10nfl1-Nukes-Cover

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 26 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com While the two definitions may not seem to pose a unique threat, the first, if won, could be used to exclude a variety of negative positions those that argue fora peaceful use of nuclear weapons, be it to end oil spills, or destroy asteroids. These positions are actually supported in a good body of topic literature, however ridiculous they may seem. It was suggested multiple times as a feasible solution to the recent gulf oil spill, and both the United States and Russia experimented with peaceful uses of nuclear weapons after the cold war These positions do exist, but I think that a definition of weapon that limits the word to talk only about those devices used in combat would clearly exclude peaceful uses of nuclear weapons. Even if the affirmative rids the world of nuclear weapons, there could still be a stockpile of nuclear devices ready for oil spills and asteroids.
I wont say which way I prefer in this debate, as I think its a good debate to have. As we will find in the following section, the resolution is less than clear about what it actually means to affirm – making what the affirmative claims to justify a hotly debated area – and the definition of weapons maybe a normally overlooked input into that debate.
INTERPRETATIONAL QUESTIONS While definitional analysis is surely relevant and occasionally interesting, there are much larger questions to ask about definitions that lack real context or specificity, as this one does. The questions to ask regarding this resolution are surely limitless, but I will attempt to address two that I feel have particular importance here. Should the affirmative have to defend the implementation of the resolutions judgment This a question that I alluded to earlier, and its a fairly straightforward question – should the affirmative be forced to defend the actual process of disarming and disassembling nuclear weapons In my opinion, they probably shouldnʼt. First, I feel like forcing the affirmative to both defend implementation would make affirming unnecessarily hard – not only would they have to defend the action in principle, they would have to defend the real world implementation of the action. Ina purely debate-centric focus, this would seem to bean unfair expectation of affirmatives, as negatives could presumably argue against either section and win. If the negative wins that the implementation would fail, they would win regardless of the outcome of the moral debate. The same holds for the opposite even if the affirmative wins that disarming is possible, if
10
http://nyti.ms/9GPNLP
11 MD. Nordyke Professor of Nuclear Physics @ University of Arizona The Soviet Program for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions USDOE, September 1, 2000

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 27 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com they lose that its a good idea, they lose. Forcing affirmatives to defend implementation would seem to give them double the burden of the negative, and so its probably bad to use as an interpretation. Also, I think that the resolution is primarily a question of the ethical value of a nuclear-free world. I would have no trouble believing both that states ought not have nuclear weapons and that it would impossible to safely disarm all nuclear weapons. The two statements donʼt seem to clearly clash, making implementation arguments, at least in my mind, entirely irrelevant to the conflict of the resolution. It maybe unrealistic to imagine a world without nuclear weapons, but that fact doesnʼt seem to have a clear impact. I can still affirm that we ought to live in a world without violence, even if such a world couldnʼt exist. That being said, I do think there are persuasive arguments that support the alternate interpretation of the resolution. For example, I think if affirmatives want to garner ends-based impacts (nukes kill the world, nuclear winter, etc, it would be reasonable to expect them to defend the ends-based impacts of disarmament (instability, power struggles, etc. Affirmatives that argue only they should have access to ends-based impacts should be prepared to defend that interpretation, which could prove to be difficult. Also, there is an extremely relevant educational concern – would it be beneficial from an educational perspective for us to debate an impossible resolution I donʼt think that the answer to this question is always no, but here, it might be a relevant concern. There is very, very little topic literature that discusses the implications of a world completely without nuclear weapons – even the authors like Carl Sagan that talk about the horrible impacts of nuclear war advocate deep cuts as opposed to universal disarmament. Well talk about this more in about a paragraph, but it is an important concern here. Sometimes, it might be beneficial for us to debate in purely ethical terms, but a good dose of the real world is necessary to keep debate grounded. Ultimately, the choice between interpretations is a tough one, and one that will have to be debated out in a good number of rounds on this topic. I foresee this being one of the primary interpretational issues for September and October, which is why I mention it here. In the end, you should be ready to justify your answer, regardless of the decision you make – this is sure to be a contentious area of the topic. Should the affirmative have to advocate universal disarmament As mentioned earlier, whether the affirmative can advocate universal disarmament is an extremely relevant concern to many conflicts on the topic – but I think its one that I have a much stronger opinion on I donʼt think that the affirmative should be forced to defend universal disarmament.

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 28 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com First, I think it could alleviate a good majority of the concerns outlined above if the affirmative would advocate a specific actors disarmament. Not only would it make the expectation of solvency/implementation defense significantly more reasonable, it could create an interesting area of clash Can (insert country here) effectively disarm is a much better debate than can countries ever disarm successfully Also, it would solve the topic literature issue. There is extensive literature available discussing the ability of countries like the United States to peacefully disarm, and the potential problems/benefits of such disarmament. There is, however, a relevant fairness concern for negatives – that they cant predict which country or set of countries any given affirmative will choose – but I think that this is a pretty silly argument. There are only nine nations that currently possess nuclear weapons, so the negative would only have to prepare for nine different affirmative cases. The response of the negative is bound to be that an affirmative could choose any combination of the nine nuclear nations, but those arguments are bad for different reasons than their choice of an actor, and Id love to seethe article that contends the US, France, and Israel are the only nations that ought to disarm. Specifying a nation would at least give negatives a general idea of what they were about to debate, even if they couldnʼt predict specifically what combination the affirmative they are currently debating ran. Also, would it necessarily be the worst thing in the world to force debaters to be prepared for many different real-world actors Forcing debaters to know a lot about many different nations is probably more of a good thing than it is bad – I would be hard pressed to think of a reason why we ought to preference interpretations that donʼt force debaters to actually know anything thatʼs happening in the real world. This is inline with what I was talking about earlier under the first interpretational question, and could be the good dose of the real world that we need to stay grounded. In the end, I feel like allowing the affirmative to choose between advocating a single actor or the entire resolution is a good idea. Surely, there will be those who disagree, and there will definitely be arguments made in round that explain why everything in the preceding section is false, but if forced to give a true answer, I think that the educational benefit and overall quality of debate that can occur under a single-state affirmative case is too enticing to categorically ignore. CONCLUSION Hopefully, Iʼve done a good job to spark your framework creativity on this topic, but possibly the most important note of this analysis is this the quest to discover unique interpretations and approaches to the resolution surely doesnʼt end here.
12
United States, France, United Kingdom, Russia, China, North Korea, India, Israel, and Pakistan

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 29 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com This is but a sampling of the many interpretational and definitional issues that will surely be present on this topic – if you keep exploring the topic literature and thinking about the topic, you will surely find things that arenʼt included in this analysis. Think about different ways to approach defining the terms of the resolution, different ways to draw impacts from those definitions, and consider entirely new framings of the resolution. I find that the most interesting and persuasive positions come from such thought – good luck

10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 30 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com

Download 1.23 Mb.

Share with your friends: