Yes-No War Core - GDI 13

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Yes/No War Core
Aff
Globalization has made war obsolete great powers and rising states need international
institutions to survive
Ikenbarry, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Deudney,
professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, 2009
(Daniel and G. John, Jan/Feb, The Myth of the Autocratic Revival, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, Issue 1, p.
8, EB)
It is in combination with these factors that the regime divergence between autocracies and democracies
will become increasingly dangerous. If all the states in the world were democracies, there would still be
competition, but a world riven by a democratic-autocratic divergence promises 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 the picture of an international system marked by
rising levels of conflict and competition, a picture quite unlike the "end of history" vision of growing
convergence and cooperation. This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and
ignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed, contrary to what trhe revivalists describe, the
most striking features of the contemporary international landscape are the intensification of economic
globalization, thickening institutions, and shared problems of interdependence. The overall structure of
the international system today is quite unlike that of the nineteenth century. Compared to older orders, the
contemporary liberal-centered international order provides a set of constraints and opportunities of
pushes and pulls that reduce the likelihood of severe conflict while creating strong imperatives for
cooperative problem solving. Those invoking the nineteenth century as a model for the twenty-first also
fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and great-power expansion has
become largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed great-power war from a
routine feature of international politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the great powers
possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among
these states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of such great losses has instilled in the
great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major revisionist efforts.
Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism have severely limited
the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting populations (as Algeria,
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the
nineteenth century, states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective territorial
control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in
return. Also unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density of trade, investment, and production
networks across international borders raises even more the costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to
take one of the most plausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist
regime daunting economic costs, both domestic and international. Taken together, these changes in the
economy of violence mean that the international system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic
revivalists acknowledge. The autocratic revival thesis neglects other key features of the international
system as well. In the nineteenth century, rising states faced an international environment in which they
could reasonably expect to translate their growing clout into geopolitical changes that would benefit
themselves. But in the twenty-first century, the status quo is much more difficult to overturn. Simple
comparisons between China and the United States with regard to aggregate economic size and capability
do not reflect the fact that the United States 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 notably China
Yes/No War Core
and Russia, are already substantial players and stakeholders in an ensemble of global institutions that
make up the status 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 only by buying into the institutions.
The pathway to modernity for rising states is not outside and against the status quo but rather inside and
through 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. The domestic viability of these regimes hinges on
their ability to sustain high economic growth rates, which in turn is crucially dependent on international
trade and investment; today's autocracies may be illiberal, but they remain fundamentally dependent on a
liberal international capitalist system. It is not surprising that China made major domestic changes in
order to join the WTO or that Russia is seeking to do so now. The dependence of autocratic capitalist
states on foreign trade and investment means that they have a fundamental interest in maintaining an
open, rulebased economic system. (Although these autocratic states do pursue bilateral trade and
investment deals, particularly in energy and raw materials, this does not obviate their more basic
dependence on and commitment to the WTO order.) In the case of China, because of its extensive
dependence on industrial exports, the WTO may act as a vital bulwark against protectionist tendencies in
importing states. Given their position in this system, which so serves their interests, the autocratic states
are unlikely to become champions of an alternative global or regional economic order, let alone spoilers
intent on seriously damaging the existing one. The prospects for revisionist behavior on the part of the
capitalist autocracies are further reduced by the large and growing social networks across international
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 are participating in a sprawling array of transnational
educational, business, and avocational networks. As individuals are socialized into the values and
orientations of these networks, stark: "us versus them" cleavages become more difficult to generate and
sustain. 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 for territorial dispute with its
neighbors, has instead sought to resolve numerous historically inherited border conflicts, acting like a
satisfied status quo state. These social and diplomatic processes and developments suggest that there are
strong tendencies toward normalization operating here. 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 and Russia. These states share a common interest in price
stability and supply security that could form the basis for a revitalization of the International Energy
Agency, the consumer association created during the oil turmoil of the 1970s. The emergence of global
warming and climate change as significant problems also suggests possibilities for alignments and
cooperative ventures cutting across the autocratic-democratic divide. Like the United States, China is not
only a major contributor to greenhouse gas accumulation but also likely to be a major victim of climateinduced desertification and coastal flooding. Its rapid industrialization and consequent pollution means
that 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 the nineteenth century and the twenty-first are based
on a severe mischaracterization of the actual conditions of the new era. The declining utility of war, the
thickening of international transactions and institutions, and emerging resource and environmental
interdependencies together undercut scenarios of international conflict and instability based on autocraticdemocratic rivalry and autocratic revisionism. In fact, the conditions of the twenty-first century point to
the renewed value of international integration and cooperation.
Yes/No War Core
Nuclear weapons deter all war empirics prove

Tepperman, LL.M. in International Law from NYU, former Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs,
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, EB)
A growing and compelling body of research suggests that nuclear weapons may not, in fact, make the
world more dangerous, 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 the truth about nukes
would have a profound impact on government policy. Obama's idealistic campaign, so out of character for
a pragmatic administration, may be unlikely to get far (past presidents have tried and failed). But it's not
even clear he should make the effort. There are more 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 of a 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's never been a nuclear, or even a nonnuclear, war
between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second and think about that: it's hard to overstate
how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the
leading "nuclear optimist" and a professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, "We now
have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that
substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states." To understand whyand why the
next 64 years are likely to play out the same wayyou need to start by recognizing that all states are
rational on some basic level. Their leaders may be stupid, petty, venal, even evil, but they tend to do
things only when they're pretty sure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a fight
only when it's almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price. Not even Hitler or Saddam
waged wars they didn't think they could win. The problem historically has been that leaders often make
the wrong gamble and underestimate the other sideand millions of innocents pay the price. Nuclear
weapons change all that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and unacceptable. Suddenly,
when both sides have the ability to turn the other to ashes with the push of a buttonand everybody
knows itthe basic math shifts. Even the craziest tin-pot dictator is forced to accept that war with a
nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not worth the effort. As Waltz puts it, "Why fight if you can't win and
might lose everything?" Why indeed? The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so
compelling, it's led to what's known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch since the end
of World War II in which all the world's major powers have avoided coming to blows. They did fight
proxy wars, ranging from Korea to Vietnam to Angola to Latin America. But these never matched the
furious destruction of full-on, great-power war (World War II alone was responsible for some 50 million
to 70 million deaths). And since the end of the Cold War, such bloodshed has declined precipitously.
Meanwhile, the nuclear powers have scrupulously avoided direct combat, and there's very good reason to
think they always will. There have been some near misses, but a close look at these cases is
fundamentally reassuringbecause in each instance, very different leaders all came to the same safe
conclusion. Take the mother of all nuclear standoffs: the Cuban missile crisis. For 13 days in October
1962, the United States and the Soviet Union each threatened the other with destruction. But both
countries soon stepped back from the brink when they recognized that a war would have meant curtains
for everyone. As important as the fact that they did is the reason why: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's
aide Fyodor Burlatsky said later on, "It is impossible to win a nuclear war, and both sides realized that,
maybe for the first time." The record since then shows the same pattern repeating: nuclear-armed enemies
slide toward war, then pull back, always for the same reasons. The best recent example is India and
Pakistan, which fought three bloody wars after independence before acquiring their own nukes in 1998.
Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didn't do anything to lessen their animosity. But it did
dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomic weapons, the two sides have never fought
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another war, despite severe provocations (like Pakistani-based terrorist attacks on India in 2001 and
2008). They have skirmished once. But during that flare-up, in Kashmir in 1999, both countries were
careful to keep the fighting limited and to avoid threatening the other's vital interests. Sumit Ganguly, an
Indiana University professor and coauthor of the forthcoming India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, has found
that on both sides, officials' thinking was strikingly similar to that of the Russians and Americans in 1962.
The prospect of war brought Delhi and Islamabad face to face with a nuclear holocaust, and leaders in
each country did what they had to do to avoid it. Nuclear pessimistsand there are manyinsist that
even if this pattern has held in the past, it's crazy to rely on 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 with a bomb. Take
the sybaritic Kim Jong Il, who's never missed a chance to demonstrate his battiness, or Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and promised the destruction of Israel, and who, according
to some respected Middle East scholars, runs a messianic martyrdom cult that would welcome nuclear
obliteration. These regimes are the ultimate rogues, the thinking goesand 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 nuclear war with America wouldn't be so bad
because even "if half of mankind died the whole world would become socialist." Pyongyang and
Tehran support terrorismbut so did Moscow and Beijing. And as for seeming suicidal, Michael Desch
of the University of Notre Dame points out that Stalin and Mao are the real 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's
antics, his power is limited, and the clerical regime has always proved rational and pragmatic when its life
is on the line. Revolutionary Iran has never started a war, has done deals with both Washington and
Jerusalem, and sued for peace in its war with Iraq (which Saddam started) once it realized it couldn't win.
North Korea, meanwhile, is a tiny, impoverished, family-run country with a history of being invaded; its
overwhelming preoccupation is survival, and every time it becomes more belligerent it reverses itself a
few months later (witness last week, when Pyongyang told Seoul and Washington it was ready to return to
the bargaining table). These countries may be brutally oppressive, but nothing in their behavior suggests
they have a death wish.
Peacekeeping contains rogue states and rising powers

Goldstein, professor emeritus of international relations at American University, 2011
(Joshua S., Sept/Oct, 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, EB)
In response, the United Nations commissioned a report in 2000, overseen by veteran diplomat Lakhdar
Brahimi, examining how the organization's efforts had gone wrong. By then the U.N. had scaled back
peacekeeping personnel by 80 percent worldwide, but as it expanded again the U.N. adapted to lessons
learned. It strengthened planning and logistics capabilities and began deploying 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 of peacekeepers has been shown to significantly reduce the likelihood of a war's reigniting after
a cease-fire agreement. 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 the U.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 done a lot of good around the world in containing war. "Some Conflicts Will Never End." Never
say never. In 2005, researchers at the U.S. Institute of Peace characterized 14 wars, from Northern Ireland
to Kashmir, as "intractable," in that they "resist any kind of settlement or resolution." Six years later,
however, a funny thing has happened: All but a few of these wars (Israel-Palestine, Somalia, and Sudan)
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have either ended or made substantial progress toward doing so. In Sri Lanka, military victory ended the
war, though only after a brutal endgame in which both sides are widely believed to have committed war
crimes. Kashmir has a fairly stable cease-fire. In Colombia, the war sputters on, financed by drug
revenue, but with little fighting left. In the Balkans and Northern Ireland, shaky peace arrangements have
become less shaky; it's hard to imagine either sliding back into full-scale hostilities. In most of the African
cases -- Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ivory Coast
(notwithstanding the violent flare-up after elections there in late 2010, now resolved) -- U.N. missions
have brought stability and made a return to war less likely (or, in the case of Congo and Uganda, have at
least limited the area of fighting). Could we do even better? The late peace researcher Randall Forsberg in
1997 foresaw "a world largely without war," one in which "the vanishing risk of great-power war has
opened the door to a previously unimaginable future -- a future in which war is no longer sociallysanctioned and is rare, brief, and small in scale." Clearly, we are not there yet. But over the decades -- and
indeed, even since Forsberg wrote those words -- norms about wars, and especially about the protection of
civilians caught up in them, have evolved rapidly, far more so than anyone would have guessed even half
a century ago. Similarly rapid shifts in norms preceded the ends of slavery and colonialism, two other
scourges that were once also considered permanent features of civilization. So don't be surprised if the
end of war, too, becomes downright thinkable.
Miscalculation is unlikely and doesnt escalate

Mueller, professor of Political Science at Ohio State University, 2010
(John, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda, p. 100, EB)
However, even if a bomb, or a few bombs, were to go off, it does not necessarily follow that war would
result. For that to happen, it is usually assumed, the accident would have to take place at a time of high
war- readiness, as during a crisis, when both sides are poised for action and when one side could perhaps
be triggeredor panickedinto major action by an explosion mistakenly taken to be part of, or the
prelude to, a full attack." This means that the unlikely happeninga nuclear accidentwould have to
coincide precisely with an event, a militarized international crisis, something that is rare to begin with,
became more so as the cold war progressed, and has become even less likely since its demise.
Furthermore, even if the accident takes place during a crisis, it does not follow that escalation or hasty
response is inevitable, or even very likely. As Bernard Brodie points out, escalation scenarios essentially
impute to both sides "a well-nigh limitless concern with saving face" and/or "a great deal of ground-in
automaticity of response and counterresponse." None of this was in evidence during the Cuban missile
crisis when there were accidents galore. An American spy plane was shot down over Cuba, probably
without authorization, and another accidentally went off course and flew threateningly over the Soviet
Union. As if that weren't enough, a Soviet military officer spying for the West sent a message, apparently
on a whim, warning that the Soviets were about to attack." None of these remarkable events triggered
anything in the way of precipitous response. They were duly evaluated and then ignored. Robert Jervis
points out that "when critics talk of the impact of irrationality, they imply that all such deviations will be
in the direction of emotional impulsiveness, of launching an attack, or of taking actions that are terribly
risky. But irrationality could also lead a state to passive acquiescence:" In moments of high stress and
threat, people can be said to have three psychological alternatives: (1) to remain calm and rational, (2) to
refuse to believe that the threat is imminent or significant, or (3) to panic, lashing out frantically and
incoherently at the threat. Generally, people react in one of the first two ways. In her classic study of
disaster behavior, Martha Wolfenstein concludes, "The usual reaction is one of being unworried."32 In
addition, the historical record suggests that wars simply do not begin by accident. In his extensive survey
of wars that have occurred since 1400, diplomat-historian Evan Luard concludes, "It is impossible to
identify a single case in which it can be said that a war started accidentally; in which it was not, at the
time the war broke out, the deliberate intention of at least one party that war should take place." Geoffrey
Blainey, after similar study, very much agrees: although many have discussed "accidental" or
"unintentional" wars, "it is difficult," he concludes, "to find a war which on investigation fits this
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description." Or, as Henry Kissinger has put it dryly, "Despite popular myths, large military units do not
fight by accident."
Silo location and smaller arsenals rule out nuclear winter

Ball, Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University,
2006
(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, EB)
The leading populariser of the Nuclear Winter hypothesis was Carl Sagan, the brilliant planetary
scientist and humanist. He had noticed in 1971, when Mariner 1 was examining Mars, that the planet was
subject to global dust storms which markedly affected the atmospheric and surface temperatures. Large
amounts of dust in the upper atmosphere absorbed sunlight, heating the atmosphere but cooling the
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 the existence of some threshold level around
100 million tonnes of smokefor production of Nuclear Winter.7 I argued vigorously with Sagan about
the Nuclear Winter hypothesis, both in lengthy correspondence 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 data about the operational characteristics of the respective US and Soviet force
configurations (such as bomber delivery profiles, impact footprints of MIRVed warheads) and more
plausible exchange scenarios, it was impossible to generate anywhere near the postulated levels of smoke.
The megatonnage expended on cities (economic/industrial targets) was more likely to be around 140-650
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 several kilometres from combustible
material. A target-by-target analysis of the actual locations of the strategic nuclear forces in the United
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 Winter theorists. I thought that it was just as wrong to overestimate the possible consequences
of nuclear war, and to raise the spectre of extermination 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 Cold War. 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 the United States about 24,000 (down from a peak of 32,500 in 1967), of which
33,800 and 10,550 respectively were classed as tactical or theatre weapons and 11,200 and 13,450 as
strategic. Most of the tactical and theatre weapons have been dismantled and the numbers of strategic
weapons halved.
Scenarios for nuclear extinction are exaggerated scientists ignore the possibility of
adaptation
Martin, research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics at Australian National University, 1984
(Brian, May 1984, Scientists Against Nuclear Arms Newsletter, Extinction politics, number 16, p. 5-6,
EB)
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 the obliteration of civilization from war. But the experience of World War II showed that the
1930s military expectations of casualties per tonne of bombs were sizeable overestimates.[1] By the
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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, among
which 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 scenario of the book and movie On the Beach,[2]
with fallout clouds gradually enveloping the earth and wiping out all life, was and is fiction. The scientific
evidence is that fallout would only kill people who are immediately downwind of surface nuclear
explosions and who are heavily exposed during the first few days. Global fallout has no potential for
causing massive 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 next effect to which beliefs
in nuclear extinction were attached was ozone depletion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, scares about
stratospheric ozone developed, culminating in 1982 in the release of Jonathan Schell's book The Fate of
the Earth.[4] Schell painted a picture of human annihilation from nuclear war based almost entirely on
effects from increased ultraviolet light at the earth's surface due to ozone reductions caused by nuclear
explosions. Schell's book was greeted with adulation rarely observed in any field. Yet by the time the
book was published, the scientific basis for ozone-based nuclear extinction had almost entirely
evaporated. The ongoing switch by the military forces of the United States and the Soviet Union from
multi-megatonne nuclear weapons to larger numbers of smaller weapons means that the effect on ozone
from even the largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to any major effect on human population levels, and
extinction from ozone reductions is virtually out of the question.[3] The latest stimulus for doomsday
beliefs is 'nuclear winter': the blocking of sunlight from dust raised by nuclear explosions and smoke from
fires ignited by nuclear attacks. This would result in a few months of darkness and lowered temperatures,
mainly in the northern mid-latitudes.[5] The effects could be quite significant, perhaps causing the deaths
of up to several hundred 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 possibilities 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 up the 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 emphasized worst cases. Schell
continually bends evidence to give the worst impression. For example, he implies that a nuclear attack is
inevitably followed by a firestorm or conflagration. He invariably gives the maximum time for people
having to remain in shelters from fallout. And he takes a pessimistic 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 to overcome 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 direct consumption of the grain, thereby greatly
extending reserves of food.
A small chance of solving existential risk outweighs every other impact

Bostrom, Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University, 2012
(Nick, Global Policy, Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority, Volume 4, Issue 1, p. 15-31, EB)
But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes existential
catastrophes especially bad is not that 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 point
with 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
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kills 99% of the world's existing population. (3) A nuclear 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? Most people believe
that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3) is very
much greater. ... The Earth 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 loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist
in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth-originating intelligent life is literally
astronomical. One gets a large number even if one confines one's consideration to the potential for
biological human beings living on Earth. If we suppose with Parfit that our planet will remain habitable
for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on it
sustainably, then the potential exist for at least 1016 human lives of normal duration. These lives could
also be considerably better than the average contemporary human life, which is so often marred by
disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological limitations that could be partly overcome through
continuing technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could
live on Earth but how 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 in
computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 1054 humanbrain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1071 basic computational operations) (Bostrom 2003).8 If we
make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations could eventually press close to the
absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher
estimates of the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of
years of subjective experience that could be realized.9 Even if we use the most conservative of these
estimates, which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and software minds, we find that
the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1016 human lives. This implies
that the expected value 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 technologically mature civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct, we find that the
expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point
is worth a hundred billion times as much as a billion human lives.
Extinction outweighs ethics

Bostrum, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, directs the Oxford Future of
Humanity Institute, 2012
(Nick, 3-6-12, The AtlanticWere Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction, interview with Ross
Anderson, correspondent at The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/wereunderestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821, accessed 7-15-12, EB)
Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of several papers
that human extinction risks are poorly understood and, worse still, severely underestimated by society.
Some of these existential risks are fairly well known, especially the natural ones. But others are obscure
or even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that arise from human
technology, a subset that he expects to grow in number and potency over the next century. Despite his
concerns about the risks posed to humans by technological progress, Bostrom is no luddite. In fact, he is a
longtime advocate of transhumanism---the effort to improve the human condition, and even human nature
itself, through technological means. In the long run he sees technology as a bridge, a bridge we humans
must cross with great care, in order to reach new and better modes of being. In his work, Bostrom uses the
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tools of philosophy and mathematics, in particular probability theory, to try and determine how we as a
species might achieve this safe passage. What follows is my conversation with Bostrom about some of the
most interesting and worrying existential risks that humanity might encounter in the decades and
centuries to come, and about what we can do to make sure we outlast them. Some have argued that we
ought to be directing our resources 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 the alleviation of present suffering. Can you
explain why? Bostrom: Well suppose you have a moral view that counts future people as being worth as
much as present people. You might say that fundamentally it doesn't matter whether someone exists at the
current time or at some 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 human life. If you have that
moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their population numbers, then you get
this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much higher utility than pretty much
anything else that you could do. There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if
humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants might
colonize 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 to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be
tremendous under ordinary standards.
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, EB)
However, one need not be convinced about the potential for ideas to transform international politics to
believe that major war is extremely unlikely to recur. Mueller, Mandelbaum, Ray, and others may give
primary credit for the end of major war to ideational evolution 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 state behavior
(Keohane and Nye 1977, 1987). Richard Rosecrance (1986, 1999) has contended that evolution in socioeconomic organization has altered the shortest, most rational route to state prosperity in ways that make
war unlikely. Finally, many others have argued that credit for great power peace can be given to the
existence of nuclear weapons, which make aggression irrational ( Jervis 1989; Kagan et al. 1999). With so
many overlapping and mutually reinforcing explanations, at times the end of major war may seem to be
overdetermined ( Jervis 2002:89). For purposes of the present discussion, successful identication of the
exact cause of this fundamental change in state behavior is probably not as important as belief in its
existence. In other words, the outcome is far more important than the mechanism. The importance of
Muellers argument for the eld of IR is ultimately not dependent upon why major war has become
obsolete, only that it has. Almost as significant, all these proposed explanations have one important point
in common: they all imply that change will be permanent. Normative/ideational evolution is typically
unidirectional. Few would argue that it is likely, for instance, for slavery or dueling to return in this
century. The complexity of economic interdependence is deepening as time goes on and going at a
quicker pace. And, obviously, nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented and (at least at this point) no
foolproof defense against their use seems to be on the horizon. The combination of forces that may have
brought major war to an end seems to be unlikely to allow its return. The twentieth century witnessed an
unprecedented pace of evolution in all areas of human endeavor, from science and medicine to philosophy
and religion. In such an atmosphere, it is not difcult to imagine that attitudes toward the venerable
institution of war may also have experienced rapid evolution and that its obsolescence could become
plausible, perhaps even probable, in spite of thousands of years of violent precedent. The burden of proof
would seem to be on those who maintain that the rules of the game of international politics, including
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the rules of war, are the lone area of human interaction immune to fundamental evolution and that, due to
these immutable and eternal rules, war will always be with us. Rather than ask how major war could have
grown obsolete, perhaps scholars should ask why anyone should believe that it could not.
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Neg
War is possible defense buildup and international tensions
Mearsheimer, 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, EB)
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 good reasons why great powers in the system will think seriously about going to
war in the future, and Ill give you three of them and try and illustrate some cases. First, states oftentimes
compete for economic resources. Is it hard to imagine a situation where a reconstituted Russia gets into a
war with the United States and the Persian Gulf over Gulf oil? I dont think thats implausible. 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 course, is dear to the heart of
realists like me, and thats to enhance their security. Take the United States out of Europe, put the
Germans on their own; you got the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other, and in between a
huge buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it impossible to imagine the
Russians and the Germans getting into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but feasible,
for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting 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 highly likely, that the Chinese and the Americans end up shooting at each other. It doesnt
necessarily have to be World War III, but it is great-power war. Chinese and Russians fighting each other
over Siberia? As many of you know, there are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. You start
mixing ethnic populations in most areas of the world outside the United States and its usually a
prescription for big trouble. Again, not highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on, positing a lot of
scenarios where great powers have 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 doesnt mean that war is ruled out. The
presence of nuclear weapons alone does not make war obsolescent. I will remind you that from 1945 to
1990, we lived in a world where there were thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides, and there was
nobody running around saying, War is obsolescent. So you cant make the argument that the mere
presence of nuclear weapons creates peace. India and Pakistan are both going down the nuclear road. You
dont hear many people running around saying, Thats going to produce peace. And, furthermore, if
you believe nuclear weapons were a great cause of peace, you ought to be in favor of nuclear
proliferation. What we need is everybody to have a nuclear weapon in their back pocket. You dont hear
many people saying thats going to produce peace, do you? Conventional war? Michaels right;
conventional war was very deadly before nuclear weapons came along, but we still had wars. And the
reason we did is because states come up with clever strategies. States are always looking for clever
strategies to avoid fighting lengthy and bloody and costly wars of attrition. And they sometimes find
them, and they sometimes go to war for those reasons. So theres no question in my 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 the other 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 national security establishmentand I bet this is true of Michael-who believes that war is obsolescent. Im going to tell you why I think
this is the case. Consider the fact that the United States stations roughly 100,000 troops in Europe and
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100,000 troops in Asia. We spend an enormous amount of money on defense. Were spending almost as
much money as we were spending during the Cold War on defense. We spend more money than the next
six countries in the world spend on defense. The questions is, why are we spending all this money? Why
are we stationing troops in Europe? 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, trouble 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. Do you think the Germans and the Japanese are going to stand for long not to have
nuclear weapons? I dont think thats the case. Again, that security zone between the Germans and the
Russians-therell be a real competition to fill that. The reason were there in Europe, and the reason that
were there in Asia is because we believe that great-power war is a potential possibility, which contradicts
the argument on the table. So I would conclude by asking Michael if, number one, he believes we should
pull out of Europe and pull out of Asia, and number two, if he does not, why not?
Great power war is possible and is a prior questions

Gonsell, Lieutenant Commander, and Orzetti, US Marine Corps, 12
(April and Michael, USNI, Now Hear This - ls Great-Power War Still Possible?
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012-04/now-hear-great-power-war-still-possible, accessed
7-15-13, EB)
The Center for Naval Analyses recently published Grand Strategy: Contemporary Contending Analyst
Views and Implications for the U.S. Navy , a survey of potential U.S. strategies being debated in the
academic and defense communities. The study identifies four competing lines of strategic thought:
maintaining American hegemony, selective engagement, offshore balancing, and integrating collective
international efforts. Two additional optionsisolationism and world governmentare noted and
disregarded as not viable. Under this list of strategic options a sharp division is apparent, dictated by the
question, Is great-power war obsolete? This fundamental question must be answered before any logical
strategic decisions can be made. If great-power war is possible, then the de facto existential threat to U.S.
interests, latent in the international system, must be addressed before 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 the proliferation of nuclear weapons as modern
guarantors of peace among major powers. However, we contend that these very rational hedges against
violence can still be shattered by decidedly irrational and reactionary forces. Thus, the possibility of
great-power war between China and the United States cannot be ruled out. Economic interdependence
offers benefits beyond the sheer transfer of capital and goodsthere can be no doubt 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 hugely dependent on
American oil imports in the years leading up to World War II. It was this dependence that made the U.S
oil embargo intolerable, ultimately motivating the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, the
existential threat of nuclear weapons has certainly resulted in a universal desire keep Pandoras 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 the table as a strategic option. More fundamentally, though, the arguments for a
nuclear-based state of peace are constrained by the limits of rationality. Rational bounds do not apply to
the ephemeralyet extremely powerfulwaves of bellicose nationalism that can sweep up an entire
nation. National pride is embedded in the Chinese DNAand 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 leadership appears
increasingly unable to act as a check on the military. Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping had
ironclad control over 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
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rapport with the PLA. Neither possesses a comparable level of control. Any surge of aggressive
nationalism, either in the PLA or among the greater masses, could conceivably compel contemporary
party leadership toward a bellicosity it does not desire. How might this happen? The two most likely
scenarios deal with Chinese core interests in the Pacific: sovereignty in the South China Sea and
Taiwan. The South China Sea is no stranger to conflict. Its location and material promise have led to a
host of conflicting territorial claims 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 by Secretary of State Hillary
Clintons July 2010 speech in Hanoi, Vietnam, provides ample opportunity for a Sino-American butting
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 future, 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 nationalism could
explode, effectively forcing party leadership into a series of irrational but irreversible actions. As such, the
possibility of great-power war, unlimited or otherwise, cannot be ruled out. U.S. policymakers must plan
accordingly.
Nuclear deterrence fails

Doyle, senior policy analyst at Science Applications International Corporation, , 2009
(James, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: a Debate, Eyes on the Prize: A Strategy for Enhancing Global
Security, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/abolishing_nuclear_weapons_debate.pdf, accessed 715-13, EB)
In their essay, Perry, Shultz, Kissinger, and Nunn assert that nuclear deterrence is increasingly hazardous
and decreasingly effective. In essence, they reject the prevailing belief within national security
establishments that nuclear weapons still provide powerful security benefits in the evolving international
security environment. Theirs is an unprecedented challenge to the existing nuclear order, and their
arguments deserve serious analysis. In many ways, they are consistent with traditional critiques of the
risks of nuclear deterrence. But they also go deeper to demonstrate why nuclear deterrence is more
unstable in the current environment than in the Cold War and why continued nuclear proliferation is likely
to exacerbate rather than attenuate these instabilities, increasing the risks yet further. Nuclear deterrence is
increasingly hazardous because a large surplus of nuclear weapons and materials left over from the Cold
War is, in some cases, not adequately secured. In addition, an entirely new threat in connection with these
weapons and materials has emerged in the form of extremist groups that are willing to carry out
catastrophic terrorist attacks. 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. Nuclear deterrence is decreasingly effective because the conditions that enabled
mutual deterrence during the Cold War have changed. In todays world, nuclear-armed states share
disputed borders, have limited experience with nuclear weapon safety and security, and have vulnerable
early warning and nuclear weapon control capabilities. Moreover, nuclear deterrence cannot effectively
reduce the chance of nuclear terrorism. The more states acquire nuclear weapons for deterrence, the
more they will also risk providing weapons and materials to terrorists who wish to carry out a nuclear
attack. These realities refute the view held most notably by Kenneth Waltz that nuclear weapons provide
concrete benefits for states and will have a stabilizing influence on the international system.1 The authors
of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons do not give enough emphasis to the transformed nature of the security
environment and the implications of that transformation for traditional nuclear strategies. Strategic
thought on nuclear arms 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 a reciprocal threat of nuclear retaliation.
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Taboo and deterrence arent credible

Gerson, 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, EB)
So thus my argument stands in contrast to those who believe that the more options the better, and that
ambiguity aids deterrence by creating uncertainty and incalculable risks. My argument comes from a
position that a fundamental tenet of deterrence is that limiting your options can in fact enhance deterrence
and make you safer. This notion of deliberately tying ones hands or limiting ones options is of course
attributed to the 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 more
importantly, 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 you know that youre going on the
diet. So thats the sort of position that Im come from, is that while the traditional view has been that as
many options 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 military options 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.
Its either not credible, in which case it adds nothing to U.S. security, but rather is politically complicating
in the 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 simply not credible. Its not credible for a variety of reasons. I mean,
one is the nuclear taboo, this moral and political aversion to using nuclear weapons that has emerged in
the long absence of nuclear use and conflict. In the nuclear arena, 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. The prospect that the
United States would unilaterally shatter the almost seven-decade record of non-use in conflict 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 the United States spends all of this time working on the
efforts to prevent others from getting nuclear weapons, it seems it makes it less credible that the United
States would risk shattering that and throwing it all away by using nuclear weapons first. And finally, in
the Gulf War, despite the threats of calculated ambiguity and the ambiguous threat of nuclear weapons,
which some believe deterred Saddam, Bush, Scowcroft, Powell, and Baker, all said after the conflict that
they had actually never intended on using nuclear weapons. And such public admission I think reduces
the credibility of those threats.
Nuclear war causes extinction prefer the latest studies

Choi, 2011
(Charles Q., 2-22-11, National Geographic, Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for
Years?, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warmingenvironment-science-climate-change/, accessed 7-15-13, EB)
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 superpowerssuch as the one feared
for years between the United States and the former Soviet Unionwas predicted to cause a "nuclear
winter." In that scenario hundreds of nuclear explosions spark huge fires, whose smoke, dust, and ash blot
Yes/No War Core
out the sun for weeks amid a backdrop of dangerous radiation levels. Much of humanity eventually dies
of starvation and disease. Today, with the United States the only standing superpower, nuclear winter is
little more than a nightmare. But nuclear war remains a very real threatfor instance, between
developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan. To see what climate effects such a regional
nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a
hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNTjust 0.03 percent
of the world's current nuclear arsenal. (See a National Geographic magazine feature on weapons of mass
destruction.) The researchers predicted the resulting fires would kick up roughly five million metric tons
of black carbon into 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 the soot 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 catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear
winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research
physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Earth is currently in a long-term
warming trend. After a regional nuclear war, though, average global temperatures would drop by 2.25
degrees 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 of the Arctic and Antarctic would actually warm a bit, due to shifted wind and oceancirculation 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 nuclear war, the models predict. (Pictures: "Red Hot"
Nuclear-Waste Train Glows in Infrared.) Years Without Summer For a time Earth would likely be a
colder, hungrier planet. "Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in
areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts," said Oman, of NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Examples similar to the crop failures and famines experienced
following the Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 could be widespread and last several years," he added.
That Indonesian volcano ushered in "the year without summer," a time of famines and unrest. (See
pictures of the Mount Tambora eruption.) All these changes would also alter circulation patterns in the
tropical atmosphere, reducing precipitation by 10 percent globally for one to four years, the scientists
said. Even after seven years, global average precipitation would be 5 percent lower than it was before the
conflict, according to the model. In addition, researcher Michael Mills, of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research in Colorado, found large decreases in the protective ozone layer, leading to much
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 global consequences."
The convergence of hyper-competition and hyper-power status make conflict increasingly likely
Capie 11Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for
International 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 Change,
Peace & Security, Volume 23, Issue 2, Taylor and Francis, AL]
The book's thesis is that there
are two systemic drivers of contemporary security and insecurity. The first is what
the intensified competition that agglomerates markets . Accelerated by new
technologies, 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, with
corporations embracing aspects of a Hobbesian warre of all against all as they seek to cut costs, raise
efficiency and dominate markets. Hypercompetition is heavily but not totally American in several of its facets, including the long reach of US
Mittelman calls hypercompetition,
markets, investment in R&D, the prevalence of neoliberal ideas about the ordering of the economy and society as well as the prevalence of American popular culture.
The second is the concentration of power in an historically unprecedented hegemonic actor: the United States 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 unipolar moment.
Rather, in
light of the large distance between the U nited States and the other major powers in a globalizing world, the
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preferred term is hyperpower.3 The idea builds on the notion of hyperpuissance coined by French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine in 1998, but,
drawing on Gramscian notions of consensual hegemony and Foucauldian biopolitics, Mittelman gives it more
precision and extracts greater analytic leverage from it. Notably, in his vision, although there can be only one hyperpower, the
concept extends beyond the USA as a state. Instead, hyperpower is imperial in character, a weblike structure, including a net
of overseas military bases, a clutch of allies, aspects of ideological appeal, and an educational system that widely propagates values associated with those
at the epicentre of globalization.4 When hypercompetition and hyperpower converge (or coincide), the
conditions point to the book's third core concept: hyperconflict. This arises out of the tension between the logic of
statecentric and polycentric worlds and when a medley of nonstate actors both accommodates and more assertively resists state initiatives.5
Although only in a nascent phase, hyperconflict expresses itself as heightened coercion and weakening consensus ,
pervasive uncertainty and a rising climate of fear.6 Contrasting the old order of war with the new order of militarized globalization,
Mittelman argues that the old order was permeated by wars between states and within them, as well as partial safeguards with rules to manage
them. This has been partly supplanted by hyperpower enmeshed in various conflicts , but the 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 or formal explanation of contemporary insecurity
and work more as a heuristic, a grammar for thinking about evolving forms of world order.8 The author seeks to provide a vocabulary through which the
links between globalization and insecurity can be understood holistically and critically explored. One of Hyperconflict's most significant contributions is the wideranging theoretical discussion that fills its first two chapters, offering a sophisticated distillation of the vast literatures on globalization and peace and conflict to form a
compelling and provocative account.
Nuclear war causes the earth to explode

Chalko, 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, EB)
Consequences of using modern nuclear weapons can be far more serious than previously imagined. These
consequences relate to the fact that most of the heat generated in the planetary 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 neutron radiation 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 through the planet and losing its intensity, a neutron beam stimulates nuclei of radioactive
isotopes naturally present inside the planet to disintegrate. This disintegration in turn, generates more
neutron and other radiation. The entire process causes increased nuclear heat generation in the planetary
interior, far greater than the initial energy of the bomb. It typically takes many days or even weeks for this
extra heat to conduct/convect to the surface of the planet and cause increased seismic/volcanic activity.
Due to this variable delay, nuclear tests are not currently associated with seismic/volcanic activity, simply
because it is believed that there is no theoretical basis for such an association. Perhaps you heard that after
every major series of nuclear test there is always a period of increased seismic activity 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. The process of accelerating volcanic activity is nuclear in essence.
Accelerated decay of unstable radioactive isotopes already present in the planetary interior provides the
necessary energy. The TRUE danger of modern nuclear weaponry is that their neutron radiation is
capable to induce global overheating of the planetary interior, global volcanic activity and, in extreme
circumstances, may even cause the entire planet to explode.
Nuclear war destroys the environment

Nissani, 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, EB)
Yes/No War Core
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 war might, for instance, halt or slow down the suspected trend of global warming.
On balance, however, the war's overall environmental impact will almost certainly be on the negative
side. Radioactive fallout will contaminate soils and waters. We shall probably learn to adjust to these new
conditions, perhaps by shunning certain regions or by carrying radioactivity meters 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 northern latitudes. 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 and farms, 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 exaggerated

Stern, Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former National Security Council Member,
1999
(Jessica, The Ultimate Terrorists, 1999, p. 32, EB)
Poisons have always been seen as unacceptably cruel. Livy called poisonings of enemies "secret
crimes." Cicero referred to poisoning as "an atrocity." 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 actually threatens us
most. When you got up this morning, you were exposed to serious risks at nearly every stage of your
progression from bed 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 gives way, or another such failure occurs. Your risk of suffering a
lethal accident in your bathtub or shower was one in a million. Your breakfast increased your risk of
cancer, heart attack, obesity, or malnutrition, depending on what you ate. Although both margarine and
butter appear to contribute to heart disease, a new theory suggests that low-fat diets make you fat. If
you breakfasted on grains (even organic ones), you exposed yourself to dangerous toxins: plants
produce their own natural pesticides to fight off fungi and herbivores, and many of these 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 of coffee included twenty-six compounds
known to be mutagenic: if coffee were synthesized in the laboratory, the FDA would probably ban
it as a cancer-causing substance. Most people are more worried about the risks of nuclear power
plants than the risks of driving to work, and more alarmed by the prospect of terrorists with chemical
weapons than by swimming in a pool. Experts tend to focus on probabilities and outcomes, but
public perception of risk seems to depend on other variables: there is little correlation between
objective risk and public dread. Examining possible reasons for this discrepancy will help us
understand why the thought of terrorists with access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons fills
us with dread. People tend to exaggerate the likelihood of events that are easy to imagine or recall.
Disasters and catastrophes stay disproportionately rooted in the public consciousness, and evoke
disproportionate fear. A picture of a mushroom cloud probably stays long in viewers'
consciousness as an image of fear.
Yes/No War Core
Focusing on magnitude creates policy paralysis

Rescher, 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, EB)
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 shrewd deployment 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 riskaversive, 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. The critical 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 its resources 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 as in 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.
Yes/No War Core
Warming Supplement
Warming is happening fast
Perkins, 2012
(Sid, 3-25-12, Science Magazine, Earth Warming Faster Than Expected,
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/earth-warming-faster-than-expected.html, accessed 715-13, EB)
By 2050, global average temperature could be between 1.4C and 3C warmer than it was just a couple of
decades ago, according to a new study that seeks to address the largest sources of uncertainty in current
climate models. That's substantially higher than estimates produced by other climate analyses, suggesting
that Earth's climate could warm much more quickly than previously thought. Many factors affect global
and regional climate, including planet-warming "greenhouse" gases, solar activity, light-scattering
atmospheric pollutants, and heat transfer among the land, sea, and air, to name just a few. There are so
many influences to consider that it makes determining the effect of any one factordespite years and
sometimes decades of measurementsdifficult. Daniel Rowlands, a climate scientist at the University of
Oxford in the United Kingdom, and his colleagues took a stab at addressing the largest sources of shortterm climate uncertainty by modifying a version of one climate model used by the United Kingdom's
meteorological agency. In their study, the researchers tweaked the parameters that influence three factors
in the model: the sensitivity of climate to changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, the rate at which oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, and the amount of cooling from
light-scattering aerosols in the atmosphere. Then the team analyzed the results of thousands of climate
simulationseach of which had a slightly different combination of parametersthat covered the years
between 1920 and 2080, Rowlands says. All of the simulations assumed that future concentrations of
greenhouse gases would rise from today's 392 parts per million to 520 ppm by 2050. Each of the runs also
allowed for variations in solar activity (which would affect how much the sun's radiation warms Earth)
and rates of volcanic activity (which would influence the concentrations of planet-cooling sulfate aerosols
in the atmosphere). The team discarded results of simulations that didn't match observations of regional
climate in more than 20 land areas and ocean basins from 1960 to today. Of those that passed this test,
those considered statistically most likelythe two-thirds of those that best matched previous climate
observationssuggest that global average temperature in 2050 will be between 1.4C and 3C warmer
than the global average measured between 1961 and 1990. All of the simulations that matched recent
climate patterns suggested warming would be at least 1C, the researchers report online today in Nature
Geoscience. The higher end of the team's range of likely warming scenarios is between 0.5C and 0.75C
warmer than the scenarios published in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Rowlands says. "These sorts of numbers haven't been seen in other complex climate models." "I think
people will be very interested in taking a close look" at details of the simulations that yielded unusually
high estimates of warming to ensure the results are credible, says Isaac Held, a climate scientist with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey. Nevertheless, he notes, the
team's set of simulations is a valuable resource for further analysis of climate change. Eventually, he
suggests in a commentary in Nature Geoscience, results of the new study may help scientists not only
quantify the uncertainty in climate analyses but also reduce it.
Its still reversible, but a tipping point exists

Lemonick, taught science and environmental journalism at Princeton, Columbia, and Johns
Hopkins, 2012
Yes/No War Core
(Michael D., 8-4-12, Climate Central, Study Shows Planet Keeping Pace With CO2 Emissions,
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-study-shows-planet-keeping-pace-with-co2-emissions, accessed
7-15-13, EB)
Climate change is a serious enough problem, but it could be a lot worse. About half of the carbon dioxide
weve pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels has been absorbed by plants and oceans, rather
than staying in circulation to drive up temperatures. Scientists are convinced this cant go on forever
but a new study in Nature shows that we havent come to the danger point yet. Over the past 50 years,
says the report, humans have quadrupled our emissions, but the planet has kept up by doubling the
amount of CO2 it absorbed. That comes as something as a surprise: several earlier, small-scale studies
have suggested we might be on the verge of a tipping point where the planet cant absorb any more
carbon dioxide. So we decided to take a step back and ask, do we see this at a global scale? said
Ashley Ballantyne of the University of Colorado and lead author of the new report, in an interview, and
the answer is no. To get that answer, Ballantyne and his co-authors used what Ingeborg Levin of
Heidelberg University, writing in a Nature commentary, called a strikingly simple approach. They took
estimates of how much CO2 humans have been pumping out over the past half-century and subtracted the
amount that has stayed in the atmosphere. Whatevers left over must have been absorbed by the land (or
more accurately, by plants growing on land) or by the ocean; theres nowhere else it could have gone. The
calculation is so obvious, it probably could have been done long ago, but, said, Ballantyne, we
[scientists] can become too focused on details, and lose sight of the big picture. It wasnt quite as easy as
it might sound, however. Our ability to measure CO2 in the atmosphere has gotten a lot better over the
years, Ballantyne said, but our ability to measure emissions has actually gotten worse. The reason, he
said, is that nobody measures carbon dioxide emissions directly. Instead, they use economic activity as a
proxy reasonable enough, since economies run on energy, and that energy comes largely from fossil
fuels. In developing countries like China and India, he said, growth is happening really fast, and
emissions accounting isnt necessarily keeping pace, so theres more error. Indeed, said Ballantyne, 10
percent of our work went to making the calculations, and 90 percent was scratching our heads over the
uncertainties. In the end, the scientists combined emissions estimates from three different sources to
ensure they had the best possible information. What the new study doesnt answer is where, exactly, the
CO2 is being absorbed. One possibility is the lush vegetation in the tropics, where plants take in CO2 for
growth, and where, said Ballantyne, very little data is available. Another is the deep oceans again, a
place where scientists and their instruments havent gone. Knowing where the carbon is going is
important because it could give scientists a better handle on how much capacity is left. Sooner or later,
however, that capacity will disappear. Plants take in more CO2 if theres more in the atmosphere, but only
up to a point. The oceans will ultimately stop absorbing carbon dioxide as well, in part because plankton
and other sea-based plants will reach their own limits, and also because sea water gets less and less able
to take in CO2 as it warms (in some ways, this will be a good thing). When the Earth finally does reach
its absorption limit, all of the CO2 humans emit will stay in the atmosphere, and that will turbo-charge the
pace of global warming. We dont know exactly when well reach the limit, Ballantyne said, but our
models suggest things will turn around on land, at least, sometime in the coming century, maybe even by
2030-2050. I would really hope, he said, that we can cut back on fossil fuel emissions before that.
This decade is key

Chestney, 2012
(Nina, 3-26-13, Reuters, Global warming close to becoming irreversible-scientists,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-climate-thresholds-idUSBRE82P0UJ20120326, accessed 715-13, EB)
(Reuters) - The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this
decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. Scientific estimates
differ but the world's temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas
emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably. As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to
Yes/No War Core
reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the
melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests. "This is the critical decade. If we don't get the curves
turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will Steffen, executive director of the
Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London. Despite
this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United
States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020. "We are
on the cusp of some big changes," said Steffen. "We can ... cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross
the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state."
Yes/No War Core
Blackouts Supplement
Nuclear meltdowns cause extinction
IBT Science, 2011
(International Business Times, 9-14-11, Solar Flare Could Unleash Nuclear Holocaust Across Planet
Earth, Forcing Hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants Into Total Meltdowns,
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/213249/20110914/solar-flare-could-unleash-nuclear-holocaust-acrossplanet-earth-forcing-hundreds-of-nuclear-power-pl.htm, accessed 7-15-13, EB)
Fukushima was one power plant. Imagine the devastation of 100+ nuclear power plants, all going into
meltdown all at once across the planet. It's not the loss of electricity that's the real problem; it's the global
tidal wave of invisible radiation that blankets the planet, permeates the topsoil, irradiates everything that
breathes and delivers the final crushing blow to human civilization as we know it today. Because if you
have 100 simultaneous global nuclear meltdowns, the tidal wave of radiation will make farming nearly
impossible for years. That means no food production for several years in a row. And that, in turn, means a
near-total collapse of the human population on our planet.

Yes-No War Core - GDI 13

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Nuclear weapons deter all war empirics prove

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Peacekeeping contains rogue states and rising powers

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Miscalculation is unlikely and doesnt escalate

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Silo location and smaller arsenals rule out nuclear winter

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

A small chance of solving existential risk outweighs every other impact

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Extinction outweighs ethics

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Factors preventing war arent reversible

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Great power war is possible and is a prior questions

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Nuclear deterrence fails

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Taboo and deterrence arent credible

Nuclear war causes extinction prefer the latest studies

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Nuclear war causes the earth to explode

Nuclear war destroys the environment

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Probability comes first magnitude is always exaggerated

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Focusing on magnitude creates policy paralysis

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Its still reversible, but a tipping point exists

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

This decade is key

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Yes/No War Core

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