10nfl1-Nukes-Cover

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 10 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com
NUKES
WERE
USED
TO
STOP
A
GAS
LEAK
IN
UZBEKISTAN
ONCE.
186
A
LIENS

187
ALIENS
WANT
NATIONS
TO
DISARM.
187
ALIENS
WANT
NATIONS
TO
DISARM.
187
ALIENS
EXIST
–
EYEWITNESS
TESTIMONY
SHOULDNʼT
BE
DISMISSED.
188
ALIENS
EXIST,
AND
WE
SHOULD
AVOID
THEM.
188
CONTACT
WITH
ALIENS
IS
SURE
TO
BE
HOSTILE.
188
I
RAN

189
LET
IRAN
HAVE
NUKES
TO
DETER
US
INVASION.
189
ISRAEL
MUST
HAVE
NUKES
TO
SECURE
ITSELF
FROM
IRANIAN
THREAT.
190
IRAN
IS
NOT
FANATICAL;
IT
CAN
HANDLE
THE
NUKE.
190
IRAN
NEEDS
NUKES
TO
DETER
ISRAELI
ATTACK,
NOT
CAUSE
IT.
190
IRAN
WILL
NOT
ENGAGE
IN
MASS
MURDER
IF
IT
ACQUIRES
NUKES.
191
IRANIAN
NUKES
ARE
NECESSARY
TO
SECURE
THE
NATION
FROM
EXTERNAL
THREATS.
191
IRANIAN
BOMB
DOES
NOT
HARM
ISRAELI
DETERRENCE.
191
AN
IRANIAN
NUKE
IS
NECESSARY
TO
DETER
A
US
NUCLEAR
STRIKE
IN
THE
REGION.
192
IRAN
MUST
GO
NUCLEAR
TO
SAVE
ITSELF
FROM
A
NUCLEAR
ISREAEL,
A
NUCLEAR
RUSSIA,
AND
A
NUCLEAR
AMERICA
OCCUPYING
TWO
COUNTRIES
SURROUNDING
IT.
192
THE
ONLY
IMPLICATION
TO
IRANIAN
PROLIFERATION
IS
STABILITY.
193
M
ISCELLANEOUS

194
THE
POSSESSION
OF
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
FULFILLS
THE
NEEDS
OF
A
PROLIFERATING
STATE.
194
FOCUS
ON
THE
HORROR
OF
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
USE
TRANSFERS
AGENCY
TO
THE
BOMB.
194
DONʼT
BLAME
THE
BOMB.
195
NMD
FAILS
TO
WORK
BECAUSE
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
AND
BE
DELIVERED
IN
A
NUMBER
OF
WAYS
195
NATIONS
WILL
PURSUE
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
IF
STATES
ALREADY
HAVE
IT.
THEY
NEED
SECURITY
TOO.
196
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
HAVE
INCREASED
STATESʼ
SECURITY.
196
NOT
ALL
FORMS
OF
NUCLEAR
PROLIFERATION
ARE
BAD
197
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
ARE
THE
ULTIMATE
EQUALIZER
IN
INTERNATIONAL
POLITICS.
197
NUCLEAR
PROLIFERATION
REPLACES
OTHER,
MORE
EXPENSIVE
FORMS
OF
MILITARY
GROWTH
199

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 11 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com
Topic Analysis by Ryan Hamilton
This topic has a lot of promise – but there area lot of traps that debaters must work hard to avoid lest they inflict upon judges and one another a boring debate that has no substantial clash and few educational merits. To that end, it is my advice that debaters work hard to either affirm or negate the resolution on its basis as a normative ethical claim rather than on any kind of act-actor grounds. I think there are several good reasons why debaters should choose this interpretation of the resolution first, it is clearly what the author of this resolution intended. There are some topics these days that focus on an actor or use a particular term of art that invites an advocacy that is hyperspecific – this is not one of them. More to the point, if someone asked another should states possess nuclear weapons And the other party replied Iran ought not possess nuclear weapons, the asking party would probably say That doesnʼt answer my question It might be tempting to take the path which requires less intellectual rigor – but that is a path what has no destination that include sense. Second, any engagement of implementation of plans requires debaters – the most advanced of which are still only high school students with perhaps one or two civics or government classes on their CV – to engage in rank speculation regarding the nature and way any country might chose to disarm or the political ramifications of joining this treaty or that. I have sat through a great many practice rounds already and the most boring and narrow debates were between two debaters forwarding case positions that required them to speculate on the nuclear weapons firing protocol between countries who mayor may not have been minutes away from blowing us all away in a horrible nuclear holocaust because of some flock of birds or whatever or what Israel must do to satisfy its irrational enemies in the near east. Lets face it youʼre not Madeleine Albright and neither am I. Third, it doesnʼt make any sense. Youʼd necessarily need an agreement or imperative that states ought not possess nuclear weapons prior to engaging in any type of debate regarding disarmament – an ethical debate about the merits of the topic would necessarily precede any debate about how best to form a reality around the normative claim should it be affirmed – so why not just have that debate The alternative is to skirt the issue and try to shove a square peg in a very round hole – sometimes so forcefully that it can only be described as a sort of intellectually violent action. For instance, if the topic were individuals ought not lie, the most proper debate would be about how others have rights to the truth and how lying calls into question the notion of truth in the first place. Once that proposition has been affirmed, and only once it has – can we move onto discuss methods by which we try to order society or moral systems around its validity. But the veracity of the claim must first be established. It is not clear, independent of the capability

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 12 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com to disarm all countries immediately, whether or not states have any kind of imperative to not possess them. Lastly, the sort of debate found above doesnʼt educate anyone regarding moral truth and vastly increases the breadth of research debaters will need to be competitive or even slightly authoritative in their claims. They will have to research all combinations of two (or more) of the 9 known nuclear powers to be topical (since states means two or more) and then, when it comes to implementation, research particular methods of disarmament, understand which economies can support which measures, and soon and soon. This might be easier to understand and is certainly more straightforward, but my advice is to stop the madness before it starts and write a case position that engages the moral and ethical issues that exist in the abstract and does not require any knowledge of the minutia that might result from any plans of disarmament that happen post-affirmation. The alternative seems to avoid these pitfalls and provide an excellent opportunity for students to discuss and engage in philosophical debate about ethical prescriptions. Whether or not nuclear weapons – the sole purpose of which is to destroy on a magnitude so vast that we can hardly understand it, or to threaten that destruction to coerce others to act in such away as we wish – are ethical is a question that is ripe for the picking. These sorts of debate, however, require an intellectual rigor – understanding moral concepts does not come easy to most of us, myself included. It requires reflection and meditation on concepts, going through examples trying to distill a clear principle. Please do not give up during your research periods – forge ahead, read one more page, lookup one more explanation. Once that process is done, most of the cases that follow the above advice will probably include a lot of framework. Give judges a very clear value and criterion structure that sets your argumentation up for success. I have no small stake in this – as a judge, I feel the argument about the way in which I should evaluate the arguments is probably the most interesting part of the debates. I will outline some case positions for both sides below, starting with the affirmative.
Affirming:
First, and most obviously tome, is a case position that is consistent with a deontological understanding of ethics. Nuclear weapons are not ends in themselves, they are only instruments
– typically of foreign policy or warfare – that seek the ends of a greater strategy. The key to that strategy is to threaten force so great that no actor – rational or otherwise – would ever defy an ultimatum where nuclear destruction were the consequence. There are two parts to the action threat of force and it seems inevitable, use of force. But it is difficult to warrant claims that nuclear

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 13 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com weapons will necessarily be used in the future, and even then, it engages in the sort of rank speculation of which I have already spoken ill. But the threat seems tome to meet a threshold of violation of rights – it treats individuals strictly as a means to a greater strategic policy of coercion. This clearly means that states in possession of nuclear weapons violate a fair treatment of individuals standard by ignoring that individuals are ends in and of themselves, not slaves to some greater foreign policy objective by their home country or a foreign one. In this way, the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral because of the way it makes objects out of people – lives become the collateral of foreign policy strategies, numbers to be added together. This position has several advantages, if you ask me first, it avoids the debates about implementation that I have already discussed. Second, it doesnʼt speculate on this, but rather speaks to the nature of mere possession of nuclear weapons without considering their particular use. All one must do is setup a framework whereby individuals ought to be treated as ends in themselves, warrant the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, easily enough done, warrant that the threat of said destruction itself is a sufficient enough violation of the standard and you have yourself a good starter affirmative case position. I have given significant time to reflection on whether or not the nature of a nuclear weapon – with its implications for destruction and coercive power – is not so contrary to a free living and purposeful advancement of the species through time and space that it violates ethical standards by its nature alone. I think it is fairly reasonable to hold that the intention to destroy ones enemy is not altogether immoral depending on the situation – but who can argue that the destruction be carried out when it has the capability to not just destroy ones enemy but to annihilate him complete and along with him all mankind and even rob life of its home hereon Earth – which nuclear weapons, by their very nature, do. If the idea can be rejected as immoral, then certainly there are sufficient dangers associated with the material object, the bomb itself, which are so offensive to our code of ethics which is meant to protect and promote life. This, of course, is a somewhat mystical case that would require a great deal to warrant in the framework, but it is not without literature in the academic world. When the topic was first released, I immediately researched what Bertrand Russell had to say about the issue. He is perhaps the most famous global zero (before it was called that) academic who found the nature of nuclear weapons, vis a vis their destructive power, to simply be incompatible with our humanity. Indeed, his famous radio address, Manʼs Peril ends with a call for individuals to remember their humanity and forget all else. The underlying assumption of Russellʼs objection to nuclear weapons was that they posed a risk not only to Soviets or Americans, to capitalists or communists, but to the advancement of the species into the future. For all of his liberal atheism, Russell saw in nuclear weapons the ultimate threat to a conservative position he looked to what wed accomplished, to how we gained from our surroundings an understanding of working, created beautiful works of art

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 14 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com and music. He liked what he saw, and thought that it ought to be preserved. Any threat to its preservation, particularly threats over which we as a species have control, ought to be eliminated out of hand. Additionally, this gives the opportunity for local debaters to introduce new philosophies that arenʼt outrageous to their circuits to not only raise the level of discourse but get ahead start on college philosophy classes. This summer I was fortunate enough to assist in the philosophy focus week at the Victory Briefs Institute where was taught contractualism. Contractualism can be summed up in an easy and debate-packaged way we form normative ethical codes on propositions which cannot be reasonably rejected. In other words, morality has a lotto do with actions which can be justified to others. It seeks to combine the best elements of consequential frameworks and deontic frameworks and create positions that neither could reasonably reject. The next thing to warrant is how undue harm to innocent parties is not justified by this ethical framework because of the lack of a convincing justification – even if the affirmative debater concedes that civilians in two or more warring parties can be considered collateral to the opposing state, nuclear weapons have consequences that will necessarily negatively effect innocent parties who arenʼt part of the conflict – as small as radiation, air, and water pollution and as large as a cataclysmic nuclear winter that wipes out all life on Earth. Insofar as any use of nuclear weapons will inevitably harm uninvolved, innocent third parties to a conflict, their possession is unjust.
Negating:
The most attractive negative position, for me, comes out of an article by Hans
Morgenthau called The 6 Principles of Political Realism that is easily found by a Google search mixed in with a little basic social contract theory. Morgenthau differentiates between the obligations of individuals and the obligations of states since individuals operate on their own behalf, they are readily able to self-sacrifice since theirs is the only agency that goes down with them. States, on the other hand, exercise power on behalf of others and therefore cannot engage in self-sacrificing actions because they would violate the agency of the individuals they are meant to protect. In this way, states should certainly not surrender nuclear weapons, doing so would be a major abrogation of what they are expected to do – then, states ought to acquire and accumulate weapons with this end in mind protect the citizens. This furthers the states ethical obligation to protect its citizens and makes it amoral pursuit. It also has a lets get real approach about the world approach – states do not exist in utopian settings where most people get along, but rather a state of nature more like what Thomas Hobbes described – caught between imperialism and regional tensions, states should be looking to how to best navigate the international system in away that serves their best interests, and not subject to some highfalutin

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 15 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com moral charge that forces them to abandon what have turned out to be extraordinarily useful tools. More to the point, these weapons are part of a very rare genus whereby states with small or nonexistent conventional armies have the capability of pushing back against larger forces that are typically trying to exert control or exercise influence contrary to a weaker states good. The sort of naiveté engendered by the affirmative position only compounds the problem it leaves states ill equipped to protect their citizens in an increasingly hostile international realm. Indeed, basic social contract theory tells us that we give up certain rights to states in exchange for protection, and insofar as nuclear weapons exist, it makes sense that the state should seek to acquire them to further its goal of protecting its charges. No person would ever enter into asocial contract knowing that their particular state would preference everyone the same regardless of borders – this idea rather negates the entire point of the social contract. Therefore, if states have any obligations to their citizens they must first uphold those in order for any subsequent action to be moral or just or credible – it is therefore not immoral to possess nuclear weapons, but rather the possession of instruments which further the duty of the state can be proactively moral and a hinge on which all further state action maybe judged as immoral if they surrender the weapons. All of this is just a starting point – I hope youʼll consider my advice as you embark on case writing and researching. Best of luck to you all

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 16 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com

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