LD Zou Files - Nuclear Weapons

Z-LD Nuclear Weapons
DB8 Zone, LLC September/October 2010
QUALITY RESEARCH FOR COMPETENT DEBATE
FROM THE PRODUCERS OF THE ZOU FILES
Resolved: States ought not possess nuclear weapons.
September/Ooctober 2010
Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC

http://www.db8zone.com
TOPIC BRIEF
If your childhood was anything like mine, you grew up hearing that the world
would be a better place if there were no violence in the world. Sesame Street
taught me this, and so did my mother, so for a time it seemed as gospel to my ears.
Then I realized that the world does not consist solely of sunshine and daisies. It is
for this reason that I am utterly disappointed in your first Lincoln-Douglas topic
for the 2010-2011 school year.
Resolved: States ought not possess nuclear weapons.
Other topics considered include: people ought not possess guns; people with
diabetes ought not possess cake; old people ought not possess twitter accounts;
Glenn Beck ought not possess a cable news show; and Justin Bieber ought not
possess a recording studio. The world isn’t perfect.
What exactly is this resolution trying to get us to debate? That depends on
definition, of course, and we’ll discuss the specifics later. But are we supposed to
deal with what ought to happen in an ideal world? Well, sure – I’ll affirm.
Assuming that we could magically rid the world of every nuclear warhead, a world
Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC 2

with no nuclear weapons would be fine, I guess. Mutually Assured Destruction is
clearly working, but it’s hard to see it as comparatively advantageous to an utter
lack of nuclear weapons altogether.
Or are we debating this in the real world? Because in the real world, we actually
had a long history of not having nuclear weapons – pretty much every year up
until 1945, actually. And what did we do with this magical place? We invented
nuclear weapons. The guy who originally got the ball rolling on atomic warfare,
Adolf Hitler, did so out of a desire to conquer Europe. The nation that actually
created the working prototype, the United States, was spurred into action out of
fear that Hitler would actually succeed.
The point is that the real world is a dangerous and confusing place, with extremist
madmen trying to create weapons of mass destruction, and a moderate democratic
government actually using two of them. In such an environment, why would a
state not possess nuclear weapons, if only for their own protection?
Come on, National Forensics League (and coaches who voted for this topic). This
is a useless topic, and it’s heavily biased toward the negative. But worse, it’s
cliché. I could say that I expected better from you, but we all know that would be
a lie.

We have no better alternative, so let’s start with a background of nuclear
weaponry. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a diverse group of scientists had
revolutionized the field of physics with a new understanding of atoms. Albert
Einstein’s theories provided a mathematical basis for the notion that there was
incredible power available in matter. Uranium was discovered to be a particularly
radioactive element by Pierre and Maria Curie, and it quickly became obvious that
this could be a source of nuclear fuel. John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton
successfully split the atom in 1932, and Leó Szilárd patented the idea of a nuclear
weapon shortly thereafter.
The next ten years were a period of intense discovery in the field of nuclear
fission. Scientists in Europe and the United States quickly discovered that stable
elements could be bombarded with alpha particles to induce radioactivity, and
similar results were seen by bombarding uranium with neutrons. Nuclear fission
was first discovered by a pair of German physicists in 1938, and the results were
confirmed in 1939.
These geniuses were not stupid, and they realized early on the potential for the
weaponization of fission. When World War II began to heat up, physicists on both
sides of the conflict stopped publishing the results of their experiments, due to fear
of the other side gaining knowledge to which they would otherwise not have had
access. The Allies were concerned that the Germans were developing a nuclear
weapon themselves, which was later revealed to be a justified fear, if incorrect in
timeframe. The British originally were at the forefront of the Allies’ atomic
energy research, but brought America into the effort when it became apparent that
their industrial capacity would be essential for the weapon’s development.
Thus, the Manhattan Project was formed, under the direction of Robert
Oppenheimer. The US and Britain coordinated information and resources on this
project, without notifying the Soviet Union, their ostensible ally in the war effort.
Exiles from all over Europe participated in the project, and by July 16th, 1945, a
successful test was conducted under the authority of President Truman. On
August 6th, the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, we
did it again at Nagasaki, effectively bringing World War II to a close.
It has been suggested by many historians that the US was less concerned about the
quick and unconditional surrender of Japan, than with impressing the Soviet Union
with a display of raw power. This position has a certain amount of merit. The US
was, at that point, in no real danger of losing the war. Japan could likely have
been forced to surrender through continued firebombings, an outright invasion, or
both. But Truman, Churchill and others were very concerned about the Soviet
influence in the postwar world. In fact, Truman had already revealed to the
Soviets that the US possessed a “powerful new weapon,” and tried to use it as
leverage in negotiations at Potsdam. What Truman did not know at the time was
that the Soviet Union had several well-placed spies in the Manhattan Project, and
was very aware of the capabilities of the weapon long before Truman mentioned
it. Thanks in large part to the information passed by these spies to the USSR, and
also to the resources freed up by the end of the war, the Soviets had a nuclear
weapon by 1949.
Thus began the Cold War, the arms race, and the multi-decade experiment with
Mutually Assured Destruction about which we grew up hearing in school. If the
first phase of the arms race came with the USSR developing its own atomic bomb
in 1949, then the second phase would be America’s development of a hydrogen
fusion bomb, thousands of times more destructive than those dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many scientists in the United States originally were
opposed to the creation of such a weapon, alleging that its massive destructive
power could only be used against entire populations of civilians, never tactically.
They saw it as a tool for genocide. (Oppenheimer was opposed to the idea for a
more practical reason: he could find no target in the world large enough to justify
the creation of such a huge bomb.) Eventually, Truman decided that he needed a
response to the Soviet’s challenge to our nuclear monopoly, and we tested the first
hydrogen bomb in 1952. The USSR responded with the development of its own
hydrogen bomb in 1953.

The US and the USSR continued to develop bigger bombs, and better means of
delivery. The invention of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) meant
that with a push of a button, either nation’s nuclear arsenal could be fired at the
other without a need for bombers as a delivery system. The sheer number of
bombs also skyrocketed. It was estimated that between the two of them, the US
and USSR could have destroyed all life on Earth’s surface seven times over.
Nobody has yet arrived at a satisfactory explanation for why there was or would
ever be a need to destroy all life on Earth’s surface seven times over, but it didn’t
seem to matter. The point was to have more than the other guy.
In the meantime, a number of other nations successfully joined the nuclear club.
First was Great Britain, which had sort of been given the cold shoulder by the US
after Churchill left office. They became a nuclear power in 1952. France took
longer, but successfully developed its own nuclear warheads by 1960. China was
next in 1964, followed by India in 1974, Pakistan by 1998, and North Korea by
2006 at the latest. Israel is strongly believed to possess several hundred nuclear
warheads, but as they will neither confirm nor deny their existence, there is a lack
of reliable data. A handful of other nations are in the process of developing
nuclear weapons, including Brazil, Sweden, Argentina and (perhaps) Iran.
Today, the world lives under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. The US
and Soviet Union very nearly did reach the point of nuclear war in 1962, during
the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it was thankfully averted. The US could destroy any
country on Earth in a very short amount of time, and the US itself could be
destroyed, albeit only by a first strike from Russia. Yes, nuclear weapons are very
dangerous. They have the capacity to end life on Earth as we know it. So why
haven’t they?
The answer seems to lie in the basic rationality of human beings. Any government
that takes an action will likely pause to consider the consequences of that action.
The consequences of a nuclear strike against another nuclear power would be dire
indeed. If Pakistan tried to use a nuclear warhead against India, India would
respond in kind. The loss of human life would easily be in the millions, and
neither country would be better off in any sense. And many countries which don’t
have nuclear weapons have allies who do. If North Korea were to use a nuclear
weapon against, say, Japan, they could be assured of the swift and utter destruction
of Hanoi by nuclear or other ICBM’s from the United States. This is the MAD
concept, which we’ve already discussed briefly. In short, there is no good,
rational reason for any nuclear power to initiate a nuclear war – and any nuclear
strike would likely do just that.
There is a second reason, and a more modern one, why nuclear war might never
happen. In part, it is an extension of the Oppenheimer critique that there are no
real-world targets large enough for the reasonable use of a hydrogen fusion bomb.
In modern warfare, destroying cities is rarely an objective. The use of any nuclear
weapon, therefore, would seem to be unnecessary in any sense. While the US
does possess “tactical” nuclear weapons, which are designed for more targeted
uses (such as submarine warfare) and have much smaller blast radii, these nukes
would seem to be no different in their destructive capabilities than many ordinary
bombs – the only difference lies in the technology used to create the explosion,
rarely the explosion itself.
Furthermore, the US and many other nations now possess non-nuclear bombs that
far exceed the strength of those deployed at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Every few
years, someone will test a newer and bigger non-nuclear weapon. The US used at
least two such bombs, called “daisy-cutters,” in our 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
They had the power of atomic bombs, but they were otherwise conventional
explosions. As these weapons aren’t banned by international law, but are just as
destructive as many nuclear weapons in our arsenal, they are a logical choice for
countries looking to cause a giant explosion in an enemy’s territory.
The Cold War is clearly over. We have nuclear weapons that could target
something as small as a submarine, and we have conventional bombs that are now
capable of obliterating entire cities. Our faith in MAD is such that many political
scientists are convinced that total nuclear war between two states will never occur.

In this post-Cold War world, the challenge of nuclear power is very different –
namely, how to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.
The black market for nuclear secrets, fuel and expertise is small, but total
eradication is unlikely to ever occur. We’ll discuss this market first on the supply
side, and then on the demand side. The biggest potential supply of nuclear
technology, expertise and parts is indubitably Russia. When the USSR collapsed,
there were a number of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Socialist Republics
of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The terms of a series of international
agreements dictated that Russia, and Russia alone, was to be the heir of the Soviet
stockpile of weaponry, which numbered close to 40,000 warheads at one point in
time.
Here’s the rub: when the transfer of all the nuclear weaponry was finally
concluded, and all Soviet missiles were safely in the hands of the Russians, we
discovered that some of them weren’t. They also weren’t in the hands of Belarus,
Kazakhstan, or the Ukraine. In fact, nobody knows the current location of
approximately 250 Soviet nuclear missiles, although they seem to have gone
missing from the Ukrainian stockpile. Reports from Russia have also indicated
that perhaps 100 of these nuclear devices are “suitcase-sized.” Regardless of the
size of the devices in question, this is a huge problem, as one nuclear weapon
could potentially kill millions of civilians.

As for the remaining 3000-odd weapons retained by the Soviets, it is less than
certain that they are well-guarded. Certainly, there are safety protocols in place.
But let’s posit a not-impossible scenario: a Russian named Dmitri is one of two
guards on the night shift at an ageing missile storage site (yes, they ordinarily do
have just the two guards on duty at once). He makes the equivalent of $22,500 a
year, and has a wife and children. One day, he is approached by a representative
of al-Qaeda, who offers him $10 million to deactivate a security door at the
storage facility for him, at a specific date and time. Knowing that the only other
guard at the facility regularly consumes a fifth of vodka while on duty, Dmitri
accepts the offer, thinking that he could probably avoid getting caught. He can,
and he does. Al-Qaeda now has a nuclear missile, Dmitri lives out the rest of his
life comfortably, and Mother Russia never notices a thing. The end.
That story is essentially the greatest fear of US policymakers with respect to the
Soviet nuclear arsenal. It could happen, and for all we know it might have
happened already. These are the things that keep Special Agent Jack Bauer up at
night.
Continuing with the supply side of nuclear supplies and secrets, we come to Iran
and North Korea. These two nations are in starkly different positions, as North
Korea has at least one working nuclear weapon and Iran probably does not. North
Korea’s possession of a nuke underscores an utter failure on the part of China to
keep their house in order, but that’s a story for another month. Here’s where the
two are similar: their governments have both likely purchased nuclear secrets,
parts and fuel from Russia; and neither government can be trusted to refrain from
selling these secrets, parts and fuel to terrorist organizations.
The laws of mutually assured destruction stipulate that initiating a nuclear war
would be suicide for any nation-state. But those laws don’t govern the interaction
of governments with terrorist organizations, which ordinarily lack a city for the
United States to nuke. While I believe that, at times, Barack Obama has probably
wanted to nuke all Pashtun territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I do not believe
for a second that he would actually do so, merely to exterminate a few hundred
terrorists – even if one of them is Osama bin Laden (remember him?). Perhaps a
more prescient question is how Obama, or any world leader, would respond to
actionable intelligence confirming that Iran or North Korea had sold a nuclear
weapon (or enriched uranium, or even expertise) to a terrorist organization. A
good leader must be prepared to use nuclear force in order for it to be an effective
deterrent. But responding to a nuclear strike in kind is one thing; responding to a
nuclear sale by launching ICBMs is very much another. Would we nuke North
Korea for selling al-Qaeda a nuclear weapon? I seriously doubt it. This makes
our vaunted “second strike” capability somewhat obsolete, as would any similar

lack of a viable target to nuke. Clearly, keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands
of terrorists is the greatest post-Cold War nuclear challenge.
The international community has engaged in many efforts to reduce the number of
nuclear weapons, with varying degrees of success. Most success in the reduction
of overall numbers of nuclear warheads has been achieved through bilateral
agreements between the US and Russia, or the multilateral, 189-signatory Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT). The NPT is probably the most
effective measurement against the spread of nuclear weapons, although three non-
signatories (India, Pakistan and North Korea) are known to possess nuclear
warheads, with a fourth (Israel) strongly suspected of having them.
The NPT has three main “pillars” to it, much like Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
The first is non-proliferation. Only five signatories to the treaty – the US, Great
Britain, France, Russia and China – are recognized as legitimate nuclear powers
(these same five countries, interestingly enough, are also the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council). These nuclear powers are prohibited by
the NPT from spreading any nuclear weapons or weapons technology/secrets to
any non-nuclear power. These states also agree to accept the oversight of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which governs the spread of
peaceful nuclear technology.

The second pillar of the NPT is disarmament. There are two major interpretations
of this pillar, one which is held by the signatories of the NPT and another which is
held by many non-signatories. The signatories hold that they are obligated by the
terms of the treaty to negotiate in good faith toward their eventual total nuclear
disarmament, but lack any specific obligation to disarm at any point in time. The
non-signatories hold that the language of the treaty is much more binding; by this
interpretation, the nuclear powers would be required to disarm. Their continued
failure to do so would constitute a breach of the treaty, if one were to interpret it in
this manner.
The third pillar is peaceful nuclear power usage, which will not be discussed here.
So now we move to the resolution at hand: states ought not possess nuclear
weapons. If brevity were the only soul of wit, this resolution would be fairly
hysterical. Unfortunately, the Bard never debated.
The definition of “states” is unlikely to present a huge problem in the round. Yes,
there will be the odd team that will argue on the affirmative that Vermont ought
not possess nuclear weapons, but this is clearly and defensibly outside of the scope
of the resolution. “States” refers to autonomous political units, or any politically
organized group of people under one single government.

But this is a fine time to note that the resolution is conspicuously silent on the role
of non-states in the possession of nuclear warheads. We already have a certain
amount of intelligence to suggest that private citizens have in the past obtained
nuclear weapons – a Russian defector once alleged that he knew of a businessman
in Russia who kept a nuclear weapon at his vacation home, just in case. Few
people could afford a nuclear weapon, but there is no doubt that such a bomb
could be used as incredible leverage in a variety of political situations. We also
have intelligence to suggest that al-Qaeda has made real attempts to secure a
nuclear weapon, something which is undesirable to say the least.
The reason the resolution ignores the role of non-states is pretty simple: as we’ve
already discussed, nuclear weapons are only useful tools against large urban areas.
As a private businessman presents an incredibly small target, and terrorist
organizations are notoriously hard to find, nuclear weapons would be far from the
most effective deterrent, or retaliatory technique.
No, the most important use for nuclear weapons in the 21st century would appear
to come from rogue states. For all that we love MAD, there remains the
possibility that Kim Jung-Il is actually a crazy person. He cannot be trusted not to
use nuclear weapons against South Korea, Japan, or any other country that his
bombs can reach.

We can make all the claims we want about states not having nuclear weapons, but
this resolution doesn’t exactly have an enforcement mechanism. Depending on
your definition of “ought” (which, believe me, we’ll get to later) the resolution is
either a truth statement or a recommendation for what states should do. But in
either case, it must be acknowledged that rogue states are not, in practice, the same
thing as members of the international community. They can not be trusted, and
they will probably always exist.
So perhaps states legitimately do have a use for a nuclear arsenal, in the same
sense that law-abiding citizens have a legitimate use for guns. The international
community is essentially a lawless place, as there is no true international
government, and every state is responsible for the welfare of its people and its
people alone. The resolution treats states as a homogenous group; in reality, the
states on this planet constitute a diverse and at times oppositional group of actors.
Any single state would be irresponsible and foolish not to have nuclear weapons
on hand, just in case another state decided to develop one all of a sudden and make
a power play.
The sentence’s predicate is one that experienced debaters will know well, and
probably hate also. This is because it begins with the auxiliary verb “ought.”
Keep in mind when discussing this verb, as well as “possess,” that the word “not”
is sandwiched in there, thus negating the predicate.

“Ought” can have several different meanings. The most colloquial usage, of
course, is to use it interchangeably with the word “should.” In this sense, ought
would mean simple desirability, for whatever reason. If I ought to go to the store,
it is desirable that I go there – the desirability could stem from a desire to buy a
loaf of bread, or possibly from a need for apples. The root cause doesn’t alter the
meaning of the word at all.
Let’s reason this one out. If states ought/should not possess nuclear weapons, then
it is desirable that states not possess nuclear weapons. But to say categorically
that “states” ought/should not have nuclear weapons is nonsensical – that doesn’t
mean that it’s funny, it means that it literally makes no sense. “States” is plural.
The states on planet Earth are not one sole actor, but many. And the actions of
any one of those actors will inherently depend on what the rest of the world does.
If Russia has nuclear weapons, then the US ought/should have them. If Great
Britain has nuclear weapons, then China ought/should have them. So if the
affirmative tries argue that the international community ought/should not have
nuclear weapons, the negative can retort that the statement doesn’t even make
sense given the structure of the international community.
But there is yet another reason why it would be foolish for the affirmative to
categorically allege that nuclear weapons ought/should not be possessed by states.

Not only has MAD prevented the (probably) nine nuclear powers on Earth from
engaging in a total nuclear war, but there is also a real case to be made that MAD
also prevents massive traditional wars from occurring between nuclear powers.
The US and the USSR would have had every reason to go to war in the time of the
Cold War, were it not for nuclear weapons. They were separated by ideology and
international interest. The USSR was an inherently expansionist regime (leading
communist theorists postulated that communism could only work if the entire
would were subject to it), and thus would have desired nothing more than the
eventual conquest of the world. The US, while not so expansionist by the 1950’s,
would have benefitted from the presence of more democratic republics, and could
have won a war against the Soviets. Conflict should have been inevitable. The
only reason it wasn’t was that any direct attack by one country on the other would
have resulted in the total nuclear annihilation of both.
Since the use of the atomic bomb in 1945, no two international powers have ever
waged a direct war against one another – and this is over a period of 65 years. In
the previous 65 years there were two world wars, separated only by 20 years or so.
Sure, we’ve had plenty of small-scale and proxy wars. India and Pakistan have
had their skirmishes. But nuclear weapons seem to prevent major international
wars from occurring. Even in a magical world where we could potentially rid the
entire planet of nukes, now and forever, the potential harms of nuclear weapons
must be weighed against the potential harms of a traditional World War III.
Actually, at the rate we were going before nukes, we’d be due for World War V
right about now. Take that into account in the impact calculus if it becomes an
issue in the round.
So there are some very powerful negative arguments against the “should”
interpretation of “ought.” Is there any good affirmative argumentation associated
with this interpretation?
The affirmative would have to start by forcing the resolution to act in a purely
hypothetical manner – we’d have to assume that it was possible to remove nuclear
weapons from the hands of all states, the magical world that we’ve been talking
about. This is not a bad way to approach the resolution, and indeed might be the
only way for it to even be debatable. The negative’s “that’s not how the
international community works” response from a few paragraphs ago would be
ineffective with this interpretation, although the negative could always argue that
it was an abusive interpretation by the affirmative (it isn’t).
This still leaves the negative with an enormous edge in the impact calculus. (And
remember, because this is the desirability/should interpretation of ought, we can
get stuck debating an impact calculus.) If the affirmative promises a world
without nuclear weapons in this hypothetical scenario, the negative can promise
World Wars III, IV and V. But the affirmative does have an acceptable response.
First, he should concede that nuclear weapons may have prevented these potential
world wars, although he should note that this is far from certain. Second, he
should point out that the active verb in the resolution, “possess,” and thus the
resolution as a whole, is in the present tense. Third, he should point out that, at
present, there are non-nuclear bombs capable of delivery by ICBM that have
destructive capability greater than that of certain nuclear bombs, and that these
new weapons could easily serve the same deterrent function as nuclear missiles.
MAD could work with any sufficiently powerful and easily deliverable weapon,
nuclear or not.
This would allow the affirmative to claim two unique benefits to getting rid of
nukes among states. First, conventional bombs are cleaner than nukes, giving the
affirmative environmental impacts. Japan is still experiencing higher cancer rates
thanks to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions.
Second, and more importantly, the affirmative could claim that getting rid of
nukes among states would make it exponentially harder for terrorist organizations
to get their hands on one. Consider what was involved in the invention of nuclear
weapons. Decades of physics research were first required. $20 BILLION in
funding, in 1996 dollars, had to be expended. The Manhattan Project involved an
international team of scientists, and it is doubtful that the brainpower of the US

alone, back in 1945, would have sufficed. Even with this international team, it
took over thirty manufacturing locations in the US to produce the parts for the
bomb and enrich the uranium properly. Most countries cannot afford this kind of
research, which is why only the richest have even tried. China’s broke ass had to
buy technology and parts from the Russians, and by most accounts so did North
Korea.
The idea that al-Qaeda could ever pony up the $20 billion in 1996 dollars is
laughable. The idea that they would have the expertise to design a nuclear weapon
themselves is downright hilarious. The thought that a group of people WHO
LIVE IN CAVES could possess the manufacturing ability to produce a nuclear
weapon themselves is, quite literally, one of the funniest things I’ve ever thought.
Point is, if the affirmative can put the round into a theoretical realm in which all
states lack nuclear weapons, there is no way that terrorists would ever develop
them in the foreseeable future.
Now, that’s not the whole story. The terrorists could always produce a “dirty”
nuclear device – not a proper warhead, but something that would cost a few
million dollars, could be fueled with only energy-grade uranium, and would be
capable of irradiating everything in a major metropolitan area. Such a weapon
would kill many people… eventually. In essence, if terrorists deployed a
sufficiently large dirty bomb in New York, the radiation harm would be equivalent
to everyone in the city smoking five packs of cigarettes a day, every day of their
life. Yes, a least a third of the city would get cancer within the next 50 years, and
most children of those doused with radiation would probably have 17 toes, but it
would be a whole lot better than a nuclear bomb going off in Times Square.
It’s probably time to move on to the second interpretation of “ought,” which reads
“referring to a moral obligation or duty.” The single most important thing I can
note about this moral obligation/duty interpretation of “ought” is that it
inherently precludes the theoretical construct of the affirmative, whereby a
magic wand can eliminate all state-held nuclear weapons. That construct was
only defensible because it was a vehicle to evaluate the desirability of such an
outcome – and the only reason we cared about desirability as a voting issue was
because that was the definition of “ought” that we were using at the time. If we’re
using the moral obligation/duty definition of “ought,” the justification for that
construct no longer exists, and would be abusive if the affirmative used it.
From where would a moral obligation for a state not to possess nuclear weapons
come? Even if one buys the argument that states can have moral obligations, a
claim that is very much debatable, I challenge the debater to give me one reason
why nuclear weapons would be uniquely deserving of this ban. Yes, their
destructive power is great – but conventional weapons can cause the same amount
of damage. Yes, nuclear weapons have terrible long-term environmental impacts

– but biological warfare could do far worse, so wouldn’t states then have a moral
obligation to keep nukes around as a deterrent to bio-warfare? The most unique
thing about nuclear weapons, truth be told, is their size-to-destruction ratio. A true
nuclear bomb could fit inside a briefcase, and could potentially contain enough
power to destroy a small city. This would make them perfect for clandestine
operations – but is any state under a moral obligation to refrain from clandestine
operations? No, the moral obligation argument doesn’t seem to hold up.
What about duties? Do states have a duty of some sort to refrain from possessing
nuclear weapons? To answer this, we need to figure out where such stately duties
come from. In general, the duties (or amoral obligations, if you will) of states can
only come from two places. The first is the citizenry of the state in question. The
second is any international accord that the state may have signed.
A state’s obligations to its citizenry would seem to indicate that the state has a
duty to possess nuclear weapons, if only as a deterrent. After all, in this uncertain
world in which Soviet aggression is still a recent memory, and a few rogue states
have already proven able to acquire a nuclear weapon, nuclear deterrence seems
essential to the safety and security of a populace.
A state’s duties in accordance with international treaties would depend on the
treaty in question. Signatories to the NPT very well could be said to have such a
duty. The Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
could also be sources of a duty to disarm. But there are two problems with this
line of thought.
First, not every state has ratified such an accord. India and Pakistan are not
signatories to the NPT, and North Korea withdrew from it in 2003. All three are
members of the United Nations, and have in theory agreed to the tenets of the
UDHR, and all three have also ratified the codes of the Geneva Conventions, but
there are states that are totally non-aligned with any of these.
Second, even if there were no such state, such a state could always exist in theory.
The resolution makes the blanket statement that states ought not possess nuclear
weapons. With this definition of ought, the affirmation of the statement depends
on states inherently having a moral obligation or duty to disarm. If there is even
the theoretical possibility of a state that would lack such a moral obligation or
duty, then the resolution is false. Even if 100% of states have such a moral
obligation or duty as a result, circumstantially, states as a class of political actors
would not inherently have such a moral obligation or duty.
The remainder of words in the resolution are almost an afterthought – possess,
nuclear weapons… those terms are easy enough to define, and should present little
to no problem, so I’ll leave them to you. But keep ought, especially, in mind as
you prepare for this topic. Like this world in which we live, it may not be perfect,
but it’s the hand we’ve been dealt.

SAMPLE CASE – AFF
Because nuclear weapons all but ensure that the human race will eventually destroy itself,
I urge you to join with me in affirming the resolution which stands resolved: states
ought not possess nuclear weapons.
Because this resolution is international in scope, there is no value to use other than
societal well-being. This value is essentially a truism, and I would expect the negative to
have such a value as well. Because the resolution deals with a particular type of warfare,
my value criterion will be minimizing early death.
Terms are defined as follows:
States: international, autonomous actors, responsive to a particular and largely exclusive
group of citizens.
Ought: used to indicate desirability
Possess: to have in one’s keeping
Nuclear weapons: any means of harming another living thing which utilizes atomic
energy.

Observation 1: Affirmative burden of proof
With this resolution, and the definitions provided, it is the affirmative’s job to prove that
it would be desirable for all states not to possess nuclear weapons, at the present moment
in time, were such an action possible. It is not the affirmative’s burden to prove that such
an action is possible.
Contention 1: Nuclear weapons are no longer the only effective deterrent, or even
the most effective deterrent, to large-scale warfare.
There is a compelling argument to be made that nuclear weapons prevent major wars
from occurring. It is now even popular in some political science circles to make the
claim that nuclear proliferation is desirable as a goal of international policy – countries
would doubtless hesitate to make war on one another were all states capable of nuclear
retaliation.
However, this argument has two problems. The first is that nuclear weapons matter little
without an effective delivery system. If Iraq had possessed a nuclear weapon in 2003, for
example, they might have been tempted to use it upon the US invasion. But given US air
supremacy, and Iraq’s lack of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles to which to affix a
nuclear warhead, they would have had no chance of retaliating against the US with a
nuclear strike, even if they had a nuclear bomb.

The second problem with the pro-proliferation argument is that conventional bombs,
delivered by ICBMs, are now capable of deterring aggression in much the same way as a
nuclear warhead would be. Certain “daisy-cutters” used in the invasion of Afghanistan
are already more powerful than the explosives used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A
sufficient supply of these large but conventional weapons could cause the same Mutually
Assured Destruction scenarios that played out in the Cold War.
Contention 2: Nuclear weapons are insufficient for and counterproductive to with
21st century problems.
A: The Cold War is over
The United States and the USSR no longer stand on the brink of nuclear war. A series of
international accords have reduced the stockpile of nuclear weapons in the US and USSR,
and promises have been made in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to move toward
eventual disarmament. This reflects the growing belief that nuclear weapons no longer
are a unique deterrent threat against a missile strike or full-scale invasion, but also
underscore a growing faith in the power of collective action to eliminate the presence of
nuclear weapons altogether.
B: Terrorists cannot be nuked

Terrorist organizations are arguably the greatest threat to world peace in the modern age.
States find it increasingly difficult to successfully challenge the existing world order, and
ICBMs will prevent major warfare from occurring into the foreseeable future. Terrorists,
however, engage in asymmetrical warfare. They hide from aggressors among civilian
populations, and strike clandestinely at the most opportune of moments. No state would
deploy a nuclear warhead to eliminate a few terrorists – the US is even beginning to
refrain from drone strikes due to the risk of civilian casualties. But the more nuclear
warheads that exist in the world, the greater the risk that a terrorist organization will be
able to purchase one on the black market, potentially using it in a major population
center. This is one of the greatest threats to worldwide security imaginable.
Nuclear weapons are an environmentally unsafe relic from a time when world powers
actually went to war with one another. Thanks to modern weaponry, they are no longer
necessary. Yet they still pose a great risk to the safety and security of the entire world.
For these reasons, it would be very desirable that no state possessed them.

SAMPLE CASE – NEG
Because every state in the world has the duty to protect its citizens, and the world’s
stability depends on the existence of mutually assured destruction, I am forced to negate
the resolution at hand. I will offer no value or value criterion. Instead, I will contend that
the resolution is simply factually untrue. Before I explain further, allow me to offer some
key definitions.
Ought: pertaining to a moral obligation or duty
Observation 1: Negative burden of proof
In any debate round, it is the negative’s job to negate the resolution being debated. This
resolution boldly asserts that states, as a class of political actors, have the moral
obligation or duty to not possess nuclear weapons. The job of the negative is to prove
this statement false; in other words, to prove that states do not, as a class of political
actors, inherently possess such a moral obligation or duty.
Observation 2: Definition of “state”
The definition of a state has changed over time, and there is no necessarily correct
definition. Some attempt to define it as the set of political institutions that govern a

nation, and others include the people of a nation themselves in the definition. In the
context of this resolution, it is useful to remember two commonly agreed upon necessary
conditions for a state to exist. First, a state must be autonomous, and thus capable of
acting independently in the international community. Second, a state must have
consenting or participating body of citizens. The authority of a state is legitimately
derived from the consent or participation of the governed, and its sole reason for
existence is to advance their welfare. These citizens will have interests that compete with
the citizens of other nations.
Contention 1: States are distinct political actors with an obligation to protect their
fellow citizens.
States don’t all just act with one mind. The resolution treats them as a homogenous class
of political actors, but this is not the case. States are eternally in conflict with one
another for limited space, resources, and a variety of other factors. The state exists to
advance the interests of one group of humans over those of another group of humans.
One of these interests is the safety and security of such a group.
Contention 2: Elimination of a state’s nuclear stockpile would make a state less safe
The safety and security of a state’s group of citizens is continually in danger of being
harmed by the actions of another state. While it would certainly be a pleasant experience
if nuclear weapons were magically eliminated from the world, no individual political
actor can make that happen on its own. Any state which eliminates one’s own stockpile

of nuclear weapons, then, would be in constant danger of attack from those who possess
such weapons.
Contention 3: No state can have a moral obligation or duty to take actions against
its own welfare.
A moral obligation or duty can never exist at the state level to eliminate a nuclear
stockpile, as doing so would make a nation far less safe and the state’s first duty is always
to its citizens. No state could possibly have a moral obligation or duty to take any action
that is not in its citizens’ best interests. And very few states in the world, if any, would
have their interests served by lacking nuclear weapons. The only possible exception
would be the United States, the only country in possession of a large enough stockpile of
ICBMs and massive conventional bombs to make nuclear weapons almost an
afterthought. But even in this case, it would be hard to see a strategic advantage by the
elimination of our nuclear arsenal.
Nuclear weapons deter nuclear war. They deter conventional war. And it should be
considered that terrorism has only recently become the greatest threat to worldwide
stability. This is unquestionably because before the advent of nuclear warfare, states
were a far greater threat to each other. To alter this might not be suicide per se, but it
would certainly be shooting one’s self in the foot.

EVIDENCE OUTLINE
AFF
AFF-1) Nuclear deterrence’s threatening of civilians makes it immoral, even if there is no

retaliation.............................................................................................................................................37
AFF-2) Nuclear deterrence requires nations to retaliate in vengeance, ushering mass
civilian homicide on the attacking country. ..................................................................................38
AFF-3) Countervalue targeting is inevitable in a world of deterrence......................................39
AFF-4) Rational deterrence theory models fail to assess modern deterrence models. ........40
AFF-5) Rationale deterrence theory doesn’t apply to small actors like Iran and North Korea.
...............................................................................................................................................................41
AFF-6) State possession of nuclear weapons makes it more likely that terrorists will
acquire them and use them..............................................................................................................42
AFF-7) Nuclear weapons drive a preemption strategy that ensures global chaos. ...............43
AFF-8) A transition to a nuclear free world is possible. The unfair possession of nuclear
weapons is what drives proliferation and danger........................................................................44
AFF-9) Even if some nuclear weapon holders are stable, the risk of a radical member of the
nuclear club outweighs all else. ......................................................................................................45
AFF-10) Possession of nuclear weapons by rogue states makes them immoral. .................46
AFF-11) Nuclear weapons only use is to project an imagined power around the globe.
Global power is not dependent upon them. ..................................................................................47
AFF-12) Using nuclear weapons as a deterrent is worse than engaging in a preventative
war; both are rooted in violence......................................................................................................48
AFF-13) Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only way to solve all of their potential deadly
risks. .....................................................................................................................................................49
AFF-14) A nuclear war would be the ultimate horror. Don’t allow their deceptive language
use justify the retention of weapons of utter destruction. .........................................................50
AFF-15) With the knowledge of what nuclear weapons are capable of doing to humanity,
we must completely reject their existence. ...................................................................................52
AFF-16) The use of nuclear weapons would cause damage to surrounding innocents, even
more reason to reject them. .............................................................................................................53
AFF-17) A nuclear war would destroy the nuclear reactor infrastructure, creating over 200
Chernobyls. .........................................................................................................................................54
AFF-18) A nuclear war would destroy the value of life for any survivors and stagnate
civilization indefinitely. .....................................................................................................................55
AFF-19) Nuclear weapons destroy the genetic development of humans, creating monster
babies while ushering in a slow and painful death to those infected with radiation.............56
AFF-20) A nuclear war would collapse health services, making thousands of generations
infected with massive amounts of radiation. ................................................................................57
AFF-21) Nuclear war is in no way survivable. It would destroy all sense of government and
law and order while at the same time unleashing nuclear winter. ............................................58
AFF-22) Nuclear weapons are illegal; they bring harm and damage upon innocent states.59
AFF-23) A nuclear war would be worse than genocide, destroying the entirety of our
environment. .......................................................................................................................................60
AFF-24) The world must disarm nuclear weapons and end the greatest threat to humanity.
...............................................................................................................................................................61
AFF-25) Nuclear weapons will bring an end to humanity, they must be disarmed................62
AFF-26) It is imperative that the atrocities that a nuclear weapon can produce be the top
issue. Even a small risk would completely destroy humanity...................................................63
AFF-27) Nuclear weapons pose a massive threat to the world; any accident could trigger
an attack. Meanwhile, governments accept this danger and refuse to give them up, thus
enhancing the risk. ............................................................................................................................64
AFF-28) Nuclear weapons poses no morality. Their continued use poses the greatest risk
to humanity. ........................................................................................................................................65
AFF-29) Nuclear weapons drain State’s budgets. Those funds could be reallocated to
better causes. .....................................................................................................................................66
AFF-30) Nuclear weapons prevent states from practicing democracy; makes them
dependent on their armaments. ......................................................................................................67

EVIDENCE OUTLINE
NEG
NEG-1) Deterrence is more ethical than alternatives; it is comparatively safer for the
planet....................................................................................................................................................69
NEG-3) Nuclear deterrence is stable and key to retaining world stability. ..............................71
NEG-4) Nuclear Proliferation is inevitable, the only way a state can protect itself is with
nuclear weapons. ...............................................................................................................................72
NEG-5) Moral assertions against deterrence threaten states and societies. ..........................74
NEG-6) Nuclear Weapons are key to ensure stability, save lives, and prevent future
conflict. ................................................................................................................................................75
NEG-7) Nuclear Weapons are key to protect against CBWs and other threats facing
society..................................................................................................................................................76
NEG-8) Nuclear weapons don’t violate just war theory ..............................................................77
NEG-10) Determining ethical action includes utilitarian calculations. .....................................79
NEG-11) Nuclear weapons are neither moral or immoral, only their context determines that. ........ 80
NEG-12) Nuclear deterrence is not an immoral act since it prevents a greater evil
happening............................................................................................................................................81
NEG-13) Deterrence is key to ensuring long major powers peace. ..........................................82
Nuclear deterrence is key to stopping a huge power war using nuclear weapons. ..............83
NEG-15) Deterrence outweighs all the alternatives even if it isn’t perfect. .............................84
The risk of nuclear deterrence posing an actual threat is not immoral. ..................................85
NEG-17) Nuclear weapons are politically and morally neutral, only their use gives them
significance. ........................................................................................................................................87
NEG-18) Disarming is flawed, nuclear deterrence is key to prevent massive wars...............89
NEG-19) Nuclear weapons are key to stop violent, world wars and conflicts. .......................90
NEG-20) Great Power’s possession of nuclear weapons is key to deter conflict and the
weapons proliferation. ......................................................................................................................91
NEG-21) Nuclear Weapons are key to stopping conflict, it is impossible to without them. .92
NEG-22) Effective deterrence controls escalation and is the best predictor for war. ...........93
NEG-23) Desire to hold onto power proves deterrence works. .................................................94
NEG-24) Nuclear deterrence works against the most aggressive foes, Cold War proves. ..95
NEG-25) Nuclear deterrence is morally on par with the willingness to drive – the increase
in risk is equal. ...................................................................................................................................96
NEG-26) There are moral ways to carry our nuclear deterrence. ..............................................97
NEG-27) A coercive or compliance strategy won’t be enough to stop the threat of rogue
nuclear proliferators – only deterrence can ensure peace in the international system........98
NEG-28) The viewed immorality of nuclear weapons is what is key to their deterrent
abilities.................................................................................................................................................99
NEG-29) Nuclear deterrence is wholly moral in that it prevented conflict in Europe while at
the same time helping develop peaceful alliances. .................................................................. 100
NEG-30) Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvited. If they were to be eliminated they would
quickly be redeveloped by rogue nations, shifting the world’s balance of power. Retaining
nuclear weapons is the only way to preserve global stability and security......................... 101

AFF EVIDENCE

AFF-1) Nuclear deterrence’s threatening of civilians makes it

immoral, even if there is no retaliation.
Tung Yin, 03 (Associate Professor, University of Iowa College of Law,

Disposable Deontology: The Death Penalty and Nuclear Deterrence, 55 Ala. L.
Rev. 111, Lexis, 8/17/10)
There are two very disturbing implications about MAD. First, MAD is predicated
upon the concept of countries' holding each other's civilian populations
hostage. 56 The fact that MAD appears to have kept the peace for over fifty
years, one commentator asserts, "blinds us to the fact that our [*120]
method for preventing nuclear war rests on a form of warfare universally
condemned since the Dark Ages--the mass killing of hostages." 57 In other
words, one can plausibly argue that even if a nuclear power has no real
intention of retaliating against an adversary with a nuclear strike, simply
threatening the innocent civilians of the adversarial nation is immoral.
*MAD=Mutually Assured Destruction

AFF-2) Nuclear deterrence requires nations to retaliate in

vengeance, ushering mass civilian homicide on the attacking
country.

Rev. 111, Lexis, 8/17/10)
The second disturbing implication of MAD is the requirement that the victim
of a first strike act be willing to launch its own remaining nuclear
weapons at the other superpower even though doing so will not do
anything to save the victim country. 58 A superpower that detects a
preemptive first strike would have a lifespan measurable in minutes.
The moral problem is perhaps more easily grasped if simplified to the
following: X is walking through a park when X is accosted by Y. Y shoots X
in the arm and is going to shoot again, possibly through the chest or head.
X has a gun as well. Is X justified in shooting Y? Under traditional
principles of criminal law, the answer is yes; X is entitled in that situation to
use lethal force for selfdefense. 59 But suppose that the first shot wounds
X mortally and that X knows this instantly. Is X still justified in shooting
back? At that point, X is no longer using lethal force in self-defense but is
shooting in vengeance, which would technically be considered
homicide. 60 While one might argue that X is justified in shooting Y on the
theory that X is acting in defense of others, that justification does not work
because no one is directly threatened by Y. 61 In the unthinkable event that
nuclear deterrence fails, the target country is essentially in the same
position as X--mortally wounded and forced to [*121] decide whether to
retaliate in vengeance. The one major difference is that an individual may not
know that he has been mortally wounded; a country, however, is armed with
satellite technology and computer simulations and would be in a much better
position to have perfect (or close to perfect) information about the lethal
consequences of the attack.

AFF-3) Countervalue targeting is inevitable in a world of

deterrence.

Rev. 111, Lexis, 8/17/10)
U.S. military planners were aware of the moral dilemma posed by MAD.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara tried to move U.S. nuclear strategy
away from primarily targeting civilians toward primarily targeting enemy
nuclear forces, an approach known as "counterforce," while the targeting of
cities was known as "countervalue." 62 But simply designating nuclear forces
as primary targets and cities as secondary targets hardly resolves
the moral dilemma. Counterforce makes little sense as a retaliatory
strategy unless one has in mind limited nuclear wars; otherwise, if the
other side has launched enough nuclear weapons to annihilate a country,
that country gains nothing from launching against only the remaining
nuclear forces. 63 Even if a country prefers to use counterforce in the end
to deter a massive first strike, it has to be willing to use countervalue.

AFF-4) Rational deterrence theory models fail to assess modern

deterrence models.
BRADLEY A. THAYER, 07 (Thinking about Nuclear Deterrence Theory: Why

Evolutionary Psychology Undermines Its Rational Actor Assumptions, Missouri
State University Department of Defense and Strategic Studies Fairfax, Virginia,
USA, Ebscohost, 8/17/10)
The proponents of rational deterrence theory may be correct in the U.S.-

Soviet case. The history of the Cold War is debatable. But, even if so,
generalizing that outcome from the U.S.-Soviet case is laden with risk. Keith
Payne’s scholarship has demonstrated, first, many of the difficulties and
near-run failures of deterrence during the Cold War; and, second, why
deterrence in the post–Cold War era is impregnated with multiple and
varied perils and hazards, some of which are similar to deterrence in the
Cold War but many of which are not.7

AFF-5) Rationale deterrence theory doesn’t apply to small actors

like Iran and North Korea.
BRADLEY A. THAYER, 07 (Thinking about Nuclear Deterrence Theory: Why

Evolutionary Psychology Undermines Its Rational Actor Assumptions, Missouri
State University Department of Defense and Strategic Studies Fairfax, Virginia,
USA, Ebscohost, 8/17/10)
The insights of evolutionary psychology for human rationality further

weaken rational deterrence theory in circumstances where a single leader,
or small groups of individuals, makes decisions concerning whether to
employ nuclear weapons. Accordingly, its insights are applicable to
decision making in North Korea or Iran, and other states where small
numbers of individuals control the decision to use nuclear weapons, and
so where the psychology of these few individuals is more salient. The force
of my argument is significantly reduced when we consider those decisions in the
context of an established nuclear power and democracy like the United States.

AFF-6) State possession of nuclear weapons makes it more

likely that terrorists will acquire them and use them.
Greg Travalio and John Altenburg, 03 (STATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR

SPONSORSHIP OF TERRORIST AND INSURGENT GROUPS: Terrorism, State
Responsibility, and the Use of Military Force, 4 Chi. J. Int'l L. 97, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
Finally, of course, there are "weapons of mass destruction"--chemical, biological,

and nuclear weapons. These weapons not only possess nightmarish
destructive capacity, but are terrifying because of their horrible effects,
indiscriminate nature, and unpredictable consequences. Three factors have
combined in the past couple of decades to increase the likelihood that
such [*110] weapons will be acquired by terrorists: technological
advances in their manufacture, the availability of information, and the
inadequacy of international safeguards on their proliferation.

AFF-7) Nuclear weapons drive a preemption strategy that

ensures global chaos.
Greg Travalio and John Altenburg, 03 (STATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR

SPONSORSHIP OF TERRORIST AND INSURGENT GROUPS: Terrorism, State
Responsibility, and the Use of Military Force, 4 Chi. J. Int'l L. 97, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
A preemption doctrine also creates the possibility that a state will

accelerate its arms development, or even launch its own preemptive strike,
in order to avoid being "preempted" itself. For example, the perceived
preemptive strike on Iraq may cause North Korea or Iran to accelerate its
development of nuclear weapons in order to deter US preemption. 57 This
potential destabilization has apparently not been thoughtfully considered
by those who advocate a preemption strategy. In addition, how do we
contain the use of the preemption norm by others? How do we prevent the
Chinese from relying upon it to invade Taiwan, or the Indians from relying
upon it to attack Pakistan? In short, preemption portends a stark and
lawless world.

AFF-8) A transition to a nuclear free world is possible. The unfair

possession of nuclear weapons is what drives proliferation and
danger.
William Arthur Wines, 2009 (is Associate Professor of Business Law in the
Steven L. Craig School of Business, Missouri Western State University, 43 J.
Marshall L. Rev. 159, OBSERVATIONS ON LEADERSHIP: MORAL AND
OTHERWISE, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
After the end of World War I, the nations of this planet worked on and
eventually agreed upon the banning of mustard gas as a
weapon. 235 Mustard gas was a hideous weapon that was [*203]
indiscriminate. It has been successfully banned. 236 Countries with
stockpiles of mustard gas (the U.S. has eight such stockpiles 237) have
only recently begun to destroy those weapons. 238 After World War II, a
similar fate should have awaited nuclear weapons. It has yet to happen. In
view of the horrific outcomes possible if any country uses nuclear
weapons again, what actions might a moral leader contemplate? I suspect that a
moral leader might consider moving toward a nuclear-free world. Such a
political step would require that all countries agree to dismantle theirnuclear
weapons - including all the members of the current nuclear club. If we could
negotiate such a treaty, any country having a nuclear weapon or attempting
to generate one might, pursuant to the terms of such an agreement, be
considered to have committed a war crime under the Rome Statute 239 and
be subject to sanctions such as the imposition of an international trustee
until the weapon or weapons were disassembled and the political passions
calmed. Perhaps, such a non-nuclear weapons treaty might have its own
enforcement protocol aside from the Rome Statute. By now, it should be clear
to informed and open-minded observers that the use of sanctions has not
worked and will not work. For illustrations, see the cases of sanctions to
end apartheid in South Africa; sanctions to enforce no-fly and other
restrictions on Iraq (pre-fall of Saddam Hussein); sanctions to deter the
nuclear ambitions of North Korea; and sanctions to stop nuclear [*204]
development by Iran. Perhaps, a large problem is the lack of moral
standing to impose restrains on the weaker nations that the more powerful
do not themselves observe; this is one of the definitions that Dr. King
offered for "unjust laws."

AFF-9) Even if some nuclear weapon holders are stable, the risk
of a radical member of the nuclear club outweighs all else.
Thomas C. Wingfield, 04 (THE CONVERGENCE OF TRADITIONAL

THEORY AND MODERN REALITY: JUST WAR DOCTRINE AND TYRANNICAL
REGIMES, 2 Ave Maria L. Rev. 93, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
Tyranny and terrorism are the threats to this peace par excellance, their
very nature, rather than the specific weapons they wield, setting them at
odds with the tranquilitatis ordinis. 7 While certain categories of weapons
draw a great deal of attention as being inherently threatening (firearms
domestically, and nuclear weapons internationally), the threat is due less to
the weapon itself than the moral nature of the one who wields it.
Domestically, a 9mm pistol in the hands of a criminal is far more
threatening than an entire police department equipped with the same 9mm
pistol. Similarly, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons(the only
remaining lawful weapon of mass destruction) under the control of a
democracy are far less threatening than a single such weapon in the hands
of a terrorist or tyrant. As Weigel explains,

AFF-10) Possession of nuclear weapons by rogue states makes

them immoral.
Thomas C. Wingfield, 04 (THE CONVERGENCE OF TRADITIONAL

THEORY AND MODERN REALITY: JUST WAR DOCTRINE AND TYRANNICAL
REGIMES, 2 Ave Maria L. Rev. 93, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
The "regime factor" is crucial in the moral analysis, for weapons of mass
destruction are clearly not aggression-waiting-to-happen when they are
possessed by stable, law-abiding states. No Frenchman goes to bed
nervous about Great Britain's nuclear weapons, and no sane Mexican or
Canadian worries about a pre-emptive nuclear attack from the United
States. Every sane Israeli, on the other hand, is deeply concerned about the
possibility of an Iraq or Iran with nuclear weapons and medium-range
ballistic missiles. 8

AFF-11) Nuclear weapons only use is to project an imagined

power around the globe. Global power is not dependent upon
them.
Paul W. Kahn, 2000 (ARTICLE: AMERICAN HEGEMONY AND

INTERNATIONAL LAW: Speaking Law to Power: Popular Sovereignty, Human
Rights, and the New International Order, 1 Chi. J. Int'l L. 1, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
A strand of military analysis asserts that nuclear weapons are quite

useless devices. On this view, American power does not depend upon
such weapons, which can never be used effectively. This way of
approaching nuclear weapons, as if they are part of an inventory of
resources available for the battlefield, fails to grasp the political and
cultural significance of such weapons. Political power is only in small part
about the use or threat to use force. It is much more about the political
imagination: how a state sees itself, and how it is seen by others. Nuclear
weapons figure centrally in the political imagination that maintains
hegemonic power. They represent the material [*7] embodiment of an
ultimate seriousness about politics that extends across the population. 13

AFF-12) Using nuclear weapons as a deterrent is worse than

engaging in a preventative war; both are rooted in violence.
Brian Angelo Lee, 09 (Article: Preventive War, Deterrent Retaliation, and

Retrospective Disproportionality, 2009 B.Y.U.L. Rev. 253, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
Deterrence and preventive war share another fundamental similarity: both

depend upon violence for the attainment of their prospective aims.
Although preventive war's reliance on violence is obvious, the way in
which deterrence relies on violence can easily go unnoticed, since
successful deterrence is "marked by nothing much
happening." 16 Moreover, the history of deterrence theory offers an
additional reason why the role of violence in deterrence has been easy to
overlook. Modern deterrence theory developed largely during the Cold War,
in a strategic environment dominated by the presence of nuclear
weapons. 17 The apocalyptic destructive power of nuclear weapons had
two relevant consequences. First, it made serious consideration of
retaliation seem rather pointless - if nuclear deterrence failed, the potential
retaliator was probably doomed anyway. 18 In this respect, nuclear deterrence
was a one-time-only tactic, albeit one that extended over several decades.
Second, nuclear weapons' overwhelming destructiveness offered a way to
avoid credibility concerns. The weapons were so destructive that even a
threat with relatively low credibility might still be enough to deter, since the
consequences of guessing incorrectly were so dire as to make even
minimally credible threats become frightening. 19

AFF-13) Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only way to solve all

of their potential deadly risks.
Justice C. G. Weeramantry, 2000 (NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND

INTERNATIONAL LAW, 9 MSU-DCL J. Int'l L. 255, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
The topic of this conference is Nuclear Weapons, Doctrine and Policy, Issues
and Concerns for the Next Millennium, and I will try to address a few legal
aspects of this problem from the standpoint of a millennia reconsideration of this
most important problem. To begin, I must confess that I am sometimes taken
aback by the attitude of complacency regarding nuclear weapons that seems to
prevail in many quarters. For the past few years, you heard the sound of sighs of
relief on all sides. The Cold War is over. We have passed out of the shadow
of themushroom cloud. The nuclear confrontation has come to an end, at
least so they think. But the reality could very well be even worse. There is a
risk andthe risk is not over yet. It may even be greater than before. The
hands controlling the trigger may be even more risky, may be responsible.
There may be leaky weapons, black-market weapons, nuclear know-how on
sale, many states aspiring to the nuclear status, even terrorist movements
aspiring to such a status. So we don't know where we stand and the safest
and the only feasible course for us to rid ourselves of this nuclear danger
is to get rid of it once and for all. Where there was once one open nuclear
opponent, there may today be half a dozen concealed ones and their
number could be increasing. We just do not know. So there is a need for a
great deal of work to be done in exposing these current dangers and this calls for
an educational process in relation to them and conferences such as this play a
vital role in letting the public, the academic community, those who hold power
within a group, all of them need to be alerted to these dangers.

AFF-14) A nuclear war would be the ultimate horror. Don’t allow

their deceptive language use justify the retention of weapons of
utter destruction.

It was a horrible sight. Hundreds of injured people were trying to escape to

the hills past our house. The sight of them was almost unbearable. Their
faces and hands were burned and swollen. Great sheets of skin that peeled
away from their tissues to hang down like rags on a scarecrow. They moved
like a line of ants. All through the night they went past our house but this morning
they had stopped. I found them lying on both sides of the road, so thick that
it was impossible to pass by without stepping on them, and they had no
faces. Their eyes, noses, and mouths had been burnt away and it looked
like their ears had melted off. It was hard to tell front from back. One soldier
whose features had been destroyed and was left with white teeth sticking
out asked me for water but I didn't have any. I clasped my hands and prayed.
His plea for water must have been his last words. Now that is what nuclear
war is after one limited nuclear weapon has been used. Now we have gone
one stage up from the level of Solferino. Now the next nuclear war if there is
one will go one step up from that because the next nuclear war, if it takes
place, will take place not between adversaries only one of whom as
the nuclear weapon but it will take place against adversaries both of whom
have the nuclear weapon, and then it will not stop with the first attack. It
will go on and as was observed in some of the passages I read, there will be a
cascading series of acts of violence and you'll go up the scale, escalating
all the time, and there would literally be a situation created of possible
extermination of all that we call civilization. So those are the realities of
war, but we have to guard against disguising the realities of war by
euphemisms; euphemisms such as the glory of the battlefield and so on
which I referred to earlier. There is a set of euphemisms that has come into
popular use, especially by military authorities, considerable thermal
damage they say, when they mean the incineration of cities. Acceptable
levels of casualties when they mean the deaths of tens of thousands.
Nuclear preparedness when they mean a balance of terror. Environmental
damage when they mean the devastation of the environment. So such
language bypasses human suffering and we must not permit ourselves to
be deluded by such language and my mind goes back to Confucius who was
once asked: how can you introduce law and morality into the state, to which he
replied, by correcting names. Don't [*262] use false language to describe the
real effect of what you propose to do. And he says you use the right
expression to describe the thing and people will then understand much better
what you are talking about. So there is a great deal of hypocrisy and
euphemisms that disguise the true realities of nuclear war.

AFF-15) With the knowledge of what nuclear weapons are

capable of doing to humanity, we must completely reject their
existence.

There is a thinking that it is better if the law remains without declaring itself
on these things. There is a need to avoid uncertainty and there is
sometimes an advantage in leaving the law unclear. I believe that is wrong. I
believe that the law is clear and that it should be stated clearly and that
statement, as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, would be a clear
statement of the illegality of nuclear weapons first off. That's all the law has
to say about nuclear weapons and for the reasons, which I will give you in a
moment. Also, it must be stressed that the knowledge we have now in the year
2000 is much vaster than the knowledge that was available in 1945 when
the nuclear weapon was used and as every lawyer knows, knowledge is a
main ingredient in deciding the question of culpability of any act. So if we
in the year 2000 use a nuclear weapon, the degree of culpability is
enormously greater with all the knowledge now at our disposal than it was
in the year 1945 when it was used. So we have got to look at it from that
point of view and also look at the logicality of a legal system which says, it
said so more than 100 years ago that the dumb-dumb bullet was illegal. The
dumb-dumb bullet was illegal. Why? Because when it enters the body of a
single individual, it expands or explodes and causes unnecessary
suffering. So we have a law that says that the dumb-dumb bullet is illegal
and can that same legal system say that burning to death 200,000 civilians
in one stroke is legal? The absolute contradiction, the logicality, and the
absurdity of having that juxtaposition within the field of international law
are too obvious to require further elaboration.

AFF-16) The use of nuclear weapons would cause damage to

surrounding innocents, even more reason to reject them.

Let me talk about a few dangers of nuclear weapons, which are not often referred
to. The electromagnetic pulse, which is released when there is a nuclear
explosion can put all electric systems and electronic systems out of
operation for hundreds of miles around. So all essential services can come
to a standstill in our modern computer age. And not only that, that's not
only in the countries that are at war but in all surrounding countries. So
that's one aspect of it. Secondly, the nuclear [*263] winter. We all know
about that but the fact that even a temperature drop of a few degrees can
affect all the crops on the surface of the earth and global food supplies,
global food supplies for the whole global population could be disrupted if
the nuclear winter comes into being.

AFF-17) A nuclear war would destroy the nuclear reactor

infrastructure, creating over 200 Chernobyls.

Next imagine the fact that there are, even in Europe, about 200 nuclear
reactors. Now we all know what a terrible scare and what an almost
unsolvable problem was created by Chernobyl, one nuclear reactor going
out of action for a short time. Imagine what would happen if there is war on
this colossal scale and nuclear reactors, of course, in the zone of war will
naturally all go out of action. There would be problems arising from the
nuclear reactors going out of control and every geographical region has
dozens of these which would be ignited or damage to them would be
triggered by a nuclear reaction in the area. As you know in Chernobyl, little
doses of radiation were passed on to people, sometimes 150 miles
downwind and crops were damaged for 600 miles downwind. So what
nation on earth has the right to impose that kind of damage on any other
nation, enemy or neutral?

AFF-18) A nuclear war would destroy the value of life for any
survivors and stagnate civilization indefinitely.

Likewise, the cultural treasures of the world would be destroyed. All that we
have built up for thousands of years as a memento of human achievement
in the past, all that will go overboard in one moment. What happens after
the war, of course, we reduced whoever is unfortunate enough to survive
would live in a stone age, and as Henry Kissinger once said, those who are
sifting among the debris of the space age would not be thinking of how to
rebuild the economy and how to rebuild the auto industry, but they would
be trying to think how they may find nonradioactive berries on the trees
around them or edible timber bark which they can eat. That will be the level
to which the survivors will be reduced.

AFF-19) Nuclear weapons destroy the genetic development of

humans, creating monster babies while ushering in a slow and
painful death to those infected with radiation.

I also would like to tell you something about the deformities that could arise
from nuclear weapons and the genetic impact would, of course, have to be
monitored for generations. We know the sad tale of the nuclear weapons,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan who have come [*264] under all sorts of
problems in relation to the general fear about their passing on genetic mutations,
but let me tell you something about the Marshall Islands. There was a lady from
the Marshall Islands who came and deposed before the court in the nuclear
weapons opinion. In the court, she said that she had come all the way from
the Marshall Island just to tell us about the hardships that they had
experienced and about the fact that the people there after nuclear testing in
the area, how they had given birth to monster babies. They were described
in their community as octopuses, turtles, and apples. Some of them didn't
even have a human form. There were jellyfish babies with no bones and
with transparent skin, and you could see their brains and hearts pulsating
within this translucent skin that they had. That's what she described to the
court and everybody who was there would have heard it. In other words,
there is a breathing substance there. Sometimes with no face, no legs, no
arms. That's what those people have actually experienced after a few minor
nuclear tests in their area. What would the world experience after a nuclear
war with a series of nuclear explosions and also we know that it's not as in
a battlefield, there are people who get killed, some get killed, some get
injured but those who have radiation injuries go on to a painful and
lingering death.

AFF-20) A nuclear war would collapse health services, making

thousands of generations infected with massive amounts of
radiation.

Looking at another aspect, take Chernobyl again, the health services of the
whole of the Soviet Union were stretched by that one incident. Hundreds
and thousands of trucks, special trains had to be laid on, medical
personnel from the whole country had to be poured into the area to deal
with that one unhappy event. What would it be if there is a nuclear war, and
add to all that the fact that the half life of plutonium is 20,000 years.
Consider what right any one generation has to impose this kind of atrocity,
not merely upon its own generation, but upon a thousand generations to
come.

AFF-21) Nuclear war is in no way survivable. It would destroy all

sense of government and law and order while at the same time
unleashing nuclear winter.

Now people say, and they say it rather lightly, that nuclear war is survivable.
After all, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have risen from the ashes and they are
great cities again, but there are so many distinctions that have to be kept in
mind. First of all, it was a war involving only the use of those two bombs.
There was no possibility of retaliation and an escalation of the nuclear
conflict. The bomb itself was of less than 15 kilotons explosive power. We
have bombs today of several multiples of that size. Those were not centers
of government, nor centers of administration, and the administration of the
country was not paralyzed by the pulverization of those cities. So that it is
quite different if there [*265] is a nuclear war and enemy capitals are
targeted or enemy command centers, there would be a total devastation of
the enemy and a total elimination of all law and order and forms of control
in that country. We don't know in what corner nuclear weapons are lurking
and there is also the fact that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki weapons were
not strong enough to release a nuclear winter, but any nuclear exchange
would have the potential to trigger off a nuclear winter with the
consequences that I described earlier.

AFF-22) Nuclear weapons are illegal; they bring harm and

damage upon innocent states.

Are we to shut our eyes to those possibilities and say there is no legal
principle adequate to deal with it? I think that is just an exercise in futility.
And to me what seems amazing is that the legality of the nuclear weapon is
still the subject of discussion when it seems too self-evident that it is
blatantly illegal. Now also in considering the nuclear problem, you have to
consider this basic principle of international law. Everybody accepts that no
state has the right to impose damage upon [*266] another state. That's
axiomatic. A nuclear war, there will be colossal damage to neutral states.
That's axiomatic. What follows? It must follow that thenuclear weapon is
illegal. That's also axiomatic but it is not seen in that way, whereas the
basic obligation not to injure any other state will be accepted by every
student of international law and by every state.

AFF-23) A nuclear war would be worse than genocide,

destroying the entirety of our environment.

Then we have the principles of environmental law and environmental

protection. A nuclear war would destroy the environmental system. It
would destroy the whole ecosystem and as somebody once described it, it
would be ecocide; ecocide in the sense that just as genocide is the
destruction of a group, ecocide would be the destruction of the ecosystem.
Genocide, of course, is a war crime but really refers only to the elimination
of a group of people, but this would be what you could describe as
omicide, the destruction of everybody and if genocide is a war crime, what
would not the use of nuclear weapons be?

AFF-24) The world must disarm nuclear weapons and end the
greatest threat to humanity.

We, on the contrary, have statements in some quarters that nuclear

weapons are the still the cornerstone of security policy, that first use
[*270] will not be abrogated. Summit meetings to cut down the arsenals
have not been held for some time, and in fact, there was a very informative
letter by President Carter which appeared in the Herald Tribune of February 24th,
[2000] and I would suggest that you look at that article and read it because it
spells all this out from the standpoint of a very concerned person. The U.S. and
NATO still have up to 200 nuclear weapons in Western Europe. Transfer of
fissile material controls are weak. The International Court has said there is
an obligation to take steps in good faith to bring to conclusion negotiations
leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects and a direct and effective
international control. That's the unanimous language of the International
Court. It has to be implemented. So this is one of the most major crises
facing the world but very little is being done about it. It is as one can easily
see one of the greatest problems ever to confront the human race.

AFF-25) Nuclear weapons will bring an end to humanity, they

must be disarmed.
Luis E. Rodriguez-Rivera, 06 (ARTICLE: The Human Right to Environment

and the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy, 35 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 173, LEXIS,
8/24/10)
The use of nuclear weapons during armed conflict, as well as the peaceful
use of nuclear energy, poses potential catastrophic threats to all of
humanity. The International Court of Justice recognized the cataclysmic nature
and the environmental risks associated with the use of nuclear weapons in its
1996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons:
The Court recognizes that the environment is under daily threat and that the
use of nuclear weapons could constitute a catastrophe for the
environment. The Court also recognizes that the environment is not an
abstraction but represents the living space, the quality of life and the very
health of human beings, including generations unborn... In applying this
law to the present case, the Court cannot however fail to take into account
certain unique characteristics of nuclear weapons... [The Court] also notes
that nuclear weapons are explosive devices whose energy results from the
fusion or fission of the atom. By its very nature, that process, innuclear
weapons as they exist today, releases not only immense quantities of heat
and energy, but also powerful and prolonged radiation... These
characteristics render the nuclear weapon potentially catastrophic. The
destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space
or time. They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire
ecosystem of the planet.

AFF-26) It is imperative that the atrocities that a nuclear weapon

can produce be the top issue. Even a small risk would
completely destroy humanity.
Luis E. Rodriguez-Rivera, 06 (ARTICLE: The Human Right to Environment

and the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy, 35 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 173, LEXIS,
8/24/10)
The radiation released by a nuclear explosion would affect health,

agriculture, natural resources and demography over a very wide area.
Further, the use of nuclear weapons would be a serious danger to future
generations. Ionizing radiation has the potential to damage the future
environment, food and marine ecosystem, and to cause genetic defects
and illness in future generations... It is imperative for the Court to take
account of the unique characteristics of nuclear weapons, and in [*181]
particular their destructive capacity, their capacity to cause untold human
suffering, and their ability to cause damage to generations to come. 24

AFF-27) Nuclear weapons pose a massive threat to the world;

any accident could trigger an attack. Meanwhile, governments
accept this danger and refuse to give them up, thus enhancing
the risk.
Douglas Roche, 05 (Nuclear Weapons and Morality: An Unequivocal Position,

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBYQFjAA&url=http
%3A%2F%2Fwww.gsinstitute.org%2Fmpi%2Fdocs%2FRoche_CatholicBishops
NuclearWeapons.pdf&ei=gpd0TLzAN8iUnQfz_Z3IBg&usg=AFQjCNHNADkb8Mk
WsCi6fUv3z-18FsGJaw&sig2=tLAZxFzckQbTQnnrbqF55A)
When the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it could
hardly have been imagined that sixty years later more than 30,000 nuclear
weapons would be in existence. The Cold War is long over, but half the world
population still lives under a government brandishing nuclear weapons.
More than $12 trillion has so far been spent on these instruments of mass
murder, which is a theft from the poorest people in the world. The present
nuclear weapons crisis has, in fact, led to the opening of the Second Nuclear
Age. First, we must understand the dimensions of the crisis. The long- standing
nuclear weapons states -- the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom,
France, and China -- are making nuclear weapons permanent instruments of
their military doctrines. India, Pakistan and Israel have joined the “nuclear
club.” North Korea has tried to get into it. Iran is suspected of trying to
acquire the capacity to convert nuclear fuels for peaceful purposes into
nuclear weapons. NATO is maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons on the soil of six
European countries, and the U.S. is preparing “reliable replacement” warheads
with new military capabilities. The U.S. and Russia have put new emphasis on
the war-fighting role of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states
refuse to give up their nuclear arsenals, and feign surprise that other
nations, seeing that nuclear weapons have become the currency of power
in the modern world, are trying to acquire them. So are terrorists. No major
city in the world is safe from the threat of a nuclear attack. The risk of
accidents is multiplying daily. All these are the characteristics of the
Second Nuclear Age.

AFF-28) Nuclear weapons poses no morality. Their continued

use poses the greatest risk to humanity.

Thinking that the nuclear weapons problem went away with the end of the
Cold War, much of the public is oblivious to the new nuclear dangers. U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan is trying to warn governments and the
public, but few are listening. In the case of many politicians, they don’t
even know that they don’t know about this greatest threat to human
security the world has ever faced. They do not recognize the continued
existence of enormous stocks of nuclear weapons, most with a destructive
power many times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons are instruments of pure evil. A nuclear
explosion, either by design or accident, would kill massive numbers of
people, create international chaos, and cripple the world economy. Nuclear
weapons are devoid of the slightest shred of moral legitimacy. Prominent
jurists consider their use illegal in any possible circumstance. The nuclear
weapons states are deliberately undermining the rule of law in maintaining
them.

AFF-29) Nuclear weapons drain State’s budgets. Those funds

could be reallocated to better causes.

It staggers the imagination to consider what the enormous sums spent on

nuclear weapons could have done for education, health, and other
requisites for the development of peoples everywhere. The United States
spends $110 million every day on the maintenance of its nuclear forces and
seeking money from Congress for new ones. This is driving world military
spending, which exceeded $1 trillion in 2004, a 20 percent increase in two
years.

AFF-30) Nuclear weapons prevent states from practicing

democracy; makes them dependent on their armaments.

Governments have thrown democracy out the window in their zeal for
armaments. Nowhere have citizens clamoured for nuclear weapons. Rather,
governments have either imposed them or manipulated public opinion to
get people to quietly accept them. A 2002 poll of citizens in 11 countries,
including the U.S. and Canada, showed that 86 percent of people either
strongly agree (72 percent) or agree to some extent (14 percent) that all
nations should sign a treaty to ban all nuclear weapons. Governments are
ignoring this opinion; the public, except for core groups of activists, is not
actively demanding that governments move toward such a treaty. Instead,
the public is saying, we should cure the worst of poverty and restore the
environment.

NEG EVIDENCE

NEG-1) Deterrence is more ethical than alternatives; it is

comparatively safer for the planet
Julian Lewis, pub. date: 2006, (Secretary, Conservative Parliamentary

Defence Committee, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security
Studies Journal, Vol. 1 No. 2, “Nuclear disarmament versus peace in the twenty-
first century,” http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/lewis.pdf)
The dawning of the atomic age was thus accompanied by what seemed to be
an extreme ethical paradox: peace could apparently best be maintained by
the possession of, and the threat to use, weapons which could obliterate
tens of thousands of people in an instant. Simply because nuclear weapons, if
used, would cause hideous destruction and loss of life, it has often been argued
that there is something immoral in their very possession. Yet no weapon is
moral or immoral in itself. Ethics enter the equation only when one
considers the motivation for possessing weapons and the uses to which they
are put. 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 conflict
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. He set out the scenario of a security guard who is the only person in a
position to prevent a terrorist from opening fire on a queue of passengers
in an airport lounge. According to most people’s 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. This is without prejudice to the fact
that the security guard might well be right to feel that it was a tragedy that
he had to take anyone’s life at all. 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 one’s own society, only the purest
pacifist can be in any doubt as to which course to follow.

NEG-2) Deterrence is ethical; otherwise we take purity to an

extreme and ignore the unethical nature of their position
Abrams, 83 (Society, September October Volume 20, Number 6, 26-29)

These facts constitute a genuine paradox: the moral result of avoiding nuclear
war was achieved through certain weapons. I believe we must face this
paradox squarely. Many members of the antinuclear movement will not face it
at all. These people argue that it is immoral even to have nuclear weapons. In
the words of one churchman: "It is morally wrong to threaten to use nuclear
weapons as a deterrent." But the very purpose of a nuclear deterrent is to
prevent nuclear war. This argument--that deterrence is morally wrong-- is
tantamount to saying that the avoidance of the immoral is immoral. Such
reasoning would finally sever the link between morality and human reason.
It is simplistic because it ignores half of morality--that the good man must be
concerned about achieving a good result through his actions. It is based on
an extreme exaggeration of the morality of intention, and it flies in the face of the
moral experience of our country. When we try to decide whether it is right to
use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence to prevent nuclear war, we
face a dilemma similar to that faced by opponents of slavery in the 1840s.
They had to decide whether it was right to prevent the extension of slavery
by voting for Henry Clay, a slaveholder. The extreme abolitionists argued
on the basis of the principle "We are not to do evil that good may come."
To this argument Abraham Lincoln wrote to the abolitionist Williamson Durley:
"This general proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply? If by your votes
you could have prevented the extension ... of slavery would it not have been
good, and not evil, so to have used your votes, even though it involved the
casting of them for a slaveholder? By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree
cannot bring forth good fruit. At any given time, it is hard to know who is right
in such a dilemma. But in retrospect we know that Lincoln was right. The
extreme abolitionist position was as highly moral as it was impractical, and
it was Lincoln who succeeded in freeing black Americans from bondage.
The same sort of choice faces members of the antinuclear movement
today. Theirs is the choice between a moralism that is ultimately self-
indulgent, on the one hand, and working with their government to devise
practical steps that will prevent nuclear war, on the other.

NEG-3) Nuclear deterrence is stable and key to retaining world

stability.
Alagappa, 09 (Muthiah, Reinforcing national security and regional stability the

implications of nuclear weapons and strategies. The long shadow page 480)
Nuclear weapons cast a long shadow that informs in fundamental ways the
strategic policies and behavior of major powers (all but one of which possess
nuclear weapons), their allies, and those states facing existential threats.
They induce caution and set boundaries to the strategic interaction of
nuclear weapon states and condition the role and use of force in their
interactions. The danger of escalation limits military options in a crisis
between nuclear weapon states and shapes the purpose and manner in
which military force is used. Although relevant only in a small number of
situations, these include the most serious regional conflicts that could
escalate to large-scale war. Nuclear Weapons help prevent the outbreak of
hostilities, keep hostilities limited when they do break out, and prevent
their escalation to major wars. Nuclear weapons enable weaker powers to
deter stronger adversaries and help ameliorate the effects of imbalance in
conventional military capability. By providing insurance to cope with
unanticipated contingencies, they reduce immediate anxieties over military
imbalances and vulnerabilities. Nuclear Weapons enable major powers to
take a long view of the strategic environment, set a moderate pace for their
force development, and focus on other national priorities, including
mutually beneficial interaction with other nuclear weapon states. Although
nuclear weapons by themselves do not confer major power status, they are an
important ingredient of power for countries that conduct themselves in a
responsible manner and are experiencing rapid growth in other dimensions
of power.

NEG-4) Nuclear Proliferation is inevitable, the only way a state

can protect itself is with nuclear weapons.
CDR JOHN J. WELSH, 03 (NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IS HERE TO STAY,

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA414501)
Both quotes, taken decades apart, state that we will continue to have nuclear
weapons as long as there are enemies of the U.S. and nuclear weapons.
Since the first nuclear weapon use, eight countries have developed and fielded
nuclear weapons to enhance their security. The figure below depicts the makeup
of the playing field.12 Russia and the United States clearly dominate. Their
arsenals were rapidly built up in the Cold War arms race with the sole purpose of
ensuring Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). India and Pakistan developed
weapons to deter each other in the on-going conflict in Kashmir. China’s
arsenal is designed in part to deter the U.S. from interfering with the
reunification of Taiwan and in part to ensure its survivability. China is
currently developing a new Ballistic Missile Submarine (SSBN) and missile
system.13 Israel possess a small arsenal mostly based at sea on submarines
and nuclear capable F-15’s and 16’s and is designed to provide stability in the
region and deter against an attack from a regional hegemon. 14 France and the
United Kingdom’s arsenals are sized to provide European stability, deter
against an attack of their countries, and provide NATO with indigenously
located weapons on the European continent. It is interesting to note that in
the 1980’s several countries had active nuclear weapons programs, and gave
them up due primarily because of their large price tags and the fact that they
believed that the U.S. would provide a nuclear umbrella over them. Additionally,
it is suspected that several other countries have started work on the
development and/or the fielding of nuclear weapons. These countries
include the so-called “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea) along with
Libya. Only North Korea has publicly admitted (and then retracted the statement,
and then readmitted) to actually possessing nuclear weapons. From myriad often
conflicting reports, it is not clear whether or not nuclear weapons are in North
Korea’s arsenal. In my view, the aim of North Korea’s nuclear weapons
development is to provide a strategic hedge, to allow reunification of North and
South Korea to continue, and perhaps more importantly, to use them as a means
to have economic sanctions them lifted. The revelation of North Korea’s weapons
program is causing serious concerns about the stability on the Korean peninsula,
and the outcome of this will not be known for some time to come. Libya, Iraq, and
Iran are suspected of developing nuclear weapons for much the same reasons
as India and Pakistan- to deter each other, provide weapons of last resort if
conditions would warrant, and to use as a bargaining chip to ease sanctions.
Clearly, despite the Non Proliferation and Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaties, proliferation of materials and knowledge required to build and
field nuclear weapons will continue and perhaps even increase in the

foreseeable future. Based on the strategic and political uncertainties, it

seems essential for the United States to maintain nuclear weapons and
maintain a strong deterrence posture for a long time to come.

NEG-5) Moral assertions against deterrence threaten states and

societies.
Joseph, Robert G., Reichart, 98 (The case for nuclear deterrence today.
John F., Orbis, 00304387, Winter98, Vol.42, Issue 1, Ebsco)
Morality and ethics. In terms of morality, the blanket charge that any use
of nuclear weapons--and even reliance on the threat
of nuclear retaliation for deterrence--would be immoral goes beyond past
proclamations, such as those contained in the 1983 Catholic bishops' pastoral
letter which, while calling for general disarmament and condemning the first use
of nuclear weapons, left ambiguous the role of nuclear weapons for deterrence. If
allowed to stand unchallenged, such a charge could carry substantial weight
in the policy debate, especially in a democracy (and perhaps only in a
democracy) built upon moral principles. But it does not take a trained ethicist
to recognize that such blanket moral assertions are at best simplistic, and
perhaps--in light of what we know about human nature and history--
dangerous in themselves.

NEG-6) Nuclear Weapons are key to ensure stability, save lives,

and prevent future conflict.
Looking back, one might even argue that those who

condemned nuclear weapons as immoral were simply wrong. The Western
alliance's nuclear weapons were in fact the moral weapon of choice. They
worked precisely as intended by deterring an immoral totalitarian state
from attacking Western Europe and undermining the peace, values, and
freedom which the democracies cherished .Indeed, given the tens of
millions of innocent noncombatants killed in two world wars, one can
argue that the possession of nuclear weapons to deter yet another
outbreak of mass slaughter by conventional weapons, either in Europe or
Asia, was squarely in the just war tradition.

NEG-7) Nuclear Weapons are key to protect against CBWs and

other threats facing society.
The argument that the external environment has changed so much

with the end of the Cold War that no ethical or moral basis for nuclear arms
remains is likewise unconvincing. American lives and interests remain
threatened. In fact, the proliferation of chemical and
biological weapons have made the likelihood of conflict and the prospect
of the use of weapons of mass destruction even greater than in the past in
several key regions. But just as before, sound public and defense policy
will emerge only from a prudent calculation of risks and benefits, not from
sweeping generalizations about the morality or immorality of possession or
use of nuclear weapons. The "new eliminationists" who wrap themselves
in the cloak of moral superiority and certainty should be asked to
address the consequences of disarming the great democracies in a world
in which advanced conventional, chemical, and biological weapons(and in
some cases nuclear capabilities) continue to spread among states
explicitly hostile to democratic values.

NEG-8) Nuclear weapons don’t violate just war theory
Joseph Nye, 86 (Nuclear Ethics, p. 50-1)
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.

NEG-9) Advocating a moral responsibility to all persons risks nuclear

war and the ultimate immorality.
Joseph Nye, 86 (Nuclear Ethics, p. 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
must be relevant to the international domain in which moral choice is to be
exercised.

NEG-10) Determining ethical action includes utilitarian

calculations.
Gregory S. Kavka, pub. date: 1987, Ph.D. @ the Univ. of Michigan, and a
Assoc. Prof. @ UCLA, one of the leading political philosophers, Moral paradoxes
of nuclear deterrence, p. 17, Google Books
Turning to our normative assumption, we begin by noting that any reasonable

system of ethics must have substantial utilitarian elements. The
assumption that produces the paradoxes of deterrence concerns the role
of utilitarian considerations in determining one’s moral duty in a narrowly
limited class of situations. Let us say that a great deal of utility is at stake in
a given situation if either (1) reliable expected utilities are calculable and
the difference in expected utility between the best act and its alternatives is
extremely large differences in utility between some possible outcomes of
different available acts. Our assumption says that the act favored by
utilitarian considerations should be performed whenever a great deal of
utility is at stake. This means that, if the difference in expected, or possible,
utilities of the available acts is extremely large (e.g., equivalent to the
difference between life and death for a very large number of people), other
moral considerations are overridden by utilitarian considerations.

NEG-11) Nuclear weapons are neither moral or immoral, only

their context determines that.
Turan Çetiner, pub. date: May 1998, is an Attaché @the Turkish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and a Ph.D. candidate in
International Relations @ Bilkent Univ., Perceptions Journal of International
Affairs, Vol. 3 No. 1, “IS NUCLEAR DETERRENCE MORALLY ACCEPTABLE?,”
http://www.sam.gov.tr/perceptions/Volume3/March-
May1998/ISNUCLEARDETERRENCEMORALLYACCEPTABLE.PDF
Once the moral acceptability of nuclear deterrence is questioned, one

should consider the nature of this weapon as well. Moral paradox,
evidently, has its origin in the enormous destructive power of nuclear
weapons. These weapons have geographically widespread effects from dust8, heat flash9,
and radiation which obviously result in the death of a large group of people away from the conflict
zone. A Japanese study of nuclear effects stated that when nuclear bombs were dropped on
Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later, about 210,000 people were killed
immediately, and the death toll by 1950 was 300,000.10 Pittock emphasized that the justice of the
nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains controversial to this day. The vast effects of
nuclear war, violate another moral rule: the principle of discrimination. It is the basic point of Just
War theory that violence is morally justifiable only in cases when it is not used against innocents:
the ones who are not responsible for the aggressive acts. Non-nuclear weapons, with their
restricted effects, are likely to be used more discriminately, but nuclear weapons are “inherently
indiscriminate.”11 Controversially, the idea of Just War might legitimize ideological warfare. On
the other hand, Joseph S. Nye, an academic and former Assistant Secretary of Defence, pointed
out that to consider the morality of means without considering the morality of
ends is a ‘stunted’ approach. In his framework of analysis, Nye stated the five
maxims of nuclear ethics as follows: i) self defense—a just but limited
cause, ii) never treating nuclear weapons as normal weapons, iii)
minimizing the harm to innocent people, iv) reducing the risk of nuclear
war in the near term and, lastly, v) reducing reliance on nuclear weapons
over time. According to Herman Kahn, US scientist and military analyst, nuclear weapons
are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral
use than most weapons. But they can be used to accomplish moral objectives
and can do this in ways that are morally acceptable. Whereas, it was the
‘principle of proportionality’ that led Kahn to oppose the use of nuclear
weapons against non-nuclear enemies. This included ‘no first use’ of
nuclear weapons against nuclear rivals, and not resorting to ‘massive
retaliation’ and a rejection of ‘uncontrolled war’.

NEG-12) Nuclear deterrence is not an immoral act since it

prevents a greater evil happening.
David Conway, pub. date: 1990, is Principal Lecturer in Philosophy @ Middlesex

Polytechnic, he has contributed to numerous academic journals, and is the
author of A Farewell To Marx, “THE ETHICAL JUSTIFICATION OF NUCLEAR
DETERRENCE,” http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/forep/forep019.pdf
the deontological ground for Premise (2).Kenny has offered this ground for the
Let us turn finally to (ii),
moral wrongness of nuclear deterrence as follows: The real reason why the way
in which we maintain the power to destroy an enemy population is immoral
is that in order for the nation to have the power, individuals in the nation must have the
willingness to exercise the power. Everyone involved in the military chain of command from the top down-wards must
be prepared to give or execute the order to massacre millions of non-combatants if ever the government decides that this
is what is to be done. It is true that this willingness is a conditional willingness: it is a willingness to massacre if ordered to
do so. It is true that it is accompanied, in every member of the armed forces I have ever spoken to, by a profound hope
that those orders will never be given. None-the less, it is a willingness which is required and insisted upon in all the
relevant military personnel. It is this which is really wrong with the deterrent strategy ...It is very horrible that we should be
following a policy which makes it a mark of the good serviceman to be willing, in the appropriate circumstances, to commit
murder on a giganticscale.17 We can afford to be brief in considering thesis (ii). I
concur with William Shaw
entirely when he writes: It begs the question at issue to assume that a conditional
intention to retaliate immorally, when that intention is part of a threat that will (likely)
guarantee that there is no initial immoral attack (and thus no need to retaliate) and when the threat is
it begs the question to say that having a
honorably motivated, is immoral.18In other words,
willingness to do what is morally wrong is always in itself morally wrong. It
depends on what one’s motivation in having that willingness is and on the consequences
of having that willingness. If one’s motivation in having that willingness is to prevent another evil
from happening, and if that willingness is very unlikely to result in any actual wrong act being done, then the
willingness to do moral wrong is not in itself morally wrong. I conclude, therefore, that the moral
case against nuclear deterrence has not been made out . Premise (2) remains unproven, and, while it
does, nuclear deterrence may be practiced by the Western nuclear powers in good
conscience.

NEG-13) Deterrence is key to ensuring long major powers peace.
John Welsh, pub. date: 2003, Commander in the U.S. Navy, USAWC Strategy
Research Project U.S. army War College Publications, “Nuclear Deterrence is
Here to Stay,” http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA414501
Deterrence is a complex concept. The word deter derives from a Latin root,
deterre, that means “to frighten from” or “to turn aside, discourage, or prevent
from acting.” A more modern definition comes from Webster’s dictionary which
defines deterrence as: “The act or a means of deterring and measures taken by a
state or an alliance of states to prevent hostile action by another state.”4
Deterrence is actually a communication process with elements of
punishment and assurance. An adversary must believe that certain actions will
result in unacceptable risks and losses and, conversely, that averting those
actions will prevent the execution of the threats. The process of deterrence
involves assessing both what is known and what is not. Capabilities to
punish can be measured with good knowledge, but intentions and willingness to
act or show
constraint can not.5 Can we make the assumption that the fear of punishment
kept us from going to war with the Soviets during the Cold War? Many believe
that nuclear deterrence was in fact a major factor. When we look at the Cold War in
retrospect, we find that we experienced the longest peace among major powers in the
history of the world.6 It is hard to prove that the concept of deterrence alone kept the U.S.
and the Soviet Union from using nuclear weapons, but the evidence points to the fact that
since their introduction, nuclear weapons and their threat of use have kept us from going
the route of the dinosaurs by destroying the Earth and the exterminating the entire human
race.

Nuclear deterrence is key to stopping a huge power war using

nuclear weapons.
Robert Monroe, pub. date: September 2009, Vice Admiral Monroe (BS, US
Naval Academy; MA, Stanford University) is a self-employed national security
consultant, Senior Leaders Perspective, “A Perfect Storm over Nuclear
Weapons,”
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj09/fal09/monroe.html
Nuclear deterrence has been with us since the dawn of the nuclear era.
It works! We’re all here today because it works. During the 40-plus years of
the Cold War—the most deadly confrontation of superpowers in history—
nuclear deterrence worked flawlessly. Those decades saw hundreds of
major crises and dozens of “hot” wars; yet, the poised readiness of
thousands of nuclear weapons, fine tuned to destroy the Soviets’ most
valued assets, was completely effective in preventing the use of a single
nuclear weapon. But to keep deterrence working during those years, we had to
redesign our nuclear weapons continually to meet changing conditions, threats,
strategy, technology, Soviet leadership, and so on. Our nuclear deterrence
brought about the end of the Soviet Union and the defeat of communism
without violence.

NEG-15) Deterrence outweighs all the alternatives even if it isn’t

perfect.
Elbridge Colby, pub. date: Summer 2007, was a staff member in the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence and on the Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, “Restoring
Deterrence,” Orbis, Vol. 51 Issue 3, Science Direct
In between these two extremes, deterrence is a security policy that offers a

way forward for the United States that is not only more effective because
more tailored, but is also more moral. It is more moral because a deterrent
posture would entail a strategy that is more proportionate, more necessary, more
responsive, and, ultimately, more just. Indeed, deterrence comports with the
fundamental human intuition that it is generally only moral to fight when
attacked. In this it complies with the classical conception of just war, which
mandates that wars only be conducted when one's cause is just, waged by a
legitimate authority, motivated by a right intent, fought with a real prospect of
success, conducted proportionately, and undertaken only as a last resort.
Deterrence satisfies these criteria. It is a defensive strategy that responds to
invasions or attacks, and is therefore just; it sets out relatively clear guidelines for
when it mandates that the government fight, and, therefore, is governed by
legitimate authority. It is driven by a desire to protect, deter, and avenge, and
is therefore motivated by right intent; its realistic red lines and threats are
backed up by the awesome power of the United States, and therefore likely to
succeed; and it responds when attacked and asks from the rest of the
international community only respect for its marked out positions rather than
revolutionary transformation, and is therefore proportional.22 Finally, by its
nature it is undertaken as a last resort rather than preventively.23 It was the
fundamental moral attractiveness of this position that continually
frustrated both Soviet efforts to decouple Europe from the American
nuclear umbrella during the Cold War andoccasional American efforts to
roll back the Soviet empire.
But theorizing about war and peace cannot remain at the level of
abstraction. It must bear moral responsibility for actual consequence and
the power of contingency, as Max Weber pointed out.24 And deterrence,
defense by calculation, uniquely satisfies the moral requirement that
leaders, whatever their benevolent intentions, are basically responsible for
the consequences that contingency produces from their actions. This it
does by grounding a nation's security on its own credible threats—not on either
changing the world through force, as neo-conservatives advocate, nor by hoping
that a more peaceful world will emerge, as the left proposes. Both of these
extremes ground security on radical changes in the way the world
operates, and, therefore, necessarily enmesh us in the rest of the world's
affairs, thereby exponentially expanding our vulnerability to all the
permutations that chance and contingency may produce. Deterrence,
rather, narrows our profile, and thereby reduces our exposure to risk.
NEG – 16) The risk of nuclear deterrence posing an actual threat

is not immoral.
Jeffery L. Johnson, pub. date: 1998, adjunct research prof. @ the Univ. of
Houston Law Center, and now teaches @ Eastern Oregon University,
Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, “NUCLEAR DETERRENCE,”
http://www.eou.edu/~jjohnson/nucwar.htm
Proponents of the strategy have at their disposal a very interesting response.

They can argue that the whole purpose of nuclear deterrence is the
avoidance of the death and destruction that innocent people would
experience in a nuclear war. The deaths, everyone hopes, would not be
actual deaths, but conditional deaths. No one dies from the use of nuclear
weapons, if the strategy achieves its desired outcome. The use of nuclear
weapons in retaliation, and the death and destruction that would result,
may only exist in our nightmares, and the world of subjunctive
conditionals. The policy of nuclear deterrence has some actual effects, here
and now. Many believe that both you and I having massive arsenals, planning
national defense in a context of suspicion and distrust, and other obvious
features of the contemporary nuclear scene, make it more likely that at some
point in the future nuclear weapons will be used. This may come about because
of mistaken calculations of strategic advantage, anger or irrational behavior on
the part of national leaders, or by simple mistake. In any case, having such
destructive power sitting there, armed with a hair trigger, seems by itself to make
it frighteningly likely that the worst will eventually happen. We consider it
intrinsically wrong to put others, particularly innocent others, at great risk. It is
wrong of me to drive my car in a state of intoxication, even if I am lucky enough
to always get away with it. Negligent, or overly risky behavior, is wrong, and
must be normatively condemned, whether or not it results in disastrous
consequences. Since my engaging in a strategy of nuclear deterrence puts
others, innocents in both of our nations, as well as innocents in non-belligerent
nations, at great risk, it is wrong. It is wrong, here and now, non-conditionally.
This argument is plausible, but once again it admits to a plausible response.
Enthusiasts of nuclear deterrence can start by pointing out that society accepts
high levels of risk, if they perceive that the benefit is great enough. We
actively invest in, and make routine use of, national systems of highway and air
travel. Clearly, driving the interstate, or flying in an airliner, is very risky
business. Convenience, economic efficiency, and modern culture, simply
force us to accept the risk of terrible accidents. We do not judge these
risks as immoral, or even unreasonable. Nuclear deterrence does impose
great risk, but its goal -- avoiding nuclear war -- is at least as important as
ease of travel. Further, a world without nuclear deterrence might be even
riskier. You still retain your nuclear weapons. If I do not make it in your best
interest not to use them through a policy of nuclear deterrence, my

decision not to undertake this strategy, or to abandon it, may actually

impose greater risk on innocents at home and abroad.

NEG-17) Nuclear weapons are politically and morally neutral,

only their use gives them significance.
George Perkovich & Ernest W. Lefever, pub. date: November/December 2000, is vice president for
studies and dir. of the Nonproliferation Program @ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Earnest Lefever was the founder and the first President of
the Ethics & Public Policy Center, Foreign Affairs, “Loose Nukes: Arms Control Is No Place for Folly,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/56643/george-
perkovich-and-ernest-w-lefever/loose-nukes-arms-control-is-no-place-for-folly?page=4&%24Version=0&%24Path=/&%24Domain=.foreignaffairs.com
First, Schell asserts that the "existence of the world's present nuclear arsenals poses the ever-present danger of unimaginable catastrophe." Although his
nuclear arms and delivery systems have not led

apocalyptic premise is theoretically true, it is also true that
to nuclear war. In fact, these awesome weapons have helped make

possible a half-century of great-power peace , a peace paradoxically bought at the risk of nuclear conflict. Thus mutual deterrence at the strategic
level has worked so far. Ironically, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis highlighted not the danger of nuclear weapons but their stabilizing impact. This risky "eyeball to eyeball" confrontation demonstrated the virtues of nuclear restraint and reinforced
the Cold War adversaries' inclination to rely on less lethal means of pursuing their interests. Second, Schell states that "every nuclear arsenal is linked to every other nuclear arsenal in the world by ... powerful ties of terror and response." He
insists that the U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence inevitably induces other states to choose the nuclear option. Of course the proliferation of nuclear arms also proliferates dangers, but compelling evidence suggests that neither India nor Pakistan,
for example, has any intention of using its small nuclear arsenal in open warfare. In a visit to both countries early this year, I found no knowledgeable person in either place who regarded the recently acquired nuclear capability as anything other
than a mutual deterrent, a bargaining chip, or a source of national prestige. In fact, all with whom I spoke thought the existence of nuclear arms would dampen the bitter conflict over Kashmir -- and they could claim evidence for their case. In
each country had already learned

1999, when New Delhi and Islamabad came to the brink of a fourth war over Kashmir, both sides pulled back. This suggests that
the discipline of nuclear-induced restraint. After all, during the nuclear standoff between the Soviet Union and the United
States, neither side ever fired a shot at the other, even though Washington was seriously provoked in Berlin, and Moscow was provoked by our u-2 flights over its territory. U.S. & U.S.S.R.:
MORAL EQUIVALENTS? Schell's third key point is to bemoan the shift from the early "nuclear disarmament" negotiations to "arms control" efforts. Under the arms control regime in both
Washington and Moscow, he says, first-strike forces regularly got the better of the hope for stability. Each side habitually saw itself as lagging behind. Cries of alarm and appeals to catch up -- to
close the "bomber gap," a "missile gap," a "throw-weight gap," or a "window of vulnerability" -- sounded through the halls of Congress as well as the hidden precincts of the Politburo. Schell's
views suggest a kind of unjustified moral-equivalence doctrine. Washington focused on nuclear stability over provocation, whereas Moscow occasionally threatened the use of nuclear arms to
maintain control over its satellites in Eastern Europe. And the Soviet Union and the United States behaved quite differently in the global arena. As a predatory power, Moscow was hostile toward
Western Europe and sought to expand its empire elsewhere by subversion. Fourth, although Schell supports the three major arms-control agreements -- the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, the
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and the NPT -- as well as the test-ban negotiations, he feels that the U.S. failure to commit to a totally denuclearized world is subverting these efforts. Schell
sternly criticizes the unilateral American determination to deploy a national missile defense system, which, he insists, jeopardizes the old ABM treaty and will spur a new nuclear arms race. He
also condemns the Senate for rejecting the patently unenforceable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Schell rightly sees the "arms control regime" as a weak reed, even as "folly," but he cites the
Arms control advocates should not be faulted for seeking to avoid

wrong reasons.
war but for raising utopian expectations by exaggerating the force of international treaties. Yet
Schell wants to invest even greater confidence in such instruments, which he sees as handmaidens in the ultimate task of
pushing the evil nuclear genie back into its bottle. Alas, nuclear
arms and missile technology,
like dynamite and guns, cannot be uninvented. States, not international
treaties, are and always have been the primary actors in world politics. And in
grave crises the vital interests of the state always trump treaties, however solemn or multilateral they may be. A MINIMUM DETERR First, Schell asserts that the "existence of the world's present
nuclear arsenals poses the ever-present danger of unimaginable catastrophe." Although his apocalyptic premise is theoretically true, it is also true that nuclear arms and delivery systems have not
led to nuclear war. In fact, these awesome weapons have helped make possible a half-century of great-power peace, a peace paradoxically bought at the risk of nuclear conflict. Thus mutual
deterrence at the strategic level has worked so far. Ironically, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis highlighted not the danger of nuclear weapons but their stabilizing impact. This risky "eyeball to eyeball"
confrontation demonstrated the virtues of nuclear restraint and reinforced the Cold War adversaries' inclination to rely on less lethal means of pursuing their interests. Second, Schell states that
"every nuclear arsenal is linked to every other nuclear arsenal in the world by ... powerful ties of terror and response." He insists that the U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence inevitably induces other
states to choose the nuclear option. Of course the proliferation of nuclear arms also proliferates dangers, but compelling evidence suggests that neither India nor Pakistan, for example, has any
intention of using its small nuclear arsenal in open warfare. In a visit to both countries early this year, I found no knowledgeable person in either place who regarded the recently acquired nuclear
capability as anything other than a mutual deterrent, a bargaining chip, or a source of national prestige. In fact, all with whom I spoke thought the existence of nuclear arms would dampen the
bitter conflict over Kashmir -- and they could claim evidence for their case. In 1999, when New Delhi and Islamabad came to the brink of a fourth war over Kashmir, both sides pulled back. This
suggests that each country had already learned the discipline of nuclear-induced restraint. After all, during the nuclear standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States, neither side ever
fired a shot at the other, even though Washington was seriously provoked in Berlin, and Moscow was provoked by our u-2 flights over its territory. U.S. & U.S.S.R.: MORAL EQUIVALENTS?
Schell's third key point is to bemoan the shift from the early "nuclear disarmament" negotiations to "arms control" efforts. Under the arms control regime in both Washington and Moscow, he says,
first-strike forces regularly got the better of the hope for stability. Each side habitually saw itself as lagging behind. Cries of alarm and appeals to catch up -- to close the "bomber gap," a "missile
gap," a "throw-weight gap," or a "window of vulnerability" -- sounded through the halls of Congress as well as the hidden precincts of the Politburo. Schell's views suggest a kind of unjustified
moral-equivalence doctrine. Washington focused on nuclear stability over provocation, whereas Moscow occasionally threatened the use of nuclear arms to maintain control over its satellites in
Eastern Europe. And the Soviet Union and the United States behaved quite differently in the global arena. As a predatory power, Moscow was hostile toward Western Europe and sought to
expand its empire elsewhere by subversion. Fourth, although Schell supports the three major arms-control agreements -- the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)
Treaty, and the NPT -- as well as the test-ban negotiations, he feels that the U.S. failure to commit to a totally denuclearized world is subverting these efforts. Schell sternly criticizes the unilateral
American determination to deploy a national missile defense system, which, he insists, jeopardizes the old ABM treaty and will spur a new nuclear arms race. He also condemns the Senate for
rejecting the patently unenforceable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Schell rightly sees the "arms control regime" as a weak reed, even as "folly," but he cites the wrong reasons. Arms control
advocates should not be faulted for seeking to avoid war but for raising utopian expectations by exaggerating the force of international treaties. Yet Schell wants to invest even greater confidence
in such instruments, which he sees as handmaidens in the ultimate task of pushing the evil nuclear genie back into its bottle. Alas, nuclear arms and missile technology, like dynamite and guns,
cannot be uninvented. States, not international treaties, are and always have been the primary actors in world politics. And in grave crises the vital interests of the state always trump treaties,
however solemn or multilateral they may be. A MINIMUM DETERRENT Schell's final thesis pins the primary responsibility for eliminating nuclear weapons on the United States. He writes that in
"many parts of the world, a steady undertow of nuclear sanity" has slowed "a global scramble to obtain nuclear arms." Washington should follow this sane lead and resolve to eliminate this
scourge, he argues. However unrealistic Schell's principal proposal, he is right in implying that mutual deterrence during the Cold War could have been achieved with fewer arms on each side.
After Moscow exploded its first H-bomb in 1953, Washington sought to maintain effective mutual deterrence at the lowest prudential level. But Moscow's paranoia and ironclad secrecy prevented
America from knowing the numbers and disposition of Soviet nuclear forces. Then at the 1955 Geneva summit, President Eisenhower made his daring "open skies" proposal that, if implemented,
would have provided each side with sufficient intelligence about the other's arsenals to permit something approximating a minimum deterrent approach. Premier Khrushchev promptly rejected the
proposal. This development made the u-2 espionage flights over Soviet territory a viable alternative. Had Khrushchev accepted the mutual verification of warheads and missiles, no u-2 flights
would have taken off and the superpowers might well have maintained the stability conferred by mutual deterrence at a much lower level of nuclear arms, thus saving hundreds of billions of
dollars. Finally, in September 1983 Ronald Reagan's firm response to Moscow's deployment of medium-range ss-20 missiles targeted on cities from Oslo to Istanbul made possible a substantial
reduction in the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) based in the Soviet Union, East and West Germany, Belgium, and Italy. Despite pressure from nuclear-freeze advocates, including Schell,
Reagan deployed Pershing IIs in West Germany to counter the ss-20s. This move got Gorbachev's attention, and in 1987 he agreed with Reagan to jettison this highly destabilizing system on both
sides. The INF treaty, the most significant arms reduction of the nuclear age, was achieved not by protracted arms control negotiation or by an international treaty but the unilateral decision --
backed by NATO allies -- of a courageous president facing a clear and present threat.. BETWEEN UTOPIA AND HELL Schell insists that "every last nuclear warhead" must be destroyed. This
Alas, the alternatives

goal, in his view, can be accomplished only if American leaders heed his apocalyptic advice and launch a vigorous crusade to that end.
that statesmen face are not utopia or hell, but purgatory. Constrained by
the realities of history and politics, they confront agonizing choices in their
quest for a tolerable balance of power that restrains aggressors and
permits -- but does not assure -- a measure of peace and freedom. Nuclear
weapons, like all technology, are morally and politically neutral. They are
inert and have no life of their own. Weapons are not actors in the global
drama but pliant tools to be used or misused by fallible human beings.
Their significance derives from how statesmen employ them. For all their
portent, nuclear arms so far have served as instruments of peace.

NEG-18) Disarming is flawed, nuclear deterrence is key to

prevent massive wars.
First, the idea of nuclear disarmament is flawed at its foundation. A world

without nuclear weapons is not desirable. The United States and, indeed, the
rest of the world are better off if we retain our arsenal. Preeminently, the nuclear
force provides security for the United States through deterrence. No
rational actor would dare trigger a decisive U.S. nuclear attack. This does
not mean that the United States can always avoid war or enforce its will, but it
does mean that our nation is protected from the worst kinds of devastating
attack. We possess the “absolute weapon,” the ultimate trump card and, if we
have elected not to use it in the wars we have fought, that is a matter
of our choosing. Conventional weapons, no matter how precise, are orders of
magnitude less powerful than their nuclear counterparts and thus can never
offer this kind of protection. And even if we enjoy an overwhelming
conventional superiority today, prudence and experience suggest that this
advantage will not last forever, and certainly not in its current stark form. While
it does last, furthermore, preservation of a strong nuclear deterrent is fully
compatible with a policy of reducing these weapons’ roles in our actual
military strategy, even as we retain them as a reserve force. Why, then,
would we abandon this ability to guarantee retaliation should anyone cross
our “red lines”?

NEG-19) Nuclear weapons are key to stop violent, world wars

and conflicts.
Furthermore, the American arsenal contributes to peace in key regions of the

world through our extended deterrent umbrella. Nuclear weapons make
absolutist wars with the United States—or those it protects—irrational. The
threat of nuclear retaliation makes wars necessarily limited because ratcheting
up violence or demands risks a nuclear response. The cold peace of the post-
1945 era testifies to the reality that an attack that might prompt nuclear
retaliation, as a major Soviet attack against NATO almost certainly would
have, is a risk very unlikely to be taken. With this logic, the American
nuclear umbrella has, for 60 years, sheltered not only the United States,
but NATO, Japan and other allies from outright attack and forced
submission. Given that much of the worst violence in human history has
occurred because of great power wars (almost entirely conventional), we
should not dispense with the very weaponry that has rendered such
devastating conflicts almost obsolete.

NEG-20) Great Power’s possession of nuclear weapons is key to

deter conflict and the weapons proliferation.
The U.S. nuclear umbrella offers the additional benefit of preventing some
kinds of proliferation. For example, the U.S. deterrent has dissuaded
otherwise perfectly capable countries (such as Germany, Japan, South
Korea and others) from developing indigenous nuclear forces because they
could rely ultimately on American protection in the event of attack or
coercion.10 Conversely, the very supremacy of the American strategic (and
conventional) arsenal dissuades many countries from attempting to
compete militarily with us and our allies. Those countries that have
resolutely pursued nuclear programs – including the United States – have
found that such weapons are most useful for deterrence and, to a lesser
extent, prestige rather than blackmail or coercion.11 Nuclear weapons are
attractive principally because they largely take cataclysmic defeat and
regime change “off the table” in conflicts short of the absolute, an
attraction we can more effectively minimize by deemphasizing that policy
rather than abandoning key weapons in our arsenal.

NEG-21) Nuclear Weapons are key to stopping conflict, it is

impossible to without them.
Some might contend that these arguments wrongly presume a rationality

among America's opponents. This point may be debated, as even fanatics
follow a certain kind of rationality, but the basic point is that we should not
abandon the overwhelming advantages of a system that speaks directly to
man's most basic rational calculus—his, his fellows’ and his society's
survival. Nuclear weapons, and especially sophisticated and integrated nuclear
arsenals with command and control, redundancy, and the like, have
fundamentally changed war-making. They are essentially defensive
weapons that make most violent aggression, both of the nuclear and even
serious conventional varieties, irrational to even the most aggressive and
risk-tolerant powers.

NEG-22) Effective deterrence controls escalation and is the best

predictor for war.
Walter Gary Sharp, pub. date: 2008, serves as an Assoc. Deputy General
Counsel for International Affairs @ the U.S. Dept. of Defense where he is
responsible for providing advice on international and national security law issues
related to the worldwide activities and operations of the U.S. Armed Forces,
Democracy and Deterrence Foundations for an Enduring World Peace,
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/gettrdoc?ad=ada493031&location=u2&doc=gettrdoc.pdf
Moore concludes in Solving the War Puzzle that war arises from the
interaction of all three Waltzian levels (individual, state or national, and
international), whereas some proponents of the democratic peace principle
focus only on government structures to explain war and some traditional realists
focus only on the international system. Both realists and democratic peace
proponents tend to emphasize institutions and systems, whereas Moore reminds
us that people—leaders—decide to pursue war: Wars are not simply accidents.
Nor, contrary to our ordinary language, are they made by nations. Wars are
made by people; more specifically they are decided on by the leaders of
nation states—and other non- national groups in the case of terrorism—who
make the decision to commit aggression or otherwise use the military
instrument. These leaders make that decision based on the totality of
incentives affecting them at the time of the decision. . . . . . . [Incentive
theory] tells us that we simply have a better chance of predicting war, and
fashioning forms of intervention to control it, if we focus squarely on the effect of
variables from all levels of analysis in generating incentives affecting the actual
decisions made by those with the power to decide on war.42 Incentive theory
focuses on the individual decisions that lead to war and explains the synergistic
relationship between the absence of effective deterrence and the absence of
democracy. Together these three factors—the decisions of leaders made
without the restraining effects of deterrence and democracy— are the cause
of war: War is not strictly caused by an absence of democracy or effective deter-
rence or both together. Rather war is caused by the human leadership decision
to employ the military instrument. The absence of democracy, the absence of
effective deterrence, and most importantly, the synergy of an absence of both
are conditions or factors that predispose to war. An absence of democracy
likely predisposes by [its] effect on leadership and leadership incentives, and an
absence of effective deterrence likely predisposes by its effect on incentives from
factors other than the individual or governmental levels of analysis. To
understand the cause of war is to understand the human decision for war;
that is, major war and democide . . . are the consequence of individual
decisions responding to a totality of incentives.43

NEG-23) Desire to hold onto power proves deterrence works.
The leading charge made against the deterrence strategy is that America’s
modern enemies cannot be deterred. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, and the
rest of the rogue states’ gallery are, in this view, actors bent on hostile action
against the United States, our interests, and our allies. The risk of allowing these
powers to obtain WMD—particularly nuclear weapons—is so great that it
outweighs the costs of initiating preventive steps up to and including war.
Advocates of this position point wistfully to the ‘‘easier’’ days of the Cold War,
when the West faced only the ‘‘rational’’ Soviets and, to a lesser extent, Chinese.
Why this argument has achieved such dominance is a mystery. There is no
reason to think that America’s enemies cannot in significant respects be
deterred. There is plenty that each of these rogue states holds dear that the
United States can threaten. Though little is known of the ‘‘Hermit Kingdom,’’ it is
certainly clear that North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il and his family very much value his
place as the great leader. Indeed, the brooding specter of American nuclear
and conventional forces striking down the Kim regime was enough to end
the war in 1953 and maintain a very cold peace for half a century.11 Syria’s
weak Assad family dictatorship is probably even more susceptible to
threats to its hold on power than the Kims. Iran’s mullahcracy and
revolutionary leadership are deeply committed to maintaining their regime
(probably the reason they are developing their nuclear capability in the first
place). All of these perverse dictators share a common devotion to their
own power, a devotion that the United States can easily exploit.

NEG-24) Nuclear deterrence works against the most aggressive

foes, Cold War proves.
Deterrence,” Orbis, Vol. 51 Issue 3, accessed: 10-1-09, Science Direct
Thus, if we demand that no rogue state launch or enable through third parties
(i.e., terrorists) a WMD strike against the United States or its allies—a
reasonable, defensive demand—and back that provision up with a threat—
clearly credible—to respond with crushing force, there is every reason to believe
that such a policy will work. No regime, no matter how aggressive and risk-
inclined, would be so foolish as to attack the United States, a move that
would yield little advantage, and thereby incur an attack’s clear
consequence—utter destruction. There is important evidence to this effect.
The Cold War experience shows that such defensive demands backed by
believable threats can stave off attacks by even the most aggressive foes. It
is amusing today to hear the Soviet Union referred to as a rational and reliable
power, a tagline that would have been news to the Western officials who had to
deal with the USSR during those years. This was, after all, the power that
threatened to ‘‘bury’’ the West, brandished its awesome military forces with little
restraint, developed an enormous nuclear arsenal that peaked at something on
the order of 45,000 nuclear warheads (including over 10,000 ‘‘strategic’’
warheads), and tried to cow Western Europe into submission. Without the
threat of American nuclear retaliation, the Soviets likely would either have
intimidated the Western Europeans into fealty or invaded to make it so.
Only the threat of U.S. nuclear strikes placated this ideological behemoth,
destined by its holy book to spread Marxism worldwide, from starting the
third world war. If the United States was able to deter perhaps the most
aggressive, most powerful force in human history, why can’t we deter Iran
or North Korea or Syria?14

NEG-25) Nuclear deterrence is morally on par with the

willingness to drive – the increase in risk is equal.

DETERRENCE,” http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/forep/forep019.pdf
It may be objected that the two cases of nuclear deterrence and killing
pedestrians by accident while driving are not analogous. Nuclear deterrence
involves having an intention to do something which one knows will lead to the
deaths of many innocent people. Driving involves having no such intention. I
would dispute the moral relevance of this latter claim. If you know for certain -
as we all do - that innocent pedestrians will be accidentally killed by drivers
despite the drivers having no intention to kill these pedestrians, then, if you
decide to drive, you are manifesting a willingness to create a risk that you
accidentally kill pedestrians. I submit that, as far as increasing the risks of
wrong-doing are concerned, nuclear deterrence is no worse than driving is.
Of course, killing millions of people is morally worse than killing only very few.
Driving risks killing very few by comparison with the numbers whose lives are
risked by the practice of nuclear deterrence. Yet, if the wrongness of deterrence
is a function only of its increasing the risk of killing non-combatants and that
alone, the two practices - driving and nuclear deterrence - are on a moral
par. I submit that there is no real moral difference between driving and nuclear
deterrence, despite nuclear deterrence risking something that is much worse
than driving risks. In any case, it is certainly true, it seems to me, that the risk of
innocent people dying if people drive is much higher than the risk of
innocent people dying if nuclear deterrence is practised. For we know for
certain that there will be accidental deaths on the roads if people drive. We do
not know there will be any innocent deaths if nuclear deterrence is
practiced. For there is no certainty that nuclear deterrence will fail. I submit that
the consequentialist ground for asserting Premise (2) does not hold good - or, at
least, it has not been proved that it does hold good.

NEG-26) There are moral ways to carry our nuclear deterrence.

DETERRENCE,” accessed: 10-24-09,
http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/forep/forep019.pdf
However, Kenny has argued that, during disarmament negotiations with the
Soviet Union, it would be possible to deter Soviet aggression for a brief period
at least by the West’s retaining the capacity to launch nuclear weapons
against the Soviet Union in retaliation for aggression, while at the same time
the West sincerely declared that under no circumstances whatever would it
ever be prepared to use the weapons even in retaliation if attacked. The
Soviets would be deterred from attacking the West in such circumstances,
argues Kenny, by the fear that the West might retaliate, given its capacity,
despite its declaration that it would not use the weapons in retaliation. This is
because the Soviet Union would not be able to be certain either that the West
was sincere in its declaration or that the West would not change its mind in the
event of Soviet aggression against it. By maintaining the capacity to retaliate
with nuclear weapons if attacked, despite lacking the intent, the West could
effectively deter the Soviet Union from aggression and provide the Soviet Union
with an incentive for participating in multi-lateral nuclear disarmament.
Kenny, therefore, denies that all nuclear deterrence requires its
practitioners to have the wrongful intention to retaliate with nuclear
weapons if attacaked in order to be effective.

NEG-27) A coercive or compliance strategy won’t be enough to

stop the threat of rogue nuclear proliferators – only deterrence
can ensure peace in the international system.
Deterrence,” Orbis, Vol. 51 Issue 3, accessed: 10-1-09, Science Direct
The Cold War also illuminates the limits of a coercive or compellance strategy. The failure
of the Eisenhower-Dulles ‘‘rollback’’ policy shows that coercion—the offensive use of threat—is
far more difficult to pull off than defense. Deterrence works, by contrast, because its
fundamental aim is a conservative one, the preservation of an existing system. If the United States and its
allies see themselves as conservators of the current international order, as they should, then deterrence is a workable
strategy. Of course, this may require accommodating proliferation and changes in the balances of power, but these
What the U nited S tates demands
developments are unlikely to alter the underlying dynamics of the current order.
of its rogue state irritants is simple: that they not strike or enable a strike at the U nited
S tates or its allies, at pain of massive American response. If the threat of a devastating American
response is sufficiently credible, then neither can these powers bluff and bludgeon
themselves into regional dominance. Such a policy on our part would allow the
continuation of the peaceful, profitable, and promising international system.15

NEG-28) The viewed immorality of nuclear weapons is what is

key to their deterrent abilities.
Stephen J. Hadley, 97 (POLICY CONSIDERATIONS IN

USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 8 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 23, LEXIS, 8/24/10)
The second serious misconception in the recent public debate is that

reliance on nuclear weapons as part of the U.S. national defense strategy is
"irresponsible" and "immoral." This suggestion is misguided because from
the beginning, the purpose of nuclear weapons was to deter war and
prevent loss of life. In fact, nuclear weapons were intended to deter not
only nuclear war, but the kind of massive conventional wars of World War I
and World War II. Ironically, it was precisely the enormous and terrifying
destructive power of nu [*25] clear weapons - the basis for their alleged
"irresponsibility" or "immorality" - that made them so effective in this role.

NEG-29) Nuclear deterrence is wholly moral in that it prevented

conflict in Europe while at the same time helping develop
peaceful alliances.

USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 8 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 23, LEXIS, 8/24/10
Even critics must acknowledge that the security arrangements developed

after World War II, largely dependent upon nuclear weapons, were
successful in giving us a Europe that has been free for fifty years from the
major warfare that twice afflicted the continent in the first half of this
century. Under the protection of nuclear deterrence, Europe has pursued a
policy of economic and political integration that has put to rest age-old
antagonisms and centuries of conflict between countries such as France
and Germany. Nuclear deterrence also helped to hold off a Communist
Soviet Union until the internal contradictions of that regime brought it
down. In summary, "morality" must be judged in part by its effects, and if
judged by these results, nuclear deterrence was a highly moral and
responsible national security policy.

NEG-30) Nuclear weapons cannot be uninvited. If they were to

be eliminated they would quickly be redeveloped by rogue
nations, shifting the world’s balance of power. Retaining nuclear
weapons is the only way to preserve global stability and
security.

USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 8 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 23, LEXIS, 8/24/10
We must acknowledge that the goal of no nuclear weapons is [*26]

unachievable; nuclear weapons cannot be eliminated. Even if all nuclear
weapons were destroyed today, the possibility of their reappearing in a
crisis will cast a shadow over the national security policy of every nation,
and over international politics.Nuclear weapons can be reproduced and
deployed without detection in a relatively short time. In short, the genie is
out of the bottle; nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented. Nations
acquire nuclear weapons because they either fear their neighbors or want
to coerce them. In a world of virtually no deployed nuclear weapons, the
possession of a handful of these weapons will transform a country such as
Iran, Iraq, or Libya not just into a regional player, but into a global power.
Indeed, the fewer nuclear weapons actually deployed in the world, the
greater the incentive for nations and terrorist groups to acquire them.
Further, as the Iraq situation has shown, our ability to detect, much less
prevent, the clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons is exceedingly
suspect. We learned in the Gulf War that Iraq was much further along in the
development of nuclear weapons than the world community ever
contemplated. 10 Moreover, the United Nations' most intrusive inspection
regime since the dawn of the nuclear age has been unable to guarantee
that all vestiges of Iraq's nuclear weapons program and the associated
delivery systems, have been eliminated. 11 Thus, because we cannot be
confident that the world will ever be, to use the phrase of some in the
recent debate, permanently "devoid of nuclear weapons," 12 some nations,
such as the United States, must continue to possess them to deter their
acquisition or use by others.


LD Zou Files - Nuclear Weapons

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Descrição original:

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

LD Zou Files - Nuclear Weapons

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Z-LD Nuclear Weapons

DB8 Zone, LLC September/October 2010

QUALITY RESEARCH FOR COMPETENT DEBATE

FROM THE PRODUCERS OF THE ZOU FILES

Resolved: States ought not possess nuclear weapons.

Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC

for the 2010-2011 school year.

Resolved: States ought not possess nuclear weapons.

possess a recording studio. The world isn’t perfect.

What exactly is this resolution trying to get us to debate? That depends on

Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC 2

with no nuclear weapons would be fine, I guess. Mutually Assured Destruction is

clearly working, but it’s hard to see it as comparatively advantageous to an utter

lack of nuclear weapons altogether.

fear that Hitler would actually succeed.

madmen trying to create weapons of mass destruction, and a moderate democratic

government actually using two of them. In such an environment, why would a

Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC 3

We have no better alternative, so let’s start with a background of nuclear

revolutionized the field of physics with a new understanding of atoms. Albert

incredible power available in matter. Uranium was discovered to be a particularly

weapon shortly thereafter.

elements could be bombarded with alpha particles to induce radioactivity, and

weapon themselves, which was later revealed to be a justified fear, if incorrect in

their industrial capacity would be essential for the weapon’s development.

Oppenheimer. The US and Britain coordinated information and resources on this

successful test was conducted under the authority of President Truman. On

did it again at Nagasaki, effectively bringing World War II to a close.

been forced to surrender through continued firebombings, an outright invasion, or

Mutually Assured Destruction about which we grew up hearing in school. If the

in 1949, then the second phase would be America’s development of a hydrogen

fusion bomb, thousands of times more destructive than those dropped on

hydrogen bomb in 1953.

Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC 6

delivery. The invention of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) meant

of reliable data. A handful of other nations are in the process of developing

nuclear weapons, including Brazil, Sweden, Argentina and (perhaps) Iran.

concept, which we’ve already discussed briefly. In short, there is no good,

strike would likely do just that.

happen. In part, it is an extension of the Oppenheimer critique that there are no

weapon, therefore, would seem to be unnecessary in any sense. While the US

would seem to be no different in their destructive capabilities than many ordinary

rarely the explosion itself.

countries looking to cause a giant explosion in an enemy’s territory.

Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC 9

namely, how to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The terms of a series of international

stockpile of weaponry, which numbered close to 40,000 warheads at one point in

Kazakhstan, or the Ukraine. In fact, nobody knows the current location of

could potentially kill millions of civilians.

Korea’s possession of a nuke underscores an utter failure on the part of China to

selling these secrets, parts and fuel to terrorist organizations.

weapon (or enriched uranium, or even expertise) to a terrorist organization. A

deterrent. But responding to a nuclear strike in kind is one thing; responding to a

Copyright 2010, DB8 Zone, LLC 12

of terrorists is the greatest post-Cold War nuclear challenge.

of overall numbers of nuclear warheads has been achieved through bilateral

agreements between the US and Russia, or the multilateral, 189-signatory Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT). The NPT is probably the most

warheads, with a fourth (Israel) strongly suspected of having them.

members of the UN Security Council). These nuclear powers are prohibited by

the NPT from spreading any nuclear weapons or weapons technology/secrets to

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which governs the spread of