Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 Hegemony Core Brovero/Verney/Hurwitz

US-China conflict escalates to nuclear war

(Charles, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University., Foreign Affairs, Mar/April 2011, "Will China's Rise Lead to War? ", Vol. 90, Issue 2, Ebsco, accessed 7-9-13)

Such dangers have been around for decades, but ongoing improvements in China's military capabilities may make Beijing more willing to escalate a Taiwan crisis. In addition to its improved conventional capabilities, China is modernizing its nuclear forces to increase their ability to survive and retaliate following a large-scale U.S. attack. Standard deterrence theory holds that Washington's current ability to destroy most or all of China's nuclear force enhances its bargaining position. China's nuclear modernization might remove that check on Chinese action, leading Beijing to behave more boldly in future crises than it has in past ones. A U.S. attempt to preserve its ability to defend Taiwan, meanwhile, could fuel a conventional and nuclear arms race. Enhancements to U.S. offensive targeting capabilities and strategic ballistic missile defenses might be interpreted by China as a signal of malign U.S. motives, leading to further Chinese military efforts and a general poisoning of U.S.-Chinese relations.

Escalation will spiral out of control

Swaine, Carnegie Endowment senior associate & University California-Berkeley Asia Program postdoctoral fellow, 4

(Dr. Michael, “Trouble in Taiwan”, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/?fa=view&id=1460, accessed 11-8-11, CMM)

A war with China over Taiwan would, of course, be far more dangerous than any of the United States' post-Cold War operations. Although not a match for the United States, China is nonetheless a continental power with very large conventional ground, naval, and air forces, as well as a nuclear weapons arsenal capable of reaching any target in the United States and beyond. Taiwan's proximity to China, the difficulty involved in interdicting Chinese attacks without directly striking the Chinese mainland, and the historical inclination of both sides to display resolve in a crisis through decisive -- and sometimes rapid -- military action suggest that escalation might prove extremely difficult to control.

Asian Instability Bad Impact

Asian instability leads to nuclear war

Landay, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 00

[Jonathan, 3-10-00, Knight Ridder, “Top administration officials warn stakes for U.S. are high in Asian conflicts”, Lexis]

Few if any experts think China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, or India and Pakistan are spoiling to fight. But even a minor miscalculation by any of them could destabilize Asia, jolt the global economy, and even start a nuclear war. India, Pakistan, and China all have nuclear weapons, and North Korea may have a few, too. Asia lacks the kinds of organizations, negotiations, and diplomatic relationships that helped keep an uneasy peace for five decades in Cold War Europe.

“Nowhere else on Earth are the stakes as high and relationships so fragile,” said Bates Gill, director of northeast Asian policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “We see the convergence of great power interest overlaid with lingering confrontations with no institutionalized security mechanism in place. There are elements for potential disaster.

In an effort to cool the region’s tempers, President Clinton, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger all will hopscotch Asia’s capitals this month.

For America, the stakes could hardly be higher.

There are 100,000 U.S. troops in Asia committed to defending Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, and the United States would instantly become embroiled if Beijing moved against Taiwan or North Korea attacked South Korea. While Washington has no defense commitments to either India or Pakistan, a conflict between the two could end the global taboo against using nuclear weapons and demolish the already shaky international nonproliferation regime.

India-US Relations Good Impact

India-US relations reduce the risk of South Asian nuclear war

Schaffer, Center for Strategic and International Security South Asia Program director, 2

(Teresita, Washington Quarterly, Spring, “Building a new partnership with India”, p. Lexis)

Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As a result, both giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation. For Washington, the advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly, as well as a stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region. Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S. relations with India. For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to maintain an economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the United States.

India-Pakistan Nuclear War Impacts

India-Pakistan nuclear war risks extinction

Caldicott, Physicians for Social Responsibility founder, 2

[Helen, Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, “The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex”, p. xiii]

The use of Pakistani nuclear weapons could trigger a chain reaction. Nuclear-armed India, an ancient enemy could respond in kind. China, India’s hated foe, could react if India used her nuclear weapons, triggering a nuclear holocaust on the subcontinent. If any of either Russia or America’s 2,250 strategic weapons on hair-trigger alert were launched either accidentally or purposefully in response, nuclear winter would ensue, meaning the end of most life on earth.

South Asian nuclear war risks extinction

Hundley, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting senior editor, 12

(Tom, 9-5-12, Foreign Policy, “Race to the End”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/05/race_to_the_end?page=0,3, accessed 7/7/13, AR)

The arms race could make a loose nuke more likely. After all, Pakistan's assurances that its nuclear arsenal is safe and secure rest heavily on the argument that its warheads and their delivery systems have been uncoupled and stored separately in heavily guarded facilities. It would be very difficult for a group of mutinous officers to assemble the necessary protocols for a launch and well nigh impossible for a band of terrorists to do so. But that calculus changes with the deployment of mobile battlefield weapons. The weapons themselves, no longer stored in heavily guarded bunkers, would be far more exposed. Nevertheless, military analysts from both countries still say that a nuclear exchange triggered by miscalculation, miscommunication, or panic is far more likely than terrorists stealing a weapon -- and, significantly, that the odds of such an exchange increase with the deployment of battlefield nukes. As these ready-to-use weapons are maneuvered closer to enemy lines, the chain of command and control would be stretched and more authority necessarily delegated to field officers. And, if they have weapons designed to repel a conventional attack, there is obviously a reasonable chance they will use them for that purpose. "It lowers the threshold," said Hoodbhoy. "The idea that tactical nukes could be used against Indian tanks on Pakistan's territory creates the kind of atmosphere that greatly shortens the distance to apocalypse." Both sides speak of the possibility of a limited nuclear war. But even those who speak in these terms seem to understand that this is fantasy -- that once started, a nuclear exchange would be almost impossible to limit or contain. "The only move that you have control over is your first move; you have no control over the nth move in a nuclear exchange," said Carnegie's Tellis. The first launch would create hysteria; communication lines would break down, and events would rapidly cascade out of control. Some of the world's most densely populated cities could find themselves under nuclear attack, and an estimated 20 million people could die almost immediately. What's more, the resulting firestorms would put 5 million to 7 million metric tons of smoke into the upper atmosphere, according to a new model developed by climate scientists at Rutgers University and the University of Colorado. Within weeks, skies around the world would be permanently overcast, and the condition vividly described by Carl Sagan as "nuclear winter" would be upon us. The darkness would likely last about a decade. The Earth's temperature would drop, agriculture around the globe would collapse, and a billion or more humans who already live on the margins of subsistence could starve. This is the real nuclear threat that is festering in South Asia. It is a threat to all countries, including the United States, not just India and Pakistan. Both sides acknowledge it, but neither seems able to slow their dangerous race to annihilation.

AT – China War

Economic interdependence checks war

Menon, Lehigh University international relations professor & New America Foundation fellow, 8

(Rajan, Jan/Feb 2008, The National Interest, "The Changing of the Guard, http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/changing_guard_6586, accessed 9-4-9)

The possibility of conflict is all the more unpalatable for Beijing because China's economic miracle is the result of shedding autarky and embracing economic interdependence or, in its turbocharged variant, globalization. For example, if China were to unload its dollar holdings and opt for the euro as its main reserve currency, it would damage the American economy (the U.S. government would have to hike interest rates to keep attracting dollars). But Beijing would also wound itself. While Americans certainly benefit from the relatively inexpensive goods that U.S. companies export from China, it is no less true that a reliable American market is important to China. Its exports to the United States totaled $287 billion in 2006, making the United States the number one foreign destination for Chinese goods; on top of that, the United States is the fifth-largest source of foreign direct investment in China.

So, the costs of willfully creating instability--indeed, of upheaval unrelated to Chinese actions--have risen now that China's economic engine is powered by capital inflows, global markets and reliable energy supplies. And the constraints imposed by such dependence will not diminish even though China will be less susceptible to economic sanctions as rising incomes expand the internal market.

Interdependence is inevitable and solves war

Deudney, John Hopkins Political Science professor & Ikenberry, Princeton Politics and International Affairs professor, 9

[Daniel, G. John, Jan/Feb 2009, Foreign Affairs, "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival," http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20090101faessay88106/daniel-deudney-g-john-ikenberry/the-myth-of-the-autocratic-revival.html?mode=print, accessed 7-8-13]

Finally, there is an emerging set of global problems stemming from industrialism and economic globalization that will create common interests across states regardless of regime type. Autocratic China is as dependent on imported oil as are democratic Europe, India, Japan, and the United States, suggesting an alignment of interests against petroleum-exporting autocracies, such as Iran and Russia. These states share a common interest in price stability and supply security that could form the basis for a revitalization of the International Energy Agency, the consumer association created during the oil turmoil of the 1970s. The emergence of global warming and climate change as significant problems also suggests possibilities for alignments and cooperative ventures cutting across the autocratic-democratic divide. Like the United States, China is not only a major contributor to greenhouse gas accumulation but also likely to be a major victim of climate-induced desertification and coastal flooding. Its rapid industrialization and consequent pollution means that China, like other developed countries, will increasingly need to import technologies and innovative solutions for environmental management. Resource scarcity and environmental deterioration pose global threats that no state will be able to solve alone, thus placing a further premium on political integration and cooperative institution building.

Analogies between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first are based on a severe mischaracterization of the actual conditions of the new era. The declining utility of war, the thickening of international transactions and institutions, and emerging resource and environmental interdependencies together undercut scenarios of international conflict and instability based on autocratic-democratic rivalry and autocratic revisionism. In fact, the conditions of the twenty-first century point to the renewed value of international integration and cooperation.

China’s integration in the Western political and economic order checks conflict

Ikenberry, Princeton University International Affairs professor, 8,

[G. John, Jan/Feb 2008, Foreign Affairs, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West ," Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87102/g-john-ikenberry/the-rise-of-china-and-the-future-of-the-west.html?mode=print, access 9-4-9)

The Western order's strong framework of rules and institutions is already starting to facilitate Chinese integration. At first, China embraced certain rules and institutions for defensive purposes: protecting its sovereignty and economic interests while seeking to reassure other states of its peaceful intentions by getting involved in regional and global groupings. But as the scholar Marc Lanteigne argues, "What separates China from other states, and indeed previous global powers, is that not only is it 'growing up' within a milieu of international institutions far more developed than ever before, but more importantly, it is doing so while making active use of these institutions to promote the country's development of global power status." China, in short, is increasingly working within, rather than outside of, the Western order.

China is already a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a legacy of Roosevelt's determination to build the universal body around diverse great-power leadership. This gives China the same authority and advantages of "great-power exceptionalism" as the other permanent members. The existing global trading system is also valuable to China, and increasingly so. Chinese economic interests are quite congruent with the current global economic system -- a system that is open and loosely institutionalized and that China has enthusiastically embraced and thrived in. State power today is ultimately based on sustained economic growth, and China is well aware that no major state can modernize without integrating into the globalized capitalist system; if a country wants to be a world power, it has no choice but to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). The road to global power, in effect, runs through the Western order and its multilateral economic institutions.

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