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
EU Rearm BadAT: EU Rearm GoodEU benevolence and defensive nuclearization is misleading- lowers the threshold of nuclear useJasper and Portela 10 (Ursula Jasper, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and Clara Portela, Singapore Management University, “EU Defence Integration and Nuclear Weapons: A Common Deterrent for Europe?”, Security Dialogue, 41 (2))//vl Yet, the strategy of the British government remains ambivalent. While it reiterates its commitment to the NPT and eventual nuclear disarmament, it is still attached to the idea of maintaining a ‘minimum’ nuclear deterrence. One year after coming to power in 1997, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s first administration announced reductions in Britain’s nuclear forces, and at the 2000 NPT Review Conference the British delegation helped to achieve a minimal consensus. Overall, however, the British government has failed to follow up on these first steps, and the ambiguity persists: While the adminis- tration of current Prime Minister Gordon Brown – like those of his forerunner Blair – presses ahead with the modernization of the Trident nuclear-weapons system,7 several high-ranking government officials – such as previous foreign secretary Margaret Beckett (2007) and her successor David Miliband8 or former defence secretary Des Browne (2008) – have expressed their sympa- thy for nuclear disarmament.9 Similarly, while Prime Minister Gordon Brown (2008) has claimed that in 2010 the UK will be ‘at the forefront of the interna- tional campaign to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states’, he has also insisted that keeping a nuclear force is ‘non-negotiable’.10 This attitude is backed by the government’s assertion that the ‘Cold War threat has been replaced by a diverse but interconnected set of threats and risks, which affect the United Kingdom directly and also have the potential to undermine inter- national stability’ (Cabinet Office, 2008: 3). Consequently, defence could only be guaranteed through an independent nuclear deterrent, as ‘fundamental principles relevant to nuclear deterrence have not changed since the end of the Cold War, and are unlikely to change in future’ (UK Government, 2006). The maintenance of nuclear weapons is not only framed as being necessary to preserve international stability, but implicitly also as a service to the inter- national community. This rhetorical move seemingly removes the nuclear- weapons issue from a purely national agenda, relating it instead to the need for international stability: the continued reliance on nuclear weapons by a ‘reliable’ and ‘responsible’ great power is necessary for upholding inter- national peace and stability. It is this self-conception as a responsible and rational, while globally potent, great power that presents the major obstacle to the abandonment of the UK’s nuclear weapons.11 Such a strategic conception has grave implications for both international security and common European defence.12 The assurance that these ‘weapons of last resort’ will only be used for defensive purposes is misleading, as Rogers (2006) points out: The problem with this is that it is one of the great myths of the nuclear age. . . . Nato as an alliance, and Britain as a state, have long planned to fight nuclear wars at levels falling far short of a cataclysmic central nuclear exchange. This also means that Nato and Britain have had, and still maintain, policies that can envisage ‘first use’ of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the recurrent reference to the UK’s disarmament record is deceptive. While the UK is arguably the most ‘arms-control-friendly’ of the nuclear-weapon states, the British government has announced the moderni- zation of its arsenals and developed new options concerning the use of what are called ‘substrategic’ weapons – that is, weapons with a low yield that might be used as a final warning or to ‘decapitate’ a rogue state’s leadership (UK Government, 2006: 23). These substrategic weapons lower the thresh- old of nuclear use, blurring the distinction between conventional and atomic weapons.13 In sum, all three aspects – the modernization of weapon systems, the refusal to implement a no-first-use policy and the development of more ‘usable’ nuclear weapons – have rendered the use of nuclear weapons more likely than during Cold War times. Moreover, the ‘deterrence’ trope and the related link to the reputed stability of the Cold War blight a more thorough debate about the effectiveness of deterrence under the conditions of the post- Cold War era. Instead, they suggest that there are indeed what Lebow (2005: 772) calls easy ‘technical fixes’ to problems that might in fact be very political in nature, and also purport that the roles of ‘defender’ and ‘challenger’ in a conflict are always evident and clearcut. Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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