Loyola - War Core

8/11/2019 Loyola - War Core

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 Yes/No War Core

War Core


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Yes War

War is possible defense buildup and international tensionsMearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, 99

(John, 2-25-99 , Is Major War Obsolete? http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10, accessed 7-15-13)Now I think the central claim thats on the table is wrong -headed, and let me tell you why. First of all, there are a number of goodreasons why great powers in the system will think seriously about going to war in the future , and Ill give youthree of them and try and illustrate some cases. First, states oftentimes compete for economic resources. Is it hard toimagine a situation where a reconstituted Russia gets into a war with the United States and th e Persian Gulf over Gulf oil? I dont think thatsimplausible. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war in the South China Sea over economic resources? I dont find that hard to

imagine. A second reason that states go to war which, of cour se, is dear to the heart of realists like me, and thats to enhance theirsecurity. Take the United States out of Europe, put the Germans on their own; you got the Germans on one side and the Russians on theother, and in between a huge buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it impossible to imagine the Russians andthe Germans getting into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but feasible, for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and Chinagetting into a war over the South China Sea, not for resource reasons but because Japanese sea-lines of communication run through there and

a huge Chinese navy may threaten it? I dont think its impossible to imagine that. What about nationalism, a third reason? China,fighting in the United States over Taiwan? You think thats impossible? I dont think thats impossible. Thats a scenario that

makes me very nervous. I can figure out all sorts of ways , none of which are h ighly likely, that the Chinese and theAmericans end up shooting at each other. It doesnt necessarily have to be World War III, but it is great -power war. Chineseand Russians fighting each other over Siberia? As many of you know, there are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. Youstart mixing ethnic populations in most areas of the world outside the United States and its usually aprescription for big trouble. Again, not highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on, positing a lot of scenarios where great powershave good reasons to go to war against other great powers. Second reason: There is no question that in the twentieth century, certainly with

nuclear weapons but even before nuclear weapons, the costs of going to war are very high . But that doesn t mean thatwar is ruled out. The presence of nuclear weapons alone does not make war obsolescent . I will remind youthat from 1945 to 1990, we lived in a world where there were thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides, and there was nobody running

aroun d saying, War is obsolescent. So you cant make the argument that the mere presence of nuclear weapons creates peace . India andPakistan are both going down the nuclear road. You dont hear many people running around saying, Thats going to producepe ace. And, furthermore, if you believe nuclear weapons were a great cause of peace, you ought to be in favor of nuclear proli feration. Whatwe need is everybody to have a nuclear weapon in their back pocket. You dont hear many people saying thats going t o produce peace, doyou? Conventional war? Michaels right; conventional war was very deadly before nuclear weapons came along, but we still had wars. And thereason we did is because states come up with clever strategies. States are always looking for clever strategies to avoid fighting lengthy andbloody and costly wars of attrition. And they sometimes find them, and they sometimes go to war for those reasons. So theres no question inmy mind that the costs of war are very high, and deterrence is not that difficult to achieve in lots of great-power security situations. But on theother hand, to argue that war is obsolescent- I wouldnt make that argument. My third and final point here is, the fact of the matter is, that theres hardly anybody in the nation al security establishment -and I bet this is true of Michael- who believes thatwar is obsolescent. Im going to tell you why I think this is the case. Consider the fact that the United States stations roughly100,000 troops in Europe and 100,000 troops in Asia. We spend an enormous amount of money ondefense. Were spending almost as much money as we were spending during the Cold War on defense. We spend more money than thenext six countries in the world spend on defense. The questions is, why are we spending all this money? Why are we stationing troops inEurope? Why are we stationing troops in Asia? Why are we concentrating on keeping NATO intact and spreading it eastward? Ill tell you why,because we believe that if we dont stay there and we pull out, t rouble is going to break out, and not trouble between minor powers, but

trouble between major powers. Thats why were there. We know very well that if we leave Europe, the Germans are going to

seriously countenance, if not automatically go, and get nuclear weapons. Certainly the case with the Japanese. Doyou think the Germans and the Japanese are going to stand for long not to have nuclear weapons? I dont think thats the case . Again, thatsecurity zone between the Germans and the Russians- therell be a real competition to fill that. The reasonwere there in Europe, and the reason that were there in Asia is because we believe that great-power war is a potentialpossibility, which contradicts the argument on the table. So I would conclude by asking Michael if, number one, he believes we should pullout of Europe and pull out of Asia, and number two, if he does not, why not?
http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10


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Nuclear deterrence failsDoyle, senior policy analyst at Science Applications International Corporation, , 2009(James, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: a Debate, Eyes on the Prize: A Strategy for Enhancing GlobalSecurity , http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/abolishing_nuclear_weapons_debate.pdf, accessed 7-15-13)

In their essay, Perry, Shultz, Kissinger, and Nunn assert that nuclear deterrence is increasingly hazardousand decreasingly effective . In essence, they reject the prevailing belief within national security establishments thatnuclear weapons still provide powerful security benefits in the evolving international securityenvironment . Theirs is an unprecedented challenge to the existing nuclear order, and their arguments deserve seriousanalysis . In many ways, they are consistent with traditional critiques of the risks of nuclear deterrence . Butthey also go deeper to demonstrate why nuclear deterrence is more unstable in the currentenvironment than in the Cold War and why continued nuclear proliferation is likely to exacerbate ratherthan attenuate these instabilities, increasing the risks yet further. Nuclear deterrence is increasinglyhazardous because a large surplus of nuclear weapons and materials left over from the Cold War is, insome cases, not adequately secured . In addition, an entirely new threat in connection with these weapons andmaterials has emerged in the form of extremist groups that are willing to carry out catastrophic terroristattacks. Several states that are acquiring nuclear weapons or increasing existing arsenals are located in conflict-prone regions and have limited financial and technical resources to devote to nuclear security. Nucleardeterrence is decreasingly effective because the conditions that enabled mutual deterrence during theCold War have changed . In todays world, nuclear-armed states share disputed borders, have limitedexperience with nuclear weapon safety and security, and have vulnerable early warning and nuclearweapon control capabilities . Moreover, nuclear deterrence cannot effectively reduce the chance of nuclearterrorism. The more states acquire nuclear weapons for deterrence, the more they will also risk providing weapons and materials toterrorists who wish to carry out a nuclear attack. These realities refute the view held most notably by Kenneth Waltzthat nuclear weapons provide concrete benefits for states and will have a stabilizing influence on theinternational system .1 The authors of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons do not give enough emphasis to the transformed nature of thesecurity environment and the implications of that transformation for traditional nuclear strategies. Strategic thought on nucleararms evolved within a global security environment that no longer exists. That security environment was defined by a

single primary state adversary, whose threat of nuclear attack against the United States and its allies could be successfully deterred by areciprocal threat of nuclear retaliation.

The convergence of hyper-competition and hyper-power status make conflictincreasingly likelyCapie 11 Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center forInternational Affairs at Harvard University, Research Associate in the ASEAN Studies Centre at American University, co-editor of the journal Political Science,member of the editorial board of Asian Politics and Policy *7/6, David, Welcome to the dark side? Mittelman's encounter with global insecurity, Global C hange,Peace & Security, Volume 23, Issue 2, Taylor and Francis]

The book's thesis is that there are two systemic drivers of contemporary security and insecurity. The first is whatMittelman calls hypercompetition, the intensified competition that agglomerates markets . Accelerated by newtech nologies, the rise of transnational capital and increasing labour mobility , national production systems are

giving way to global firms with supply chains extending across the world. The language of war has permeated commerce , withcorporations embracing aspects of a Hobbesian warre of all against all as they seek to cut costs, raiseefficiency and dominate markets. Hypercompetition is heavily but not totally American in several of its facets, including the long reach of USmarkets, investment in R&D, the prevalence of neoliberal ideas about the ordering of the economy and society as well as the p revalence of American popular

culture. The second is the concentration of power in a n historically unprecedented hegemonic actor: the U nitedStates of America. The book puts aside the traditional vocabulary of geopolitics, arguing that the USA is not a superpower or even a great power enjoying a unipolarmoment. Rather, in light of the large distance between the United States and the other major powers in aglobalizing world, the preferred term is hyperpower. 3 The idea builds on the notion of hyperpuissance coined by French foreign minister HubertVedrine in 1998, but, drawing on Gramscian notions of consensual hegemony and Foucauldian biopolitics, Mittelman gives
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it more precision and extracts greater analytic leverage from it. Notably, in his vision, although there can be only onehyperpower, the concept extends beyond the US A as a state. Instead, hyperpower is imperial in character, a weblikestructure , including a net of overseas military bases, a clutch of allies, aspects of ideological appeal, and an educational system that widely propagates valuesassociated with those at the epicentre of globalization .4 When hypercompetition and hyperpowerconverge ( or coincide), the conditions point to the book's third core concept: hyper conflict . This arises out of the tensionbetween the logic of statecentric and polycentric worlds and when a medley of nonstate actors both accommodates and moreassertively resists state initiatives.5 Although only in a nascent phase, hyperconflict expresses itself as heightened coercion andweakening consensus , pervasive uncertainty and a rising climate of fear .6 Contrasting the old order of war with the new orderof militarized globalization, Mittelman argues that the old order was permeated by wars between states and within them, as well as partialsafeguards with rules to manage them. This has been partly supplanted by hyperpower enmeshed in various conflicts , butthe most flagrant conflicts deny military solutions. In fact, the application of more and more coercion inflames tensions,emboldens unconventional enemies, and inspires recruits for their causes.7 The three concepts serve less as a model orformal explanation of contemporary insecurity and work more as a heuristic , a grammar for thinking about evolving forms o f world order.8 The authorseeks to provide a vocabulary through which the links between globalization and insecurity can be understood holistically and critical ly explored. One ofHyperconflict's most significant contributions is the wide-ranging theoretical discussion t hat fills its first two chapters, offering a sophisticated distillation of the vastliteratures on globalization and peace and conflict to form a compelling and provocative account.

Nuclear war causes extinction prefer the latest studiesChoi, 2011 (Charles Q., 2-22-11, National Geographic, Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming forYears?, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/, accessed 7-15-13)Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for years,according to U.S. government computer models. Widespread famine and disease would likely follow,experts speculate. During the Cold War a nuclear exchange between superpowers such as the one feared for years between the UnitedStates and the former Soviet Union was predicted to cause a "nuclear winter." In that scenario hundreds of nuclear explosionsspark huge fires, whose smoke, dust, and ash blot out the sun for weeks amid a backdrop of dangerousradiation levels. Much of humanity eventually dies of starvation and disease. Today, with the United States the only standingsuperpower, nuclear winter is little more than a nightmare. But nuclear war remains a very real threat for instance,between developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan. To see what climate effects such a regionalnuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundredHiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT just 0.03 percent of theworld's current nuclear arsenal. (See a National Geographic magazine feature on weapons of mass destruction.) Theresearchers predicted the resulting fires would kick up roughly five million metric tons of black carboninto the upper part of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere. In NASA climate models,this carbon then absorbed solar heat and, like a hot-air balloon, quickly lofted even higher, where thesoot would take much longer to clear from the sky. (Related: "'Nuclear Archaeologists' Find World War II Plutonium.")Reversing Global Warming? The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophicas a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leadingto unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at ameeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Earth is currently in a long-termwarming trend. After a regional nuclear war, though, average global temperatures would drop by 2.25degrees F (1.25 degrees C) for two to three years afterward, the models suggest. At the extreme, the tropics,Europe, Asia, and Alaska would cool by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4 degrees C), according to the models. Parts ofthe Arctic and Antarctic would actually warm a bit, due to shifted wind and ocean-circulation patterns, the researchers said. After ten years,

average global temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclearwar , the models predict. (Pictures: "Red Hot" Nuclear-Waste Train Glows in Infrared.) Years Without Summer For a time Earth wouldlikely be a colder, hungrier planet. "Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/


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especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts ," said Oman, of NASA's Goddard SpaceFlight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Examples similar to the crop failures and famines experienced following theMount Tambora eruption in 1815 could be widespread and last several years ," he added. That Indonesian volcanoushered in "the year without summer," a time of famines and unrest. (See pictures of the Mount Tambora eruption.) All these changeswould also alter circulation patterns in the tropical atmosphere, reducing precipitation by 10 percentglobally for one to four years , the scientists said. Even after seven years, global average precipitation wouldbe 5 percent lower than it was before the conflict , according to the model. In addition, researcher Michael Mills, of theNational Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, found large decreases in the protective ozone layer, leading tomuch more ultraviolet [uv] radiation reaching Earth's surface and harming the environment and people. "The main message from our work," NASA's Oman said, "would be that even a regional nuclear conflict would have globalconsequences."

No war arguments have been proven false nationalism, extremismGosnell and Orzetti 12 (Lieutenant Commander Rachael Gosnell and Second Lieutenant Michael Orzetti, Lieutenant CommanderGosnell is pursuing a graduate degree in international security at Georgetown University. She was gunnery officer on board the USS Shiloh (CG-67) and operations intelligence division officer on board the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).Second Lieutenant Orzetti is a 2011 graduate of the Naval Academy and holds a masters degree from Georgetown Universitys Ed mund A.Walsh School of Foreign Service. His work has also appeared in Small Wars Journal, Now Hear This Is Great Power War Still Possible?Proceedings Magazine, 04/2012, http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012-04/now-hear-great-power-war-still-possible, Aa)

The Center for Naval Analyses recently published Grand Strategy: Contemporary Contending Analyst Views and Implicationsfor the U.S. Navy, a survey of potential U.S. strategies being debated in the academic and defensecommunities. The study identifies four competing lines of strategic thought: maintaining Americanhegemony, selective engagement, offshore balancing, and integrating collective international efforts .Two additional options isolationism and world government are noted and disregarded as not viable. Under this list of strategicoptions a sharp division is apparent, dictated by the question, Is great -power war obsolete? Thisfundamental question must be answered before any logical strategic decisions can be made. If great-power war is possible, thenthe de facto existential threat to U.S. interests, latent in the international system, must be addressedbefore all others. There are enormous implications for weapon procurement, operational doctrine,and force levels driven by this single issue . Global strategists point to economic globalization and theproliferation of nuclear weapons as modern guarantors of peace among major powers. However, wecontend that these very rational hedges against violence can still be shattered by decidedly irrationaland reactionary forces. Thus, the possibility of great-power war between China and the United Statescannot be ruled out. Economic interdependence offers benefits beyond the sheer transfer of capital and goods there can be nodoubt of that. However, history renders globalizations deterrent effects at least somewhat questionable .Substantial economic interdependence existed throughout Europe prior to World War I, and Japan was hugelydependent on American oil imports in the years leading up to World War II . It was this dependence thatmade the U.S oil embargo intolerable, ultimately motivating the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor . Onthe other hand, the existential threat of nuclear weapons has certainly resulted in a universal desire keepPandoras Box firmly shut . While we concede the remarkable ability of weapons of mass destruction to dampen the oscillations of

great-power relations, it is unclear that the nuclear restraint against total war ever takes limited war off thetable as a strategic option. More fundamentally, though, the arguments for a nuclear- based state of peace a reconstrained by the limits of rationality. Rational bounds do not apply to the ephemeral yet extremelypowerful waves of bellicose nationalism that can sweep up an entire nation. National pride is embedded inthe Chinese DNA and rightly so. In certain segments of society, however, the sentiment manifests itself with a particular fervor, and some

elements of the Peoples Liberation Army ( PLA) epitomize this zeal . Alarmingly, the Communist Party leadershipappears increasingly unable to act as a check on the military . Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping had ironclad controlover the PLA, having earned unquestionable credibility during the Long March. Neither General Secretary of the Communist Party Hu Jintao nor

First Secretary Xi Jinping can claim a similar rapport with the PLA. Neither possesses a comparable level of control. Any surge of aggressive


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nationalism , either in the PLA or among the greater masses, could conceivably compel contemporary partyleadership toward a bellicosity it does not desire . How might this happen? The two most likely scenarios dealwith Chinese core interests in the Pacific: sovereignty in the South China Sea and Taiwan . The SouthChina Sea is no stranger to conflict. Its location and material promise have led to a host of conflicting territorialclaims and brought the Chinese and Vietnamese to armed conflict over the Spratly Islands in the late 1980s. After a period of relative calm,tensions have once again begun to flare. American commitment to freedom of the seas in the region , exemplified bySecretary of State Hillary Clintons July 2010 speech in Hanoi, Vietnam, provides ample opportunity for a Sino-Americanbutting of heads . Similarly, the Republic of China remains a perennially sore issue for the Chinese; the furor over the sale of American F-16s provides an ample platform for fu ture, more-polarizing interactions over Taiwan. War between China and the United States is unlikely.

Economic interdependence and nuclear weapons are powerful, persuasive deterrents against it. However , Sino-American dealings ,particularly in Taiwan or the South China Sea, provide instances in which the powder keg of Chinese nationalismcould explode, effectively forcing party leadership into a series of irrational but irreversible actions . Assuch, the possibility of great-power war , unlimited or otherwise, cannot be ruled out . U.S. policymakers mustplan accordingly.

Irrationality of leaders increases risk of war probability outweighs - prefer our

mathematical analyses on their political dataYonamine 12 (Jay Yonamine, Head of Political Science Department @ Penn State University, (ir)Rationality and Roulette,06/27/2012, http://jayyonamine.com/?p=281, Aa)

In his seminal 1995 work Rationalist Explanations for War, Fearon argues that war can occurbetween rational leaders due to the commitment problem and private information (and issue indivisibilities,but probably not). I have always believed that while this may be true in some instances, many wars must have occurred due toirrational leaders . However, in order to prove this given Fearons arguments, one would have toidentify a bargaining period during which leaders knew and agreed upon their respective odds ofwinning a war with 100% certainty (hence no private information). Additionally, all leaders would have to knowwith 100% certainty that all parties would uphold any agreements reached short of war (hence nocommitment problem). Such a situation has never and will never exist in global politics. Thus, in order tomake the case that war is a possible result of irrational leaders, one must look outside of internationalrelations . Quick side note on what we mean by rationality: Lets say you are given two choices . Option 1) Flip a faircoin. If it comes up heads, you receive $10. If it comes up tails, you get nothing. Option 2) You get$5.50 with 100% certainty We can calculate the expected utilities of both of these options in a verystraightforward manner using the following formula: Expected_Utility = P(win)+(1-P)(lose) P=probability of winning (from 0 to 1) win=what you get if you win lose = what you get if you lose . So, if we apply this formula to the two options above, we get two different expected utilities : Expected_Utilityoption1=.5($10)+(1-.5)(0)=$5 Expected_Utilityoption2=1($5.0)+(1-1)(0)=$5.50 The rationality assumption as itis meant in Rationalist Explanations for War is that no individual would ever take Option 1, becausethe expected utility (i.e. what a player should logically expect to receive) is $5, which is less than the guaranteed$5.50 payout of Option 2 . Enter Roulette. Quick background on Roulette. Standard wheels have 50 slots, 24 red, 24 black, and 2green. To play, a person bets on an individual slot or a specific color. A ball in the placed in the wheel, which spins until the balls randomly stopsin one of the slots. A bet on red or black pays out 2:1, meaning that if you bet 5$ on black and the ball stops in a black slot, you receive your

initial $5 plus an additional $5 win. Because there are 2 green slots, the odds of winning are precisely 48%. Now, lets see howRoulette can help make the case that individuals with perfect information and no commitmentproblem can still act irrationally. First, in Roulette, the odds of winning are known with completecertainty, meaning that no incomplete information exists (of course, some people are dumb, but most people know thatif they bet on black or red, their odds of winning are slightly less than 50/50). Second, players know with complete certaintythat the casino will pay them out if they win, meaning no commitment problems exist. Now, lets look atthe expected utilities of two options: betting $5 on red (or black), or not playing at all. Expected Utility


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playing is .48 times $5 plus .52 times -$5 which equals -$.2 Expected Utility not playing is $0 We, likeall potential players, know that the expected utility of not playing is greater than the expected utilityof playing, yet many people play. Due to the presence of perfect information and the lack of acommitment problem, we can say that the fact that some people play roulette is proof that peopleoften violate the assumptions of rationality. If its true for roulette, why cant it be true for war? Somepotential critiques along with my responses: 1) People are not smart enough to calculate the odds. Response: If people are notsmart enough to calculate the odds of roulette, then what makes you think they are smart enough tocalculate the odds of winning a war? 2) The payoff function of taking the gamble does not account for other non-monetarypayoffs of playing, like the adrenaline rush, looking cool amongst peers, demonstrating courage, having fun, etc. Response: If somepeople are more likely to gamble for non-monetary gains, then why should we not expect that someleaders are more likely to pursue wars for the same reasons? 3) This only works because the stakes are so low, whenthe stakes are high like in wars, people are more rational. Response: So is there a certain cut point at which rationalitykicks in? If so, is everyones cut point the same? And where does that cut point start? For greatpowers fighting small wars, are the stakes really that high for a leader, especially one in his/her finalterm? 4) Some say this only works because an individual by him/herself may be rational, but in agroup, people think more logically. Response: Considerable psychological evidence disputes this.Additionally, many leaders appoint cabinets that think the same way, meaning that the purported

benefits of a group are lost.

Global wars are likely to happen U.S. force posture is perceived as a threat to othercountries - none of their evidence assumes thisBarnett 12 (Thomas P. M. Barnett, chief analyst at Wikistrat and a contributing editor for Esquire magazine; his latest book is "GreatPowers: America and the World After Bush" (2009), The New Rules: Slouching Towards Great Power War, 02/06/2012,http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11383/the-new-rules-slouching-toward-great-power-war, Aa)

Arguably the greatest strategic gift offered by America to the world over the past several decades has been our consistent willingness tomaintain a high and hugely expensive entry barrier to the market that is great -power war: first by deterring outright war with the SovietUnion during the Cold War, and then by maintaining a lopsided and unipolar military superiority in the post-Cold War period. However, a case

can be made that in recent years, the greatest threat to this enduring component of global stability arises fromwithin the United States itself -- namely, a national security establishment intent on pressing theboundaries of this heretofore rather sacrosanct responsibility . The origins of this dangerous rethink stretch back toRonald Reagans original championing of strategic missile defense. Back then, Reagan sold Star Wars as a way ofmaking America, and by extension the world, safe from the scourge of nuclear war. But, of course, mostof the world -- the Soviets included -- suspected a stealthy attempt by America to free only itself from thestrictures of mutually assured destruction, the doctrine that underpinned Cold War-era nucleardeterrence . (Unsurprisingly, Moscow still holds that opinion regarding the United States expanding missile defense facilities in EasternEurope.) Such fears resurfaced in the early years of the George W. Bush administration, with the rise to power of manynational security thinkers who had advocated for the U.S. to pursue primacy vis vis any potentialnear-peer rivals as the centerpiece of its grand strategy . However, any initial anxiety was subsequently tempered by theworlds recognition that America was far too busy in its role as global cop to seriously re -engage the competitive space of primacy in such away as to make a return of great- power warfare conceivable. If anything, Americas post -Sept. 11 exuberance in fulfilling its global cop roledelighted both the free-riders and risers among the great-power ranks -- count China among both -- because it simplified their strategicplanning and kept the American military from darkening their doorsteps in any undue manner. But when you consider the developments of

the past three years under President Barack Obama, several of which admittedly represent continuity from the Bush-Cheney period, it isclear that the current administration is guilty of resuscitating and even accelerating this disturbingtrend along several lines . Obamas massive downgrading of nation-building and managing theconflicts of developing regions comes as no surprise . As a candidate in 2008, he ran on the platform ofwinding down the large-scale military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he has certainly beena man of his word. But pairing that development with the aggressive ramping up of targeted


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assassinations by drones and special forces, along with the just- announced strategic pivot to EastAsia -- a region of stunning strategic stability despite the simultaneous rise of multiple great powers --raises some questions about where Obama is going with all this . If any other great power killed its enemies aroundthe world at will, it would be called a state -sponsor of terrorism of the most destabilizing sort. Imagine how unrestrained our domesticpolitical dialogue would be, for instance, if China carried out such an assassination campaign, in addition to basing troops permanently all overthe world, while announcing that its new strategic focus involved increasing its ability to wage high-end sustained warfare in the WesternHemisphere. Given how little the Chinese actually complain about the totality of U.S. national security operations around the globe, its fair toask which great power is acting more provocatively. So much for the big picture. The pattern revealed from a more granular look is no morereassuring. In a world relatively freer of conflict than at any other point in human history, and while otherwise reducing military spending,

the Pentagon is busy gearing up its AirSea Battle Concept, with China as its obvious target.Meanwhile, our new national cyber-security strategy equates Chinese military-industrial snoopingwith an act of war and advocates the right to strike back kinetically at equivalent Chinese facilities -- ineffect, pre-approving China for immediate state-of-war conditions. The parallel with America claiming the right to summarily execute anyone,anywhere in the world, after unilaterally deciding it is at war with them is striking. In another critical domain, the picture is similarly disturbing.

China and Russia have repeatedly asked for a treaty banning the weaponization of near space.America has declined , even as the U.S . Air Force openly pursues Prompt Global Strike, whereby long-range ballistic missiles will be usedto deliver non-nuclear ordnance anywhere on the globe within minutes. Thankfully, next- generation boost -glide hypersonic missiles havereplaced regular intercontinental ballistic missiles as the planned delivery vehicle, because Congress rightly feared that the Russians or Chinesemight confuse an ICBM launch with the outbreak of World War III. Such a capability could conceivably come in handy the next t ime werelooking to take out a wanted terrorist in a far-off mountain lair, but in truth, the only plausible use for them is to knock out Chinese anti-

satellite weapons early on in any lightning-strike war. Again, it might seem easier simply to ban such space-domainweapon systems, and if our real desire was to avoid great- power war, one would imagine we d dothat. Instead, the Obama administration has set its sights on a world free of nuclear weapons, inwhich, presumably, wed be even freer to wage such prompt global strikes. This is the logic openlyarticulated by Obamas just -released strategic military guidance, which is tailor-made for a world where counterinsurgency andnation-building have little utility, and where America must rebuild its big war forces long-neglectedby the long war against violent extremists. Make no mistake: The need to hunt down bad actorsand kill them has been a staple of my strategic vision for U.S. national security for more than adecade, one that Ive preached far and wide across the professional community involved in formulating and implementing U.S. grandstrategy. And in truth, with the exception of ending the use of torture, the U.S. under Obama has waged its undeclared war on terrorists with

an extrajudicial zeal that profoundly surpasses that of Bush-Cheney. But the only way that approach doesnt come off lik ea cynical dodge is if the U.S. takes responsibility for the regional and local conditions it creates withthese operations. Instead, Obama has combined the precision strikes with a clear diminution offollow-up stabilization capabilities, while simultaneously trying to militarily box in China in East Asiaby ramping up our strategic-blinding capabilities for the first minutes and hours of the next great war . Here the question becomes, To what end? Why simultaneously exacerbate a rising Chinas worst securitynightmares -- namely, its growing resource dependencies on unstable regions -- and then act like anyChinese attempt to move in the direction of securing those far-flung national interests is threatening? What puzzles me most is why no one else is asking these questions, because its happening right under all of our noses.

Nuclear war causes the earth to explodeChalko, Ph.D., Head of Geophysics Research, Scientific E Research P/L, 2003 (Tom J., Scientific Engineering Research, Can a Neutron Bomb Accelerate Global Volcanic Activity?http://sci-e-research.com/neutron_bomb.html, accessed 7-15-13)Consequences of using modern nuclear weapons can be far more serious than previously imagined . Theseconsequences relate to the fact that most of the heat generated in the p lanetary interior is a result of nuclear decay. Over the last few decades,

all superpowers have been developing so-called " neutron bombs ". These bombs are designed to emit intensive neutronradiation while creating relatively little local mechanical damage. Military are very keen to use neutron bombs in combat ,because lethal neutron radiation can peneterate even the largest and deepest bunkers. However, the military seem to ignore the fact that a

neutron radiation is capable to reach significant depths in the planetary interior . In the process of passing throughthe planet and losing its intensity, a neutron beam stimulates nuclei of radioactive isotopes naturally present inside the planet to disintegrate.
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This disintegration in turn, generates more neutron and other radiation. The entire process causes increased nuclear heatgeneration in the planetary interior, far greater than the initial energy of the bomb. It typically takes many daysor even weeks for this extra heat to conduct/convect to the surface of the planet and cause increased seismic/volcanic activity. Due to thisvariable delay, nuclear tests are not currently associated with seismic/volcanic activity, simply because it is believed that there is no theoreticalbasis for such an association. Perhaps you heard that after every major series of nuclear test there is always a period of increased seismicactivity in some part of the world. This observable fact CANNOT be explained by direct energy of the explosion. The mechanism of neutron

radiation accelerating decay of radioactive isotopes in the planetary interior, however, is a VERY PLAUSIBLE and realistic explanation. Theprocess of accelerating volcanic activity is nuclear in essence. Accelerated decay of unstable radioactiveisotopes already present in the planetary interior provides the necessary energy . The TRUE danger ofmodern nuclear weaponry is that their neutron radiation is capable to induce global overheating of theplanetary interior, global volcanic activity and, in extreme circumstances, may even cause the entire planet toexplode .

Nuclear war destroys the environmentNissani, Professor at Wayne State, 1992(Moti, Lives in the Balance: The Cold War and American Politics 1945-1991,http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/pagepub/CH2.html, accessed 7-15-13)There will be fewer people and less industrial and commercial activity long after the war, hence some serious environmental threats will be ameliorated . By killing billions and destroying industrial infrastructures, nuclear warmight, for instance, halt or slow down the suspected trend of global warming. On balance , however, the war's overallenvironmental impact will almost certainly be on the negative side. Radioactive fallout will contaminate soilsand waters. We shall probably learn to adjust to these new conditions, perhaps by shunning certain regions or by carrying radioactivitymeters everywhere we go the way our ancestors carried spears. Still, this will lower the quality of human life. Nuclear explosions might create

immense quantities of dust and smoke. The dust and smoke might blanket, darken, and cool the entire planet .Although the extent of the damage is unclear, 24 it would be far more severe during the growing season-late spring and summer in the northernlatitudes. One Cassandran and controversial prediction sounds a bit like the eerie twilight described in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine . This

"nuclear winter" projection forecasts freezing summertime temperatures ,25 temporary climatic changes (e.g., violent storms,dramatic reductions in rainfall), lower efficiencies of plant photosynthesis, disruption of ecosystems andfarms, loss of many species , and the death of millions of people from starvation and cold. However, even these pessimists expect a

return to normal climatic conditions within a few years.26a,27

Probability comes first magnitude is always exaggeratedStern, Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former National Security CouncilMember, 1999 (Jessica, The Ultimate Terrorists, 1999, p. 32)Poisons have always been seen as unacceptably cruel. Livy called poisonings of enemies "secret crimes." Cicero referred to poisoning as "anatrocity." But why do poisons evoke such dread? This question has long puzzled political scientists and historians. One answer is that

people's perceptions of risk often do not match reality : that what we dread most is often not what actuallythreatens us most. When you got up this morning, you were exposed to serious risks at nearly every stage of your progression frombed to the office . Even lying in bed exposed you to serious hazards: 1 in 400 Americans is injured each

year while doing nothing but lying in bed or sitting in a chair --because the headboard collapses, the frame givesway, or another such failure occurs. Your risk of suffering a lethal accident in your bathtub or shower was one in a million. Your breakfastincreased your risk of cancer, heart attack, obesity, or malnutrition, depending on what you ate. Although both margarine and butterappear to contribute to heart disease, a new theory suggests that low-fat diets make you fat. If you breakfasted on grains (even organicones), you exposed yourself to dangerous toxins: plants produce their own natural pesticides to fight off fungi and herbivores, and many ofthese are more harmful than synthetic pesticide residues. Your cereal with milk may have been contaminated by mold toxins, including the

deadly aflatoxin found in peanuts, corn, and milk. And your eggs may have contained benzene, another known carcinogen. Your cup ofcoffee included twenty-six compounds known to be mutagenic: if coffee were synthesized in thelaboratory , the FDA would probably ban it as a cancer-causing substance. Most people are more worried about the risks ofnuclear power plants than the risks of driving to work, and more alarmed by the prospect of terrorists with chemical weapons than by
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Focusing on magnitude creates policy paralysisRescher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, 1983(Nicholas, 1983, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management, p.50)The stakes are high, the potential benefits enormous. (And so are the costs - for instance cancer research and, in particular, the multi-million dollar gamble on interferon.) But there is no turning back the clock. The processes at issue are irreversible. Only through the shrewddeployment of science and technology can we resolve the problems that science and technology themselves have brought upon us.America seems to have backed off from its traditional entrepreneurial spirit and become a risk-aversive, slow investing economy whose

(real-resource) support for technological and scientific innovation has been declining for some time. In our yearning for the risk-free society we may well create a social system that makes risk-taking innovation next to impossible . Thecritical thing is to have a policy that strikes a proper balance between malfunctions and missed opportunities - a balance whose "propriety"must be geared to a realistic appraisal of the hazards and opportunities at issue. Man is a creature condemned to live in a twilight zone of

risk and opportunity. And so we are led back to Aaron Wildavski's thesis that flight from risk is the greatest risk of all ,"because a total avoidance of risks means that society will become paralyzed, depleting itsresources in preventive action, and denying future generations opportunities and technologies needed for improving the quality of life.By all means let us calculate our risks with painstaking care, and by all means let us manage them with prudent conservatism. But in life asin warfare there is truth in H. H. Frost's maxim that "every mistake in war is excusable except inactivity and refusal to take risks" (though,

obviously, it is needful to discriminate between a good risk and a bad one). The price of absolute security is absolute

stultification.

Taboo and deterrence arent credible Gers on, Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, 2009(Michael S., 9-29-9, Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, Rethinking U.S. Nuclear Posture,http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/0929_transcript_nuclear_posture1.pdf, accessed 7-15-13)So thus my argument stands in contrast to those who believe that the more options the better, and that ambiguity aids deterrence by creatinguncertainty and incalculable risks. My argument comes from a position that a fundamental tenet of deterrence is that limiting your options canin fact enhance deterrence and make you saf er. This notion of deliberately tying ones hands or limiting ones options is of course attributed tothe work of Tom Schelling who argued that limiting ones own options could be a commitment tactic to enhance the credibility of ones threats.Examples in this context are burning a bridge having your army cross and then burning a bridge so that one could not retreat, or moreimportantly, making your commitments public. Making statements public in fact becomes a commitment tactic by increasing the cost of going

back. The example is, if youre going to go on a diet, one of the best ways to make sure you actually keep on that diet is to tell everybody youknow that youre going on the diet. So thats the sort of position that Im come from, is that while th e traditional view has been that as manyoptions as possible is the best way to go, and in some ways the military thinks that way in part because their their job is to put militaryoptions in the toolbox of national power, what I want to argue is that limiting our options, limiting U.S. options to use nuclear weapons first by

declaring a no-first-use policy will in fact make us safer. My argument is essentially this: Nuclear first use is one of two things. Itseither not credible, in which case it adds nothing to U.S. security, but rather is politically complicating inthe nonproliferation context. Or, if it is credible, its potentially dangerous by fostering crisis instability .So thats Im going to talk a few more minutes about that. On the one hand, I think you can make a case that U.S.threats, whether theyre implicit or explicit and really what were talking about here is the ambiguous threat are simplynot credible. Its not credible for a variety of reasons . I mean, one is the nuclear taboo, this moral and politicalaversion to using nuclear weapons that has emerged in the long absence of nuclear use and conflict. In the nucleararena, the United States is largely seen as cool-headed, risk-averse and sensitive to casualties and collateral damage. The United States

does not seem to be able to benefit from the sort of rationality of irrationality type argument. Theprospect that the United States would unilaterally shatter the almost seven-decade record of non-use inconflict I think contributes to the belief that the United States would in fact not use nuclear weapons .Another argument is I think that one could make the case that an unintended consequence of the United States first use the United States

efforts to lead to the global non-proliferation regime is that it reduces the credibility of the United States to use nuclear weapons first. If theUnited States spends all of this time working on the efforts to prevent others from getting nuclearweapons, it seems it makes it less credible that the United States would risk shattering that andthrowing it all away by using nuclear weapons first . And finally, in the Gulf War, despite the threats ofcalculated ambiguity and the ambiguous threat of nuclear weapons , which some believe deterred Saddam, Bush,
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Scowcroft, Powell, and Baker, all said after the conflict that they had actually never intended on usingnuclear weapons . And such public admission I think reduces the credibility of those threats.


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No War

Globalization has made war obsolete great powers and rising states needinternational institutions to survive

Ikenbarry, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, andDeudney, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, 2009(Daniel and G. John, Jan/Feb, The Myth of the Autocratic Revival, Foreign Aff airs, Vol. 88, Issue 1, p. 8,)It is in combination with these factors that the regime divergence between autocracies and democracies will become increasingly dangerous. Ifall the states in the world were democracies, there would still be competition, but a world riven by a democratic-autocratic divergencepromises to be even more conflictual. There are even signs of the emergence of an "autocrats international" in the Shanghai Cooperation

Organization, made up of China, Russia, and the poorer and weaker Central Asian dictatorships. Overall, the autocratic revivalists paint thepicture of an international system marked by rising levels of conflict and competition , a picture quite unlike the "endof history" vision of growing convergence and cooperation. This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration ofrecenhttp://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-17/cbo-says-short-term-deficit-cut-won-t-avert-fiscal-crisis-2#p2t developments andignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed, contrary to what trhe revivalists describe , the most strikingfeatures of the contemporary international landscape are the intensification of economic globalization , thickeninginstitutions, and shared problems of interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike thatof the n ineteenth century. Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberal-centered international order provides a set ofconstraints and opportunities of pushes and pulls that reduce the likelihood of severe conflict whilecreating strong imperatives for cooperative problem solving. Those invoking the nineteenth century as a model for thetwenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and great-power expansion hasbecome largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed great-power war from a routine feature of internationalpolitics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the great powers possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand theirdeterrent forces, warfare among these states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of such great losses has instilled in thegreat powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms andthe near universality of nationalism have severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resistingpopulations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the nineteenthcentury, states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective territorial control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonicrelationships that require them to give something in return. Also unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density of trade, investment, andproduction networks across international borders raises even more the costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the mostplausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist regime daunting economic costs, both domestic andinternational. Taken together, these changes in the economy of violence mean that the international system is far more primed for peace thanthe autocratic revivalists acknowledge. The autocratic revival thesis neglects other key features of the international system as well. In thenineteenth century, rising states faced an international environment in which they could reasonably expect to translate their growing clout intogeopolitical changes that would benefit themselves. But in the twenty-first century, the status quo is much more difficult to overturn. Simplecomparisons between China and the United States with regard to aggregate economic size and capability do not reflect the fact that the UnitedStates does not stand alone but rather is the head of a coalition of liberal capitalist states in Europe and East Asia whose aggregate assets far

exceed those of China or even of a coalition of autocratic states. Moreover, potentially revisionist autocratic states , most notablyChina and Russia , are already substantial players and stakeholders in an ensemble of global institutions that make up thestatus quo, not least the UN Security Council (in which they have permanent seats and veto power). Many other global institutions, such as the

International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are configured in such a way that rising states can increase their voice onlyby buying into the institutions. The pathway to modernity for rising states is not outside and against the status quo but rather inside andthrough the flexible and accommodating institutions of the liberal international order. The fact that these autocracies are capitalist

has profound implications for the nature of their international interests that point toward integration and accommodation in the future. Thedomestic viability of these regimes hinges on their ability to sustain high economic growth rates, which in turn iscrucially dependent on international trade and investment; today's autocracies may be illiberal, but they remain fundamentallydependent on a liberal international capitalist system. It is not surprising that China made major domestic changes in order to join the WTO orthat Russia is seeking to do so now. The dependence of autocratic capitalist states on foreign trade and investment means that they have afundamental interest in maintaining an open, rulebased economic system. (Although these autocratic states do pursue bilateral trade andinvestment deals, particularly in energy and raw materials, this does not obviate their more basic dependence on and commitment to the WTOorder.) In the case of China, because of its extensive dependence on indus trial exports, the WTO may act as a vital bulwark against protectionisttendencies in importing states. Given their position in this system, which so serves their interests, the autocratic states are unlikely to becomechampions of an alternative global or regional economic order, let alone spoilers intent on seriously damaging the existing one. The prospects


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for revisionist behavior on the part of the capitalist autocracies are further reduced by the large and growing social networks acrossinternational borders. Not only have these states joined the world economy, but their people particularly upwardly mobile and educated

elites have increasingly joined the world community. In large and growing numbers, citizens of autocratic capitalist states areparticipating in a sprawling array of transnational educational, business, and avocational networks. As individuals are socializedinto the values and orientations of these networks, stark: "us versus them" cleavages become more difficult to generate andsustain. As the Harvard political scientist Alastair Iain Johnston has argued, China's ruling elite has also been socialized, as its foreign policy

establishment has internalized the norms and practices of the international diplomatic community. China, far from cultivating causes forterritorial dispute with its neighbors, has instead sought to resolve numerous historically inherited border conflicts, acting like a satisfied statusquo state. These social and diplomatic processes and developments suggest that there are strong tendencies toward normalization operatinghere. Finally, there is an emerging set of global problems stemming from industrialism and economic globalization that will create common

interests across states regardless of regime type. Autocratic China is as dependent on imported oil as are democratic Europe, India,Japan, and the United States , suggesting an alignment of interests against petroleum-exporting autocracies, such as Iran andRussia . These states share a common interest in price stability and supply security that could form the basis for a revitalizationof the International Energy Agency, the consumer association created during the oil turmoil of the 1970s. The emergence of globalwarming and climate change as significant problems also suggests possibilities for alignments and cooperative ventures cuttingacross the autocratic-democratic divide. Like the United States, China is not only a major contributor to greenhouse gas accumulation but alsolikely to be a major victim of climate-induced desertification and coastal flooding. Its rapid industrialization and consequent pollution meansthat China, like other developed countries, will increasingly need to import technologies and innovative solutions for environmental

management. Resource scarcity and environmental deterioration pose global threats that no state will be able to solve

alone , thus placing a further premium on political integration and cooperative institution building. Analogies between thenineteenth century and the twenty-first are based on a severe mischaracterization of the actual conditions of the new era. The decliningutility of war , the thickening of international transactions and institutions, and emerging resource and environmentalinterdependencies together undercut scenarios of international conflict and instability based on autocratic-democratic rivalry and autocratic revisionism. In fact, the conditions of the twenty-first century point to the renewed value of internationalintegration and cooperation.

Nuclear weapons deter all war empirics proveTepperman, LL.M. in International Law from NYU, former Managing Editor of ForeignAffairs, 2009(Jonathan, 8-28- 9, The Daily Beast, Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb,

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/28/why-obama-should-learn-to-love-the-bomb.html, accessed 7-14-13)A growing and compelling body of research suggests that nuclear weapons may not, in fact, make the world moredangerous, as Obama and most people assume. The bomb may actually make us safer. In this era of rogue states and transnational terrorists,that idea sounds so obviously wrongheaded that few politicians or policymakers are willing to entertain it. But that's a mistake. Knowing thetruth about nukes would have a profound impact on government policy. Obama's idealistic campaign, so out of character for a pragmaticadministration, may be unlikely to get far (past presidents have tried and failed). But it's not even clear he should make the effort. There aremore important measures the U.S. government can and should take to make the real world safer, and these mustn't be ignored in the name ofa dreamy ideal (a nuke-free planet) that's both unrealistic and possibly undesirable. The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace

as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations. First, nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there'snever been a nuclear , or even a nonnuclear, war between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second andthink about that: it's hard to overstate how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, theleading "nuclear optimist" and a professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, "We now have 64 years of experience sinceHiroshima. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states."

To understand why and why the next 64 years are likely to play out the same way you need to start by recognizing that all states arerational on some basic level . Their leaders may be stupid, petty, venal, even evil, but they tend to do things only when they're prettysure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a fight only when it's almost certain it can get what it wantsat an acceptable price. Not even Hitler or Saddam waged wars they didn't think they could win. The problem historically has been thatleaders often make the wrong gamble and underestimate the other side and millions of innocents pay the price. Nuclear weapons change all

that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and unacceptable. Suddenly, when both sides have the ability to turn theother to ashes with the push of a button and everybody knows it the basic math shifts. Even the craziest tin-potdictator is forced to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not worth the effort. As Waltz puts it,
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"Why fight if you can't win and might lose everything?" Why indeed? The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assureddestruction is so compelling, it's led to what's known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch since the end of World War II in which all the world's major powers have avoided coming to blows. They did fight proxy wars,ranging from Korea to Vietnam to Angola to Latin America. But these never matched the furious destruction of full-on , great-power war (World War II alone was responsible for some 50 million to 70 million deaths). And since the end of the Cold War, such bloodshedhas declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the nuclear powers have scrupulously avoided direct combat, and there's very good reason tothink they always will. There have been some near misses, but a close look at these cases is fundamentally reassuring because in eachinstance, very different leaders all came to the same safe conclusion. Take the mother of all nuclear standoffs: the Cuban missile crisis. For 13

days in October 1962 , the United States and the Soviet Union each threatened the other with destruction. But both countriessoon stepped back from the brink when they recognized that a war would have meant curtains for everyone. As important asthe fact that they did is the reason why: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's aide Fyodor Burlatsky said later on, " It is impossible to win anuclear war , and both sides realized that, maybe for the first time." The record since then shows the same pattern repeating: nuclear-armed enemies slide toward war, then pull back, always for the same reasons. The best recent example is India and Pakistan , whichfought three bloody wars after independence before acquiring their own nukes in 1998. Getting their hands on weapons of massdestruction didn't do anything to lessen their animosity. But it did dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomicweapons, the two sides have never fought another war , despite severe provocations (like Pakistani-based terrorist attackson India in 2001 and 2008). They have skirmished once. But during that flare-up, in Kashmir in 1999, both countries were careful to keep thefighting limited and to avoid threatening the other's vital interests. Sumit Ganguly, an Indiana University professor and coauthor of the

forthcoming India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, has found that on both sides, officials' thinking was strikingly similar to that of the Russians andAmericans in 1962. The prospect of war brought Delhi and Islamabad face to face with a nuclear holocaust, and leaders in each country didwhat they had to do to avoid it. Nuclear pessimists and there are many insist that even if this pattern has held in the past, it's crazy to relyon it in the future, for several reasons. The first is that today's nuclear wannabes are so completely unhinged, you'd be mad to trust them witha bomb. Take the sybaritic Kim Jong Il, who's never missed a chance to demonstrate his battiness, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has deniedthe Holocaust and promised the destruction of Israel, and who, according to some respected Middle East scholars, runs a messianic martyrdomcult that would welcome nuclear obliteration. These regimes are the ultimate rogues, the thinking goes and there's no deterring rogues. But

are Kim and Ahmadinejad really scarier and crazier than were Stalin and Mao? It might look that way from Seoul or Tel Aviv,but history says otherwise. Khrushchev, remember, threatened to "bury" the United States, and in 1957, Mao blithely declared that a nuclearwar with America wouldn't be so bad because even "if half of mankind died the whole world would become socialist." Pyongyan g and Tehransupport terrorism but so did Moscow and Beijing. And as for seeming suicidal, Michael Desch of the University of Notre Dame points out thatStalin and Mao are the real record holders here: both were responsible for the deaths of some 20 million of their own citizens. Yet when push

came to shove, their regimes balked at nuclear suicide , and so would today's international bogeymen. For all of Ahmadinejad'santics, his power is limited, and the clerical regime has always proved rational and pragmatic when its life is on the line. Revolutionary Iran hasnever started a war, has done deals with both Washington and Jerusalem, and sued for peace in its war with Iraq (which Saddam started) once

it realized it couldn't win. North Korea, meanwhile, is a tiny, impoverished, family-run country with a history of being invaded; its overwhelmingpreoccupation is survival, and every time it becomes more belligerent it reverses itself a few months later (witness last week, when Pyongyang

told Seoul and Washington it was ready to return to the bargaining table). These countries may be brutally oppressive, butnothing in their behavior suggests they have a death wish.

Peacekeeping contains rogue states and rising powersGoldstein, professor emeritus of international relations at American University, 2011(Joshua S., Sept/O ct, Foreign Policy, Think Again: War,http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/think_again_war?page=0,0&wp_login_redirect=0, accessed 7-15-13,)In response, the U nited Nations commissioned a report in 2000, overseen by veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, examining how theorganization's efforts had gone wrong. By then the U.N. had scaled back peacekeeping personnel by 80 percent worldwide, but as itexpanded again the U.N. adapted to lessons learned. It strengthened planning and logistics capabilities and begandeploying more heavily armed forces able to wade into battle if necessary. As a result, the 15 missions and 100,000 U.N.peacekeepers deployed worldwide today are meeting with far greater success than their predecessors. Overall, the presence ofpeacekeepers has been shown to significantly reduce the likelihood of a war 's reigniting after a cease-fireagreement. In the 1990s, about half of all cease-fires broke down, but in the past decade the figure has dropped to 12 percent. And though theU.N.'s status as a perennial punching bag in American politics suggests otherwise, these efforts are quite popular: In a 2007 survey, 79 percent

of Americans favored strengthening the U.N. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement -- there's plenty. But the U.N. has donea lot of good around the world in containing war. "Some Conflicts Will Never End." Never say never. In 2005, researchers at the U.S.
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(Desmond, May 2006, Strategic and Defense Studies Center, The Probabilities of On the Beach:Assessing Armageddon Scenarios in the 21st Century, working paper, p. 4 )The leading populariser of the Nuclear Winter hypothesis was Carl Sagan, the brilliant planetary scientist and humanist. He hadnoticed in 1971, when Mariner 1 was examining Mars, that the planet was subject to global dust storms which markedly affected theatmospheric and surface temperatures. Large amounts of dust in the upper atmosphere absorbed sunlight, heating the atmosphere but coolingthe surface, spreading cold and darkness over the planet. He recognised that wholesale ground -bursts of nuclear weapons and the

incineration of hundreds of cities could produce sufficient dust and smoke to cause a similar effect on the Earth. Sagan even postulated theexistence of some threshold level around 100 million tonnes of smoke for production of Nuclear Winter. 7 I arguedvigorously with Sagan about the Nuclear Winter hypothesis, both in lengthy corresponde nce and, in August-September 1985, when I was a

guest in the lovely house he and Ann Druyan had overlooking Ithaca in up-state New York. I argued that, with more realistic dataabout the operational characteristics of the respective US and Soviet force configurations (such as bomber delivery profiles, impactfootprints of MIRVed warheads) and more plausible exchange scenarios, it was impossible to generate anywhere nearthe postulated levels of smoke. The megatonnage expended on cities (economic/industrial targets) was more likely to be around140-650 than over 1,000; the amount of smoke generated would have ranged from around 18 million tonnes to perhaps 80 million tonnes. In

the case of counter-force scenarios, most missile forces were (and still are ) located in either ploughed fields or tundra and, even where they are generally located in forested or grassed areas, very few of the actual missile silos are less than severalkilometres from combustible material. A target-by-target analysis of the actual locations of the strategic nuclearforces in the U nited States and the Soviet Union showed that the actual amount of smoke produced even by a 4,000

megaton counter-force scenario would range from only 300 tonnes (if the exchange occurred in January) to 2,000 tonnes (for an exchange in July) the worst case being a factor of 40 smaller than that postulated by the Nuclear Wintertheorists. I thought that it was just as wrong to overestimate the possible consequences of nuclear war, and to raise the spectre ofextermination of human life as a serious likelihood, as to underestimate them (e.g., by omitting fallout casualties). The current US-Russian

nuclear forces The sizes of the US and Russian nuclear stockpiles have declined substantially since the end of the ColdWar. They now have only about 20 percent of the peak number of around 70,000 in 1986, when the Soviet Union had about 45,000 and theUnited States about 24,000 (down from a peak of 32,500 in 1967), of which 33,800 and 10,550 respectively were classed a s tactical or theatreweapons and 11,200 and 13,450 as strategic. Most of the tactical and theatre weapons have been dismantled and the numbers of strategicweapons halved.

Scenarios for nuclear extinction are exaggerated scientists ignore the possibility ofadaptation

Martin, research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics at Australian NationalUniversity, 1984(Brian, May 1984, Scientists Against Nuclear Arms Newsletter, Extinction politics, number 16, p . 5-6, )The promotion of beliefs in massive death and destruction from war has been an important facet of the efforts of many peace movements.In the 1930s, British military planners estimated the effects of aerial bombardment by extrapolating linearly from the very limited experience of

bombardments and casualties in World War I. On the basis of such assumptions, people such as Philip Noel Baker in the 1930s predicted theobliteration of civilization from war. But the experience of World War II showed that the 1930s military expectations of casualtiesper tonne of bombs were sizeable overestimates.[1] By the 1950s, a large number of people had come to believe that the killing of much or all

of the world's population would result from global nuclear war . This idea was promoted by the peace movement , amongwhich the idea of 'overkill' - in the sense that nuclear arsenals could kill everyone on earth several times over - became an article of faith. Yet in spite of the widespread belief in nuclear extinction, there was almost no scientific support for such a possibility. The scenarioof the book and movie On the Beach,[2] with fallout clouds gradually enveloping the earth and wiping out all life , was and isfiction. The scientific evidence is that fallout would only kill people who are immediately downwind ofsurface nuclear explosions and who are heavily exposed during the first few days. Global fallout has no potential for causingmassive immediate death (though it could cause up to millions of cancers worldwide over many decades).[3] In spite of the lack of evidence,large sections of the peace movement have left unaddressed the question of whether nuclear war inevitably means global extinction. The nexteffect to which beliefs in nuclear extinction were attached was ozone depletion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, scares about stratospheric ozonedeveloped, culminating in 1982 in the release of Jonathan Schell's book The Fate of the Earth.[4] Schell painted a picture of human annihilationfrom nuclear war based almost entirely on effects from increased ultraviolet light at the earth's surface due to ozone reductions caused bynuclear explosions. Schell's book was greeted with adulation rarely observed in any field. Yet by the time the book was published, the scientificbasis for ozone-based nuclear extinction had almost entirely evaporated. The ongoing switch by the military forces of the United States and theSoviet Union from multi-megatonne nuclear weapons to larger numbers of smaller weapons means that the effect on ozone from even the


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largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to any major effect on human population levels, and extinction from ozone reductions isvirtually out of the question. [3] The latest stimulus for doomsday beliefs is 'nuclear winter' : the blocking of sunlight from dustraised by nuclear explosions and smoke from fires ignited by nuclear attacks. This would result in a few months of darkness and loweredtemperatures, mainly in the northern mid-latitudes.[5] The effects could be quite significant, perhaps causing the deaths of up to severalhundred million more people than would die from the immediate effects of blast, heat and radiation. But the evidence, so far, seems to provide

little basis for beliefs in nuclear extinction. The impact of nuclear winter on populations nearer the equator , such as in

India, does not seem likely to be significant. The most serious poss ibilities would result from major ecological destruction ,but this remains speculative at present. As in the previous doomsday scenarios, antiwar scientists and peace movements have taken upthe crusading torch of extinction politics. Few doubts have been voiced about the evidence about nuclear winter or the politics of promoting

beliefs in nuclear extinction. Opponents of war, including scientists , have often exaggerated the effects of nuclear war and emphasizedworst cases. Schell continually bends evidence to give the worst impression. For example, he implies that a nuclear attack is inevitably followedby a firestorm or conflagration. He invariably gives the maximum time for people having to remain in shelters from fallout. And he takes apessimistic view of the potential for ecological resilience to radiation exposure and for human resourcefulness in a crisis. Similarly, in several of

the scientific studies of nuclear winter, I have noticed a strong tendency to focus on worst cases and to avoid examination of ways toovercome the effects. For example, no one seems to have looked at possibilities for migration to coastal areas away from the freezing continental temperatures or looked at people changing their diets away from grain-fed beef to directconsumption of the grain, thereby greatly extending reserves of food.

A small chance of solving existential risk outweighs every other impactBostrom, Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University, 2012(Nick, Global Policy, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority, Volume 4, Issue 1, p. 15-31)But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes existential catastrophes especially bad is notthat they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in figure 3, causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life.

Instead, their significance lies primarily in the fact that they would destroy the future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar pointwith the following thought experiment: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most

people think. Compare three outcomes: (1) Peace. (2) A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world's existing population . (3) Anuclear war that kills 100%. (2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences? Mostpeople believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very much greater. ... TheEarth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization began only a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind,

these few thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference between(2) and (3) may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day,

what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. (Parfit 1984, pp. 453-454). To calculate the lossassociated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in itsabsence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth-originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. Onegets a large number even if one confines one's consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth. If we suppose withParfit that our planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on itsustainably, then the potential exist for at least 1016 human lives of normal duration. These lives could also be considerably better than theaverage contemporary human life, which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological limitations that could be partlyovercome through continuing technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth buthow many descendants we could have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human life-years in the future accessible universe(based on current cosmological estimates) is 1034 years.7 Another estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented incomputational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years(or 1071 basic computational operations) (Bostrom 2003).8 If we make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations couldeventually press close to the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher estimates ofthe amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of years of subjective experience that could berealized.9 Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and softwareminds, we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1016 human lives. This implies that the expectedvalue of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least a hundred times the value of a million human lives.The more technologically comprehensive estimate of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes

the same point even more starkly. Even if we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologicallymature civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct, we find that the expected value of reducing existentialrisk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred billion times asmuch as a billion human lives.


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Extinction outweighs ethicsBostrum, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, directs the OxfordFuture of Humanity Institute, 2012(Nick, 3-6-12, The AtlanticWere Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction, interview with RossAnderson, correspondent at The Atlantic,

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821, accessed 7-15-12)Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of several papers that human extinction risksare poorly understood and, worse s till, severely underestimated by society . Some of these existential risks are fairly well known,especially the natural ones. But others are obscure or even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that arise fromhuman technology, a subset that he expects to grow in number and potency over the next century. Despite his concerns about the risks posedto humans by technological progress, Bostrom is no luddite. In fact, he is a longtime advocate of transhumanism---the effort to improve thehuman condition, and even human nature itself, through technological means. In the long run he sees technology as a bridge, a bridge wehumans must cross with great care, in order to reach new and better modes of being. In his work, Bostrom uses the tools of philosophy andmathematics, in particular probability theory, to try and determine how we as a species might achieve this safe passage. What follows is myconversation with Bostrom about some of the most interesting and worrying existential risks that humanity might encounter in the decadesand centuries to come, and about what we can do to make sure we outlast them. Some have argued that we ought to be directing ourresources toward humanity's existing problems, rather than future existential risks, because many of the latter are highly improbable. You have

responded by suggesting that existential risk mitigation may in fact be a dominant moral priority over thealleviation of present suffering. Can you explain why? Bostrom: Well suppose you have a moral view that counts future people asbeing worth as much as present people. You might say that fundamentally it doesn't matter whether someone exists at the current time or atsome future time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it doesn't matter where somebody is spatially---

somebody isn't automatically worth less because you move them to the moon or to Africa or something. A human life is a humanlife. If you have that moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their populationnumbers, then you get this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much higher utility than prettymuch anything else that you could do. There are so many people that could come into existence in the future ifhumanity survives this critical period of time--- we might live for billions of years, our descendants mightcolonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently.Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend tooutweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinarystandards.

Factors preventing war arent reversible Fettweis, professor of political science at Tulane University, 2006(Christopher J., December, A Revolution in International Relation Theory: Or, What If Mueller Is Right?International Studies Review, Volume 8, Issue 4)However, one need not be convinced about the potential for ideas to transform international politics to believe that major war isextremely unlikely to recur . Mueller, Mandelbaum, Ray, and others may give primary credit for the end of major war to ideationalevolution akin to that which made slavery and dueling obsolete, but others have interpreted the causal chain quite differently. Neoliberal

institutionalists have long argued that complex economic interdependence can have a pacifying effect upon statebehavior (Keohane and Nye 1977, 1987). Richard Rosecrance (1986, 1999) has contended that evolution in socio-economicorganization has altered the shortest, most rational route to state prosperity in ways that make warunlikely. Finally, many others have argued that credit for great power peace can be given to the existence of nuclear weapons , whichmake aggression irrational ( Jervis 1989; Kagan et al. 1999). With so many overlapping and mutually reinforcing explanations, at timesthe end of major war may seem to be overdetermined ( Jervis 2002:8 9). For purposes of the present discussion, successful identication of theexact cause of this fundamental change in state behavior is probably not as important as belief in its existence. In other wor

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