Impact turns + answers – bfhmrs russia War Good
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Harbor Teacher Prep-subingsubing-Ho-Neg-Lamdl T1-Round3, Impact Turns Aff Neg - Michigan7 2019 BFHMRS
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- War in the Gulf wouldn’t escalate---the US would crush
- Sheer military dominance ensures victory
2NC---AT: Strikes FailPreemptive strikes successfully deter acquisitionJohn R. Bolton 15, 3-26-2015, American attorney, political commentator, Republican consultant, government official and former diplomat. "Opinion," New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html?_r=2//HM FOR years, experts worried that the Middle East would face an uncontrollable nuclear-arms race if Iran ever acquired weapons capability. Given the region’s political, religious and ethnic conflicts, the logic is straightforward. As in other nuclear proliferation cases like India, Pakistan and North Korea, America and the West were guilty of inattention when they should have been vigilant. But failing to act in the past is no excuse for making the same mistakes now. All presidents enter office facing the cumulative effects of their predecessors’ decisions. But each is responsible for what happens on his watch. President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe. In theory, comprehensive international sanctions, rigorously enforced and universally adhered to, might have broken the back of Iran’s nuclear program. But the sanctions imposed have not met those criteria. Naturally, Tehran wants to be free of them, but the president’s own director of National Intelligence testified in 2014 that they had not stopped Iran’s progressing its nuclear program. There is now widespread acknowledgment that the rosy 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which judged that Iran’s weapons program was halted in 2003, was an embarrassment, little more than wishful thinking. Even absent palpable proof, like a nuclear test, Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear weapons has long been evident. Now the arms race has begun: Neighboring countries are moving forward, driven by fears that Mr. Obama’s diplomacy is fostering a nuclear Iran. Saudi Arabia, keystone of the oil-producing monarchies, has long been expected to move first. No way would the Sunni Saudis allow the Shiite Persians to outpace them in the quest for dominance within Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitical hegemony. Because of reports of early Saudi funding, analysts have long believed that Saudi Arabia has an option to obtain nuclear weapons from Pakistan, allowing it to become a nuclear-weapons state overnight. Egypt and Turkey, both with imperial legacies and modern aspirations, and similarly distrustful of Tehran, would be right behind. Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure. Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential. The former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said recently, “whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same.” He added, “if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it’s not just Saudi Arabia that’s going to ask for that.” Obviously, the Saudis, Turkey and Egypt will not be issuing news releases trumpeting their intentions. But the evidence is accumulating that they have quickened their pace toward developing weapons. Saudi Arabia has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, China, France and Argentina, aiming to build a total of 16 reactors by 2030. The Saudis also just hosted meetings with the leaders of Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey; nuclear matters were almost certainly on the agenda. Pakistan could quickly supply nuclear weapons or technology to Egypt, Turkey and others. Or, for the right price, North Korea might sell behind the backs of its Iranian friends. The Obama administration’s increasingly frantic efforts to reach agreement with Iran have spurred demands for ever-greater concessions from Washington. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, worked hard, with varying success, to forestall or terminate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons by states as diverse as South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Even where civilian nuclear reactors were tolerated, access to the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle was typically avoided. Everyone involved understood why. This gold standard is now everywhere in jeopardy because the president’s policy is empowering Iran. Whether diplomacy and sanctions would ever have worked against the hard-liners running Iran is unlikely. But abandoning the red line on weapons-grade fuel drawn originally by the Europeans in 2003, and by the United Nations Security Council in several resolutions, has alarmed the Middle East and effectively handed a permit to Iran’s nuclear weapons establishment. The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed. Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran. Mr. Obama’s fascination with an Iranian nuclear deal always had an air of unreality. But by ignoring the strategic implications of such diplomacy, these talks have triggered a potential wave of nuclear programs. The president’s biggest legacy could be a thoroughly nuclear-weaponized Middle East. War in the Gulf wouldn’t escalate---the US would crushJames R. Holmes 19, J.C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, 6-20-2019, "Gulf war would be 'Iran against the world' — but still not easy to win," TheHill, https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/449450-gulf-war-would-be-iran-against-the-world-but-still-not-easy-to-win//HM From a purely military standpoint, a Gulf war would be a scattershot affair, like most marine trials of arms. Each side would try to grind down the other through tactical actions as opportunity arose. Iranian or Iranian-backed forces would lash out at passing merchantmen, much as they did during the “Tanker Wars” in the 1980s. In reply, guardians of free navigation would blend defensive with offensive action. They would assemble merchant ships into convoys protected by escort warships, presumably corvettes, frigates or destroyers. Meanwhile, they would strike at irregular forces’ lairs, and potentially at naval harbors and shore airfields and missile sites, with the hope of squelching the problem at its source. In other words, the combatants would snipe away at each other in small-scale actions strewn across the map, hoping to grind each other into submission over time. This is what Admiral J.C. Wylie, one of my predecessors on the Naval War College faculty, would classify as a “cumulative” form of sea combat. This is war by statistics. The sinking of an individual tanker or speedboat doesn’t inflict decisive damage, let alone compel the government suffering the damage to capitulate in the war. But losing lots of ships to pinprick actions could add up to unbearable pain if the bloodletting continues over time. Cumulative operations, them, strive to kill by a thousand cuts. Like Corbett, and on similar grounds, Wylie is skeptical that any combatant would persevere with such a campaign long enough to see it through to victory. It’s exhausting. Instead, commanders and political leaders would opt for more direct, decisive measures to try to keep the costs and perils of sea warfare bearable. Wylie calls these “sequential” operations, in that forces proceed from point A to point B to point C until the foe cries uncle or no longer can resist. Tehran has no obvious sequential option; it cannot defeat the world. Washington can entertain a sequential option, but it presumably would involve crushing the Iranian armed forces and, perhaps, unseating the regime in Tehran. That’s a drastic departure from a limited war at sea. If the Trump administration wants to keep any clash of arms short and relatively inexpensive, it should give careful forethought to such an escalation — an escalation that might, in Clausewitzian parlance, transform a limited war at sea into something alien to its nature. Corbett and Wylie could only nod their agreement. Always consult the masters of strategy before launching into military adventures. Sheer military dominance ensures victoryDavid Brennan 18, World News reporter for Newsweek, 7-23-2018, "America vs. Iran: Can the U.S. military win a war against the Islamic Republic?," Newsweek, https://www.newsweek.com/america-vs-iran-can-us-military-win-war-against-islamic-republic-1036980//HM With President Donald Trump continuing to practice diplomatic brinkmanship via Twitter, U.S.-Iranian tensions appear to be reaching a boiling point—as they have several times since Trump entered the Oval Office. The president's latest outburst was in response to comments from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who said, "Peace with Iran is the mother of all peace and war with Iran is the mother of all wars." Exactly what this means is unclear, as is often the case with the president's bellicose social media output. Political commentators raised concerns that Trump might use such a conflict to deflect attention from his domestic troubles, whether in Syria, North Korea or Iran. But if the U.S. was to go to war against the Islamic Republic, could it win? The U.S. military is superior to Iran's in every way. In a straight, one-on-one fight, America trumps Iran every single time, and that's without taking into account the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which alone is enough to flatten most of Iran. But no war is fought on paper, nor in a vacuum. American might crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan and swept Saddam Hussein from power within weeks. As far back as the Vietnam War, U.S. forces never lost a battle against the North Vietnamese enemy. Regardless, none of those conflicts ended in total victory. If decades of difficult conflicts worldwide have taught the American military anything, it is that a mighty armory goes only so far. In pure population terms, Iran, at 80 million, is dwarfed by the U.S.'s 325 million. That gives America much more available manpower and domestic production ability than Iran. Though Iran has one of the youngest populations in the world, it still wouldn't be enough to tip the balance in its favor. The U.S. military has around 1.3 million active military personnel, while Iran has just 550,000. Including reserve personnel, the U.S. has more than 2 million, while Iran would struggle to hit 1 million. On top of this, American troops are far better trained and equipped than their Middle Eastern rivals. The U.S. has the largest military budget in the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, America committed $610 billion to its armed forces last year—more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the U.K. and Japan combined. Iran, on the other hand, can only dedicate around $14.5 billion to defense—a startling mismatch. Such a gulf in funding means a gulf in equipment. The U.S. fields some of the most advanced weaponry in the world, while the backbone of the Iranian military is comparatively outdated. Iran fields around 1,650 tanks compared to around 5,000 for the U.S. How many of those are battle-ready on either side is unclear, but even if you halved the American numbers, the U.S. would still come out on top. The numerous variations of the M1 Abrams tank form America's armored backbone. Introduced in 1980, the base platform is aging, but constant offensive and defensive improvements have equipped the tanks of 2018 for the modern battlefield. The newest units are inbound, and the Pentagon has already taken delivery of the first M1A2 SEP Abrams systems, sporting further upgrades. Iran mostly fields second-rate, Cold War–era battle tanks, none of which are a match for an Abrams in a one-on-one fight. The country is developing its new Karrar platform, which it says will be one of the most advanced tanks in the world. But even if it could be introduced in great numbers, experts are skeptical about how potent a weapon it could be. In the air, the U.S. comfortably outstrips any other nation on Earth. With more than 13,000 military aircraft across all branches, the American total towers above Iran's 550. Though many of them are support aircraft, the U.S. flies the most modern weapons on the planet, while Iran still relies on Cold War leftovers. Currently, the most advanced offering in the U.S. arsenal is the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth jet, of which around 50 are in service and more than 1,000 on order. One of only five fifth-generation fighter jets on the planet, it is far superior to Iran's MiG-29 fighter and a handful of older American planes left over from the days of the Shah, such as the F-14. At sea, the American navy is unrivaled worldwide. It boasts approximately 282 deployable battle force vessels, including 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Discounting more than 200 small patrol boats, Iran has around 50 battle vessels. Those smaller boats could be used as suicide boats or in other unconventional ways, but the full might of the U.S. Navy would surely dispatch an Iranian enemy. One of the issues that has caused so much animosity between Washington and Tehran is nuclear energy. Iran remains outside the nuclear club, and in the event of total war would be unable to retaliate against America's enormous nuclear arsenal, which currently houses around 6,500 warheads. In an all-out conflict with no limits, this atomic disparity would make all other comparisons irrelevant. Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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