T

Vote Negative-Including drones would moot the term and explode the
topic
Merelli-reporter at Quartz-4/2/15
These are all the countries where the US has a military presence
http://qz.com/author/amerelliqz/
Most of the countries appear to have a small concentration of US bases (below 10). Thats compared to Germanys 179, Puerto
Ricos 37, or Italys 58. The largest military footprint remains in countries that the US invaded in WWII, while its presence in areas of
more recent contention, such as the Middle East, is somewhat reduced, at least in terms of bases. It has been noted by
commentators before that not all the bases are of significant size. However, given the information available its hard to truly gauge
the size of the different installation. Vine writes: The Pentagon says that it has just 64 active major installations overseas and that
most of its base sites are small installations or locations. But it defines small as having a reported value of up to $915 million. In
other words, small can be not so small. The information about troops abroad, too, isnt completely clear, which makes it difficult to

IHS Janes armed forces analyst Dylan

Lehrke told Quartz that its hard to even settle on the definition of military presence
for the government, that means bases or deployed troops , although it would seem
acceptable to include other forms of presence: Surely one could say that the US has a military presence
in Syria at the moment. They may not have bases and troops on the ground but we
should include the warplanes in the sky . The US military arguably has more
presence in Syria than it does in Germany []. To take this idea further, it would
also be rational to say the US has a military presence wherever it uses
unmanned aerial vehicles to strike targets . All the countries that have
some sort of American military presence from one military attach to the
troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan essentially results in
highlighting pretty much the entire world (Russia included, where the
DoD reports having 24 military personnel).
know the true extent of the American military footprint.

1nc k
Their security discourse sanitizes global destruction by proliferating
symptom-focused solutions to global power imbalances causes cycles of
violence that make global warfare and extinction inevitable
Ahmed 12 bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security
scholar; executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (Dr.
Nafeez Mosaddeq, The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international
relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society, Global
Change, Peace & Security: formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global
Change, Volume 23, Issue 3, 1/5/2012, Taylor and Francis)
political
actors construct discourses of 'scarcity' in response to ecological, energy and
economic crises (critical security studies) in the context of the historically-specific sociopolitical and geopolitical relations of domination by which their power is constituted ,
and which are often implicated in the acceleration of these very crises (historical sociology
and historical materialism). Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different
This analysis thus calls for a broader approach to environmental security based on retrieving the manner in which

aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable
trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting

are, in other words, unable to address the

relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key
analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises . They simultaneously
the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They

therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of

Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour,

which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a
massive scale - in the very process of seeking security .85 In Cox's words, because
positivist IR theory 'does not question the present order [it instead] has the
effect of legitimising and reifying it'.86 Orthodox IR sanitises globallydestructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of
instrumental reason -thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational
collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by
destroying the very conditions of human existence . Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a
economics.

body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system

realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in

the acceleration of global systemic crises. By the same token, the incapacity
to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and
economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the
proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of
state/regime military-political power rather than any attempt to transform root
structural causes .88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform
through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a
vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively
more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from
dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose
highlights the extent to which both

global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to 'securitise' them - and this,

ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global
insecurity. 'Securitisation' refers to a 'speech act' - an act of labelling - whereby
political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which,
because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus

states are able to

move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of
emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself . Far from representing a mere aberration
from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper 'dual' structure of the state in its
institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal militarypolice measures in purported response to an existential danger. The problem in the
context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of
emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very
global crises generating 'new security challenges ', and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All
that remains to examine is on the 'surface' of the international system (geopolitical competition,
the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from
their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysicallyembedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised.
The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic
crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms . Indeed, orthodox IR
theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but
with the expanded application of existing theory to 'new security
challenges' such as 'low-intensity' intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty ;
environmental degradation ; international criminal activities including drugs and
arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international
terrorism .91 Although the majority of such 'new security challenges' are non-military in origin - whether their referents are
states or individuals - the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them
means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political
power. 92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic
crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global
political economy is fundamentally unsustainable , requiring urgent transformation, but as
vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their militarypolitical capacities to maintain existing power structures , to keep the lid on .93 Global
legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of 'security', therefore,

crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and
economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This
justifies the state's adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis

this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise

potentially recalcitrant populations - rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Consequently, for the most part, the policy implications of orthodox IR approaches involve a
redundant conceptualisation of global systemic crises purely as potential 'threatmultipliers' of traditional security issues such as 'political instability around the
world, the collapse of governments and the creation of terrorist safe havens' . Climate
impacts,

change will serve to amplify the threat of international terrorism, particularly in regions with large populations and scarce resources.

The US Army, for instance, depicts climate change as a 'stress-multiplier' that will
'exacerbate tensions' and 'complicate American foreign policy'; while the EU perceives it as a 'threat-multiplier which

exacerbates existing trends, tensions and instability'.95 In practice,

this generates an excessive

preoccupation not with the causes of global crisis acceleration and how to ameliorate them through
structural transformation, but with their purportedly inevitable impacts , and how to
prepare for them by controlling problematic populations. Paradoxically, this 'securitisation'
of global crises does not render us safer . Instead, by necessitating more
violence , while inhibiting preventive action, it guarantees greater
insecurity . Thus, a recent US Department of Defense report explores the future of international conflict up to 2050. It warns
of 'resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies', particularly due to a projected 'youth bulge' in
the South, which 'will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy'. This will prompt a 'return to traditional security
threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets'. Finally,
climate change will 'compound' these stressors by generating humanitarian crises, population migrations and other complex
emergencies.96 A similar study by the US Joint Forces Command draws attention to the danger of global energy depletion through
to 2030. Warning of the dangerous vulnerabilities the growing energy crisis presents, the report concludes that The implications
for future conflict are ominous.97 Once again, the subject turns to demographics: In total, the world will add approximately 60
million people each year and reach a total of 8 billion by the 2030s, 95 per cent accruing to developing countries, while populations
in developed countries slow or decline. Regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth bulge will reach
over 50% of the population, will possess fewer inhibitions about engaging in conflict.98 The assumption is that regions which
happen to be both energy-rich and Muslim-majority will also be sites of violent conflict due to their rapidly growing populations. A
British Ministry of Defence report concurs with this assessment, highlighting an inevitable youth bulge by 2035, with some 87 per
cent of all people under the age of 25 inhabiting developing countries. In particular, the Middle East population will increase by 132
per cent and sub-Saharan Africa by 81 per cent. Growing resentment due to endemic unemployment will be channelled through
political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to
capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces. More strangely, predicting
an intensifying global divide between a super-rich elite, the middle classes and an urban under-class, the report warns: The worlds
middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class

the securitisation of global crisis leads not only to the problematisation

of particular religious and ethnic groups in foreign regions of geopolitical interest, but
potentially extends this problematisation to any social group which might
challenge prevailing global political economic structures across racial, national and class lines. The previous
examples illustrate how secur-itisation paradoxically generates insecurity by reifying a
process of militarization against social groups that are constructed as external to the
prevailing geopolitical and economic order. In other words, the internal reductionism,
fragmentation and compartmentalisation that plagues orthodox theory and policy
reproduces precisely these characteristics by externalising global crises from one another, externalising
states from one another, externalising the inter-state system from its biophysical environment, and externalising new social
groups as dangerous 'outsiders*. Hence, a simple discursive analysis of state militarisation and the construction of new
"outsider* identities is insufficient to understand the causal dynamics driving the
process of 'Otherisation'. As Doug Stokes points out, the Western state preoccupation with the ongoing
interest.99 Thus,

military struggle against international terrorism reveals an underlying 'discursive complex", where representations about terrorism
and non-Western populations are premised on 'the construction of stark boundaries* that 'operate to exclude and include*. Yet these
exclusionary discourses are 'intimately bound up with political and economic processes', such as strategic interests in proliferating
military bases in the Middle East, economic interests in control of oil, and the wider political goal of 'maintaining American

for
arguably the construction of certain hegemonic discourses is mutually constituted
by these geopolitical, strategic and economic interests exclusionary discourses
are politically constituted. New conceptual developments in genocide studies throw further light on this in terms of
hegemony* by dominating a resource-rich region critical for global capitalism.100 But even this does not go far enough,

the concrete socio-political dynamics of securitisation processes. It is now widely recognised, for instance, that the distinguishing
criterion of genocide is not the pre-existence of primordial groups, one of which destroys the other on the basis of a preeminence in
bureaucratic military-political power. Rather, genocide is the intentional attempt to destroy a particular social group that has been
socially constructed as different. As Hinton observes, genocides precisely constitute a process of 'othering* in which an imagined
community becomes reshaped so that previously 'included* groups become 'ideologically recast' and dehumanised as threatening

legitimising their
annihilation .102 In other words, genocidal violence is inherently rooted in a prior
and ongoing ideological process, whereby exclusionary group categories are
and dangerous outsiders, be it along ethnic, religious, political or economic lines eventually

innovated, constructed and 'Otherised' in accordance with a specific socio-political

programme. The very process of identifying and classifying particular groups as outside the boundaries of an imagined
community of 'inclusion*, justifying exculpatory violence toward them, is itself a political act without which genocide would be

intention to destroy a group is integrally

connected with a wider socio-political project - or colonial project designed to
perpetuate the political, economic, cultural and ideological relations of the perpetrators in the
place of that of the victims, by interrupting or eradicating their means of social
reproduction. Only by interrogating the dynamic and origins of this programme
to uncover the social relations from which that programme derives can the
emergence of genocidal intent become explicable. Building on this insight, Semelin demonstrates
impossible.1 3 This recalls Lemkin's recognition that the

that the process of exclusionary social group construction invariably derives from political processes emerging from deep-seated
sociopolitical crises that undermine the prevailing framework of civil order and social norms; and which can, for one social group, be
seemingly resolved by projecting anxieties onto a new 'outsider' group deemed to be somehow responsible for crisis conditions.

It

is in this context that various forms of mass violence , which may or may not
eventually culminate in actual genocide , can become legitimised as
contributing to the resolution of crises .105 This does not imply that the
securitisation of global crises by Western defence agencies is genocidal. Rather, the
same essential dynamics of social polarisation and exclusionary group identity
formation evident in genocides are highly relevant in understanding the
radicalisation processes behind mass violence. This highlights the fundamental
connection between social crisis, the breakdown of prevailing norms, the formation
of new exclusionary group identities, and the projection of blame for crisis onto a
newly constructed 'outsider' group vindicating various forms of violence.
The drone war wraps its victims in blankets of secrecy and allows strikes
to extend beyond all borders, with no meaningful oversight their
glorification of the CIA as exercising patience and discretion feeds into
militarism and causes the expansion of a global shadow war.
DEREK GREGORY, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, The
everywhere war This paper was accepted for publication in May 2011
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2011.00426.x/asset/j.14754959.2011.00426.x.pdf?
v=1&t=hkind5qg&s=fede42c8a2c2eefd37163c1ed92c6f5f887cf207
For many, particularly in the United States, 9/11 was a moment when the world
turned; for others, particularly outside the United States, it was a climactic
summation of a longer history of American imperialism in general and its meddling
in the Middle East in particular. Either way, it is not surprising that many
commentators should have emphasised the temporality of the military violence that
followed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon on that bright September morning: the war on terror that became the
long war. For the RETORT collective, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq marked
the elevation into a state of permanent war of a long and consis- tent pattern of
military expansionism in the service of empire (RETORT 2005, 80). Keen (2006)
wrote of endless war, Duffield (2007) of unending war and Filkins (2008) of the
forever war. The sense of per- manence endures, and yet Engelhardt (2010, 23)
ruefully notes that it remains difficult for Americans to understand that Washington
is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the

planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment.

Bacevich
(2010, 225) traces this state of affairs to what he calls the Wash- ington rules that long pre-date 9/11. These are
the conviction that the obligations of leadership require the United States to maintain a global military pres-ence,
configure its armed forces for power projection, and employ them to impose changes abroad, which he argues
have formed the enduring leitmotif of US national security policy for the last 60 years and propelled the United
States into a condition approximating perpetual war. Each of these temporal formulations implies spatial
formations. For RETORT (2005, 103) military neo- liberalism is the true globalization of our time. The planetary
garrison that projects US military power is divided into six geographically defined unified com- batant commands
like US Central Command, CENTCOM whose Areas of Responsibility cover every region on earth and which operate
through a global network of bases. If you think this unremark- able, ask yourself Bacevichs question: how would the
United States react if China were to mirror these moves? Think, too, of the zones in which the shadow of US military
violence still falls: not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but also Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen. Then think of the
zones where the rhetoric of the war on terror has been used by other states to legitimise repression: Chechnya,
Libya, Palestine, the Philippines, Sri Lanka. And then think of the cities that have become displacements of the
space of war, punctuation points in what Sassen (2010, 37) calls a new kind of multi-sited war: Casablanca,
Lahore, London, Madrid, Moscow, Mumbai. All these lists are incomplete, but even in this truncated form they

This is
at once a conceptual and a material project whose scope can be indexed by three
geo-graphs that trace a movement from the abstract to the concrete: Foucaults
(19756) prescient suggestion that war has become the pervasive matrix within
which social life is constituted; the replacement of the concept of the battlefield in
US military doctrine by the multi-scalar, multi-dimensional battlespace with no
front or back and where everything becomes a site of perma- nent war (Graham
2009, 389; 2010, 31); and the assault on the global borderlands where the United
States and its allies now conduct their military opera- tions. The first two are never far from
suggest the need to analyse not only the forever war but also what we might call the every- where war.

the surface of this essay, but it is the third that is my primary focus. Duffield (2001, 309) once described the
borderlands as an imagined geographical space where, in the eyes of metropolitan actors and agencies, the
characteris- tics of brutality, excess and breakdown predominate. There, in the wild zones of the global South,
wars are supposed to occur through greed and sectarian gain, social fabric is destroyed and developmental gains
reversed, non-combatants killed, humanitarian assis- tance abused and all civility abandoned. This imagi- native
geography folds in and out of the rhetorical distinction between our wars wars conducted by advanced militaries
that are supposed to be surgical, sensitive and scrupulous and their wars. In reality, however, the boundaries are
blurred and each bleeds into its other (Gregory 2010). Thus the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001
combined a long- distance, high-altitude war from the air with a ground war spearheaded by the warlords and
militias of the Northern Alliance operating with US infantry and Special Forces; counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
and Iraq has involved the co-option of ragtag militias to supplement US military operations; and in Afghani- stan the
US Army pays off warlords and ultimately perhaps even the Taliban to ensure that its overland supply chain is
protected from attack (Report of the Majority Staff 2010). In mapping these borderlands which are also
shadowlands, spaces that enter European and Ameri- can imaginaries in phantasmatic form, barely known but
vividly imagined we jibe against the limits of cartographic and so of geopolitical reason. From Rat- zels view of der
Krieg als Schule des Raumes to Lacostes stinging denunciation la geographie, ca sert, dabord, a faire la guerre
the deadly liaison between modern war and modern geography has been conducted in resolutely territorial terms.
To be sure, the genealogy of territory has multiple valences, and Ratzels Raum is not Lacostes espace, but a critical analysis of the everywhere war requires carto- graphic reason to be supplemented by other, more abile
spatialities. This is not only a matter of tran- scending the geopolitical, connecting it to the bio- political and the
geo-economic, but also of tracking space as a doing, precarious, partially open and never complete. It is in
something of this spirit that Bauman (2002, 83) identifies the planetary frontier- lands as staging grounds of
todays wars, where efforts to pin the divisions and mutual enmities to the ground seldom bring results. In the
course of inter- minable frontierland warfare, so he argues, trenches are seldom dug, adversaries are constantly
on the move and have become for all intents and purposes extraterritorial. I am not sure about the last (Bauman is evidently thinking of al Qaeda,
which is scarcely the summation of late modern war), but this is an arresting if impressionistic canvas and the fluidity con- veyed by Baumans broad
brush-strokes needs to be fleshed out. After the US-led invasion of Iraq it was commonplace to distinguish the Green Zone and its satellites (the US
political-military bastion in Baghdad and its penumbra of Forward Operating Bases) from the red zone that was everywhere else. But this cat- egorical
division is misleading. The colours seeped into and swirled around one another, so that occupied Iraq became not so much a patchwork of green zones
and red zones as a thoroughly militarised landscape saturated in varying intensities of brown (khaki): intensities because within this warscape military
and paramilitary violence could descend at any moment without warning, and within it precarious local orders were constantly forming and re-forming. I
think this is what Anderson (2011) means when he describes insurgencies oscillating between extended periods of absence as a function of their
dispersion and moments of disruptive, punctual presence, but these variable intensities entrain all sides in todays wars amongst the people and
most of all those caught in the middle. This is to emphasise the emergent, event-ful quality of contemporary violence, what Gros (2010, 260) sees as
moments of pure laceration that punc- ture the everyday, as a diffuse and dispersed state of violence replaces the usual configurations of war. Violence
can erupt on a commuter train in Madrid, a house in Gaza City, a poppy field in Helmand or a street in Ciudad Juarez: such is the contrapuntal geog- raphy

as cartographic reason falters and military violence is loosed from its frames, the
conventional ties between war and geography have come undone: that, as Munkler (2005, 3) has it, war has lost its
of the everywhere war. It is also to claim that,

well-defined contours. In what follows, I propose to take Munkler at his word and consider three

borderlands beyond
Afghanistan and Iraq that illuminate some of the ways in which, since 9/11, late modern war is being trans- formed by the slippery spaces within which
and through which it is conducted. I focus in turn on Af-Pak, Amexica and cyberspace, partly because these concrete instances remind us that the everywhere war is also always somewhere (Sparke 2007, 117), and partly because they bring into view features of a distinctly if not uniquely American way of
war. Af-Pak Af-Pak is the cover term coined by the Obama administration, and probably by its Special Represen- tative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Richard Hol- brooke, to describe the regional battlespace in which the United States pursues its armed conflict with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The term is
widely disliked in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but its hyphen marks a pro- foundly ambiguous zone. The border was surveyed between 1894 and 1896 to
delimit British colonial territories in India along the north-west frontier with Afghanistan. This so-called Durand Line bisected the cultural region of
Pashtunistan, dividing villages and extended families with strong culture and kinship connections between them, and ever since the forma- tion of Pakistan
in 1947, Afghanistan has insisted that the demarcation lapsed with the end of colonial rule. The established body of international law rejects the Afghan
position, but Mahmud (2010) argues that the continued entanglements of law and colonial power show that in this post-colonial space law is still part of
the problem rather than the solution because the border freeze-frames colonial demarcations. Not sur- prisingly, the borderlands are highly porous and
many of their inhabitants routinely cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan and back without bothering about any border formalities. This includes the Taliban,
whose movements are both episodic, fleeing hot pursuit from Afghanistan, and seasonal, returning from Pakistan when fighting resumes in the spring. This
recent history has compounded the porosity of the region so that Af-Pak also conjures up a shadowy, still more dispersed risky geography that wires
Afghanistan and Pakistan to Londonistan and other European cities, and to terrorist cells and militant groups that threaten Europe and the continental
United States (Amoore and de Goede 2011). Although the Taliban is predominantly Pashtun, it is not a monolith that straddles the border. The Taliban
emerged in the early 1990s as an armed and predomi- nantly Pashtun response to the brutalising rule of the militias of the Northern Alliance who
governed Afghanistan in the turbulent aftermath of the Soviet occupation in 1989. The Taliban sought to impose its own stringent version of Islamic law,
and its advance drew thousands of veterans from the guerilla war against the Red Army and from Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. The civil war that
ensued was a bloody and protracted affair; hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters fought alongside Taliban troops, although the relations between the two were far
from straightforward, and by the end of the decade Afghanistan had been virtually consumed by the violence. The insular, ultra- nationalist project of the
Taliban was supported by Pakistan throughout the 1990s, and the neo-Taliban that regrouped after the US-led invasion of Afghani- stan has continued to
seek an accommodation with Islamabad (Gregory 2004, 412). Its leadership council was driven from Kandahar and is now based in Quetta; its four
regional military councils are based in Pakistan too, and it enjoys the support of Pakistans Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. These affili- ations
sharply distinguish the Afghan Taliban from the Pakistan Taliban, or Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP), which was formed in December 2007 as a loose coalition of
militant Islamicist groups under Baitullah Mehsud. The Pakistan Taliban endorses the struggle against the US-led International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in Afghanistan, but its primary target is the Pakistani state: it seeks to establish its own rule over the Feder- ally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on
the border. The Pakistan military has conducted a series of offen- sive operations against the TTP in those areas, punc- tuated by wavering truces, but the
FATA continue to have a tense and attenuated relationship to Islamabad, and in Urdu they are known as ilaqa ghair, alien, foreign, or even forbidden
lands. These ambivalences have a direct impact on strikes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the FATA. The attacks are carried out by armed MQ-1
Predators and MQ-9 Reapers launched from bases in Afghanistan (and until early this year in Pakistan too) but remotely controlled by the CIA from the
continental United States. The Predator was jointly developed for the US Air Force and the CIA, and at the CIAs request it was armed with Hellfire missiles
in early 2001. After 9/11 President George W. Bush signed an authorisation that gave the CIA wide latitude in the war on terror through the issue of kill,
capture or detain orders against members of al Qaeda. Its immediate conse- quence was the initiation in October of the same year of the program of
extraordinary rendition conducted in the shadows of the global war prison: the seizure, incarceration and torture of terrorist suspects at black sites. This
was subsequently supplemented by a program directed at killing named individuals High Value Targets who were on a list compiled by the CIAs
Counterterrorism Center. The first UAV strike in Pakistan took place on 18 June 2004. The initial pace was slow, in part because the number of UAVs was
limited but also because the target list was restricted and ground intelligence meagre. There were eight more strikes before the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto on 27 December 2007 prompted Bush to expand the target list from al Qaeda to a wider array of individuals, and thus to increase the rate of strike;
by the end of 2008 there had been 46 strikes in Pakistan. As extraordinary renditions were terminated and black sites closed, President Barack Obama
widened the scope of the target list still further and dramatically stepped up the tempo; faster and more powerful Reapers were pressed into service,
borrowed from Air Force operations in Afghanistan, and by the end of 2010 there had been a further 180 strikes. Baitullah Mehsud was assassinated by a
Predator strike in August 2009 after 16 unsuccessful strikes over 14 months that killed several hundred others (Mayer 2009) but this seems to have
been a rare success. The vast majority killed in the last 2 years have reportedly been ordinary foot soldiers people whose names were unknown or about
whom the Agency had only fragmentary information (Cloud 2010), although it had no hesitation in declaring vir- tually none of them civilians and this
has led to doubts about the purpose and parameters of the cam- paign (Miller 2011). These operations raise troubling questions. Some arise from the
resort to extra-judicial killing that the United States once condemned: if it is wrong to torture suspects, how can it be right to assassinate them? How
secure is the evidential basis on which targeting decisions are made? Others arise from the use of UAVs and the timespace compressions pro- duced by
the techno-cultural armature of this new mode of war, although I think that most of the criti- cism about video feeds reducing war to a video game is
misplaced these are profoundly immersive tech- nologies that have quite other (and more serious) con- sequences for killing but in any case these
concerns apply with equal force to the strikes carried out by the Air Forces Predators and Reapers in Afghanistan that use the Pentagons Joint Integrated

tutes the
extended war zone, and it is these that concern me here. Plainly the United States is
not at war with Pakistan, and even though Islamabad gives the nod to the strikes
while closing its eyes to their effects Murphy (2009, 10) claims that the authority
of Islamabad to sanction US military actions in the FATA is far from clear. For its part,
the Obama admin- istration represents the strikes as legitimate acts of self-defence
against the Afghan Taliban who are engaged in a transnational armed conflict and
seek sanctuary across the border and as effective counter- terrorism tactics against
al Qaeda and its affiliates hiding in Pakistan. But these are inadequate responses for
at least three reasons that all revolve around the battlespace as a grey zone. First,
even though the Air Force may be involved to some degree, it is the CIA that plans
and executes the strikes. The CIA was created in 1947 as a civilian agency to
counterbalance the influence of the mili- tary. Since then there has been a general
civilianisa- tion of war in all sorts of ways, which includes the outsourcing of
support services to contractors, and the CIA has been transformed from a civilian
agency into a paramilitary organisation at the vanguard of Ameri- cas far-flung
wars operating from an archipelago of fire-bases in Afghanistan and beyond
(Mazzetti 2010; Shane et al. 2010). But the CIA does not operate under military
Prioritised Target List to put warheads on foreheads (Gregory 2011). Still others arise from the legal apparatus that consti-

control so that, as Singer (2010) observes, the clandestine air war in Pakistan is
commanded not by an Air Force general but by a former congressman from
California, Leon Panetta, the Director of the CIA. According to Horton (2010), this is
the first time in U.S. history that a state-of-the-art, cutting-edge weapons system
has been placed in the hands of the CIA. Hence Singers (2010) complaint that
civilians are operating advanced weapons systems outside the military chain of
command and wrestling with complex issues of war for which they have neither the necessary training this is a moot point: it may be that CIA operators
follow similar procedures protocols to their Air Force counterparts, including the incorpora- tion of legal advisers into the kill-chain to endorse the
prosecution of the target (Etzioni 2010; Mckelvey 2011) nor, according to the National Security Act, the legal authority. This is the most damaging
objec- tion because it turns CIA operators into the category that Bush so confidently consigned to the global war prison after 9/11: unlawful combatants
(OConnell 2009). This is such an obvious point that Paust (2010, 45), who otherwise endorses the strikes as acts of self-defence, concludes that the CIAs
lawyers must be leftovers from the Bush administration who have proven either to be remarkably ignorant of the laws of war or conveniently quiet and
complicit during the BushCheney program of serial and cascading crimi- nality. These considerations radically transform the battlespace as the line
between the CIA and the mili- tary is deliberately blurred. Obamas recent decision to appoint Panetta as Secretary of Defense and have General David
Petraeus take his place as Director of the CIA makes at least that much clear. So too do the braiding lines of responsibility between the CIA and Special
Forces in the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in May 2011, which for that reason (and others) was undertaken in what Axe (2011) portrays as a
legal grey zone between two US codes, Title 10 (which includes the Uniformed Code of Military Justice) and Title 50 (which authorises the CIA and its

2003). The role of the CIA in this not-so-secret war in Pakistan thus
marks the for- mation of what Engelhardt and Turse (2010) call a new-style
[battlespace] that the American public knows remarkably little about , and that
bears little relationship to the Afghan War as we imagine it or as our leaders
generally discuss it. Second, representing each drone strike as a sepa- rate act of
self-defence obscures the systematic and cumulative nature of the campaign.
Although the Obama administration insists that its targeting procedures adhere to
the laws of armed conflict, the covert nature of a war conducted by a
clandestine agency ensures that most of its victims are wrapped in blankets of
secrecy. Accountability is limited enough in the case of a declared war; in an
undeclared war it all but disappears. There is little or no recognition of civilian
casualties, no inquiries into incidents that violate the principles of discrimination
and proportionality, and no mechanism for providing compensation. The Cam- paign
for Innocent Victims in Conflict reports from the FATA that: Drone victims receive no
assistance from the Pakistani or US governments, despite the existence of Pakistani
compensation efforts for other conflict-victims and US com- pensation mechanisms
currently operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. Victims are left to cope with losses on
their own while neither the Pakistani nor the US governments acknowledge
responsibility for the strikes or the civilian status of those collaterally harmed. Rogers
covert operations) (Stone

(2010, 64) The single exception to date has been the decision by Islamabad to compensate victims of a US drone strike in North Waziristan in March 2011.
The details, such as they are, are revealing. Local people had gathered at a market with Taliban mediators to settle a dispute over a chromite mine; two
UAVs launched four mis- siles that killed at least 40 people. Pakistans Prime Minister and the Chief of Army Staff both sharply condemned the strike as a
reckless attack on civilians, including elders and children, but US officials insisted that the meeting was a legitimate terrorist target not a bake sale,

(sic) (Masood and Shah 2011; Rodriguez 2011). As

even this case shows, the advanced technology that makes the UAV campaign
possible the combination of sensor and shooter in a single platform does not
dispel the fog of war. Far from making the battlespace transparent, this new
apparatus actively exploits another grey zone, the space between civilian and
combatant that is peopled by the spectral figures that haunt the landscape of
insurgency. Third, the legal logic through which the battlespace is extended beyond
the declared zone of combat in Afghanistan is itself infinitely extendible. If the
United States is fighting a global war, if it arrogates to itself the right to kill or detain
its enemies wherever it finds them, where does it end? (Blank 201011). Human
Rights Watch posed the key questions in a letter to Obama on 7 December 2010:
While the United States is a party to armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and
could become a party to armed conflicts elsewhere, the notion that the entire world
county fair, charity car wash or the local mens glee club

is automatically by extension a battleground in which the laws of war are applicable

is contrary to international law. How does the administration define the global battle- field and what is
the legal basis for that definition? What, if any, limits exist on ordering targeted killings within it? Does it view the
battlefield as global in a literal sense, allowing lethal force to be used, in accordance with the laws of war, against a
suspected terrorist in an apartment in Paris, a shopping mall in London, or a bus station in Iowa City? Do the rules
governing targeted killing vary from one place to another for example, are different criteria used in Yemen and
Pakistan? Human Rights Watch (2010) These bloody geographies exploit another grey zone. Legal opinions are
sharply divided about the regula- tion of armed conflict between state and non-state actors that takes place beyond
state borders (transna- tional armed conflicts). It is those states that have most strenuously pressed for the
regulation of intra- state wars and the establishment of international criminal tribunals for conflicts in Ruanda and
the former Yugoslavia that have most vigorously insisted on being allowed the maximum freedom to conduct their
own trans-border campaigns against non-state actors (Benvenisti 2010). Law and war have always been
intertwined, and international law is often re-made through war in fact operating at the margins of the law is one
of the most powerful ways of chang- ing it and the UAV strikes in Pakistan are evidently no exception. They seek
at once to expand the battlespace and to contract the legal armature that regu- lates its constitution .

I have argued
elsewhere that the American way of war has changed since 9/11, though not uniquely because of it (Gregory 2010), and there are crucial continuities as
well as differences between the Bush and Obama administrations: The man who many considered the peace candidate in the last election was
transformed into the war president (Carter 2011, 4). This requires a careful telling, and I do not mean to reduce the three studies I have sketched here to
a single interpretative narrative. Yet there are connections between them as well as contradictions, and I have indicated some of these en route. Others
have noted them too. Pakistans President has remarked that the war in Afghanistan has grave consequences for his country just as the Mexican drug war
on US borders makes a difference to American society, and one scholar has suggested that the United States draws legal authority to conduct military
operations across the border from Afghanistan (including the killing of bin Laden, codenamed Geronimo) from its history of extra-territorial opera- tions
against non-state actors in Mexico in the 1870s and 1880s (including the capture of the real Geronimo) (Margolies 2011). Whatever one makes of this, one

the question of legality, which runs like a red

ribbon throughout the prosecution of late modern war. On one side, commentators
claim that new wars in the global South are non-political, intrinsically predatory
criminal enterprises, that cartels are morphing into insurgencies, and that the
origins of cyber warfare lie in the dark networks of cyber crime; on the other side, the United States places a premium on
of the most persistent threads connecting all three cases is

the rule and role of law in its new counterinsurgency doctrine, accentuates the involvement of legal advisers in targeting decisions by the USAF and the
CIA, and even as it refuses to confirm its UAV strikes in Pakistan provides arguments for their legality. The invocation of legality works to marginalise ethics
and politics by making available a seemingly neutral, objective language: disagreement and debate then become purely technical issues that involve
matters of opinion, certainly, but not values. The appeal to legality and to the quasi-judicial process it invokes thus helps to authorise a widespread and
widening militarisation of our world. While I think it is both premature and excessive to see this as a transformation from governmentality to militariality

Foucaults (2003) injunction Society must be defended has been transformed into an
unconditional imperative since 9/11 and that this involves an intensifying triangulation of the planet by legality,
security and war. We might remember that biopolitics, one of the central projects of late modern war, requires a
legal armature to authorise its interven- tions, and that necropolitics is not always outside the law. This triangulation
has become such a commonplace and provides such an established base-line for contemporary politics that I am
reminded of an inter- view with Zizek soon after 9/11 which for him marked the last war of the twentieth century
when he predicted that the new wars of the twenty-first century would be distinguished by a radical uncertainty: it
will not even be clear whether it is a war or not (Deich- mann et al. 2002). Neither will it be nor is it clear where
the battlespace begins and ends. As I have tried to show, the two are closely connected. For this reason I am able to close on a less
(Marzec 2009), I do believe that

pessimistic note. As I drafted this essay, I was watching events unfold on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, just weeks after similar scenes in
Tunisia. I hope that the real, lasting counterpoint to 9/11 is to be found in those places, not in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq. For those events show that
freedom and democracy cannot be limited to the boastful banners of military adventur- ism, hung from the barrels of guns or draped across warships,
and that ordinary people can successfully rise up against autocratic, repressive and corrupt regimes: including those propped up for so long by the United
States and its European allies. Perhaps one day someone will be able to write about the nowhere war and not from Europe or North America.

The alternative is to vote negative interrogating justifications and

rejecting security is key to successful policies
Cheeseman & Bruce 1996 (Graeme, Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, and Robert, Associate
Professor in social sciences at Curtin university, Discourses of Danger & Dread Frontiers, p. 5-8, MT)
This goal is pursued in ways which are still unconventional in the intellectual milieu of international relations in Australia, even
though they are gaining influence worldwide as traditional modes of theory and practice are rendered inadequate by global trends

The inability to give meaning to global changes reflects partly the

enclosed, elitist world of professional security analysts and bureaucratic experts ,
that defy comprehension, let alone policy.

where entry is gained by learning and accepting to speak a particular, exclusionary language. The contributors to this book are
familiar with the discourse, but accord no privileged place to its knowledge form as reality in debates on defence and security.
Indeed, they believe that

evaluation

debate will be furthered only through a

long overdue

critical re-

of elite perspectives. Pluralistic, democratically-oriented perspectives on Australias identity are both required

policy book;
nor should it be, in the sense of offering policy-makers and their academic counterparts sets of neat

and essential if Australias thinking on defence and security is to be invigorated.

This is not a

conventional

solutions, in familiar language and format, to problems they pose. This expectation is in
itself a considerable part of the problem to be analysed. It is, however, a book about policy,
one that questions how problems are framed by policy-makers. It challenges the proposition
alternative

that irreducible bodies of real knowledge on defence and security exist independently of their context in the world, and it
demonstrates how security policy is articulated authoritatively by the elite keepers of that knowledge, experts trained to
recognize enduring, universal wisdom. All others, from this perspective, must accept such wisdom or remain outside the expert
domain, tainted by their inability to comply with the rightness of the official line. But it is precisely the official line, or at least its

needs to be problematised. If the critic responds directly to the

demand for policy alternatives, without addressing this image, he or she is tacitly
endorsing it. Before engaging in the policy debate the critics need to reframe
the basic terms of reference . This book, then, reflects and underlines the importance of Antonio Gramsci and
Edward Saids critical intellectuals.15 The demand, tacit or otherwise, that the policy-makers frame of
reference be accepted as the only basis for discussion and analysis ignores a three
thousand year old tradition commonly associated with Socrates and purportedly integral to the
Western tradition of democratic dialogue. More immediately, it ignores post-seventeenth century democratic traditions
which insist that a good society must have within it some way of critically assessing its knowledge
image of the world, that

and the decisions based upon that knowledge which impact upon citizens of such a society. This is a tradition with a slightly different
connotation in contemporary liberal democracies which, during the Cold War, were proclaimed different and superior to the
totalitarian enemy precisely because there were institutional checks and balances upon power. In short, one of the major differences
between open societies and their (closed) counterparts behind the Iron Curtain was that the former encouraged the critical testing
of the knowledge and decisions of the powerful and assessing them against liberal democratic principles. The latter tolerated
criticism only on rare and limited occasions. For some, this represented the triumph of rational-scientific methods of inquiry and
techniques of falsification. For others, especially since positivism and rationalism have lost much of their allure, it meant that for
society to become open and liberal, sectors of the population must be independent of the state and free to question its knowledge
and power. Though we do not expect this position to be accepted by every reader, contributors to this book believe that critical
dialogue is long overdue in Australia and needs to be listened to. For all its liberal democratic trappings, Australias security
community continues to invoke closed monological narratives on defence and security. This book also questions the distinctions
between policy practice and academic theory that inform conventional accounts of Australian security. One of its major concerns,
particularly in chapters 1 and 2, is to illustrate how

theory is integral to

the practice of security analysis and

policy

prescription. The book also calls on policy-makers, academics and students of defence and security to think critically about
what they are reading, writing and saying; to begin to ask, of their work and study, difficult and searching questions raised in other
disciplines; to recognise, no matter how uncomfortable it feels, that what is involved in theory and practice is not the ability to

terms and concepts state sovereignty,

balance of power, security, and so on are contested and problematic, and that the world is
indeterminate, always becoming what is written about it. Critical analysis which shows how particular kinds
of theoretical presumptions can effectively exclude vital areas of political life from
analysis has direct practical implications for policy-makers, academics and citizens who face the
identify a replacement for failed models, but a realisation that

daunting task of steering Australia through some potentially choppy international waters over the next few years. There is also much
of interest in the chapters for those struggling to give meaning to a world where so much that has long been taken for granted now
demands imaginative, incisive reappraisal. The contributors, too, have struggled to find meaning, often despairing at the terrible
human costs of international violence. This is why readers will find no single, fully formed panacea for the worlds ills in general, or
Australias security in particular. There are none. Every chapter, however, in its own way, offers something more than is found in
orthodox literature, often by exposing ritualistic Cold War defence and security mind-sets that are dressed up as new thinking.
Chapters 7 and 9, for example, present alternative ways of engaging in security and defence practice. Others (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6

alternative theoretical possibilities which might

better serve an Australian community pursuing security and prosperity in an uncertain world. All chapters

and 8) seek to alert policy-makers, academics and students to

confront the policy community and its counterparts in the academy with a deep awareness of the intellectual and material
constraints imposed by dominant traditions of realism, but they avoid dismissive and exclusionary terms which often in the past

attention needs to be paid

words and the thought processes of those being criticized. A close reading of this kind draws attention to
underlying assumptions, showing they need to be recognized and questioned. A sense of doubt (in place of confident certainty) is
a necessary prelude to a genuine search for alternative policies. First comes an
awareness of the need for new perspectives, then specific policies may follow. As Jim
George argues in the following chapter, we need to look not so much at contending policies
characterized exchanges between policy-makers and their critics. This is because, as noted earlier,
to the

but at challenging the discursive process which gives [favoured

interpretations of reality] their meaning and which direct [Australias] policy/analytical/military
responses. This process is not restricted to the small, official defence and security establishment huddled around the USas they are made for us

Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It also encompasses much of Australias academic defence and security community located
primarily though not exclusively within the Australian National University and the University College of the University of New South
Wales. These discursive processes are examined in detail in subsequent chapters as authors attempt to make sense of a politics of
exclusion and closure which exercises disciplinary power over Australias security community. They also question the discourse of
regional security, security cooperation, peacekeeping and alliance politics that are central to Australias official and academic
security agenda in the 1990s. This is seen as an important task especially when, as is revealed, the disciplines of International
Relations and Strategic Studies are under challenge from critical and theoretical debates ranging across the social sciences and
humanities; debates that are nowhere to be found in Australian defence and security studies. The chapters graphically illustrate how
Australias public policies on defence and security are informed, underpinned and legitimised by a narrowly-based intellectual
enterprise which draws strength from contested concepts of realism and liberalism, which in turn seek legitimacy through policymaking processes. Contributors ask whether Australias policy-makers and their academic advisors are unaware of broader
intellectual debates, or resistant to them, or choose not to understand them, and why?

Case

Terrorism

1nc terror link

Apocalyptic terrorism scenarios are grounded in vested political interests
and violent modes of national-identity formation in which political reforms
like the plan are used to carve the world into liberal and illiberal spheres
the impact is a racist extermination of alterity and expansive structural
violence
Desiree Bryan 12, Research Assistant Intern at Middle East Institute. MScECON
Candidate: Security Studies at Aberystwyth University, The Popularity of the New
Terrorism Discourse, http://www.e-ir.info/2012/06/22/the-popularity-of-the-newterrorism-discourse/
New Terrorism vs. Old Terrorism
The opening sentence of a textbook on terrorism states, Terrorism

has been a dark feature of human

behavior since the dawn of recorded history (Martin, 2010, 3). If this is the case, what makes the new
terrorism different from the old? According to the mainstream orthodoxy on terrorism, the old
terrorism was generally characterized by: left wing ideology; the use of small scale,
conventional weapons; clearly identifiable organizations or movements with equally clear political
and social messages; specific selection of targets and explicit grievances championing specific classes or
ethnonational groups (Martin, 2010, 28). Also according to the orthodoxy, the shift to the new terrorism, on the
other hand, is thought to have emerged in the early 1990s (Jackson, 2011) and took root in mass consciousness
with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. (Martin, 2010, 3). The

new terrorism is

characterized by: loose, cell-based networks with minimal lines of command and control, desired
acquisition of high-intensity weapons and weapons of mass destruction (Martin, 2010, 27), motivated
by religious fanaticism rather than political ideology and it is aimed at causing mass causality and maximum
destruction (Jackson, 2007, 179-180). However, these dichotomous definitions of the old and new types of

The first major problem is that terrorism has been

characterized by the same fundamental qualities throughout history. Some of the superficial
terrorism are not without problems.

characteristics, the means of implementation (e.g. the invention of the Internet or dynamite) or the discourse

The second major

problem is that the characterization of new terrorism is , at best, rooted in a particular
political ideology, biased and inaccurate . At worst, it is racist, promotes war
mongering and has contributed to millions of deaths . As David Rapoport states: Many
(communism vs. Islam) may have evolved, but the central components remain the same.

contemporary studies begin by stating that although terrorism has always been a feature of social existence, it
became significant when it increased in frequency and took on novel dimensions as an international or
transnational activity, creating in the process a new mode of conflict (1984, 658). Isabelle Duyvesteyn points out
that this would indicate evidence for the emergence of a new type of terrorism, if it were not for the fact that the
article was written in 1984 and described a situation from the 1960s (Duyvesteyn, 2004, 439). It seems that there
have been many new phases of terrorism over the years. So many so that the definition of new has been stretched
significantly and applied relatively across decades. Nevertheless, the idea that this terrorism, that which the War on
Terror (WoT) is directed against, is the most significant and unique form of terrorism that has taken hold in the
popular and political discourse. Therefore, it is useful to address each of the so-called new characteristics in turn.
The first characteristic is the idea that new terrorism is based on loosely organized cell-based networks as opposed
to the traditional terrorist groups, which were highly localized and hierarchical in nature. An oft-cited example of a
traditional terrorist group is the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who operated under a military structure and in a
relatively (in contrast to the perceived transnational operations of al-Qaeda) localized capacity. However, some of
the first modern terrorists were not highly organized groups but small fragmented groups of anarchists. These
groups were heeding the call of revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and other contemporary anarchists to
achieve anarchism, collectivism and atheism via violent means (Morgan, 2001, 33). Despite the initial, selfdescribed amorphous nature of these groups, they were a key force in the Russian Revolution (Maximoff, G.).
Furthermore, leading anarchist philosophers of the Russian Revolution argued that terrorists should organize
themselves into small groups, or cells (Martin, 2010, 217). These small groups cropped up all around Russia and
Europe in subsequent years and formed an early form of a loosely organized cell-based network not unlike
modern day al Qaeda. Duyvesteyn further notes that both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was

founded in 1964, and Hezbollah, founded 1982, operate on a network structure with very little central control over

that contemporary terrorist

groups aim to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). This belief is simply not
supported by empirical evidence . One of the key problems with this theory is that WMDs
are significantly more difficult to obtain and utilize than most people
understand . Even if a terrorist group were to obtain a biological WMD, Biologist Matthew
Meselson calculates that it would take a ton of nerve gas or five tons of mustard gas to
produce heavy causalities among unprotected people in an open area of one square kilometer (Mueller,
2005, 488). And thats only an example of the problem with the implementation of WMDs, assuming they are
acquired, transported and desirable by a terrorist group in the first place. Additional problems,
such as the fact that WMDs are extremely difficult to deploy and control (Mueller, 2005, 488)
and that making a bomb is an extraordinarily difficult task (Mueller, 2005, 489), further
diminish the risk. It is interesting to note that, while the potential dangers of WMDs are much lauded,
the attacks of September 11th were low tech and had been technologically possible for
more than 100 years. Mueller also states, although nuclear weapons have been around
for well over half a century, no state has ever given another state (much less a
terrorist group) a nuclear weapon that the recipient could use independently (2005, 490). All of this talk
groups (2004, 444). The second problematic idea of new terrorism is

about the difficultly of acquiring and deploying WMDs (by non-state agents), is not to diminish the question of what

It is important to question whether it would

even further the aims of terrorists to use WMDs. The evidence suggests
otherwise. In the Politics of Fear Jackson states, Mass casualties are most often
counterproductive to terrorist aims they alienate their supporters and can
provoke harsh reprisals from the authorities [] in addition, [] they would undermine
community support, distort the terrorists political message, and invite over-whelming
retaliation (2007, 196-197). Despite popular rhetoric to the contrary, terrorists
are rational political actors and are acutely aware of these dangers (Jackson,
2007, 197). Government appointed studies on this issue have supported these views . This
terrorists have to gain by utilizing these weapons.

leads us to the third problem with new terrorism, which is the idea that we are facing a new era of terrorism
motivated by religious fanaticism rather than political ideology. As stated previously, earlier, so-called traditional
forms of terrorism are associated with left wing, political ideology, whereas contemporary terrorists are described as
having anti-modern goals of returning society to an idealized version of the past and are therefore necessarily antidemocratic, anti-progressive and, by implication, irrational (Gunning and Jackson, 3). Rapoport argues the idea
that religious terrorists are irrational, saying, what seems to be distinctive about modern [religious] terrorists, their
belief that terror can be organized rationally, represents or distorts a major theme peculiar to our own culture []
(1984, 660). Conveniently for the interests of the political elites, as we shall see later, the idea of irrational
fanaticism makes the notion of negotiation and listening to the demands of the other impossible. In light of this, it is
interesting to note that the U.S. has, for decades, given billions of dollars in aid to the State of Israel, which could be
argued to be a fundamentalist, religious organization that engages in the terrorization of a group of people. Further,
it is difficult to speak of The Troubles in Northern Ireland without speaking of the religious conflict, yet it was never
assumed that the IRA was absolutist, inflexible, unrealistic, lacking in political pragmatism, and not amenable to
negotiation (Gunning and Jackson, 4). Rapaport further reinforces the idea that religious terrorism goes back
centuries by saying, Before the nineteenth century, religion provided the only acceptable justifications for terror

these
elements of terrorism are neither new nor are the popular beliefs of the
discourse supported by empirical evidence . The question remains, then, why is the idea of

(1984, 659). As we have seen here, problems with the discourse of new terrorism include the fact that

new terrorism so popular? This question will be addressed next. Political Investment in New Terrorism There are two

political
investment in the propagation of the idea that a distinct, historically unknown type
of terrorism exists. The mainstream discourse [1] reinforces , through statements by
main categories that explain the popularity of new terrorism. The first category is government and

political elites, media, entertainment and every other way imaginable,

the culture of violence,

militarism and feelings of fear . Through mass media, cultural norms and the integration of
neoliberal ideology into society, people are becoming increasingly desensitized to human
rights issues, war, social justice and social welfare, not to mention apathetic to the
political process in general. The discourse of the WoT is merely the
contemporary incarnation of this culture of fear and violence. In the past, various
threats have included American Indians, women, African Americans, communists, HIV/AIDS and drugs, to name but

terrorism
discourse . The first is as a distraction from other, more immediate and
domestic social problems such as poverty, employment, racial inequality,
health and the environment . The second, more sinister function is to
control dissent . In looking at both of these issues Jackson states: There are a number of clear
political advantages to be gained from the creation of social anxiety and moral panics. In
the first place, fear is a disciplining agent and can be effectively deployed to de-legitimise dissent,
mute criticism , and constrain internal opponents. [] Either way, its primary function is to
ease the pressures of accountability for political elites . As instrument of
elite rule, political fear is in effect a political project aimed at reifying
existing structures of power . (Politics of Fear, 2007, 185). Giroux further reinforces the idea that a
culture of fear creates conformity and deflects attention from government accountability by
a few (Campbell, 1992). It can be argued that there are four main political functions of

saying, the ongoing appeal to jingoistic forms of patriotism divert the public from addressing a number of pressing
domestic and foreign issues; it also contributes to the increasing suppression of dissent (2003, 5).

Having a

problem that is ubiquitous, catastrophic, and fairly opaque (Jackson, Politics of

Fear, 2007, 185) is useful to political elites, because it is nearly impossible to
address the efficacy of combating the problem . At least, empirical evaluation can be, and
is, easily discouraged in academic circles through research funding directives. Domestic problems such as the
unemployment rate or health care reform, on the other hand, are directly measurable and heavily monitored by
domestic sources. It is possible to account for the success or failure of policies designed to address these types of
problems and the (re)election of politicians often depends heavily on success in these areas. However, the public is
neither involved on a participative level nor, often, socially aware of what is happening in murkier and unreachable
areas like foreign policy. The third political investment in maintaining the terrorism discourse has to do with

there are a great many vested interests in maintaining the widespread

condition of fear, not least for the military-industrial complex which benefits directly
from increased spending on national security (Jackson, Politics of Fear, 2007, 186). This is true with all
economics. At a material level,

forms of crime and insecurity as all of them factor into the greater security-industrial complex. Not only do these
industries employ millions of people and support their families, they boost the economy. Barry Buzan talks of these

in terms of a threat-deficit
meaning that U.S. policy and society is dependent on having an external threat
(Buzan, 2007, 1101). The fourth key political interest in terrorism discourse is constructing
a national identity. This will be discussed more thoroughly in the following section, however, it is important to
the importance of these issues to both the government and the public

acknowledge the role the WoT (and previous threats) has had on constructing and reinforcing a collective identity.
Examples of this can be seen in the discourse and the subsequent reaction to anyone daring to step outside the
parameters of the Bush Administration-established narrative in the days immediately following the September 11th
attacks. A number of journalists, teachers and university professors lost their jobs for daring to speak out in
criticism of U.S. policy and actions following the attacks. In 2001, Lynne Cheney attacked the then deputy
chancellor of the New York City Schools, Judith Rizzo, for saying terrorist attacks demonstrated the importance of

jingoistic patriotism
a euphemism for shutting down dissent, eliminating critical dialogue , and
condemning critical citizenship in the interest of conformity and a dangerous departure from what it
teaching about Muslim cultures (Giroux, 2003, 22). According to Giroux, this form of
becomes

means to uphold a viable democracy (2003, 24). The message is, we are not the
other (Muslims), patriotism equals agreement and compliance and our identity is based
on the shared values of liberty and justice . According to Carol Winkler, Negative
ideographs contribute to our collective identity by branding behavior that is unacceptable American society
defines itself as much by its opposition to tyranny and slavery as it does by a commitment to liberty (Winkler,
2006, 12). Terrorism, and by association in this case, Islam, functions as a negative ideograph of American values. It
thereby tells us what our values and our identity are by telling us who the enemy is and who we are not. According

Western identity is dependent on the appropriation of

a backward, illiberal, violent Islamic other against which the West can organize a
collective liberal, civilized self and consolidate its cultural and political
norms (Jackson, Constructing Enemies, 2007, 420). Through this analysis we can see there are four key ways
to Jackson, [] some have argued that

in which the hegemonic system is invested in propagating a culture of fear and violence and terrorism discourse.

Not only is it key for political elites to support this system, it is also crucial that
there be an ever renewing threat that is uniquely different from past threats. These
new threats allow for the investment of significantly more resources, the continuation of the
economy, the renewal of a strong sense of cultural identity and the indoctrination and obedience of new
generations of society. This essay will now look at how individual and collective psychology supports the popularity
of the new terrorism discourse. Psychology of the Masses The second category of reasons why new terrorism
discourse is popular can be called the psychology of the masses. There are a number of factors that fall under this
category such as: the hyper-reality of the modern era; the culture of fear; the carryover of historical archetypes and
the infiltration of neoliberal values into cultural norms. The topic of social and individual psychology and how it
relates to the propagation and acceptance of hegemonic discourse is broad. It is also an important aspect of critical
terrorism studies and merits further exploration. However, in this section will outline the basis for the popularity of
new terrorism discourse and discuss several ways in which this popularity is manifested and reinforced in
contemporary society.

1nc elliot
Representations matter in the context of terrorism the discourse behind
political texts and the affective responses they create are used to instill
national fear and allow elite manipulation of societal anxiety
Elliott 2012 (Emory, University Professor of the University of California and
Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside Terror,
Theory, and the Humanities ed. Di Leo, Open Humanities Press, Online)
In a 1991 interview for the New York Times Magazine, Don DeLillo expressed his views on the place of literature in

In a
repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society thats filled
with glut and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful
act. People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering
that power. People who are powerless make an open theater of violence . True terror is a language and a
vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and
alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to. (qtd. in DePietro 84) The
our times in a statement that he has echoed many times since and developed most fully in his novel Mao II:

implications of DeLillos statement are that we are all engaged in national, international, transnational, and global

acts of representation, including those of terrorism and spectacular

physical violence as well as those of language, performance, and art compete for
the attention of audiences and for influence in the public sphere. In the early days of
the Iraq War, the United States used the power of images, such as those of the mother
of all bombs and a wide array of weapons, as well as aesthetic techniques to
influence and shape the consciousness of millions and to generate strong
support for the war. The shock, fear, and nationalism aroused in those days after 9/11 have
enabled the Bush administration to pursue a military agenda that it had planned before 9/11.
conflicts in which

Since then, the extraordinary death and destruction, scandals and illegalities, and domestic and international

Those of us in the
humanities who are trained as critical readers of political and social texts , as
well as of complex artistically constructed texts, are needed now more urgently than ever to
analyze the relationships between political power and the wide range of rhetorical
methods being employed by politicians and others to further their destructive
effects in the world. If humanities scholars can create conscious awareness of how
such aesthetic devices such as we see in those photos achieve their affective appeal,
citizens may begin to understand how they are being manipulated and motivated
by emotion rather than by reason and logic. In spite of our ability to expose some of these verbal and visual
constructions as devices of propaganda that function to enflame passions and stifle reasonable discussion, we
humanities scholars find ourselves marginalized and on the defensive in our institutions of higher
learning where our numbers have been diminished and where we are frequently being asked to justify
the significance of our research and teaching. While we know the basic truth that the
most serious threats to our societies today are more likely to result from cultural
differences and failures of communication than from inadequate scientific
information or technological inadequacies, we have been given no voice in this debate. With the
strong tendency toward polarized thinking and opinion and the evangelical and fundamentalist
religious positions in the US today and in other parts of the world, leaders continue to abandon
diplomacy and resort to military actions. Most government leaders find the cultural and
social explanations of the problems we face to be vague, and they are frustrated by complex
demonstrations and criticisms have been unable to alter the direction of this agenda.

That is not reason enough, however, for us to abandon our efforts to

influence and perhaps even alter the current course of events. In spite of the
human issues.

we
have no option but to continue to pursue our research and our teaching and hope to
influence others to question the meaning and motives of what they see and hear.
discouragements that we as scholars of the humanities are experiencing in these times, it seems to me that

1nc nuke terror

No risk of nuclear terror assumes every warrant
Mueller 10 (John, professor of political science at Ohio State, Calming Our Nuclear Jitters, Issues in Science and Technology,
Winter, http://www.issues.org/26.2/mueller.html)

Politicians of all stripes preach to an anxious, appreciative, and very numerous choir when they,
like President Obama, proclaim atomic terrorism to be the most immediate and extreme threat
to global security. It is the problem that, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, currently keeps every senior leader awake at

This is hardly a new anxiety. In 1946, atomic bomb maker J. Robert Oppenheimer ominously
warned that if three or four men could smuggle in units for an atomic bomb, they could blow up New
York. This was an early expression of a pattern of dramatic risk inflation that has persisted
throughout the nuclear age. In fact, although expanding fires and fallout might increase the effective destructive radius, the
blast of a Hiroshima-size device would blow up about 1% of the citys areaa tragedy, of
night.

course, but not the same as one 100 times greater. In the early 1970s, nuclear physicist Theodore Taylor proclaimed the atomic
terrorist problem to be immediate, explaining at length how comparatively easy it would be to steal nuclear material and step by
step make it into a bomb. At the time he thought it was already too late to prevent the making of a few bombs, here and there,

we continue to wait
for terrorists to carry out their easy task. In contrast to these predictions, terrorist
groups seem to have exhibited only limited desire and even less progress in going
atomic. This may be because, after brief exploration of the possible routes, they, unlike generations of alarmists, have
discovered that the tremendous effort required is scarcely likely to be successful . The most
now and then, or in another ten or fifteen years, it will be too late. Three decades after Taylor,

plausible route for terrorists, according to most experts, would be to manufacture an atomic device themselves from purloined fissile
material (plutonium or, more likely, highly enriched uranium). This task, however, remains a daunting one, requiring that a

armed theft of fissile material is

exceedingly unlikely not only because of the resistance of guards, but because
chase would be immediate. A more promising approach would be to corrupt insiders to smuggle out the required
substances. However, this requires the terrorists to pay off a host of greedy confederates ,
including brokers and money-transmitters, any one of whom could turn on them or , either out of guile or
incompetence, furnish them with stuff that is useless . Insiders might also consider the possibility that once the
considerable series of difficult hurdles be conquered and in sequence. Outright

heist was accomplished, the terrorists would, as analyst Brian Jenkins none too delicately puts it, have every incentive to cover

If terrorists were somehow successful at

obtaining a sufficient mass of relevant material, they would then probably have to transport it a
long distance over unfamiliar terrain and probably while being pursued by security
forces. Crossing international borders would be facilitated by following established smuggling routes, but these are
not as chaotic as they appear and are often under the watch of suspicious and careful
criminal regulators. If border personnel became suspicious of the commodity being smuggled, some of them might find it
their trail, beginning with eliminating their confederates.

in their interest to disrupt passage, perhaps to collect the bounteous reward money that would probably be offered by alarmed

Once outside the country with their precious booty,

terrorists would need to set up a large and well-equipped machine shop to
manufacture a bomb and then to populate it with a very select team of highly
skilled scientists , technicians, machinists, and administrators. The group would have to be
assembled and retained for the monumental task while no consequential suspicions
were generated among friends, family, and police about their curious and sudden absence from normal pursuits back
home. Members of the bomb-building team would also have to be utterly devoted to the cause, of course, and
they would have to be willing to put their lives and certainly their careers at high risk, because after
governments once the uranium theft had been discovered.

their bomb was discovered or exploded they would probably become the targets of an intense worldwide dragnet operation. Some
observers have insisted that it would be easy for terrorists to assemble a crude bomb if they could get enough fissile material. But
Christoph Wirz and Emmanuel Egger, two senior physicists in charge of nuclear issues at Switzerlands Spiez Laboratory, bluntly

the task could hardly be accomplished by a subnational group . They point out
that precise blueprints are required, not just sketches and general ideas, and that even with a good
conclude that

blueprint the terrorist group would most certainly be forced to redesign. They also stress that the
work is difficult, dangerous, and extremely exacting , and that the technical requirements
in several fields verge on the unfeasible . Stephen Younger, former director of nuclear weapons research at Los
Alamos Laboratories, has made a similar argument, pointing out that uranium is exceptionally difficult to
machine whereas plutonium is one of the most complex metals ever discovered , a
material whose basic properties are sensitive to exactly how it is processed. Stressing the daunting problems associated with
material purity, machining, and a host of other issues, Younger concludes, to

think that a terrorist group,

working in isolation with an unreliable supply of electricity and little access to tools
and supplies could fabricate a bomb is farfetched at best . Under the best
circumstances, the process of making a bomb could take months or even a year or more,
which would, of course, have to be carried out in utter secrecy . In addition, people in the area, including
criminals, may observe with increasing curiosity and puzzlement the constant coming and going of technicians unlikely to be locals.

If the effort to build a bomb was successful, the finished product, weighing a ton or
more, would then have to be transported to and smuggled into the relevant target
country where it would have to be received by collaborators who are at once totally
dedicated and technically proficient at handling, maintaining, detonating, and perhaps assembling the weapon
after it arrives. The financial costs of this extensive and extended operation could easily become
monumental. There would be expensive equipment to buy, smuggle, and set up and
people to pay or pay off. Some operatives might work for free out of utter dedication to the cause, but the vast
conspiracy also requires the subversion of a considerable array of criminals and opportunists, each
of whom has every incentive to push the price for cooperation as high as possible .
Any criminals competent and capable enough to be effective allies are also likely to be both smart enough to see boundless
opportunities for extortion and psychologically equipped by their profession to be willing to exploit them. Those who warn about the
likelihood of a terrorist bomb contend that a terrorist group could, if with great difficulty, overcome each obstacle and that doing so

although it may not be impossible to surmount each

individual step, the likelihood that a group could surmount a series of them quickly
becomes vanishingly small. Table 1 attempts to catalogue the barriers that must be overcome under the scenario
considered most likely to be successful. In contemplating the task before them, would-be atomic terrorists would
effectively be required to go though an exercise that looks much like this. If and when they do, they will undoubtedly
conclude that their prospects are daunting and accordingly uninspiring or even terminally dispiriting.
It is possible to calculate the chances for success. Adopting probability estimates that purposely and heavily
bias the case in the terrorists favorfor example, assuming the terrorists have a 50% chance of overcoming each of
in each case is not impossible. But

the 20 obstaclesthe chances that a concerted effort would be successful comes out to be less than one in a million. If one

the cumulative odds that

they will be able to pull off the deed drop to one in well over three billion . Other
routes would-be terrorists might take to acquire a bomb are even more problematic.
They are unlikely to be given or sold a bomb by a generous like-minded nuclear state for delivery abroad
because the risk would be high, even for a country led by extremists, that the bomb (and its
source) would be discovered even before delivery or that it would be exploded in a manner and on a target the
donor would not approve, including on the donor itself. Another concern would be that the terrorist group might be
infiltrated by foreign intelligence. The terrorist group might also seek to steal or illicitly
purchase a loose nuke somewhere. However, it seems probable that none exist . All
governments have an intense interest in controlling any weapons on their territory
because of fears that they might become the primary target. Moreover, as technology has developed, finished bombs
have been out-fitted with devices that trigger a non-nuclear explosion that destroys the bomb if
it is tampered with . And there are other security techniques: Bombs can be kept disassembled
assumes, somewhat more realistically, that their chances at each barrier are one in three,

with the component parts stored in separate high-security vaults, and a process can be set up in which two people and

multiple codes are required not only to use the bomb but to store, maintain, and

deploy it. As Younger points out, only a few people in the world have the knowledge to cause an unauthorized detonation of a
nuclear weapon. There could be dangers in the chaos that would emerge if a nuclear state were to utterly
collapse; Pakistan is frequently cited in this context and sometimes North Korea as well. However, even under such conditions,
nuclear weapons would probably remain under heavy guard by people who know that a purloined
bomb might be used in their own territory. They would still have locks and , in the case of Pakistan, the
weapons would be disassembled. The al Qaeda factor The degree to which al Qaeda, the only
terrorist group that seems to want to target the United States, has pursued or even has much interest in a
nuclear weapon may have been exaggerated . The 9/11 Commission stated that al Qaeda has tried to
acquire or make nuclear weapons for at least ten years, but the only substantial evidence it supplies comes from an episode that is
supposed to have taken place about 1993 in Sudan, when al Qaeda members may have sought to purchase some uranium that
turned out to be bogus. Information about this supposed venture apparently comes entirely from Jamal al Fadl, who defected from al
Qaeda in 1996 after being caught stealing $110,000 from the organization. Others, including the man who allegedly purchased the

the
uranium episode never happened. As a key indication of al Qaedas desire to obtain atomic weapons, many have
uranium, assert that although there were various other scams taking place at the time that may have served as grist for Fadl,

focused on a set of conversations in Afghanistan in August 2001 that two Pakistani nuclear scientists reportedly had with Osama bin
Laden and three other al Qaeda officials. Pakistani intelligence officers characterize the discussions as academic in nature. It
seems that the discussion was wide-ranging and rudimentary and that the scientists provided no material or specific plans.

scientists probably were incapable of providing truly helpful information

because their expertise was not in bomb design but in the processing of fissile material, which is
almost certainly beyond the capacities of a nonstate group . Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, the apparent
planner of the 9/11 attacks, reportedly says that al Qaedas bomb efforts never went beyond
searching the Internet. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, technical experts from the CIA and the Department of
Moreover, the

Energy examined documents and other information that were uncovered by intelligence agencies and the media in Afghanistan.
They uncovered no credible information that al Qaeda had obtained fissile material or acquired a nuclear weapon. Moreover, they
found no evidence of any radioactive material suitable for weapons. They did uncover, however, a nuclear-related document
discussing openly available concepts about the nuclear fuel cycle and some weapons-related issues. Just a day or two before al
Qaeda was to flee from Afghanistan in 2001, bin Laden supposedly told a Pakistani journalist, If the United States uses chemical or
nuclear weapons against us, we might respond with chemical and nuclear weapons. We possess these weapons as a deterrent.
Given the military pressure that they were then under and taking into account the evidence of the primitive or more probably
nonexistent nature of al Qaedas nuclear program,

the reported assertions, although unsettling, appear at best

to be a desperate bluff. Bin Laden has made statements about nuclear weapons a few other times. Some of these
pronouncements can be seen to be threatening, but they are rather coy and indirect, indicating perhaps something of an interest,
but not acknowledging a capability. And as terrorism specialist Louise Richardson observes, Statements

claiming a

right to possess nuclear weapons have been misinterpreted as expressing a determination to use
them. This in turn has fed the exaggeration of the threat we face . Norwegian researcher Anne
Stenersen concluded after an exhaustive study of available materials that, although it is likely that al Qaeda central has considered

there is little evidence that such ideas ever developed

into actual plans, or that they were given any kind of priority at the expense of more traditional types of terrorist attacks.
She also notes that information on an al Qaeda computer left behind in Afghanistan in 2001 indicates that only $2,000 to $4,000
was earmarked for weapons of mass destruction research and that the money was mainly
for very crude work on chemical weapons. Today, the key portions of al Qaeda central may well total only a few hundred
the option of using non-conventional weapons,

people, apparently assisting the Talibans distinctly separate, far larger, and very troublesome insurgency in Afghanistan. Beyond
this tiny band, there are thousands of sympathizers and would-be jihadists spread around the globe. They mainly connect in Internet

Any threat,
particularly to the West, appears, then, principally to derive from self-selected people , often isolated
from each other, who fantasize about performing dire deeds . From time to time some of these people, or
chat rooms, engage in radicalizing conversations, and variously dare each other to actually do something.

ones closer to al Qaeda central, actually manage to do some harm. And occasionally, they may even be able to pull off something

their capacities and schemes, or alleged schemes, seem to be far

less dangerous than initial press reports vividly, even hysterically, suggest . Most
important for present purposes, however, is that any notion that al Qaeda has the capacity to acquire
nuclear weapons, even if it wanted to, looks farfetched in the extreme . It is also noteworthy
large, such as 9/11. But in most cases,

that, although there have been plenty of terrorist attacks in the world since 2001, all have relied on conventional destructive
methods. For the most part, terrorists seem to be heeding the advice found in a memo on an al Qaeda laptop seized in Pakistan in
2004: Make use of that which is available rather than waste valuable time becoming despondent over that which is not within

history consistently demonstrates that terrorists prefer weapons

that they know and understand, not new, exotic ones. Glenn Carle, a 23-year CIA veteran and once
its deputy intelligence officer for transnational threats, warns, We must not take fright at the specter our
leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal,
disjointed, and miserable opponents that they are . al Qaeda, he says, has only a handful of individuals
your reach. In fact,

capable of planning, organizing, and leading a terrorist organization, and although the group has threatened attacks with nuclear
weapons, its capabilities are far inferior to its desires . Policy alternatives The purpose here has not been
to argue that policies designed to inconvenience the atomic terrorist are necessarily unneeded or unwise. Rather, in contrast with

atomic terrorism under current conditions is rather likely indeed, exceedingly likelyto come
about, I have contended that it is hugely unlikely. However, it is important to consider not only the likelihood that an event
the many who insist that

will take place, but also its consequences. Therefore, one must be concerned about catastrophic events even if their probability is

At some point, however, probabilities

become so low that, even for catastrophic events, it may make sense to ignore them or at least put
them on the back burner; in short, the risk becomes acceptable . For example, the British could at any time attack
small, and efforts to reduce that likelihood even further may well be justified.

the United States with their submarine-launched missiles and kill millions of Americans, far more than even the most monumentally
gifted and lucky terrorist group. Yet the risk that this potential calamity might take place evokes little concern; essentially it is an
acceptable risk. Meanwhile, Russia, with whom the United States has a rather strained relationship, could at any time do vastly more
damage with its nuclear weapons, a fully imaginable calamity that is substantially ignored. In constructing what he calls a case for
fear, Cass Sunstein, a scholar and current Obama administration official, has pointed out that if there is a yearly probability of 1 in
100,000 that terrorists could launch a nuclear or massive biological attack, the risk would cumulate to 1 in 10,000 over 10 years and
to 1 in 5,000 over 20. These odds, he suggests, are not the most comforting. Comfort, of course, lies in the viscera of those to be

there must be
some point at which the concerns even of these people would ease. Just perhaps it is at one of the
levels suggested above: one in a million or one in three billion per attempt.
comforted, and, as he suggests, many would probably have difficulty settling down with odds like that. But

No retaliation
Neely 13Meggaen Neely, The George Washington University Master of Arts (M.A.), Security Policy Studies 20122014
(expected) Baylor University Master of Arts (M.A.), Public Policy and Administration 20102012, Richard D. Huff Distinguished
Masters Student in Political Science (2012) Baylor University Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Political Science and Government, Research
Assistant, Elliott School at George Washington University, Research Intern, Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) Communications Intern at Federation of American Scientists Graduate Assistant at Department of
Political Science, Baylor University [March 21, 2013, Doubting Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism, http://csis.org/blog/doubtingdeterrence-nuclear-terrorism]
Because of the difficulty of deterring transnational actors, many deterrence advocates shift the focus to deterring state sponsors of
nuclear terrorism. The argument applies whether or not the state intended to assist nuclear terrorists. If terrorists obtain a nuclear

the theory goes, then the United States will track the
weapons country of origin using nuclear forensics, and retaliate against that
country. If this is U.S. policy, advocates predict that states will be deterred from assisting terrorists
with their nuclear ambitions. Yet, lets think about the series of events that would play
out if a terrorist organization detonated a weapon in the United States. Lets assume
forensics confirmed the weapons origin, and lets assume, for arguments sake, that country was Pakistan.
Would the United States then retaliate with a nuclear strike? If a nuclear attack occurs within the next
four years (a reasonable length of time for such predictions concerning current international and domestic politics), it seems
unlikely. Why? First, theres the problem of time. Though nuclear forensics is useful,
it takes time to analyze the data and determine the country of origin. Any justified
response upon a state sponsor would not be swift. Second, even if the United States
proved the country of origin, it would then be difficult to determine that Pakistan
willingly and intentionally sponsored nuclear terrorism . If Pakistan did, then nuclear retaliation might
be justified. However, if Pakistan did not, nuclear retaliation over unsecured nuclear
materials would be a disproportionate response and potentially further detrimental. Should
weapon or fissile materials from a state,

the United States launch a nuclear strike at Pakistan, Islamabad could see this as an initial hostility by the United States, and
respond adversely. An obvious choice, given current tensions in South Asia, is for Pakistan to retaliate against a U.S. nuclear launch
on its territory by initiating conflict with India, which could turn nuclear and increase the exchanges of nuclear weapons. Hence,

it

seems more likely that, after the international outrage at a terrorist groups nuclear
detonation, the United States would attempt to stop the bleeding without a
nuclear strike . Instead, some choices might include deploying forces to track down
those that supported the suicide terrorists that detonated the weapon, pressuring
Pakistan to exert its sovereignty over fringe regions such as the F ederally Administered Tribal
Areas, and increasing the number of drone strikes in Waziristan. Given the initial
attack, such measures might understandably seem more of a concession than the
retaliation called for by deterrence models, even more so by the American public .
This is not an argument against those technologies associated with nuclear forensics. The United States and International Atomic

question the presumed

American response that is promulgated by deterrence advocates . By looking at
possibilities for a U.S. response to nuclear terrorism, a situation in which we assume
that deterrence has failed, we cast doubt on the likelihood of a U.S.
retaliatory nuclear strike and hence cast doubt on the credibility of a U.S.
retaliatory nuclear strike as a deterrent . Would the United States launch a nuclear weapon now unless it was
sure of another states intentional sponsorship of nuclear terrorism? Any reasonable doubt of sponsorship might
stay the United States nuclear hand. Given the opaqueness of countries intentions,
reasonable doubt over sponsorship is inevitable to some degree. Other countries
are probably aware of U.S. hesitance in response to terrorists use of nuclear weapons. If this thought
Energy Agency (IAEA) should continue their development and distribution. Instead, I

experiment is true, then the communication required for credible retaliatory strikes under deterrence of nuclear terrorism is missing.

at: ayson
Very low probability
Ayson 10 (Robert, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for
Strategic Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, After a
Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects, Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, 2010 Available Online to Subscribing Institutions
via InformaWorld)
how other nuclear-armed states respond to the act of nuclear terrorism
on another member of that special club. It could reasonably be expected that following a nuclear
terrorist attack on the United States, both Russia and China would extend immediate
sympathy and support to Washington and would work alongside the United
States in the Security Council. But there is just a chance , albeit a slim one, where the
support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases than in others. For example, what would happen if
the United States wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their territory? If, for some reason, Washington found
the responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither for us or against us) might it
also suspect that they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever
so slightly) the chances of a major exchange. If the terrorist group had some connections to groups in Russia and
There is also the question of

China, or existed in areas of the world over which Russia and China held sway, and if Washington felt that Moscow or Beijing were placing a curiously
modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions might it then draw about their culpability?

Their scenario rests on the US blaming China and Russia for the attack,
but we wont
Ayson 10 (Robert, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for
Strategic Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, After a
Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects, Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, 2010 Available Online to Subscribing Institutions
via InformaWorld)
It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation
where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example,
in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the U nited States, it might well be wondered
just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture , not least because
they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of
terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that
sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well.

1nc russia link

The affirmatives demonization of Russia intensifies militarization and
undermines cooperation
Simao, 14 Centre for Social Studies and Faculty of Economics, University of
Coimbra (Licinia, NARRATIVES OF THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS: THE POWER OF
DISCOURSE AND MEDIA WARS ANALYSIS, Eurasia Review, 5/16/2014,
http://www.eurasiareview.com/16052014-narratives-ukrainian-crisis-powerdiscourse-media-wars-analysis/) //RGP
This article focuses on the political narratives of the Ukrainian crisis. In Ukraine, the escalating media wars, harsh political rhetoric,
and use of historically-powerful images and language to describe and prescribe courses of action need to be understood as
fundamental elements in the management of the crisis and of our understanding of what is at stake. This is not to say that the
presence of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border is not real, or that the violence on the streets of Ukraine is not important; rather

that a strict focus on the facts of the crisis fails to address the deep
connections between the emotional, discursive and ideological dimensions on the
one hand and, on the other, the political, military and economic decisions, which
they entail. The Historical Narrative: Evoking World War II One of the central features in the media and in the political
discourse during this crisis is the comparison to World War II. Images of President Putin transfigured into
Hitler circulated widely in social media, opinion pieces comparing Russias
imperialist ambitions to Hitlers appeared in important outlets, and even important politicians,
it is to underline

such as the German Minister of Finances Wolfgang Schauble and former U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton compared President
Putins annexation of Crimea to Hitlers 1938 annexation of the Sudetenland. In fact, there are remarkable similarities between
President Putins argument that ethnic Russians in Crimea required protection and Hitlers claims to protect ethnic Germans in

one must acknowledge that the choice to use comparisons with

World War II and Hitler serve a more immediate purpose: to shock and mobilize
Europeans against their worst fears, which remain, as Thomas Diez has argued, in Europes own past.1 Also
Czechoslovakia. However,

important are the reasons why this ethnic discourse has been activated in Moscow. This needs to be understood from the
perspective of the changes ongoing in the Russian Federation since the end of the Soviet Union and especially since President
Putins second term. Igor Torbakov and Lilia Shevtsova both underline the consolidation of a new vision for the Russian regime,
named Putinism. Power is personal and highly centralized around a small group of people near President Putin; political and
economic power has been merged and protected by the absence of the rule of law; and the statist-militarist view of authority
remains in place.2 This process has been accompanied by revisionist state rhetoric, including neo-Stalinist trends (the rehabilitation
of the Soviet leader),3 a reconstructed narrative around Russias role in the Great Patriotic War (Word War II), and the reintroduction
of the Soviet national anthem and of the military parades in the Red Square, all coupled with President Putins statement that the
end of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. These trends are a fundamental element to understand the

it sets the stage both domestically and abroad for a more

relevant and powerful Russia. Domestically, this new discourse has been accompanied by more restrictive laws on
current crisis in Ukraine, since

demonstrations and protests and by a narrative of the internal enemy and foreign agents, as the new restrictive laws on NGO
funding illustrate. In the current Ukrainian crisis, the fear of the fascists in Kiev is also reminiscent of the Great Patriotic War.
Although one can easily justify Russias concern with subversive movements funded by external actors just look at Ukraine and
Georgia, for instances, or the Arab Spring and with the nature of some members of the interim Ukrainian government, the choice
to combat and denounce this by resorting to this type of speech further serves the purpose of rallying those longing for the glory
days of imperial Russia behind a renovated image. A neo-Soviet identity has been gradually reestablished as an alternative to
western promises of democracy and prosperity under liberal democracy, and it has ample appeal throughout the former-Soviet
countries. Thus, we see that both in Western media and in Russia, the evocation of World War II memories and language serves a

By demonizing President Putin, the

possibilities of dialogue with the West have been severed . By appealing to an imperial

manipulative purpose more than a guide for action.

image that is linked to an authoritarian past, Russia patches over its weak democratic credentials and proposes an alternative

One of
the remarkable aspects of the Ukrainian crisis is that it quickly became a crisis of
U.S.-Russia relations with increasing similarities to Cold War rhetoric . The U.S. Propaganda
approach to the post- Soviet societies, amply frustrated with western policies. The Cold War Rhetoric and Proxy Wars

From Washington, the message to Russia has been a denunciation of the illegal military incursion into a sovereign country and
annexation of its territory, against all the principles founding the European security order, including the Helsinki Final Act. President
Obama has underlined this, as has Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Samantha Power.

the Obama administration has pursued a strategy of

international isolation of Russia in the UN. On March 27, 2014, a resolution was approved at the UN

Based on this logic,

General Assembly supporting Ukraines territorial integrity, with 11 votes against and 58 abstentions out of 168 votes, after a similar
resolution was vetoed by Russia on the UN Security Council. Also, the G7 leaders together with the European leaders approved a
statement condemning the Crimean referendum and suspending their participation in G8 meetings. The imposition of economic
sanctions, in which the United States has closely coordinated with European partners, is a further step in this isolation strategy.
However, the choice of economic instruments is contested inside the U.S. political establishment, and more extreme voices have
used this crisis to play domestic politics. Senator John McCain calls President Obamas policy feckless, and says it fails to
demonstrate American strength in the face of adversaries.4 Senator McCain and U.S. Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian
Affairs Victoria Nuland were in Kiev during demonstrations, and showed their support for the opposition forces, including the

This position seeks to pressure President Obama to act tough and portrays
Russia not as a valuable partner to the U.S. as it was for most of the last 13 years of the War on Terror
but as an adversary, the new enemy. By doing this, the hardline strategy delegitimizes
President Obamas attempts to establish dialogue with Russian authorities, and it
facilitates a military escalation to the crisis, especially within the NATO framework. In
Nationalist Svoboda Party.

a recent op-ed published in the Washington Post, several U.S. Senators further reinforced the idea that European partners are weary
of U.S. reluctance to reinforce NATO members security. They argue for repositioning the West vis-a-vis this new Russia, which has
taken a dark turn [and with which] there is no resetting [and no] business as usual.5 These steps include: the expansion of
sanctions to where it hurts; the development of a strategic response to Russia, which would include a refocusing of NATO on its
core missions of deterrence and collective defense; increasing military investment and reposition of more NATO troops along
Russias border; the development of a new transatlantic energy partnership to reduce Europes energy dependence on Russia; and
new efforts to win the war of ideas among Russian speaking populations of Europe, namely through the private sector. These
steps spell out where U.S. interests lay in this crisis, in a changing international context. It also reinforces divisions inside Europe,
between those defending a more visible U.S. presence in the continent due to perceptions of Russia as an imperialist state with
expansionist policies and those willing to develop a more autonomous path for Europes security, which requires more constructive
and less antagonistic policies towards Russia. Various media outlets, think tanks and academics have replicated these divisions.

Public opinion on the crisis has changed as a result, only adding to pressure on
decision-makers. In democratic context, public opinion is fundamental to justify actions, but
regrettably it leaves unanswered many of the questions regarding the role of the
United States and European countries in the crisis, and it fails to address Russian
foreign policy as legitimate, if illegal. Ultimately, official rhetoric serves the purpose of
justifying a specific set of actions, rather than shedding light on ongoing dynamics .
The Russian Propaganda Russias rhetoric serves similar objectives. Foremost, the domestic and Russian-speaking populations are
the main target of Russian propaganda. The focus on the legality of Russian action in Ukraine is presented side- by-side with the
narrative of the threat and illegality of the government in Kiev. This message is declared by all elements of the Russian political
establishment, starting with President Putin in several of his speeches and press conferences.6 This approach serves two main
goals. The first is the actual contestation of facts and their meaning, namely regarding the agreement reached on February 21,
between the Polish, French and German Foreign Ministers, on the one hand and the Ukrainian President and opposition forces, on the
other. According to Russian authorities, the Ukrainian opposition breached the agreement when they occupied government buildings
and passed illegal laws ousting President Yanukovych. By this logic the current government is illegal because the ouster constitutes
a coup detat. Remarkably, in his March 4 press conference, President Putin suggested that the opposition had used the fact that
President Yanukovych left Kiev to attend a conference in Kharkiv (according to Russia Todays translation) to take over power.7 That
the Ukrainian President would leave Kiev at the height of tensions to attend a conference (or even a meeting) is highly unlikely and
even disingenuous. The European and U.S. version of events is that the President Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement
reestablishing the 2004 constitution and had fled the country to Russia during the night, leaving power.8 Another example of the
contestation of crucial facts of this crisis is the situation of the Russian minorities in Ukraine, especially in Crimea, and the threats to
their security, following the seizure of power by opposition forces in Kiev. The official discourse in Russia states clearly that an
imminent threat was upon these minorities and that an official letter by the legitimate President Yanukovych, requested that Russian
troops be deployed to Crimea, to establish legitimacy, peace, law and order.9 Not only the work of the OSCE observers was not
facilitated, which could serve to prove these charges, it is not clear which Russian minorities Russia will protect. There is a great deal
of confusion over whether Russia is looking to protect Russian citizens (those holding Russian passports), ethnic Russians or Russianspeaking minorities. Either way, there is large scope for intervention throughout the post-Soviet space, which naturally creates
anxiety. This links to the construction of an area of legitimate intervention for Russia, which is designed based on what Gearoid O
Tuathail calls the eternal national geo-imaginary. This is a political and territorial space of the Russian nation that is bound not by
legal borders, but by imaginary affective ones.10 This includes the territories with historical links to Russia, the places where
Russian soldiers have been buried, and where historical injustices have been committed, such as the decision by the Bolsheviks to
award Crimea to Ukraine. The second goal of Russian propaganda, which was particularly strong from February 21 to March 16, day
of the referendum in Crimea, is to construct a reality that justifies future Russian action. What this means is that rather than
discourse reflecting the reality in Ukraine, discourse is part of the process of constructing a new reality, which will create the
conditions for intervention. Timothy Snyder makes this argument brilliantly: Propaganda is thus not a flawed description, but a
script for action. If we consider Putins propaganda in [...] Soviet terms, we see that the invasion of Crimea was not a reaction to an
actual threat, but rather an attempt to activate a threat so that violence would erupt that would change the world. Propaganda is
part of the action it is meant to justify. From this standpoint, an invasion from Russia would lead to a Ukrainian nationalist backlash
that would make the Russian story about fascists, so to speak, retrospectively true. If Ukraine is unable to hold elections, it looks less
like a democracy. Elections are scheduled, but cannot be held in regions occupied by a foreign power. In this way, military action can
make propaganda seem true.11 Both goals are equally dangerous. On the one hand, the situation in Ukraine will continue to be
destabilized and hard to manage, especially if the May 25 elections fail to provide a legitimate government capable of repositioning
the country and managing the challenges it faces. On the other hand,

the focus on the Russian intervention

and its justification through propaganda also fails to address the shortcomings in EU
and U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine and Russia, prior to the crisis, preventing
the West from a self-reflective critical analysis. Conclusion The current crisis in Ukraine
represents simultaneously a continuation of U.S. and EU irresponsible and highly
destabilizing policies of regime change and the violation of basic principles of international law by Russia. Both
approaches represent a potentially fatal blow to the European security order constructed since the 1970s and a dangerous new
contention for influence in the European continent. Understanding the crisis therefore demands clarifying facts, and critical analysis,
in order to gain a better grasp of the actors underlying motivations and the role of propaganda in the construction of more permissive contexts. It is not clear who stands to benefit in the current context, considering the heavy sanctions that are being imposed
on Russia, the remilitarization of Eu- rope and the breakdown of years of mutual accommodation between the European nations and
Russia. The coming years will see important changes in the current statu quo both in Europe and globally. The financial crisis has
underlined the shortcomings of the European integration process and has repositioned the EU globally vis-a-vis other emerging
powers. The withdrawal of NATO troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will also demand a new purpose for the Alliance. Russias
authoritarian turn and the inability to modernize have reduced its interest in closer cooperation with the West. Changes in energy
markets will also demand a restructuring of Russias economy, which will most likely focus increasingly on Asian markets, whereas
Europe might look at the U.S. and new energy sources to limit its dependence on Russia. In these scenarios, the future of Ukraine is

What is clear in this crisis, are the fragile

foundations of international cooperation, the failures of diplomacy, and the
importance of deconstructing propaganda efforts conveyed through mass media , in
order to take sound decisions.
but one part of the bigger problem facing decision-makers.

1nc russia d
US-Russia war is fundamentally impossible
Peck 14 writer for forbes (Michael, 7 Reasons Why America Will Never Go To War
Over Ukraine, March 5th, http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2014/03/05/7reasons-why-america-will-never-go-to-war-over-ukraine/) //J.N.E
America is the mightiest military power in the world. And that fact means absolutely nothing for the Ukraine crisis.
Regardless of whether Russia continues to occupy the Crimea region of Ukraine, or decides to occupy all of Ukraine,

the U.S. is not going to get into a shooting war with Russia . This has nothing to do
with whether Obama is strong or weak. Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan would face the same constraints. The
U.S. may threaten to impose economic sanctions, but here is why America will
never smack Russia with a big stick: Russia is a nuclear superpower . Russia has
an estimated 4,500 active nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of
American Scientists. Unlike North Korea or perhaps Iran, whose nuclear arsenals couldnt inflict substantial
damage, Russia could totally devastate the U.S. as well as the rest of the
planet. U.S. missile defenses, assuming they even work, are not designed to stop a
massive Russian strike. For the 46 years of the Cold War, America and Russia were
deadly rivals. But they never fought . Their proxies fought: Koreans, Vietnamese,
Central Americans, Israelis and Arabs. The one time that U.S. and Soviet forces
almost went to war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Neither Obama nor Putin is
crazy enough to want to repeat that. U.S. Marine Corps vehicle during amphibious assault exercise.
U.S. Marine Corps vehicle during amphibious assault exercise. Russia has a powerful army . While
the Russian military is a shadow of its Soviet glory days, it is still a formidable force. The Russian
army has about 300,000 men and 2,500 tanks (with another 18,000 tanks in
storage), according to the Military Balance 2014 from the International Institute
for Strategic Studies. Its air force has almost 1,400 aircraft, and its navy 171 ships,
including 25 in the Black Sea Fleet off Ukraines coast . U.S. forces are more capable than
Russian forces, which did not perform impressively during the 2008 Russo-Georgia War. American troops would
enjoy better training, communications, drones, sensors and possibly better weapons (though the latest Russian

better is not good enough. The

Russian military is not composed of lightly armed insurgents like the Taliban, or a
hapless army like the Iraqis in 2003. With advanced weapons like T-80 tanks, supersonic AT-15
fighter jets, such as the T-50, could be trouble for U.S. pilots). However,

Springer anti-tank missiles, BM-30 Smerch multiple rocket launchers and S-400 Growler anti-aircraft missiles,
Russian forces pack enough firepower to inflict significant American losses. Ukraine is closer to Russia. The distance
between Kiev and Moscow is 500 miles. The distance between Kiev and New York is 5,000 miles. Its much easier for
Russia to send troops and supplies by land than for the U.S. to send them by sea or air. The U.S. military is tired.
After nearly 13 years of war, Americas armed forces need a breather. Equipment is worn out from long service in
Iraq and Afghanistan, personnel are worn out from repeated deployments overseas, and there are still about 40,000
troops still fighting in Afghanistan. The U.S. doesnt have many troops to send. The U.S. could easily dispatch air
power to Ukraine if its NATO allies allow use of their airbases, and the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush and its
hundred aircraft are patrolling the Mediterranean. But for a ground war to liberate Crimea or defend Ukraine, there
is just the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit sailing off Spain, the 2nd Stryker
Cavalry Regiment in Germany and the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. While the paratroopers
could drop into the combat zone, the Marines would have sail past Russian defenses in the Black Sea, and the
Stryker brigade would probably have to travel overland through Poland into Ukraine. Otherwise, bringing in
mechanized combat brigades from the U.S. would be logistically difficult, and more important, could take months to

The American people are tired . Pity the poor politician who tries to sell
the American public on yet another war, especially some complex conflict in a
distant Eastern Europe nation . Neville Chamberlains words during the 1938 Czechoslovakia crisis come
organize.

to mind: How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here

Americas allies
are tired . NATO sent troops to support the American campaign in Afghanistan, and
has little to show for it. Britain sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and has little to
show for it. It is almost inconceivable to imagine the Western European public
marching in the streets to demand the liberation of Crimea, especially considering
the regions sputtering economy, which might be snuffed out should Russia stop
exporting natural gas. As for military capabilities, the Europeans couldnt evict Libyan
dictator Muammar Gaddafi without American help. And Germans fighting Russians
again?
because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.

No Chance
Charap 15 (Samuel Charap Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the IISS. Is
Russia an Outside Power in the Gulf?, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 57:1,
153-1702/5/15 )
Russia is invoked in analysis of outside powers role in the Middle East, it is often thought of in two
as a shrunken Soviet Union or as a potential regional security
guarantor should the U nited S tates abdicate that role. Following the 2013 IISS Manama Dialogue, a
When

related ways: either

Gulf leader was quoted as saying: the Russians have proved they are reliable friends As a result, some states in
the region have already started to look at developing more multilateral relations, rather than just relying on
Washington.1 This particular statement was alleged to have been fabricated, but the sentiment contained therein

The implication is that Russia seeks clients,

as the Soviet Union did; is active in the region largely to compete with the US; and could, if
asked, step in to displace or supplement the US regional role. Despite all of the headlines generated
by the Ukraine crisis, however, Russia is not a shrunken Soviet Union, nor is it
in a position to replace the US in the region While the Soviet Union had global
ambitions and reach, Russia has neither . The Soviet Union was engaged in a
global ideological competition with the US that created imperatives to seek
influence and connections everywhere . That ideology also gave it a presence in many regions via
communist parties, workers movements, or governments with anti-Western policies. In contrast, post-Soviet
Russia lacks both the ideological impetus and the geopolitical imperative
to compete with the US in every region. Moreover, despite the countrys
economic recovery during the Putin era, it lacks the resources to project power
be it hard power, economic power or soft power in the way that the Soviet Union did. PostSoviet Russia is a qualitatively different kind of outside power for the Middle East than
the US. Firstly, it does not value what could be called regional public goods enough to
sacrifice for and provide them on its own beyond its immediate neighbourhood, that is. Russia
has not created military alliances, nor even offered security guarantees , beyond
its neighbourhood. Moreover, it has no interest in doing so . This means that Russia does not
is broadly reflective of regional elite opinion about Russia.2

have to balance its national interests in the region against broader objectives, a dilemma the US faces regularly due
to its focus on regional public goods and its commitment to allies security. For the US, goals such as maintaining
stability in energy markets and countering Iran often trump worries about extremism or human-rights concerns. For
Russia, however, there are no similar balancing factors that prevent it from pursuing its more narrow national
priorities. While extremism is arguably an equal threat to both the US and Russia, the two countries focus on this
problem in completely different ways.

special operations

1nc burke
The plan fuels a new international order that centralizes American
morality and justifies endless liberal interventionism
Burke 5
Anthony, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Against the New Internationalism, Ethics
and International Affairs, 2005.

Two further elements are particularly striking, and disturbing, about the arguments
of the new internationalists. The first is the material and moral centrality of the
U nited S tates to the new normative order that they envision. Elshtain argues that the
United States is a bearer of universal values and of the primary burden of enforcement, while Ignatieff argues for
"putting the United States at the head of a revitalized U nited Nations": "New rules for
intervention, proposed by the United States and abided by it, would end the canard that the United States, not its

would put America back where it

belongs , as the leader of the international community instead of the deeply
resented behemoth lurking offstage." 3 The second is their poorly concealed
desire for decisive solutions to unwelcome and threatening political realities,
and their view that force can easily provide them . In his book Virtual War, Ignatieff makes the
enemies, is the rogue state. A new charter on intervention

revealing statement that "virtual war" produces merely "virtual victory": "Since the means employed are limited,
the ends achieved are equally constrained: not unconditional surrender, regime change or destruction of the warmaking capacity of the other side, only an ambiguous 'endstate.'" Posing a question that now reads like a prophecy,
he asks, "Why do virtual wars end so ambiguously?" and then answers: "Liberal democracies that are unwilling to
repair collapsed states, to create democracy where none existed, and to remain on guard until the institutions are
self-sustaining and self-reproducing, must inevitably discover that virtual victory is a poor substitute for the real

These then, are the passions that drove liberals to support the invasion
of Iraq , and which drive them, in its wake, to refashion liberal internationalism in a
new guise, as a convergence of universal and American values backed by
"decisive force." Yet Ignatieff also cautioned that we may never "ask ourselves clearly enough whether our
thing."64

moral emotions are real . . . we need to reflect on the potential for self-righteous irrationality which lies hidden in
abstractions like human rights."65 The destructive trap hidden in the appeal of international moralism was
identified long before by Hans Morgenthau, who felt that the historic weakness of cosmopolitan morality leaves the
statesman with a "perpetually uneasy conscience" that is soothed by pouring "the contents of his national morality
into the now almost empty bottle of universal ethics." Nations "oppose each other now as the standard-bearers of
ethical systems . . . the moral code of one nation flings the challenge of its universal claim with messianic fervor
into the face of another, which reciprocates in kind. Compromise, the virtue of the old diplomacy, becomes the
treason of the new."66 This Morgenthau rightly saw as particularly dangerous, because it leaves little room for
plural claims: The world has room for only one, and the other must yield or be destroyed. Thus, carrying their idols
before them, the nationalistic masses of our time meet in the international arena, each group convinced that it
executes the mandate of history, that it does for humanity what it seems to do for itself, and that it fulfils a sacred
mission ordained by Providence, however defined. Little do they know that they meet under an empty sky from
which the Gods have departed.67 We do not have to subscribe to Morgenthau's realist pessimism to acknowledge
the profundity of his appeal for caution, a caution that must temper any idealism we may still want to harbor in a

The United Nations has long been fissured by a

tragic and intractable struggle between the prerogatives of sovereignty and the
cosmopolitan vision of the "universal community"-but it should be resolved not by
radically transforming its structures and principles, but by transforming sovereignty
and its violent conceptual form in ways we have only begun to explore. A revived
liberal internationalism must be tempered by the fear that our ideals may be
suspect, our means dangerous, and our ends tarnished ; and if it is to be a
chastened, postmodern search for perpetual peace.

guide to action, it must resist the perennial seductions of an age that strives for a
day when thinking can stop, and action can be pure .

1nc heg d
No heg impact
Fettweis 11 Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University, 9/26/11, Free Riding or Restraint?
Examining European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 30:316332, EBSCO

It is perhaps worth noting that there is no evidence to support a direct relationship

between the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. In fact, the
limited data we do have suggest the opposite may be true. During the 1990s, the United
States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in
real terms than it had in 1990.51 To internationalists, defense hawks and believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible peace
dividend endangered both national and global security. No serious analyst of American military capabilities, argued Kristol and
Kagan, doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet Americas responsibilities to itself and to world

if the pacific trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony but a
strengthening norm against interstate war, one would not have expected an
increase in global instability and violence . The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The
world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed
to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable U nited States military,
or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address
power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races , and no
regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The rest of the world
peace.52 On the other hand,

acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. Most of all, the
United States and its allies were no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its
military spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped the spending back up. No complex
statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. Military spending figures by themselves
are insufficient to disprove a connection between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once again, one could presumably
argue that spending is not the only or even the best indication of hegemony, and that it is instead U.S. foreign political and security
commitments that maintain stability. Since neither was significantly altered during this period, instability should not have been
expected. Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather than absolute spending is decisive in
bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending during the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered.
However, even if it is true that either U.S. commitments or relative spending account for global pacific trends, then at the very least
stability can evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words, even if one can be allowed to argue in the
alternative for a moment and suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement below which the United States cannot drop without
increasing international disorder, a rational grand strategist would still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until
that level is determined. Grand strategic decisions are never final; continual adjustments can and must be made as time goes on.
Basic logic suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of its blood and treasure while seeking the
maximum return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many believe it to be, no increase in conflict
would ever occur irrespective of U.S. spending, which would save untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation. It is also
perhaps worth noting that if opposite trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S. defense spending with
more aggressive or insecure behavior, then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. If
increases in conflict would have been interpreted as proof of the wisdom of internationalist strategies, then logical consistency

the only evidence we have

regarding the likely systemic reaction to a more restrained United States suggests that the
current peaceful trends are unrelated to U.S. military spending. Evidently the rest of the world can
operate quite effectively without the presence of a global policeman. Those who
think otherwise base their view on faith alone .
demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a problem. As it stands,

We have the best studies

MacDonald and Parent 11Professor of Political Science at Williams College & Professor of Political Science at
University of Miami [Paul K. MacDonald & Joseph M. Parent, Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power
Retrenchment, International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Spring 2011), pp. 744]

we question the logic and evidence of the retrenchment pessimists. To date

there has been neither a comprehensive study of great power retrenchment nor
a study that lays out the case for retrenchment as a practical or probable policy. This
In this article,

article fills these gaps by systematically examining the relationship between

acute relative decline and the responses of great powers. We examine eighteen
cases of acute relative decline since 1870 and advance three main arguments. First, we challenge the retrenchment
pessimists claim that domestic or international constraints inhibit the ability of declining great powers to retrench. In fact, when

peaceful retrenchment is the most common

response, even over short time spans . Based on the empirical record , we find that
great powers retrenched in no less than eleven and no more than fifteen of the eighteen cases, a range of 6183
percent. When international conditions demand it, states renounce risky ties , increase
reliance on allies or adversaries, draw down their military obligations, and impose adjustments on
domestic populations. Second, we find that the magnitude of relative decline helps explain the extent of great power
retrenchment. Following the dictates of neorealist theory, great powers retrench for the same reason
they expand: the rigors of great power politics compel them to do so .12 Retrenchment is by
no means easy, but necessity is the mother of invention, and declining great powers face powerful
incentives to contract their interests in a prompt and proportionate manner. Knowing only a states rate of
relative economic decline explains its corresponding degree of retrenchment in as much as 61
percent of the cases we examined. Third, we argue that the rate of decline helps explain what
forms great power retrenchment will take. How fast great powers fall contributes to whether these
states fall in the hierarchy of great powers,

retrenching states will internally reform, seek new allies or rely more heavily on old ones, and make diplomatic overtures to

great powers facing acute decline are less likely to

initiate or escalate militarized interstate disputes. Faced with diminishing
resources , great powers moderate their foreign policy ambitions and offer
concessions in areas of lesser strategic value. Contrary to the pessimistic conclusions of critics, retrenchment
neither requires aggression nor invites predation . Great powers are able to
rebalance their commitments through compromise, rather than conflict . In these
ways, states respond to penury the same way they do to plenty: they seek to adopt policies that maximize
security given available means. Far from being a hazardous policy, retrenchment can be successful. States that
retrench often regain their position in the hierarchy of great powers. Of the fifteen great powers that adopted
retrenchment in response to acute relative decline, 40 percent managed to recover
their ordinal rank. In contrast, none of the declining powers that failed to retrench
recovered their relative position. Pg. 9-10
enemies. Further, our analysis suggests that

1nc prolif link

Their discourse on proliferation is equivalent to nuclear segregation where
non-white countries are denied the bomb because of an underlying racist
ideology rooted in colonialism
Gusterson 99 (Hugh, American Anthropological Association, MIT; "Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination":
Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Feb., 1999), pp. 111-143; MUSE)

nuclear weapons are represented so that " theirs" are a

problem whereas "ours" are not. During the Cold War the Western discourse on the dangers of "nuclear

Thus in Western discourse

proliferation" defined the term in such a way as to sever the two senses of the word proliferation. This usage split off the
"vertical" proliferation of the superpower arsenals (the development of new and im- proved weapons designs and the numerical
expansion of the stockpiles) from the "horizontal" proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, presenting only the latter
as the "proliferation problem." Following the end of the Cold War, the American and Russian arsenals are being cut to a few
thousand weapons on each side. However, the United States and Russia have turned back appeals from various nonaligned
nations, especially India, for the nuclear powers to open discussions on a global convention abolishing nuclear weapons. Article
6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty notwithstanding, the Clinton administration has declared that nuclear weapons will play a role in
the defense of the United States for the indefinite future. Meanwhile, in a controversial move, the Clinton administration has
broken with the policy of previous administrations in basically formalizing a policy of using nuclear weapons against nonnuclear
states to deter chemical and biological weapons (Panofsky 1998; Sloyan 1998). The dominant discourse that stabilizes this

nuclear apartheid in Western ideology is a specialized variant within a

broader system of colonial and postcolonial discourse that takes as its
essentialist premise a profound Otherness separating Third World from Western
countries.6 This inscription of Third World (especially Asian and Middle Eastern) nations as ineradicably different from our
own has, in a different context, been labeled "Orientalism" by Edward Said (1978). Said argues that orientalist
discourse constructs the world in terms of a series of binary oppositions that
produce the Orient as the mirror image of the West: where "we" are rational and
disciplined, "they" are impulsive and emotional ; where "we" are modern and
flexible, "they" are slaves to ancient passions and routines ; where "we" are
honest and compassionate, "they" are treacherous and uncultivated. While the
blatantly racist orientalism of the high colonial period has softened, more subtle
orientalist ideologies endure in contemporary politics. They can be found, as Akhil Gupta (1998) has
system of

argued, in discourses of economic development that represent Third World nations as child nations lagging behind Western
nations in a uniform cycle of development or, as Lutz and Collins (1993) suggest, in the imagery of popular magazines, such as
National Geographic. I want to suggest here that another variant of contemporary orientalist ideology is also to be found in U.S.
national security discourse. Following Anthony Giddens (1979), I define ideology as a way of constructing political ideas,
institutions, and behavior which (1) makes the political structures and institutions created by dominant social groups, classes,
and nations appear to be naturally given and inescapable rather than socially constructed; (2) presents the interests of elites as
if they were universally shared; (3) obscures the connections between different social and political antagonisms so as to inhibit

Western discourse
on nuclear proliferation is ideological in all four of these senses: (1) it makes the
simultaneous ownership of nuclear weapons by the major powers and the
absence of nuclear weapons in Third World countries seem natural and
reasonable while problematizing attempts by such countries as India, Pakistan, and Iraq to
acquire these weapons; (2) it presents the security needs of the established
nuclear powers as if they were everybody's; (3) it effaces the continuity between
Third World countries' nuclear deprivation and other systematic patterns of
deprivation in the underdeveloped world in order to inhibit a massive north-south
confrontation; and (4) it legitimates the nuclear monopoly of the recognized
nuclear powers.
massive, binary confrontations (i.e., revolutionary situations); and (4) legitimates domination. The

1nc prolif
Asian prolif wont happen
Weiner 12, research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues, 12 (Sarah, The
Dominos Wont Fall, November 9, http://csis.org/blog/dominos-wont-fall)
The narrative is compelling. Fortunately for us, however, it makes much more sense in
theory than it is likely to play out in practice. The first glaring problem with the nuclear
domino theory is that it has been wrong for almost 70 years. Since the United States
successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1945, eight additional nuclear powers have emerged:
Russia (1949), the United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), China (1964), (presumably) Israel (late 1960s), India
(1974), Pakistan (1998), and North Korea (2006). That averages out to about one new nuclear state every 7.5 years
(and just one every 14 years since the Nonproliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970).

If this is domino

proliferation, then it is the slowest domino chain in history.

Some may look at this list and see

the domino theory confirmed: the Soviet Union pursued a nuclear weapon because its adversary the United States
was doing so; Maoist China went nuclear in response to U.S. and Soviet nuclear build up; and India nuclearized in

The trouble with this chronicle is

that it walks right into a classic stats 101 trap: choosing based on the dependent
variable. If we are interested in understanding why states proliferate , analyzing a
sample of nuclear states is bound to skew our examination because, by our own
response to China, sparking subsequent proliferation in Pakistan.

definition, only nuclear states made it into the dataset. Its like interviewing a sample of Republican voters,
discovering that the state of the economy determined their votes, and concluding that anyone worried about the

we would need to sample all voters. So to

understand proliferation, we need to understand all states . The decision not to
proliferate is just as significant as the opposite , and the list of non-proliferating states tells quite a
economy would vote for the GOP. In this scenario,

different story. After Chinas first successful nuclear test, for example, the U.S. administration predicted India,
Indonesia, and Japan could nuclearize, followed by a menacing crew including Sweden, Italy, Canada, and several

Viewed from this lens, Indias nuclearization hardly confirms the

domino theory. Look at all the dominos that didnt fall! The same dog-thatdidnt-bark problem holds true in more modern cases . A long list of Asian countries
should feel threatened by North Koreas nuclear program, especially Japan and
South Korea. Yet, in contrast to dire predictions, the rest of the East and Southeast
Asia dominos remain upright.
nations in Eastern Europe.

No spill over and no impact stabilizes regions

Colin H. Kahl 13, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and an
associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown Universitys
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Melissa G. Dalton, Visiting Fellow at the
Center for a New American Security, Matthew Irvine, Research Associate at the
Center for a New American Security, February, If Iran Builds the Bomb, Will Saudi
Arabia Be Next?
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_AtomicKingdom_Kahl.pdf
*cites Jacques Hymans, USC Associate Professor of IR***
I I I . LESSONS FROM HISTOR Y Concerns over regional proliferation chains, falling nuclear dominos and nuclear tipping points are nothing new;
indeed, reactive proliferation fears date back to the dawn of the nuclear age.14 Warnings of an inevitable deluge of proliferation were commonplace from
the 1950s to the 1970s, resurfaced during the discussion of rogue states in the 1990s and became even more ominous after 9/11.15 In 2004, for
example, Mitchell Reiss warned that in ways both fast and slow, we may very soon be approaching a nuclear tipping point, where many countries may
decide to acquire nuclear arsenals on short notice, thereby triggering a proliferation epidemic. Given the presumed fragility of the nuclear
nonproliferation regime and the ready supply of nuclear expertise, technology and material, Reiss argued, a single new entrant into the nuclear club

could catalyze similar responses by others in the region, with the Middle East and Northeast Asia the most likely candidates.16 Nevertheless,

predictions of inevitable proliferation cascades have historically proven false (see The Proliferation
Cascade Myth text box). In the six decades since atomic weapons were first developed, nuclear restraint has proven far more common than nuclear

countries that have started down

the nuclear path have found the road more difficult than imagined , both technologically and
bureaucratically, leading the majority of nuclear-weapons aspirants to reverse course. Thus, despite frequent
proliferation, and cases of reactive proliferation have been exceedingly rare. Moreover, most

warnings of an unstoppable nuclear express,17 William Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova astutely note that the train to date has been slow to pick
up steam, has made fewer stops than anticipated, and usually has arrived much later than expected.18 None of this means that additional proliferation in
response to Irans nuclear ambitions is inconceivable, but the empirical record does suggest that regional chain reactions are not inevitable. Instead, only
certain countries are candidates for reactive proliferation. Determining the risk that any given country in the Middle East will proliferate in response to
Iranian nuclearization requires an assessment of the incentives and disincentives for acquiring a nuclear deterrent, the technical and bureaucratic
constraints and the available strategic alternatives. Incentives and Disincentives to Proliferate Security considerations, status and reputational concerns

Analysts predicting
proliferation cascades tend to emphasize the incentives for reactive proliferation while ignoring or
downplaying the disincentives . Yet, as it turns out, instances of nuclear proliferation (including reactive
proliferation) have been so rare because going down this road often risks insecurity,
reputational damage and economic costs that outweigh the potential
benefits .19 Security and regime survival are especially important motivations driving state decisions to proliferate. All else being equal, if a
and the prospect of sanctions combine to shape the incentives and disincentives for states to pursue nuclear weapons.

states leadership believes that a nuclear deterrent is required to address an acute security challenge, proliferation is more likely.20 Countries in conflictprone neighborhoods facing an enduring rival especially countries with inferior conventional military capabilities vis-a-vis their opponents or those that
face an adversary that possesses or is seeking nuclear weapons may be particularly prone to seeking a nuclear deterrent to avert aggression.21 A recent
quantitative study by Philipp Bleek, for example, found that security threats, as measured by the frequency and intensity of conventional militarized
disputes, were highly correlated with decisions to launch nuclear weapons programs and eventually acquire the bomb.22 The Proliferation Cascade Myth

Despite repeated warnings since the dawn of the nuclear age of an inevitable
deluge of nuclear proliferation, such fears have thus far proven largely unfounded.
Historically, nuclear restraint is the rule, not the exception and the degree of
restraint has actually increased over time . In the first two decades of the nuclear age, five nuclear-weapons
states emerged: the United States (1945), the Soviet Union (1949), the United Kingdom (1952), France (1960) and China (1964). However, in the nearly 50
years since China developed nuclear weapons, only four additional countries have entered (and remained in) the nuclear club: Israel (allegedly in 1967),
India (peaceful nuclear test in 1974, acquisition in late-1980s, test in 1998), Pakistan (acquisition in late-1980s, test in 1998) and North Korea (test in
2006).23 This significant slowdown in the pace of proliferation occurred despite the widespread dissemination of nuclear know-how and the fact that the
number of states with the technical and industrial capability to pursue nuclear weapons programs has significantly increased over time.24 Moreover, in
the past 20 years, several states have either given up their nuclear weapons (South Africa and the Soviet successor states Belarus, Kazakhstan and
Ukraine) or ended their highly developed nuclear weapons programs (e.g., Argentina, Brazil and Libya).25 Indeed, by one estimate, 37 countries have
pursued nuclear programs with possible weaponsrelated dimensions since 1945, yet the overwhelming number chose to abandon these activities before

the number of nuclear reversals has grown while the

number of states initiating programs with possible military dimensions has markedly declined .26
Furthermore especially since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) went into force in 1970 reactive proliferation has been
exceedingly rare . The NPT has near-universal membership among the community of nations; only
India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea currently stand outside the treaty. Yet the actual and suspected acquisition of nuclear
weapons by these outliers has not triggered widespread reactive proliferation in their
respective neighborhoods. Pakistan followed India into the nuclear club, and the two have engaged in a vigorous arms race, but Pakistani
nuclearization did not spark additional South Asian states to acquire nuclear
weapons. Similarly, the North Korean bomb did not lead South Korea, Japan or other
regional states to follow suit.27 In the Middle East, no country has successfully built a
nuclear weapon in the four decades since Israel allegedly built its first nuclear
weapons. Egypt took initial steps toward nuclearization in the 1950s and then expanded these efforts in the late 1960s and 1970s in response to
they produced a bomb. Over time,

Israels presumed capabilities. However, Cairo then ratified the NPT in 1981 and abandoned its program.28 Libya, Iraq and Iran all pursued nuclear
weapons capabilities, but only Irans program persists and none of these states initiated their efforts primarily as a defensive response to Israels
presumed arsenal.29 Sometime in the 2000s, Syria also appears to have initiated nuclear activities with possible military dimensions, including
construction of a covert nuclear reactor near al-Kibar, likely enabled by North Korean assistance.30 (An Israeli airstrike destroyed the facility in 2007.31)
The motivations for Syrias activities remain murky, but the nearly 40-year lag between Israels alleged development of the bomb and Syrias actions
suggests that reactive proliferation was not the most likely cause. Finally, even countries that start on the nuclear path have found it very difficult, and
exceedingly time consuming, to reach the end. Of the 10 countries that launched nuclear weapons projects after 1970, only three (Pakistan, North Korea
and South Africa) succeeded; one (Iran) remains in progress, and the rest failed or were reversed.32 The successful projects have also generally needed

the average time required to complete a nuclear

weapons program has increased from seven years prior to 1970 to about 17 years after 1970, even as
much more time than expected to finish. According to Jacques Hymans,

the hardware, knowledge and industrial base required for prolif eration has expanded to
more and more countries.33 Yet throughout the nuclear age, many states with potential security incentives to develop nuclear weapons have nevertheless
abstained from doing so.34 Moreover, contrary to common expectations, recent statistical research shows that states with an enduring rival that
possesses or is pursuing nuclear weapons are not more likely than other states to launch nuclear weapons programs or go all the way to acquiring the

a rivals acquisition of
nuclear weapons does not inevitably drive proliferation decisions. One reason that reactive
bomb, although they do seem more likely to explore nuclear weapons options.35 This suggests that

proliferation is not an automatic response to a rivals acquisition of nuclear arms is the fact that security calculations can cut in both directions. Nuclear

leaders have to weigh these potential gains against the

possibility that seeking nuclear weapons would make the country or regime less secure by triggering a
regional arms race or a preventive attack by outside powers. Countries also have to consider the possibility that
pursuing nuclear weapons will produce strains in strategic relationships with key allies and security
weapons might deter outside threats, but

patrons. If a states leaders conclude that their overall security would decrease by building a bomb, they are not likely to do so.36 Moreover, although
security considerations are often central, they are rarely sufficient to motivate states to develop nuclear weapons. Scholars have noted the importance of
other factors, most notably the perceived effects of nuclear weapons on a countrys relative status and influence.37 Empirically, the most highly motivated
states seem to be those with leaders that simultaneously believe a nuclear deterrent is essential to counter an existential threat and view nuclear
weapons as crucial for maintaining or enhancing their international status and influence. Leaders that see their country as naturally at odds with, and
naturally equal or superior to, a threatening external foe appear to be especially prone to pursuing nuclear weapons.38 Thus, as Jacques Hymans argues,
extreme levels of fear and pride often combine to produce a very strong tendency to reach for the bomb.39 Yet here too, leaders contemplating
acquiring nuclear weapons have to balance the possible increase to their prestige and influence against the normative and reputational costs associated
with violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). If a countrys leaders fully embrace the principles and norms embodied in the NPT, highly value
positive diplomatic relations with Western countries and see membership in the community of nations as central to their national interests and identity,
they are likely to worry that developing nuclear weapons would damage (rather than bolster) their reputation and influence, and thus they will be less
likely to go for the bomb.40 In contrast, countries with regimes or ruling coalitions that embrace an ideology that rejects the Western dominated
international order and prioritizes national self-reliance and autonomy from outside interference seem more inclined toward proliferation regardless of
whether they are signatories to the NPT.41 Most countries appear to fall in the former category, whereas only a small number of rogue states fit the
latter. According to one count, before the NPT went into effect, more than 40 percent of states with the economic resources to pursue nuclear programs
with potential military applications did so, and very few renounced those programs. Since the inception of the nonproliferation norm in 1970, however,
only 15 percent of economically capable states have started such programs, and nearly 70 percent of all states that had engaged in such activities gave
them up.42 The prospect of being targeted with economic sanctions by powerful states is also likely to factor into the decisions of would-be proliferators.
Although sanctions alone proved insufficient to dissuade Iraq, North Korea and (thus far) Iran from violating their nonproliferation obligations under the
NPT, this does not necessarily indicate that sanctions are irrelevant. A potential proliferators vulnerability to sanctions must be considered. All else being
equal, the more vulnerable a states economy is to external pressure, the less likely it is to pursue nuclear weapons. A comparison of states in East Asia
and the Middle East that have pursued nuclear weapons with those that have not done so suggests that countries with economies that are highly
integrated into the international economic system especially those dominated by ruling coalitions that seek further integration have historically been
less inclined to pursue nuclear weapons than those with inward-oriented economies and ruling coalitions.43 A states vulnerability to sanctions matters,
but so too does the leaderships assessment regarding the probability that outside powers would actually be willing to impose sanctions. Some would-be
proliferators can be easily sanctioned because their exclusion from international economic transactions creates few downsides for sanctioning states. In
other instances, however, a state may be so vital to outside powers economically or geopolitically that it is unlikely to be sanctioned regardless of NPT
violations. Technical and Bureaucratic Constraints In addition to motivation to pursue the bomb, a state must have the technical and bureaucratic
wherewithal to do so. This capability is partly a function of wealth. Richer and more industrialized states can develop nuclear weapons more easily than
poorer and less industrial ones can; although as Pakistan and North Korea demonstrate, cash-strapped states can sometimes succeed in developing
nuclear weapons if they are willing to make enormous sacrifices.44 A countrys technical know-how and the sophistication of its civilian nuclear program
also help determine the ease and speed with which it can potentially pursue the bomb. The existence of uranium deposits and related mining activity,
civilian nuclear power plants, nuclear research reactors and laboratories and a large cadre of scientists and engineers trained in relevant areas of
chemistry and nuclear physics may give a country some latent capability to eventually produce nuclear weapons. Mastery of the fuel-cycle the ability
to enrich uranium or produce, separate and reprocess plutonium is particularly important because this is the essential pathway whereby states can
indigenously produce the fissile material required to make a nuclear explosive device.45 States must also possess the bureaucratic capacity and
managerial culture to successfully complete a nuclear weapons program. Hymans convincingly argues that many recent would-be proliferators have weak

rulers to take a coercive, authoritarian management approach to

their nuclear programs. This approach, in turn, politicizes and ultimately undermines nuclear
projects by gutting the autonomy and professionalism of the very scientists, experts and
organizations needed to successfully build the bomb.46 Alternative Sources of Nuclear Deterrence Historically, the
state institutions that permit, or even encourage,

availability of credible security guarantees by outside nuclear powers has provided a potential alternative means for acquiring a nuclear deterrent without
many of the risks and costs associated with developing an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. As Bruno Tertrais argues, nearly all the states that
developed nuclear weapons since 1949 either lacked a strong guarantee from a superpower (India, Pakistan and South Africa) or did not consider the
superpowers protection to be credible (China, France, Israel and North Korea). Many other countries known to have pursued nuclear weapons programs
also lacked security guarantees (e.g., Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Switzerland and Yugoslavia) or thought they were unreliable at the

potential proliferation candidates appear to have

abstained from developing the bomb at least partly because of formal or informal extended
deterrence guarantees from the U nited S tates (e.g., Australia, Germany, Japan, Norway, South Korea and Sweden).47 All
told, a recent quantitative assessment by Bleek finds that security assurances have empirically significantly
reduced prolif eration proclivity among recipient countries.48 Therefore, if a country perceives that a security guarantee by the United
time they embarked on their programs (e.g., Taiwan). In contrast, several

States or another nuclear power is both available and credible, it is less likely to pursue nuclear weapons in reaction to a rival developing them. This
option is likely to be particularly attractive to states that lack the indigenous capability to develop nuclear weapons, as well as states that are primarily
motivated to acquire a nuclear deterrent by security factors (as opposed to status-related motivations) but are wary of the negative consequences of
proliferation.

1nc cred
Acts of sovereign violence due to the normalization of the state of
emergency have made leadership impossible forever for the United States
any exercise of US force in the future is only domination without
hegemony that is doomed to fail
Gulli 13 Bruno Gulli, professor of history, philosophy, and political science at
Kingsborough College in New York, For the critique of sovereignty and violence,
http://academia.edu/2527260/For_the_Critique_of_Sovereignty_and_Violence, pg. 5
we have now an understanding of what the situation is: The sovereign
everywhere, be it the political or financial elite, fakes the legitimacy on which its
power and authority supposedly rest. In truth, they rest on violence and terror, or
the threat thereof. This is an obvious and essential aspect of the singularity of the
present crisis. In this sense, the singularity of the crisis lies in the fact that the struggle
for dominance is at one and the same time impaired and made more brutal by the
lack of hegemony. This is true in general, but it is perhaps particularly true with respect to the greatest
power on earth, the United States, whose hegemony has diminished or vanished. It is a
I think that

fortiori true of whatever is called the West, of which the US has for about a century represented the vanguard.

Lacking hegemony, the sheer drive for domination has to show its true face, its raw
violence. The usual, traditional ideological justifications for dominance (such as
bringing democracy and freedom here and there) have now become very weak
because of the contempt that the dominant nations (the US and its most powerful
allies) regularly show toward legality, morality, and humanity. Of course, the so-called rogue
states, thriving on corruption, do not fare any better in this sense, but for them, when they act autonomously and
against the dictates of the West, the specter of punishment, in the form of retaliatory war or even indictment from

who will
stop the United States from striking anywhere at will, or Israel from regularly
massacring people in the Gaza Strip, or envious France from once again trying its luck in
Africa? Yet, though still dominant, these nations are painfully aware of their structural,
ontological and historical, weakness. All attempts at concealing that weakness (and
the uncomfortable awareness of it) only heighten the brutality in the exertion of
what remains of their dominance. Although they rely on a highly sophisticated
military machine (the technology of drones is a clear instance of this) and on an
equally sophisticated diplomacy, which has traditionally been and increasingly is an
outpost for military operations and global policing (now excellently incarnated by
Africom), they know that they have lost their hegemony. Domination without
hegemony is a phrase that Giovanni Arrighi uses in his study of the long twentieth
century and his lineages of the twenty-first century (1994/2010 and 2007 ). Originating
with Ranajit Guha (1992), the phrase captures the singularity of the global crisis, the
terminal stage of sovereignty, in Arrighis historical investigation of the present and of the future
(1994/2010: 221). It acquires particular meaning in the light of Arrighis notion of the
bifurcation of financial and military power. Without getting into the question, treated by Arrighi, of
the rise of China and East Asia, what I want to note is that for Arrighi, early in the twenty-first century,
and certainly with the ill-advised and catastrophic war against Iraq, the US belle
epoque came to an end and US world hegemony entered what in all likelihood is its
terminal crisis. He continues: Although the United States remains by far the worlds
most powerful state, its relationship to the rest of the world is now best described as
the International Criminal Court, remains a clear limit, a possibility. Not so for the dominant nations:

one of domination without hegemony (1994/2010: 384). What can the US do next? Not much, short
of brutal dominance. In the last few years, we have seen president Obama praising himself for the killing of Osama
bin Laden. While that action was most likely unlawful, too (Noam Chomsky has often noted that bin Laden was a

you can kill all the bin

Ladens of the world without gaining back a bit of hegemony. In fact, this killing, just
like G. W. Bushs war against Iraq, makes one think of a Mafia-style regolamento di
conti more than any other thing. Barack Obama is less forthcoming about the killing of
16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, whose fate many have correctly compared to that of
17-year-old Trayvon Martin (killed in Florida by a self-appointed security watchman), but it is
precisely in cases like this one that the weakness at the heart of empire, the illconcealed and uncontrolled fury for the loss of hegemony, becomes visible. The
frenzy denies the possibility of power as care, which is what should replace
hegemony, let alone domination. Nor am I sure I share Arrighis optimistic view about the possible rise
of a new hegemonic center of power in East Asia and China: probably that would only be a shift in
the axis of uncaring power, unable to affect, let alone exit, the paradigm of
sovereignty and violence. What is needed is rather a radical alternative in which
power as domination, with or without hegemony, is replaced by power as care in
other words, a poetic rather than military and financial shift.
suspect, not someone charged with or found guilty of a crime), it is certain that