to support the
principal objections of critics who dismiss rogue state as a category of analysis. But at the
same time, we find that some of the assumptions made by policy makers about the
behavior of rogue states may have a basis in reality. These results6 are discussed in more
detail below. Table 2 shows the results of the models for rogue state involvement in
militarized interstate disputes. When we consider the behavior of states meeting the
objective rogue criteria, model B, we find they are no different as a group than other
international actors; they are no more or less likely to become involved in a militarized
dispute in any given year than any other state. This finding is confirmed when we
examine patterns of dispute initiation and first use of force. As shown in Table 3, model
D, states meeting the objective rogue criteria were no more likely as a group to be the
initiator when involved in a militarized interstate dispute than any other state. Likewise,
as shown in Table 4, model F, objective rogues were no more likely as a group to use
force first when interstate disputes turn violent.
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Iran
Iran wont attack Hormus it would destroy the Iranian economy

Schake 2007, Research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Bradley Professor of
International Security Studies at the US Military Academy at West Point, 2007
(Kori, Dealing with a Nuclear Iran, Hoover Institution, April/May,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/6848072.html)
Iran could also disrupt the flow of oil by closing the Straits of Hormuz or attacking Gulf
platforms or shipping. As Edward Luttwak points out, all of the offshore oil- and gasproduction platforms in the gulf, all the traffic of oil and gas tankers originating from the
jetties of the Arabian peninsula and Iraq, are within easy reach of the Iranian coast.
However, this, too, seems improbable beyond a short duration, since oil accounts for 80
percent of the Iranian economy. Attacks on gcc oil facilities are a greater likelihood, since
they would increase the value of Iranian oil, but if gcc states were not involved in or
supporting the strikes against Iran, such attacks would have long-term detrimental
consequences for Irans relations with the gcc states.
Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.
Haaretz 2008 [IAEA chief: Iran not close to developing nuclear weapons Haaretz
Service. 21/10/2008. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1030167.html]
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday that Iran
remains far from acquiring capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. In an interview
broadcast on Channel 10, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
Mohammed ElBaradei, said the Islamic Republic is still lacking the key components to
produce an atomic weapon. "They do not have even the nuclear material, the raw
unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they decide to do so," ElBaradei
said. "Even if you decide to walk out tomorrow from the non-proliferation treaty and you
go into a lot of scenarios, we're still not going to see Iran tomorrow having nuclear
weapons."
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PRO CASE #1
PREFLOW
First, North Korea is

building a nuclear weapons
program. Kuhner, president
of the Edmund Burke
Institute, a Washington
think tank, writes in 2009
Second, a nuclear North
Korea would result in
nuclear war. The New York
Times 2013
Third, US military
intervention would be
effective in stopping North
Korean proliferation. Dr
John Janzekovic writes in
2004
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PRO CASE #2
PREFLOW
First, Iran is developing
nuclear weapons.
Jerusalem Post 2013
Second, a nuclear war
between Iran and its most
likely targetIsrael
would be devastating; it
would result in 20 million
deaths. Fox News 2007
Third, US military
effective in stopping
Iranian proliferation. Dr
John Janzekovic writes in
2004
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PRO CASE #3 PREFLOW

First, preventing nuclear
proliferation prevents
nuclear terrorism. Harold
Brown writes for the
Washington Quartler in
2007
Second, nuclear terrorism
would result in extinction.
Dr. Jermoe Corse wrote in a
book called the Atomic Iran,
in 2005
Third, US military
effective in stopping Iranian
proliferation. Dr John
Janzekovic writes in 2004
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PRO CASE #4
PREFLOW
Crazy Util Policy Case

Framework: Under the theory
of utilitarianism, you should
maximize the greatest good for
the greatest number of people.
The converse is also true,
minimizing harm for the
greatest number of people. For
example, if you had the option
of either saving one persons
life or saving two peoples lives,
you should save two peoples
lives.
Dr. Rakowski 1993
First, the human population is
increasing day by day. United
Nations Population Fund
Second, human extinction is
inevitable in the future. This
means that the longer we
delay the inevitable the more
people will be harmed. The
Atlantic 2012
Third, US use of unilateral
military force to try to stop
nuclear proliferation would
result in extinction now.
A. Anti nuclear proliferation
efforts results in the
development and use of
bioweapons. Zilinskas 2000
B. Biological weapons result in
extinction. Steinbruner
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CON CASE #1 PREFLOW

First, permitting nuclear
war is the ultimate
immorality. Nye 1988
Nuclear deterrence is
necessary. Anything else
allows atrocities worse than
the threats of nuclear use.
Lewis 2006
Third, nuclear possession
deters wars because it
increases the likelihood of
cooperation. Spulak 97
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CON CASE #2
PREFLOW
First, US unilateralism is
unsustainable and will cause
nations to become hostile to
the US. Hass 1999
Second, The world is
becoming more multipolar.
The U.S. needs to fall in line.
Hass 1999
Third, Multilateralism solves
for other countries
aggression towards the US.
Hass 1999
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CON CASE #3
PREFLOW
First, Unilateralism erodes

soft power, which is key to
leadership. Greenway 2002
Second, unilateralism hurts
US soft power while
multilateralism rebuilds it.
Nye 2003
Third, soft power prevents
international
conflict,
whereas soft power can
preserve a legitimate U.S.
Leadership. Borchert 2002
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CON CASE #4
PREFLOW
A. Iranian nuclearization
doesnt cause war and
prevents Israeli strikes.
Morrison 2009
B. The impact is global

nuclear war. Ivashov 2007
144

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Finally, nuclear proliferation is another huge subtopic. Nuclear proliferation

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The PFD File

Source: American Heritage Dictionary 2013

of, having, affecting, or occurring on only one side

Source: Collins English Dictionary 2013

done or decided by one country, group, or person, often without

Source: MacMillan Dictionary 2013

done or undertaken by one person or party

Source: Merriam Websters Online Dictionary 2013

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Of, relating to, or characteristic of members of the armed forces: a

Source: American Heritage Dictionary 2013

Source: Collins English Dictionary 2013

Source: MacMillan Dictionary 2013

of or relating to soldiers, arms, or war

Source: Merriam Websters Online Dictionary 2013

Power made operative against resistance; exertion: use force in driving a

Source: American Heritage Dictionary 2013

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exertion or the use of exertion against a person or thing that resists;

Source: Collins English Dictionary 2013

physical strength, or violence

Source: MacMillan Dictionary 2013

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having a good reason for something

Source: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

To keep from happening: took steps to prevent the strike

Source: American Heritage Dictionary 2013

tr to keep from happening, esp by taking precautionary action

Source: Collins English Dictionary 2013

to deprive of power or hope of acting or succeeding

The Forensics Files

The PFD File

Source: Merriam Websters Dictionary 2013

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(Jeffrey T., June 6, 2009, Washington Times, Another Korean War?,

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Third, US military intervention would be effective in stopping North Korean

The Forensics Files

The PFD File

The Forensics Files

The PFD File

Third, US military intervention would be effective in stopping Iranian proliferation.

The Forensics Files

The PFD File

The Forensics Files

The PFD File

Third, US military intervention would be effective in stopping Iranian proliferation.