Notes I tried my best to compile and clean-up. Here’s a car: Case



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Base Key

Base key but support not resilient –most robust theory proves the link true


Walsh, 17 --- PhD candidate in political science at Rutgers University, and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps (David Hunter Walsh, “Yes, Trump will face a backlash if he doesn’t deliver on his promises,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/01/20/yes-trump-will-face-a-backlash-if-he-doesnt-deliver-on-his-promises/?utm_term=.250bb333ed24, accessed on 1/21/17)

Trump’s penchant for sweeping promises — and the likelihood that he may have trouble keeping them — has Republicans concerned about what would happen if he doesn’t or can’t follow through. “If we’re given the White House and both houses of Congress and we don’t deliver,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said recently, “I think there will be pitchforks and torches in the streets.” Although Cruz’s vision of a violent uprising may be an exaggeration, my research suggests that Trump would indeed face a backlash if he fails to deliver on key promises. [Will Trump follow through on all his Day One promises? Doesn’t look like it.] Losses outweigh gains in the human mind. What does that mean for politics? That conclusion rests on one of the most robust theories of modern psychology, prospect theory. Prospect theory argues that in our minds, perceived losses outweigh perceived gains in ways that profoundly affect our decision-making. In a political context, this means that when the president surprises you by doing something you like, you’re happy about it. But that happiness is not nearly as powerful as the disappointment — or even sadness or anger — that you experience when the president does something you hate. One implication is that the backlash a president faces for breaking a promise to his supporters may be much stronger than whatever positive reactions come from voters who are pleasantly surprised by his decision not to pursue that campaign pledge. For Trump, a shift away from some of the radical positions he has staked out may in fact please even a majority of Americans. But any positive reaction will likely be muted, while the disappointment of his original supporters will be amplified. He could find himself losing some of his supporters without picking up the same number from the other side — which could leave him even more unpopular than he already is.

Trump is only concerned with retaining the support of his Republican base --- if it starts to abandon him his approval rating will plummet further


Lauter, 2/13/17 (David, “Trump has gotten even less popular while in office,” http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-polls-20170213-story.html, accessed on 2/14/17, JMP)

One of the enduring myths of President Trump’s political career is the belief that “nothing matters” — that the controversies that surround him have no effect on his standing with the public. The three weeks since Trump’s inauguration have once again proven that untrue: Trump has lost significant ground in public approval in the aftermath of a rough start. Without question, Trump, who won the presidency with a minority of the votes cast, has retained a strong hold on his core supporters, whose loyalty remains ardent. Republicans are more approving of his personal qualities than they were in the fall, according to several ratings. And Trump has plenty of time to turn around the current negative trend in his overall ratings. But the pattern is consistent: After a brief increase in popularity early in his transition, almost all public polls show a decline in Trump’s support, though the exact amount varies. In Gallup’s surveys, Trump’s job approval has gone from an even split the week of his inauguration, with 45% of Americans approving and 45% disapproving, to a 10-point deficit in the latest average, 42% to 52%. Gallup has tracked every American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and before Trump, none hit 50% disapproval for months, sometimes years. Trump has fallen below all but the lowest points for President Obama and into territory plumbed by Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Asked about specific qualities of leadership, Americans in Gallup’s surveys give Trump strong marks for keeping his promises and being a “strong and decisive” leader. But majorities rate him negatively on inspiring confidence, managing the government effectively and being honest. On each of those measures, a vast gulf separates the mostly positive views of Republicans from the negative views of most Democrats. In addition to Gallup, other polls showing a decline in Trump’s job approval include a GOP favorite, Rasmussen, which has shown Trump dropping from a 14-point net approval rating when he started to four points now; YouGov, which has found a 13-point decline; and Quinnipiac, with a 17-point drop. Among major nonpartisan surveys, the only one to depart from the pattern is the Reuters/Ipsos poll, which had Trump’s approval at a two-point deficit when he started and now has him barely in positive territory, with 48% approving and 47% disapproving. For now, what matters most to Trump is holding the support of his core voters. That’s key to his strength in Congress, especially in the House, because his popularity remains high in most Republican-held congressional districts. But if his decline persists, it could weaken Trump’s sway in the Senate, where members need to run statewide. Whether Trump’s approval rating will drop further depends largely on independents and Republicanshe has almost no support to lose among Democrats. If those voters do sour on him, that could pose a threat to Republicans in the midterm election in 2018. The incumbent president’s approval rating historically serves as a good predictor of how many seats his party will lose at midterm. Most presidents lose ground during their first two years. The average decline since World War II is just short of eight points, according to a compilation by Marquette University political scientist Charles Franklin. If Trump follows that pattern, he could end up with an approval rating in the high 30s — perilous territory for congressional candidates running in swing districts.

Trump’s base is key


O’Reilly 6/8 (William F.B., staff @ Newsday, “Will Comey testimony begin to crack Trump’s base?”, http://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/william-f-b-o-reilly/will-comey-testimony-begin-to-crack-trump-s-base-1.13715337)

It shouldn’t matter how the president is perceived by his political base. But it means everything in reality: As long as Trump retains significant grass-roots Republican support, just 20 or 25 percent, members of Congress won’t break with him en masse. Doing so would spell political suicide for them in 2018, through primary challenges and/or Republicans bass fishing instead of voting during the midterm elections (the same may happen if this Congress can’t pass tax reforms). Republican support for Trump hovers at around 80 percent right now, with somewhere between a quarter and half of that hard core support.


They’re the last line of defense against his total collapse – but could flip


Catanese 6/2 (David, staff @ US News, “Trump's Last Line of Defense”, https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-06-02/donald-trumps-supporters-are-his-last-line-of-defense)

Inside Washington, Donald Trump's 4-month-old presidency appears to spin in a perpetual state of crisis and chaos, achieving few tangible successes and beset by weekly distractions. But in far and wide pockets of the country, where legions of loyal Trump supporters remain, a very different picture is being discerned. They see a media corps obsessed with a Russia investigation despite no evidence of a crime, all too easily swallowing an excuse for Hillary Clinton's loss. They see a Democratic Party lurching further to the left and practicing pure obstructionism to appease its inflamed base. They see a coterie of prosperous, smug elites stationed in power centers and unable to comprehend the everyday hardships spoken to by this president. And they see all of them hellbent on taking down Trump, whatever the cost to the country. U.S. News conducted email interviews with more than a dozen readers who defended Trump in their reactions to previous stories. These folks are angry, distrustful and sometimes intemperate, reflecting similar characteristics of the commander in chief. Some are true believers who salute all of Trump's actions, no matter how contentious or disputed. Others are clear-eyed about the president's flaws, but are more disturbed by the drumbeat of a contemptuous opposition. Not all of them consider themselves conservatives; some even voted for former President Barack Obama – twice. Given the current polls showing Trump's subpar popularity, members of this group are clearly the minority, but they also constitute the president's last line of defense as he toils in a capital that becomes more hostile by the day.


Only the conservative base matter & it outweighs every turn – Size, media, & money generate intensity & focus that opposition can’t match


Hacker & Pierson 15 (Jacob, Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University, & Paul, John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, “No Cost for Extremism”, http://prospect.org/article/no-cost-extremism)

Conventional images of the two parties see them as symmetrical reflections of each other. But when it comes to the activist core of the parties, there is no comparison. The Republican base is larger, more intense, better organized, and fueled by distinctive partisan media outlets that make those on the other side look like pale imitations. Strong liberals are often motivated primarily by one issue—the environment, say, or abortion, or minority rights. Strong conservatives tend to describe themselves as part of a broad effort to protect a way of life. Even during the George W. Bush presidency, liberals wanted Democratic Party leaders to take moderate positions and expressed a strong desire for compromise. Conservatives consistently indicate they want Republicans to take more conservative positions and never, ever compromise with opponents. Not surprisingly, self-described conservatives also show up when it counts. Whatever the form of participation—voting, working for candidates, contributing to campaigns—the GOP base does more of it than any other group. At the same time, the ideological distance between the party’s most active voters and the rest of the party’s electorate is greater on the GOP side than the Democratic side. Democratic activists are moderate as well as liberal (and occasionally even conservative). Republican activists are much more consistently conservative, even compared with other elements of the GOP electoral coalition. Nonetheless, the imbalance in prevalence and intensity between self-identified liberals and self-identified conservatives hasn’t changed much in 35 years—even as the role of the Republican base in American politics has changed dramatically. Something has happened that has given that base a greater weight and a greater focus on “Washington” as the central threat to American society. Here, we need to turn our attention from the GOP’s most committed voters to the organized forces that have jet-propelled the GOP’s rightward trip. Even the most informed and active voters take their cues from organizations and elite figures they trust. (Indeed, there’s strong evidence that such voters are most likely to process information through an ideological lens.) The far right has built precisely the kind of organizations needed to turn diffuse and generalized support into focused activity on behalf of increasingly extreme candidates. Those organized forces have two key elements: polarizing right-wing media and efforts by business and the very wealthy to backstop and bankroll GOP politics. Pundits like to point to surface similarities between partisan journalists on the left and right, but the differences in scale and organization are profound. The conservative side is massive; describing its counterpart on the left as modest would be an act of true generosity.

A2: Base Support Resilient

Base support not resilient – Trump’s only maintaining their support BECAUSE he’s refusing to alienate them with liberal concessions on conservative policy issues


Stanley 2/21 (Timothy, staff @ CNN, “Why Trump's supporters still love him”, http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/19/opinions/why-trump-supporters-love-him-not-the-media-stanley/)

Aside from hatred of the press, the other thing I've found that binds Trumpites together is a fear of decline. It's often noted that Trump supporters are wealthier than the working-class they claim to speak for, but that's beside the point. These are concerned citizens who have a patriotic dislike of unemployment or Islamist terrorism. They voted for Trump because he promised to restore the nation's greatness, by building a wall and locking jobs inside. From this point-of-view, conservatives are keeping faith with Trump because Trump is keeping faith with them. His list of executive orders is a wish list for the right: reverse Obamacare's spiraling costs, start planning for a border wall, reduce regulations, etc. His Supreme Court pick is a younger Antonin Scalia. The whiteness, maleness and conservatism of his Cabinet proves he's not making any concessions to political correctness.


They’re watching the White House closely for signs of liberal accommodation


Easley 4/25 (Jonathan, staff @ The Hill, “Infighting cools down in Trumpland”, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/330341-infighting-cools-down-in-trumpland)

Conservatives say they’re watching closely for signs that the “liberal” wing is winning. They haven’t seen it yet. Trump’s message in recent weeks has focused heavily on manufacturing and creating American jobs, and he hasn’t wavered on trade, immigration, building the border wall or defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Tea Party leader Mark Meckler. “We are watching closely what the White House is actually doing,” Meckler said. “All the rest of this is just noise.”

Conservative supporters need constant reassurance – The plan breaks their faith


Isenstadt 4/13 (Alex, staff @ Politico, “Trump’s base turns on him”, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/trump-base-supporters-turn-on-him-237200)

This week, some Trump die-hards passed around a column by conservative commentator Kurt Schlichter headlined: “Trump Can’t Let His Real or His Fake Friends Turn Him into Schwarzenegger Part 2.” Schlichter, in an interview, said conservatives are fundamentally distrustful of Republican politicians who had often misled them. He urged the president to take some immediate actions, however small, to put his supporters at ease. “You’ve got to understand the base. It’s like dating a girl whose father cheated on her mother. She’s always going to be suspicious,” he said. “He’s got to constantly provide wins because he’s got an emotionally damaged base that’s been abused.”


The base is key to Trump – He can’t split their support, threshold is low


Morrisey 4/12 (Ed, writes for HotAir.com, columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Sun, the Washington Times, “Syria is a dead end for President Trump”, http://theweek.com/articles/691660/syria-dead-end-president-trump)

Politically, such a move would present a sharp reversal from the promises Trump made in the campaign to the anti-establishment voters who carried him to victory last November. More than most presidents, Trump has to rely on his base for political capital. Unlike Barack Obama, whose personal popularity saw him through political setbacks, or even George W. Bush, whose own promises of a more "humble" foreign policy fell by the wayside after 9/11, Trump has no personal-popularity margin for error.


Trump base starting to have doubts – maintain support but its fragile– they could flip


Kehoe 3/24 (John, staff @ Financial Review, “Trump's 'Art of the Deal' health setback for markets”, http://www.afr.com/markets/trumps-art-of-the-deal-health-test-for-markets-20170323-gv52qw)

Trump's personal popularity may also affect which way members and senators decide to vote on the delicate healthcare issue. His personal approval rating has slumped to just 37 per cent according to a Quinnipiac University poll, following Trump erroneously claiming Obama wire tapped Trump Tower during the election and a cloud of controversy over his campaign team's potential links to Russia. "Most alarming for Trump, the demographic underpinnings of his support, Republicans, white voters, especially men and those without a college degree, are starting to have doubts," says pollster Tim Malloy.

Impact

Diversionary War

Trump only cares about his ratings and would be willing to start a war to maintain his political survival


Jaeger 1/31—analyst @ police and law enforcement (Jumare, 1/31/17, “How likely do you think Trump will start a war as a means to counter his inevitable falling approval ratings?,” https://www.quora.com/How-likely-do-you-think-Trump-will-start-a-war-as-a-means-to-counter-his-inevitable-falling-approval-ratings, Accessed 2/7/17, HWilson)

Trump is an an amateur reality show actor. For 14 years during his run on The Apprentice all he cared about was his ratings. Surely he knows nothing else.

He now perceives of himself in his latest reality show called The American Presidency. Everything he does he does to improve his ratings.



Trump’s policies are astonishingly superficial — generally bumper sticker type stuff . Trump appears to be completely unconcerned about what is in the best interest of America. Trump is clearly out of his depth in the White House. The Presidency confuses him.

Trump keeps making pronunciamentos and his staff keeps responding “You can't do that.” ( declare martial law in South Chicago and send in the National Guard for example). To which Donald Trump keeps asking “Why can't I?”

No incumbent American president has ever lost a reelection campaign — not once- while and when American troops were involved in a shooting war. (This is why George W Bush started the war in Iraq.)

So yeah, Donald Trump could conceivably start a war for no other purpose than to ensure his reelection in 2020.


If Trump’s popularity declines, he’ll lash out & start a war


Vyse 2/10 (Graham, staff @ New Republic, “Trump Has a Plan for the Next 9/11. Democrats Need One”, https://newrepublic.com/article/140556/trump-plan-next-911-democrats-need-one)

At least one elected Democrat is already pushing this message. At last Saturday’s Congressional Progressive Caucus retreat in Baltimore, Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state raised the issue in a room full of liberal lawmakers planning their political strategy. “There’s another thing that’s going to throw us off message, and that’s if we have any kind of an attack or a war,” she said. “I just want us to be thinking about that because there are lots of things that are happening right now that you could argue are setting us up for an attack. I believe that’s true of the executive orders, and we know what happened after 9/11, and we have to be thinking about what is our jiu-jitsu move to actually prepare the stage so that if something does happen it’s clear who created that and who created the environment for that to happen.” After the attacks on the the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, congressional Democrats almost uniformly rallied around President George W. Bush, authorizing the Republican’s use of military force in Afghanistan. Representative Barbara Lee, whom Jayapal calls “a great hero of mine,” was the lone “no” vote in Congress. It was a period of intense nationalism and jingoism, and it’s easy to imagine Trump trying to exploit a similar sentiment in the service of his authoritarian agenda—or simply to improve his dismal poll numbers. “I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Jayapal told her colleagues, “but I really do believe that war is a great way to get your poll numbers up. We just need to be thinking about what happens when that comes forward and how we prepare the stage right now with our message so that the blame goes exactly where the blame should be and we don’t all have to rally around in patriotism.”


Syria establishes the brink – It smooths the way for Trump to escalate future conflicts - tying popularity to military action


Fridersdorf 4/7 (Conor, staff @ The Atlantic, “Trump's Syria Strike Was Unconstitutional and Unwise”, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/04/president-trumps-syria-strike-was-unconstitutional-and-unwise/522228/)

Congress erred by doing nothing when Obama waged war illegally in Libya. It will compound that error if there are no consequences now for Trump. Every legislator who has expressed the belief that it would be illegal to strike Syria without their permission should start acting like they meant what they said. Given what recent presidents have been permitted, impeachment over this matter alone would understandably lack popular legitimacy. But I wouldn’t mind if anti-war legislators created a draft document titled “Articles of Impeachment,” wrote a paragraph about this strike at the top, and put Trump on notice that if he behaves this way again, a coalition will aggressively lobby their colleagues to oust him from office. The alternative is proceeding with an unbowed president who is out of his depth in international affairs, feels entitled to wage war in ways even he once called illegitimate, and thinks of waging war as a way presidents can improve their popularity.

Or as Trump himself once put it: Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.

Today, Trump is desperate. He is flailing from failure to failure in domestic policy, with dismal approval ratings and no clear way to increase them—except by trying to exploit the American public’s historic tendency to rally around a president at war. There has never been a stronger case for preemptively reining in a president’s ability to unilaterally launch military strikes on foreign countries that are not attacking us.


Diversionary War – China/Iran

Further declining approval risks diversionary war with China and Iran


Reynolds 2/7—writer and foreign policy analyst based in New York (Ben, 2/7/17, “Tillerson, Trump, and U.S.-China Policy,” http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/tillerson-trump-and-us-china-policy, Accessed 2/7/17, HWilson)

Donald Trump ignited controversy last year by nominating Rex Tillerson, then-CEO of Exxon-Mobil, for Secretary of State. Now that Tillerson has been confirmed, observers are waiting to see how the new Secretary accommodates himself to the role. Tillerson is a career businessman, but this does not imply that we have no clues as to how he might behave in the international arena. Indeed, his tenure at Exxon-Mobil included some curious ventures into disputed international waters.

As the Wall Street Journal has noted, Tillerson was previously involved in disputes between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea. Exxon-Mobil signed an oil exploration and production agreement with Vietnam in 2009 while Tillerson was the company’s CEO. Some of the blocks allocated to Exxon lay in waters claimed by both China and Vietnam. In 2014, some of those blocks were the subject of a serious confrontation between China and Vietnam when a Chinese rig began drilling in the disputed area. The decision to operate in such conditions suggests that Tillerson is willing to tolerate an elevated level of risk, as a more cautious CEO might have steered the corporation away from drilling under such potentially risky conditions.

At the same time, Tillerson’s comments during his confirmation hearing suggest an amateurish understanding of the finer points of U.S.-China relations. Tillerson infamously suggested the U.S. prevent China from accessing the disputed South China Sea islands, an action that would undoubtedly be seen as an act of war. The White House and State Department quietly walked those comments back, giving the impression that Tillerson’s statements were not a reflection of new U.S. policy, but rather the dangerous ramblings of an inexperienced nominee. Suffice it to say that the combination of high-risk tolerance and an extremely shallow understanding of Asian geopolitics do not bode well for U.S.-China relations.

Nevertheless, Tillerson will not be the primary figure responsible for U.S. policy towards China. The general trend in recent years has been the increasing centralization of decision-making in the executive branch. The Obama administration was renowned for allowing most cabinet secretaries little room to operate on their own. The Trump administration may very well continue this trend. Tillerson was reportedly not even informed about the extremely controversial immigration ban, although handling its inevitable fallout certainly fell under the purview of the State Department. It is hard to foresee how the internal dynamics and palace politics of the Trump White House will influence China policy at this stage.

It is more important to consider the administration’s interests and general U.S. interests if we want to predict how the U.S. will manage its relationship with China over the next four years. Unfortunately, it seems that the administration will have incentives to provoke a foreign crisis to distract from its domestic failures unless it miraculously improves its approval ratings. (Absent a major terrorist attack, it will not.) China and Iran are the two obvious targets of such a diversionary strategy. This means that, regardless of the U.S.’s long-term strategic interests, domestic politics may cause the administration to behave aggressively towards China.

One could argue that there are important ways in which U.S. interests might diverge from the interests of the Trump administration. If one believes that the U.S. is interested in preventing the hindrance of trade and ensuring peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific, then Trump’s incentives to deal belligerently with China would contradict those interests. The administration’s lack of polish and refusal to abide by basic diplomatic protocol will likely undermine U.S. ideological hegemony in the region. These facts are no doubt deeply troubling to liberal foreign policy professionals at the Brookings Institution.

That said, the atmosphere in Washington has been gradually tilting in favor of confrontation with China for years now. A declining power like the United States has every incentive to confront its rising challenger sooner rather than later, assuming it is unwilling to allow a transfer of power. China’s military capabilities and international influence grow with each passing year. U.S. military planners understand this fact well, and there are few (if any) members of the U.S. foreign policy elite who are willing to give up U.S. hegemony in Asia without a fight.

Trump’s belligerence towards China is not a radical departure from the preceding administration; it is a change in tone, not a change in underlying attitude. The Obama administration did not take such an aggressive position on Taiwan, but it was Obama’s White House that reignited security competition with China after the relatively placid Bush years. We would do well to remember that Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, was one of the preeminent architects of “assertive” U.S. policy in the Asia-Pacific. The ascension of a right-wing buffoon to the presidency did not seem to radically alter the established trend of deteriorating U.S.-China relations.

However, two important things have changed. The first of these factors is perceived legitimacy. Donald Trump’s aggressive, toddler-like demeanor has the potential to aggravate and alienate U.S. allies. There are massive material incentives for many allies to continue cooperating with the United States, but the perception of being bullied and humiliated by Trump will generate domestic pressure to push back against certain U.S. interests. Trump’s recent childish behavior on a diplomatic call with Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s Prime Minister, seems to have ruffled feathers. Outside the region, European Council President Donald Tusk made headlines by describing Trump’s America as a threat to Europe. These reflect a potential shift in the diplomatic atmosphere that may make it harder for certain leaders to publicly support U.S. policy.

The second factor is the likelihood of a thaw in U.S.-Russian relations. Rex Tillerson, reportedly has a good personal relationship with Vladimir Putin, and he may have an important role in managing U.S.-Russian relations. The U.S. has already eased some sanctions on Russia. Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Putin and willingness to work with Russia in Syria. There will be significant internal pushback on these issues, including from powerful agencies like the CIA. Nevertheless, a U.S.-Russia thaw poses serious risks for China. Simultaneous U.S. belligerence toward Russia and China under the Obama administration pushed both countries closer together, but a U.S.-Russian détente could undermine those ties. Tripolarity is notoriously unstable, and there are obvious incentives for two powers to ally themselves against the third.



The Trump presidency thus presents both risks and opportunities for China. The risks may be quite severe. Trump’s administration may attempt to provoke a diversionary crisis that could do irreparable harm to both the United States and China. Ten years from now, a military confrontation could end U.S. hegemony in Asia. Now, however, China would be drawn into a draining, protracted conflict with little hope of real victory for either side. On the other hand, there are real opportunities for China as well. The Chinese government has the opportunity to play the “adult in the room,” presenting itself as the only stable guardian of regional security. Trump’s demeanor, domestic instability in the U.S., and unnecessary U.S. escalation will all play into this perception. If China can avoid a direct clash with the United States, it may find that the reassessment of its regional role will come sooner than anyone might have imagined.

Diversionary War – NoKo

Specifically Causes lashout and war with North Korea


Torpey 4/26 (John, Presidential Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, “Defining Trumpism: Making sense of the first 100 days”, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/330686-defining-trumpism-making-sense-of-the-trumps-first-100)

Given all the obstacles to achievement on the domestic front and the need for charismatic leaders to “win” big and visibly, President Trump may look to score what he thinks are easy victories on the international scene. We now know that Xi Jinping seems to have persuaded him in Florida that things with North Korea are more complicated than he had thought. Yet the man’s ignorance is frightening, and we know that he has a tendency to listen to the last person who advised him. If he talks to the wrong person, therefore, he may go looking for trouble that is bad for us and for the world. We must therefore worry that the president will go off in search of dragons to slay simply in order to maintain his heroic stature among his base. This may all go in a very bad direction; behind the attacks on Syria may lurk a larger objective, namely Iran. Notwithstanding Xi’s counsel, putting the North Korean threat to rest may look to Trump like an appealing prize.

A2: No Diversion Wars - Studies

general diversion war defense doesn’t apply - uniquely true and statistically significant when targeting rising powers like China or manifest different identities like Iran


Jung, 13 --- Sung Chul Jung, Myongji University, Seoul, Foreign Policy, International Relations, PhD, International Studies Quarterly, 6/24, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/isqu.12087/full

When does domestic unrest lead to interstate conflict? I present the diversionary target theory that argues that domestically troubled states are more likely to use military force against some, but not all, states because political leaders prefer targets that can evoke their domestic audience's fear or greed in order to enjoy “rally-round-the-flag” effects. I suggest that the fear-producing targets are foreign states that exhibit rapidly rising power or manifest different identities. The greed-producing targets are foreign states occupying disputed territory or exercising regional/local hegemony despite declining power. In addition, I expect that political leaders prefer fear- or greed-producing targets that possess similar powers, because domestic audiences may see initiation of military conflicts against too-powerful states or too-weak states as excessively risky and unnecessary, respectively. From statistical analyses on directed dyad-years from 1920 to 2001, I find that the presence of a rising power, a territory target, or a hegemony target contributes to the correlation between domestic unrest and the initiation of interstate conflict in a statistically significant way.

Strong empirical support – only our studies account for interactions of domestic unrest and appropriate foreign targets – causes great power transition wars


Jung, 13 --- Sung Chul Jung, Myongji University, Seoul, Foreign Policy, International Relations, PhD, International Studies Quarterly, 6/24, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/isqu.12087/full

Conclusion and Implications In sum, domestically troubled states have two faces: They are aggressive against some, but not against others. When faced with domestic unrest, political leaders should succeed in selling their military aggression to domestic audience by choosing appropriate targets. In other words, political leaders are motivated by domestic conditions, but also constrained by foreign conditions. This is why this study focusing on the interaction between domestic unrest and foreign conditions finds stronger empirical support than previous large-N studies on diversionary conflict. In fact, as noted from the emergence of neoclassical realism and its popularity at least since the 1990s,19 many IR scholars have begun to call for renewed attention to the interaction of factors across levels (Elman 1997:viiii; Levy and Thompson 2010:212). This study shows how this approach leads to a logically more complete explanation of onsets of power transition and territorial conflicts. On the one hand, students of international security have asked when a declining power adopts a preventive action against a rising power and when a state initiates a military action in order to stop an unfavorable change in balance of power. By testing the rising power target hypothesis, I found that domestic unrest significantly influences a relatively declining power's initiation of military conflict. Only when suffering from domestic unrest is a declining power more likely to start a military conflict against a rising power target than against a non-attractive target. When a state sees a relative decline but has no internal troubles, its targeting of a rising power is as likely as is the targeting of a non-attractive state. This tendency is strongest when a potential target is “slightly stronger” than a potential initiator. In addition, this study shows that declining hegemonic powers are preferred as military targets by domestically troubled states. From the result of testing the hegemony target hypothesis, I find that domestically troubled states are more likely to initiate interstate conflict with declining hegemons than with non-attractive targets. This implies that a regional or local hegemon's decline often invites military aggression by other states. Second, this study also provides an answer to an old question in security studies, namely “When and why do territorial conflicts (re)occur?” By testing the territorial target hypothesis, this study shows that a challenger in a territorial claim is more likely to initiate a military conflict against its territorial claim opponent when it suffers from domestic troubles than when it is experiencing no internal trouble. What is interesting is that this tendency is most apparent when a potential target is “weaker” than a potential initiator. By targeting a weaker territorial target rather than a stronger one, political leaders may sell their military action as risk-free and beneficial to their domestic audience and then demand public support for their leadership. In sum, this result implies that political leaders are often incentivized to favor diversionary behavior when their states are seeking to (re)occupy disputed territory.

Only our studies accounts for combo of internal factors AND external target – its quantitatively significant – indicts don’t apply


Jung, 13 --- Sung Chul Jung, Myongji University, Seoul, Foreign Policy, International Relations, PhD, International Studies Quarterly, 6/24, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/isqu.12087/full

States fight wars. Why? Domestic unrest has been regarded as one of the causes of interstate war.1 Many journalists as well as scholars often shed light on domestic troubles in their attempts to explain why political leaders choose military aggression. According to their view, leaders with domestic vulnerability tend to initiate interstate conflicts in order to divert public attention to foreign affairs and to call for domestic support for their leadership. This diversionary war theory has gained support from inductive (case studies) and deductive studies (formal modeling). On the one hand, some international relations (IR) scholars have shown, by analyzing individual historical cases such as the Falklands/Malvinas War and World War I, that political leaders' decisions for using military force against other states are driven by personal rather than national interests.2 When faced with domestic challenges to their political leadership, struggling leaders have initiated international conflict, demanded domestic strong support for “national” survival and interests, and stigmatized their political opponents as anti-patriotic. On the other, some scholars have developed an agent-principal analytic framework in which an unpopular leader is expected to initiate a foreign conflict in order to demonstrate his/her competence to a domestic audience and increase the probability of staying in power. (Richards, Morgan, Wilson, Schwebach, and Young 1993; Tarar 2006).3 Diversionary action is a rational decision made by domestically vulnerable leaders whose primary concern is for personal political survival. However, this diversionary war theory has faced a challenge from statistical analyses for a large number of cases (Rummel 1963; Tanter 1966; Ostrom and Job 1986; Meernik 2004).4 Although IR scholars could prove and show how diversionary incentives contributed to the onset of interstate conflicts in formal modeling and descriptive case studies, the quantitative evidence for the correlation between domestic unrest and interstate conflict was not strong enough to support the diversionary war theory. This gap between theory and evidence, and between anecdotal studies and large-N studies, has led some scholars to seek some condition—such as regime type—under which domestic unrest causes interstate conflict. One good example is the absence of democratic diversion. Some have argued that democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to initiate diversionary conflict, because democratic leaders cannot rely on the repression authoritarian leaders often use and because they are more vulnerable to overt domestic dissatisfaction (Gelpi 1997; Kisangani and Pickering 2009). By contrast, others insist that democratic leaders are not able to initiate a diversionary conflict even if they are willing to do so. Democratic leaders, they say, cannot hide their hostile intention due to transparency of decision making; furthermore, their potential targets may make strategic moves in order to avoid being a target in international conflict (Smith 1996; Leeds and Davis 1997; Clark 2003). This study focuses on types of potential targets in order to explore whether and when domestic unrest leads to interstate conflict. The driving question here is: “What kinds of states attract diversionary actions by domestically troubled states? Given that struggling leaders seek a foreign state with which a conflict can produce domestic support, and not a domestic backfire, it is worthwhile to take into consideration the combination of internal conditions (for example, domestic unrest) and external conditions (for example, potential target) in order to have a better understanding of foreign aggression. Why did General Leopoldo Galtieri, for example, choose to occupy the Falkland Islands, but not initiate a non-territorial conflict or a conflict with other states?5 Based on the assumption that political leaders' decisions for diversionary action include prudent choices of targets, this study examines whether and how domestic unrest and some types of foreign target result in interstate conflict. Only limited attention has been paid to diversionary targets.6 Some scholars have pointed to dyadic condition (that is, rivalry and “contentious issues”) in order to explore whether dyad types affect diversionary military action (Mitchell and Prins 2004; Mitchell and Thyne 2010). All territorial and hegemonic rivals, however, are not equal in producing domestic support. By differentiating territorial rivals in terms of challengers and defenders, and hegemonic competitors in terms of declining and non-declining, this study expects and shows that some rivals are more popular diversionary targets than others. This article proceeds as follows. First, I propose a diversionary target theory that expects domestically vulnerable leaders to prefer fear-producing targets (states with rising power and different identities), greed-producing targets (states occupying disputed territory and possessing regional or local hegemon), and similar power targets. Second, I explain my quantitative research design, discussing case selection and measurement. Third, I show how my analysis results in support for my hypotheses on the rising power, territory, and hegemony target and refutes my hypothesis for the identity target. Lastly, I discuss the contribution that this study makes to understanding of territorial conflicts and power transition conflicts.

A2: No Diversion Wars – Trump

Specifically true for Trump - risk of miscalculation is high


Torpey 4/26 (John, Presidential Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, “Defining Trumpism: Making sense of the first 100 days”, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/330686-defining-trumpism-making-sense-of-the-trumps-first-100)

The shock and awe with which the Trump administration initially took office has given way to an apparent lull, a period of seeming disorientation and grasping for direction. There are reports of a palace coup against Stephen Bannon and of an assertion of control by steadier hands. But make no mistake: this is a dangerous moment with a White House occupied by a president whose only qualification for election was a charismatic connection with a strategically located base swayed by nostalgic images of a once-and-future “great” America. It is dangerous because the president’s only real political capital is his charisma, and charismatic leaders must deliver heroic feats. With the morass on the domestic side, Trump has turned his limited attention span to international affairs, where the risks of miscalculation and violent death are much greater.


Insecurity drives Trump – Risks escalation of multiple hotspots


Bouie 4/24 (Jamelle, staff @ Slate, “Trump’s Defining Trait”, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/ how_trump_could_save_his_flailing_presidency_with_smart_tax_reform.html)

Donald Trump has just three months in office, but even now, we can see what he brings to the White House. Not the strength or mastery he works to project with every public appearance, but its opposite: insecurity. As president, Trump is profoundly insecure: insecure about his electoral victory, insecure about his public standing, and insecure about his progress as chief executive. President Trump’s smothering insecurity is evident in his recent interview with the Associated Press. Throughout the long and meandering exchange, Trump repeatedly turns from questions of policy and program to the obsessions and insecurities that seem to consume his attention. When asked, for example, if he’ll reject a bill to fund the government if it doesn’t include funding for a border wall, Trump pivots from the issue at hand to a discussion of the Electoral College. “You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College,” said Trump, later adding that “the Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win.” This focus on the Electoral College—and how difficult it’s supposed to be for Republican presidential candidates—is a regular tic for Trump. “You know, look, the Democrats had a tremendous opportunity because the Electoral College, as I said, is so skewed to them,” said Trump in response to questions about his White House team. “The Electoral College is so skewed in favor of a Democrat that it’s very, very hard.” It’s difficult to discern the exact reason for these digressions. But the best explanation is that Trump remains self-conscious about his failure to win the national popular vote or is possibly already worried that he might lose re-election. Harping on difficulty of an Electoral College victory is a way of saying that he accomplished the hard part of an election and of creating an excuse for any potential future failure. Which is tied to another aspect of Trump’s insecurity: his childlike need for constant affirmation. “I have learned one thing, because I get treated very unfairly, that’s what I call it, the fake media,” said Trump, in a long non sequitur that came after the AP asked about his work building relationships with Democrats. “I get treated so badly,” he said, at one point characterizing CNN, MSNBC, and CBS as nemeses and suggesting they were “fake media.” Indeed, this happens throughout. President Trump does not get very far without referring to what he feels is unfair treatment from the press, regularly saying that the media isn’t covering any of his accomplishments or giving him sufficient praise for his dealmaking. “Nobody wrote that story,” he said in reference to what he describes as major cost savings for military aircraft but what—in reality—is more modest and less tied to Trump’s negotiating skills. With any given issue and on any given concern, Trump turns immediately to how he’s perceived. Similarly, with the 100-days marker, Trump dismisses it as an “artificial barrier” and says voters shouldn’t judge him on it, while simultaneously arguing that he has accomplished most of the items on his list for the period. It’s as if Trump knows he is far behind on his agenda—that, a Supreme Court justice aside, he has done relatively little as president—but that he also has to affirm his self-image as a historic, consequential leader. It’s why, when the topic turned to his February address to Congress, Trump turned immediately to extreme hyperbole. “[S]ome people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he said. Later, he repeated his false—or at least distorted—story about Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings. “He said, ‘You will be,’ in front of five, six people, he said, ‘You will be the greatest president in the history of this country,’ ” Trump claimed. When the AP disputed that characterization, he repeated himself. (The difficulty for Trump here seems to be an unacknowledged and very big if in Cummings’ remarks.) With any given issue and on any given concern, Trump turns immediately to how he’s perceived; whether the press is unfair, whether he is getting his due. And while he denounces outlets like MSNBC and CNN, he is clearly preoccupied with the cable news and hyperattentive to what’s said about him. “By the way, I’m 10–0 for that. I’ve called every one of them,” said Trump about his early statement describing the recent attack in France as “terrorism” before all the details were known. Once again, here, he’s complaining about press criticism, eventually ending his digression by affirming his position as president. “Whatever. In the meantime, I’m here, and they’re not.” Donald Trump is fond of statements like that, fond of reminding his interlocutors that he resides in the White House. One imagines he sees it as a statement of confidence. In reality, it’s the boast of someone who protests a bit too much, who feels less secure in his station than he might project. One last point: Presidential insecurity isn’t harmless, especially for a commander in chief who is obsessed with winning and who seems to see life as a dominance game, where someone or something has to be a loser. What happens when the insecure president can’t move his agenda through Congress? What happens when his plans fail? What does he do to ensure that, above all, he isn’t a loser? If our recent national adventures with Afghanistan, Syria, and North Korea are any indication, we have a good, and worrying, answer for that question.

That lashout will be violent


Chelala 2/14 (Dr. Cesar, international public health consultant and the winner of several journalism awards, “Shrinks take a stab at what makes Trump tick”, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/02/14/commentary/world-commentary/shrinks-take-stab-makes-trump-tick/#.WKPPcjsrJhE)

In that regard, one could say that Trump’s psychological characteristics are consistent with a person with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), which is characterized by a pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. Also apparent in this disorder is a history of legal problems and of impulsive and aggressive behavior. Individuals with this disorder generally have no compunction in exploiting others in harmful ways for their own gain and pleasure. They frequently manipulate and deceive other people through a facade of wit and superficial charm, or even through intimidation and violence. What makes this disorder particularly dangerous is that among its other characteristics those who have it are often reckless and impulsive, and fail to consider the consequences of their actions. In addition, they are often aggressive and manifest a lopsided temper, lashing out with violence to what they perceive is a provocation. Robert Caro, President Lyndon Johnson’s great biographer, said, “Although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said … is that power always reveals.” Anyone who has observed Trump’s actions since assuming the presidency cannot fail but notice his increasingly impulsive decisions, his notable frustration at not receiving the response that he expected and a failure to admit that he has been wrong or apologizing when harming others. What we have is a situation where the most powerful person in the world is tainted by personality characteristics that could pose serious harm to global peace. The extent to which these harmful characteristics can be controlled may well decide the future of the world.


A2: Trump Restrained

Defense is wrong – no checks


Bruce Blair 16, Nuclear security expert, Research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University', 6/11/2016, What Exactly Would It Mean to Have Trump’s Finger on the Nuclear Button?, Politico, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-missiles-nukes-button-launch-foreign-policy-213955

To a degree we haven’t seen, perhaps, since the candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964, the question of Donald Trump’s temperament and judgment on matters of war and peace is stirring attention—and trepidation, particularly when the subject of nuclear weapons comes up. Some people believe that Trump himself is the maniac, the madman with nukes that appears in Trump’s own worst nightmare. And it’s not just Trump’s general-election opponent, Hillary Clinton, who’s hinting at this; his former GOP rival, Marco Rubio, repeated his earlier concerns about Trump only this week, saying America can't give "the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual." Others would side with Trump’s view that the weapons themselves—which pack a destructive force amounting to “Hiroshima times a thousand,” as he put it—are the evil. But these points are not mutually exclusive.¶ What would it mean to have Trump’s fingers on the nuclear button? We don't really know, but we do know this: In the atomic age, when decisions must be made very quickly, the presidency has evolved into something akin to a nuclear monarchy. With a single phone call, the commander in chief has virtually unlimited power to rain down nuclear weapons on any adversarial regime and country at any time. You might imagine this awesome executive power would be hamstrung with checks and balances, but by law, custom and congressional deference there may be no responsibility where the president has more absolute control. There is no advice and consent by the Senate. There is no second-guessing by the Supreme Court. Even ordering the use of torture—which Trump infamously once said he would do, insisting the military “won’t refuse. They’re not gonna refuse me”—imposes more legal constraints on a president than ordering a nuclear attack.¶ If he were president, Donald Trump—who likes to say he doesn't spend a lot of time conferring with others ("My primary consultant is myself," he declared in March)—would be free to launch a civilization-ending nuclear war on his own any time he chose.¶ The “nuclear button” is a metaphor for a complex apparatus that has the president’s brain at its apex. The image of a commander in chief simply pressing a button captures none of the machinery, people and procedures designed to inform the president and translate his or her decisions into coherent action. Although it remains shrouded in secrecy, we actually know a great deal about it, beginning with the president’s first task of opening the “nuclear suitcase” in an emergency to review his nuclear attack options. If we shine our light at the tactical and timing considerations of how a first- or second-strike attack would unfold, and at the inner workings of the nuclear decision process from the standpoint of the White House, we gain a much better idea of a presidential candidate’s fitness for this responsibility. And here it is essential to consider a candidate’s temperament and character—especially in situations of extreme stress. Decisiveness is important, but so is prudence.Let us say the president is awakened in the middle of the night (the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call) by his or her top nuclear adviser and told of an incoming nuclear strike. Since the flight time of missiles fired from launch stations in Russia or China to the White House is 30 minutes, and 12 minutes or less for missiles fired from submarines lurking in the Western Atlantic Ocean (Russian subs historically favor a patrol area to the west of Bermuda), the steadiness and brainpower of the commander in chief in such circumstances are serious questions indeed. The voting public must ask whether a given candidate would remain calm—or panic, become discombobulated and driven to order an immediate nuclear response on the basis of false information.¶ This call has never happened, but if it ever does, the situation would be as stressful and dangerous as things ever get inside the Oval Office. The closest we came to such a call occurred in 1979, when the consoles at our early warning hub in Colorado lit up with indications of a large-scale Soviet missile attack. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, received back-to-back calls in the middle of the night informing him of the imminent nuclear destruction of the United States. The second call reported an all-out attack. Brzezinski was seconds away from waking Carter to pass on the dreadful news and convince him of the need to order retaliation without delay (within a six-minute deadline). Brzezinski was sure the end was near.¶ Just before he picked up the phone to call Carter, Brzezinski received a third call, this time canceling the alarm. It was a mistake caused by human and technical error. A training tape simulating an all-out Soviet attack had inadvertently slipped into the actual real-time attack early warning network. The impending nuclear holocaust was a mirage that confused the duty crew. (They were fired for taking eight minutes instead of the required three minutes to declare their degree of confidence that an attack against North America was underway.)¶ How would a President Trump behave under such duress, informed of the attack and the imminent destruction of the nation’s capital and himself? He would have only a few minutes to consider the reliability of the attack report and decide whether and how to retaliate. If the attack is real, and he hesitates, a president will likely be killed and the chain of command decapitated, perhaps permanently. During the short countdown to impact, he also will be advised by the head of the Strategic Command in Omaha (or the officer on duty that night if the four-star head of Strategic Command cannot get onto the conference call on time) that the incoming attack will destroy the bulk of the U.S. land-based strategic missile force unless the president makes a timely decision ordering their egress from their underground silos before incoming warheads arrive. Furthermore, he will hear that the loss of this land-based force will mean that the goals of the U.S. war plan will not be realizable. (These goals require the ability to destroy the vast bulk of the Russia target base consisting of just under 1,000 aim points and of the China target base of just under 500 aim points.)¶ Yet if the president yields to this pressure and orders immediate retaliation, then he risks launching on false warning. Voters should want to consider whether Trump or any other candidate possesses the steely nerves and competence to deliberate intelligently and calmly at the moment of truth. How does the candidate process ambiguity? Does he or she interpret ambiguous or contradictory data in black-and-white terms or in ways that reinforce his or her bias? Does the candidate rush to conclusions? Does he or she appear to place too much stock and faith in the performance of technical systems, such as the sensor systems in early warning networks, and underestimate the fallibility of people and machines?¶ It is of course not unreasonable to believe that the nuclear responsibilities of any president are above the pay grade of every living human being—that no one is really up to the task. The only real protection against nuclear disaster is total elimination of nuclear weapons.¶ And yet until that far-off day we expect our president at least not to act rashly under pressure, and to ensure with near-absolute certainty that the United States never launches a nuclear strike on the basis of spurious indications of an incoming attack. It is possibly asking too much, however, because even the most level-headed commander in chief simply cannot process all that he or she needs to absorb under the short deadlines imposed by warheads flying inbound at the speed of 4 miles per second. The risks of mistaken launch based on false warning, human error in control systems, and panic in the face of imminent death are very real and probably inherent in the hair-trigger nuclear postures of the United States and Russia.¶ Most presidents during the Cold War lived in dread of this moment knowing all too well the attendant risks. Ronald Reagan expressed incredulity that he would be allowed only six minutes to decide whether to trigger Armageddon based on blips on a radar screen. There is no guarantee that the next president will exercise due caution when the balloon appears to have gone up.¶ Although no president during the atomic age appears to have ever lost his grip on reality to such an extent that an insane nuclear act might have resulted, top advisers to President Richard Nixon tried to constrain his launch authority during the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced his resignation. His secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, quietly instructed the Pentagon war room to double check with him if Nixon contacted it to order up a nuclear strike. Nixon’s mental stability, and his heavy drinking, caused concern within his inner circle that he might behave erratically out of despair and depression. Alcoholism in a future nuclear monarch is of course quite beyond the pale.¶ Trump’s teetotaling lays that concern to rest, but his quick temper, defensiveness bordering on paranoia and disdain for anyone who criticizes him do not inspire deep confidence in his prudence. Can we trust a President Trump to remain grounded and sensible under extraordinary pressure in a crisis that appears to be crossing the nuclear Rubicon?¶ Yet a harried decision to launch on warning in the belief that the United States is under nuclear attack is not even the most plausible scenario a President Trump might face today. That is more likely to be a crisis that escalates by design or inadvertence to the nuclear brink and then spins out of control. To be sure, the U.S. and Russian launch on warning postures have certainly put them at the mercy of false alarms. (Russia adopted the practice during the Cold War and maintains it today despite having a decrepit early warning network that has shortened President Vladimir Putin’s decision time to two to four minutes.) Computer glitches and human error have generated serious false alarms in the past, and every day events happen that trigger the sensors and require a closer look—peaceful space launches (satellites and astronauts), missile test launches, conventional combat missile launches, fighter jets taking off on after-burners, and even wildfires. But close calls have been fairly rare—about three serious false alarms in the United States and three in the Soviet Union/Russia that could have led to a very bad call by their leaders have occurred.¶ By comparison, there have been dozens of intense confrontations between the nuclear adversaries in the past, almost all of which tested the mettle, composure and restraint of their leaders. The next president will become embroiled in ongoing low-boil nuclear standoffs with Russia, China and North Korea that could morph quickly into a full-blown nuclear crisis. In such situations, actions thought to be defensive and reassuring to allies are often viewed as offensive by the opponent, whose reaction starts another cycle of action-reaction.¶ The United States and Russia today are entwining themselves in this trap over Ukraine, U.S. missile defenses in Europe and other disputes. Military buildups with nuclear dimensions are underway, and nuclear threats have been made explicitly by Russian officials including Putin and implicitly by each side’s nuclear force operations—for instance, flying strategic bombers close to each side’s territory. Both Putin and President Barack Obama are reminding each other, to a degree we haven’t seen since the Cold War, that they have nuclear buttons at hand.¶ ***¶ Trump would actually have not one but several fingers on the nuclear button. One finger would be an active digit ready to point up or down for an attack to his nuclear commanders. Other fingers would shape the size and composition of U.S. nuclear forces and the strategy for their use. Additional fingers would determine nuclear actions taken in his absence or demise by presidential successors from his vice president, the Cabinet that he appoints or by generals to whom he may pre-delegate his launch authority.¶ As with his predecessors, Trump’s power over the life and death of entire nations would be practically unbounded. Today, the nuclear deluge he could command would consist of thousands of weapons, each 10 or 20 times more deadly than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Nearly 2,000 U.S. strategic nuclear weapons aimed primarily at Russia and China (at a ratio of roughly 2 to 1), with additional dozens aimed at each of several other nations—North Korea, Iran and Syria—would be at a President Trump’s disposal from his first minutes in office. The city of Moscow alone lies in the bore sights of more than 100 U.S. nuclear warheads.¶ There are no restraints that can prevent a willful president from unleashing this hell.¶ If he gave the command, his executing commanders would have no legal or procedural grounds to defy it no matter how inappropriate it might seem. As long as the president can establish his or her true identity by his or her personal presence in the Pentagon’s nuclear war room or its alternates (places like Site R at Fort Richie near Camp David), or by phone or other means of communications linking him or her to these war rooms using a special identification card (colloquially known as “the biscuit” containing “the nuclear codes”) in his or her possession (or, alternatively, kept inside the “nuclear briefcase” carried by his or her military aide who shadows the president everywhere he or she works, travels and plays), a presidential nuclear decision is lawful (putting international humanitarian law aside). It must be obeyed as long as it is constitutional—i.e., the president as commander in chief believes he or she is acting to protect and defend the nation against an actual or imminent attack.¶ But within these broad constraints there is no wiggle room for evasion or defiance of the president’s orders. That’s true even if the national security adviser, the secretary of defense (who along with the president makes up the “national command authority”) and other top appointees and advisers disagree with the president’s decision. It does not matter whether the United States has already come under attack by nuclear or non-nuclear weapons. It does not even matter if the commander in chief simply orders the use of nuclear weapons on an ordinary day for reasons unknown to all but him or her. Under the president’s open-ended mandate to decide when the national interest is threatened, ordering up a nuclear strike is his or her prerogative, and obeying the order is incumbent upon the military servants of civilian authority.

China War

Nuclear war---Impact Defense doesn’t apply to Trump


Klare 17 – Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, “Escalation Watch: Four Global Hotspots for Trump”, Asia Times, 1-20, http://www.atimes.com/article/escalation-watch-four-global-hotspots-trump/

Within months of taking office, President Donald Trump is likely to face one or more major international crises, possibly entailing a risk of nuclear escalation. Not since the end of the Cold War has a new chief executive been confronted with as many potential flashpoints involving such a potential for explosive conflict.

This proliferation of crises has been brewing for some time, but the situation appears especially ominous now given Trump’s pledge to bring American military force swiftly to bear on any threats of foreign transgression. With so much at risk, it’s none too soon to go on a permanent escalation watch, monitoring the major global hotspots for any sign of imminent flare-ups, hoping that early warnings (and the outcry that goes with them) might help avert catastrophe.

Looking at the world today, four areas appear to pose an especially high risk of sudden crisis and conflict: North Korea, the South China Sea, the Baltic Sea region, and the Middle East. Each of them has been the past site of recurring clashes, and all are primed to explode early in the Trump presidency.

Why are we seeing so many potential crises now? Is this period really different from earlier presidential transitions?

It’s true that the changeover from one presidential administration to another can be a time of global uncertainty, given America’s pivotal importance in world affairs and the natural inclination of rival powers to test the mettle of the country’s new leader. There are, however, other factors that make this moment particularly worrisome, including the changing nature of the world order, the personalities of its key leaders, and an ominous shift in military doctrine.

Trump may lift gold as new leaders carry risk

Just as the United States is going through a major political transition, so is the planet at large. The sole-superpower system of the post-Cold War era is finally giving way to a multipolar, if not increasingly fragmented, world in which the United States must share the limelight with other major actors, including China, Russia, India, and Iran. Political scientists remind us that transitional periods can often prove disruptive, as “status quo” powers (in this case, the United States) resist challenges to their dominance from “revisionist” states seeking to alter the global power equation. Typically, this can entail proxy wars and other kinds of sparring over contested areas, as has recently been the case in Syria, the Baltic, and the South China Sea.

This is where the personalities of key leaders enter the equation. Though President Obama oversaw constant warfare, he was temperamentally disinclined to respond with force to every overseas crisis and provocation, fearing involvement in yet more foreign wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. His critics, including Donald Trump, complained bitterly that this stance only encouraged foreign adversaries to up their game, convinced that the US had lost its will to resist provocation. In a Trump administration, as The Donald indicated on the campaign trail last year, America’s adversaries should expect far tougher responses. Asked in September, for instance, about an incident in the Persian Gulf in which Iranian gunboats approached American warships in a threatening manner, he typically told reporters, “When they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and make gestures that … they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”

Although with Russia, unlike Iran, Trump has promised to improve relations, there’s no escaping the fact that Vladimir Putin’s urge to restore some of his country’s long-lost superpower glory could lead to confrontations with Nato powers that would put the new American president in a distinctly awkward position. Regarding Asia, Trump has often spoken of his intent to punish China for what he considers its predatory trade practices, a stance guaranteed to clash with President Xi Jinping’s goal of restoring his country’s greatness. This should, in turn, generate additional possibilities for confrontation, especially in the contested South China Sea. Both Putin and Xi, moreover, are facing economic difficulties at home and view foreign adventurism as a way of distracting public attention from disappointing domestic performances.


China War – Timeframe

Escalates quickly


Brown 1/20 (James, UNITED STATES STUDIES CENTRE, Australia, “Australia in firing line if US and China go to war, experts say”, http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2017/s4607360.htm)

JAMES BROWN: Well, how do wars start? Generally there are multitudes of way. Miscalculations, deliberate provocations, over-confident players, militaries that jostle each other too aggressively or some sort of wildcard factor. STAN GRANT: Imagine this: A US fighter jet enters territory claimed by China and is shot down. History shows this scenario is not only possible but one that could quickly escalate. JAMES BROWN: US military assets and Chinese military assets operate in close proximity all the time, every day. Any time a US ship goes into the South China Sea, there is a Chinese ship shadowing it. In the air, Chinese and US planes have passed within tens of metres with each other. Now there are protocols to govern those interactions but there are pilots and ship captains who are known to be rogue operators. The US and China talk about this and there are always accidents that happen and miscalculations so it could escalate very quickly.


A2: No China War

Checks don’t apply – Trump will antagonize China ensuring conflict


Rachman 3/7 (Gideon, chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, “Trump in the China Shop”, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/07/trump-in-the-china-shop/)

The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House threatens a significant acceleration in the rivalry between the US and China. The deliberate but careful attempts of the Obama administration to push back against Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region are likely to be replaced by a new Trump approach that is much more openly confrontational, and more impulsive in style. Even before taking office, the new US president demonstrated his willingness to antagonize Beijing—by speaking directly to the president of Taiwan, something that all US presidents have refused to do since the normalization of relations between the United States and China in the 1970s. If a direct military conflict between China and the United States does break out during the Trump years, the likeliest arena for a clash is the South China Sea. In his confirmation hearings before the US Senate, Rex Tillerson, Trump’s new secretary of state, signaled a significant hardening in the American attitude to the artificial islands that China has been building in the South China Sea. Tillerson likened the island building to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and said that the Trump administration intended to let Beijing know that “your access to those islands is not going to be allowed.” Taken at face value, that sounded like a threat to blockade the islands, on which China has been constructing military installations. China would almost certainly attempt to break such a blockade by sea or air. The stage would be set for a modern version of the Cuba missile crisis. The Chinese government’s official reaction to the Tillerson statement was restrained. But China’s state-controlled media was ferocious. The Global Times, a nationalist paper, warned of the possibility of a “large-scale war” between the United States and China, while the China Daily spoke of a “devastating confrontation between China and the U.S.” Independent observers had come to similar conclusions. Speaking to me in Davos a couple of days after Tillerson’s statement, Vivian Balakrishnan, the foreign minister of Singapore, warned that any effort at a US blockade in the South China Sea would lead to a war between the United States and China. The Singaporeans, who maintain close ties to both Washington and Beijing and whose natural style is cautious and technocratic, are not given to hysteria. In an effort to calm the rising anxieties in Asia, expressed by the likes of Balakrishnan, James Mattis, Trump’s new defense secretary, used his first trip to the region in early February to reassure allies that the US is not planning any “dramatic military moves” in the South China Sea. But there are other influential voices in the new administration who clearly believe that a war with China is both inevitable and necessary. Stephen K. Bannon, chief strategist in the Trump White House, told a radio show in early 2016, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years. There is no doubt about that.” A decision by President Trump to confront China over its territorial claims would represent a new development in the president’s thinking, for Trump’s most longstanding and profound concerns about Asia are economic. Conventional economic theory has long held that the growing wealth of Asian nations is a good thing for the United States, since it creates larger markets for American companies and cheaper goods for American consumers. But Trump and his advisers emphatically reject this idea. They blame the stagnation of the living standards of American workers on “globalism”—otherwise known as international trade and investment. Bannon argues that “the globalists gutted the American working-class and created a middle-class in Asia.” In his view, the increasing wealth of Asia, far from being a mutually advantageous process, has impoverished the United States.

US & China are on the brink


Holloway 2/4 (Henry, staff @ Daily Star (UK news), “World War 3 on the brink in the Pacific – nukes and warships ready for devastating WAR”, http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/584828/US-China-War-South-China-Sea-World-War-3-Donald-Trump-Trade-Shipping-Reality-Tillerson)

Washington and Beijing have both been flexing their military muscles as Chinese military bosses declared “war between the US and China is now reality”. Warships, missiles, and nuclear-capable bombers are flooding the region as both superpowers prepare for a potentially nuclear conflict. The cradle of this war zone is the South China Sea which Beijing claim belongs to the Chinese by right while the US weighs in support of the Asian power’s Pacific neighbours. Experts have warned just one wrong move could cause the region to explode into war between the US and China. David L. Goldwyn, a former special envoy for the US State Department, warned of conflict with China in a report to the Atlantic Council seen by Daily Star Online. He said: "China is prone to testing new US presidents and Mr. Trump seems intent on testing, if not provoking, China. "A miscalculation on either side creates a non-negligible risk of military conflict.”

War goes nuclear – It’s probable


Young 16 (Stephen, fellow @ Union of Concerned Scientists, USA, “The Risk of Nuclear War with China”, http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/us-china-relations/risk-nuclear-war-china#.WNR8UjvythE)

Could simmering tensions lead to a full-blown nuclear war? More specifically: could a minor skirmish or conventional war escalate into a full-blown nuclear conflict? Numerous factors suggest that it could—and that the likelihood of nuclear use between the United States and China may be increasing. The two countries have a very contentious history. Despite sincere and occasionally successful efforts to cooperate on shared concerns such as climate change and nuclear terrorism, lack of mutual trust sustains an entrenched and deepening antagonism. Both governments are preparing for war. Their preparations include improvements to their nuclear arsenals, including a trillion dollar investment in the United States. Both governments also believe that a demonstrable readiness to use military force­—including nuclear weapons—is needed to ensure the other will yield in a military confrontation. Discussions of contentious issues are exceedingly inadequate. Their militaries have produced shared understandings of the conduct of naval vessels and aircraft, but strategic dialogues on nuclear forces, missile defenses, and anti-satellite weapons are limited at best. United States and Chinese officials see the risk of nuclear use differently. US officials believe that if a military conflict starts, nuclear weapons may be needed to stop it—but Chinese officials assume no nation would ever invite nuclear retaliation by using nuclear weapons first. Their only concern is maintaining a credible threat of retaliation. These and other factors are exacerbated by recent developments between the two countries, including China’s apparent move toward hair-trigger alert—a policy that increases the risk of accidental nuclear war, especially in the early days of its development.

A2: No China War – Deterrence

No deterrence – Causes extinction


Wittner 11 (Dr. Lawrence, Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany, “Is a Nuclear War With China Possible?”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-wittner/nuclear-war-china_b_1116556.html)

At the least, though, don’t nuclear weapons deter a nuclear attack? Do they? Obviously, NATO leaders didn’t feel deterred, for, throughout the Cold War, NATO’s strategy was to respond to a Soviet conventional military attack on Western Europe by launching a Western nuclear attack on the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Furthermore, if U.S. government officials really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they would not have resorted to championing “Star Wars” and its modern variant, national missile defense. Why are these vastly expensive — and probably unworkable — military defense systems needed if other nuclear powers are deterred from attacking by U.S. nuclear might? Of course, the bottom line for those Americans convinced that nuclear weapons safeguard them from a Chinese nuclear attack might be that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far greater than its Chinese counterpart. Today, it is estimated that the U.S. government possesses over 5,000 nuclear warheads, while the Chinese government has a total inventory of roughly 300. Moreover, only about 40 of these Chinese nuclear weapons can reach the United States. Surely the United States would “win” any nuclear war with China. But what would that “victory” entail? An attack with these Chinese nuclear weapons would immediately slaughter at least 10 million Americans in a great storm of blast and fire, while leaving many more dying horribly of sickness and radiation poisoning. The Chinese death toll in a nuclear war would be far higher. Both nations would be reduced to smoldering, radioactive wastelands. Also, radioactive debris sent aloft by the nuclear explosions would blot out the sun and bring on a “nuclear winter” around the globe — destroying agriculture, creating worldwide famine, and generating chaos and destruction.


A2: No China War – Escalation

Escalation to nuclear use is likely – NFU & “peaceful intent” wont solve


Kulacki 16 (Gregory, China Project Manager for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “The Risk of Nuclear War with China”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-kulacki/the-risk-of-nuclear-war-w_b_1903336.html)

Last week two separate studies warned that China and the United States are pursuing military strategies and implementing defense policies that could lead to a nuclear war. John Lewis and Xue Litai of Stanford University concluded a detailed exposition of China’s nuclear war plans with a very sober warning. “Both sides, clinging to incongruous assessments, run the risk of provoking unanticipated escalation to nuclear war by seeking a quick victory or tactical advantages in a conventional conflict. This dilemma is not only real, but perilous.” Thomas Christensen of Princeton expressed concern about the same problem; the possibility that a conventional military conflict between the United States and China could end in a nuclear exchange. “For example, if strikes by the United States on China’s conventional coercive capabilities or their critical command and control nodes and supporting infrastructure were to appear in Beijing as a conventional attack on its nuclear retaliatory capability or as a precursor to a nuclear first strike, even a China that generally adheres to a No-First-Use posture might escalate to the nuclear level.” Neither study suggests that the military or political leadership of China or the United States intends to resort to nuclear weapons in the event of a military conflict. China’s commitment not to be the first to use nuclear weapons “at any time under any circumstances“ is drilled into the officers and soldiers of China’s strategic missile forces. A classified text used to train those forces, The Science of Second Artillery Operations, unambiguously instructs, “In accord with our national principle not to be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, the Second Artillery’s strategic nuclear forces can carry out a retaliatory nuclear attack against the enemy, following the command of the ‘high leadership,’ only after the enemy has first attacked us with nuclear weapons.” Although the United States is unwilling to make a similar commitment, U.S. superiority in conventional weapons and overall military capabilities makes it unlikely the United States would consider using nuclear weapons for any purpose other than preventing a Chinese nuclear attack on the United States. The most recent U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, in an effort to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense policy, declared that the “fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons...is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States, our allies and partners.“ The risk of a nuclear war with China lies in the potential for misunderstanding or miscommunication during a conventional conflict. China’s current strategy for employing its conventional and nuclear missile forces during a future conflict with the United States is self-consciously designed to create uncertainty, with the expectation that uncertainty will restrain U.S. military action. Unfortunately, China’s strategy could also precipitate a large-scale U.S. attack on China’s missile forces. There are several Chinese military policies that might confuse U.S. decision-makers in a time of war. Some Chinese conventional missiles are located on the same missile bases as Chinese nuclear missiles. Some Chinese missiles, particularly the DF-21, can be armed with either a conventional or a nuclear warhead. Chinese conventional war plans call for long-range “strategic” conventional missile strikes at key enemy targets, including U.S. military bases on allied soil and the continental United States. If this were not confusing enough already, The Science of Second Artillery Operations contains a section on “lowering the nuclear threshold” that details procedures for alerting China’s nuclear forces in a crisis for the express purpose of forcing a halt to an enemy’s conventional attacks on a select group of targets, such as Chinese nuclear power plants, large dams and civilian population centers. Although the Science of Second Artillery Operations unambiguously states that if alerting China’s nuclear missile forces fails to halt conventional enemy attacks China will hold firm to its “no first use” commitment, U.S. decision-makers might not believe it. Indeed, U.S. interlocutors have repeatedly told their Chinese counterparts that they do not find China’s “no first use” pledge credible. The combination of these factors makes a nuclear exchange between the United States and China not only plausible, but also probable if the two countries were to become embroiled in a military conflict. As Lewis and Xue explain, “If, in a time of high tension, the Chinese command authorized a conventional missile attack as an act of preemptive self-defense, the enemy and its allies could not know if the incoming missiles were conventional or nuclear. In a worst-case scenario, a Chinese first-strike conventional attack could spark retaliation that destroys Chinese nuclear assets, creating a situation in which escalation to full-scale nuclear war would not just be possible, but even likely.”

Iran War

Iran escalates to nuclear war


Beres 2/10 (Louis Rene, emeritus professor of political science and international law at Purdue University, “The Fast Track to Armageddon”, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-02-10/donald-trump-iran-and-the-fast-track-to-nuclear-war-in-the-middle-east)

All such bewildering calculations, of course, must assume perfect rationality on all sides. If, for example, the new American president should cast all caution to the winds with his own first strike (a strike that would be defended by Washington, in law, as an allegedly legitimate expression of international law-enforcement, or "anticipatory self-defense"), the Iranian response, whether rational or irrational, could expectedly be "proportionate" – that is, comparably massive. In that prospectively escalatory case, any contemplated introduction of nuclear weapons into the ensuing conflagration might not necessarily be dismissed out of hand. At that point, moreover, any such introduction would have to originate from the American and/or Israeli side. This indisputable inference is "true by definition," "simply" because Iran would not yet have become an operationally nuclear power. In such circumstances, Trump, especially in view of his favored argumentum ad baculum stance in virtually all matters, might decide upon a so-called "mad dog" strategy vis-a-vis Iran. Here, the American president would display a last-resort dependence upon a strategy of pretended irrationality, or what I have called in my own latest books and monographs, the "rationality of pretended irrationality." Significantly, any such residual reliance, while intuitively sensible and apparently compelling, could still backfire, thereby opening up an "Armageddon path" to a now unstoppable escalation.


AT: No Iran War – Trump

Aggression fuels war with Iran


Schneider 12/4 (Dave, staff @ Fight Back News, “Trump picks corporate war criminal 'Mad Dog' Mattis for Secretary of Defense”, http://www.fightbacknews.org/2016/12/4/trump-picks-corporate-war-criminal-mad-dog-mattis-secretary-defense)

Picking Mattis signals Trump's intent to escalate military aggression towards Iran. During his tenure as head of Central Command from 2010 to 2013, Mattis pushed for the U.S. to take a more belligerent stance towards Iran. He proposed greater covert operations against the Iranian government and vocally opposed diplomatic efforts. When the Obama administration began negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program in 2013, they removed Mattis, an outspoken critic of the negotiations, from Central Command. During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly called for overturning the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran, which received approval from all five members of the UN Security Council in 2015. While the billionaire real estate mogul occasionally spoke against U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, Trump's selection of Mattis for Defense Secretary shows where his actual priorities lie: moves toward war with Iran and more U.S. involvement in the region.


Trump will aggressively attack Iran


Sepahour-Ulrich 2/6 (Soraya, Master of Public Diplomacy from the University of Southern California and is an independent researcher, “Trump: Trumpeting For a War on Iran?”, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2017/02/06/trump-trumpeting-for-a-war-on-iran/)

The Trump Administration’s rhetoric and actions have alarmed the world. The protests in response to his visa ban have overshadowed and distracted from a darker threat: war with Iran. Is the fear of the threat greater than the threat itself? The answer is not clear. Certainly Americans and non-Americans who took comfort in the fact that we would have a more peaceful world believing that Trump would not start a nuclear war with Russia must now have reason to pause. The sad and stark reality is that US foreign policy is continuous. An important part of this continuity is a war that has been waged against Iran for the past 38 years–unabated. The character of this war has changed over time. From a failed coup which attempted to destroy the Islamic Republic in its early days (the Nojeh Coup), to aiding Saddam Hussein with intelligence and weapons of mass destruction to kill Iranians during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war, helping and promoting the terrorist MEK group, the training and recruiting of the Jundallah terrorist group to launch attacks in Iran, putting Special Forces on the ground in Iran, the imposition of sanctioned terrorism, the lethal Stuxnet cyberattack, and the list goes on and on, as does the continuity of it. While President Jimmy Carter initiated the Rapid Deployment Force and put boots on the Ground in the Persian Gulf, virtually every U.S. president since has threatened Iran with military action. It is hard to remember when the option was not on the table. However, thus far, every U.S. administration has wisely avoided a head on military confrontation with Iran. To his credit, although George W. Bush was egged on to engage militarily with Iran, , the 2002 Millennium Challenge, exercises which simulated war, demonstrated America’s inability to win a war with Iran. The challenge was too daunting. It is not just Iran‘s formidable defense forces that have to be reckoned with; but the fact that one of Iran’s strengths and deterrents has been its ability to retaliate to any attack by closing down the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passageway off the coast of Iran. Given that 17 million barrels of oil a day, or 35% of the world’s seaborne oil exports go through the Strait of Hormuz, incidents in the Strait would be fatal for the world economy. Faced with this reality, over the years, the United States has taken a multi-prong approach to prepare for an eventual/potential military confrontation with Iran. These plans have included promoting the false narrative of an imaginary threat from a non-existent nuclear weapon and the falsehood of Iran being engaged in terrorism (when in fact Iran has been subjected to terrorism for decades as illustrated above). These ‘alternate facts’ have enabled the United States to rally friend and foe against Iran, and to buy itself time to seek alternative routes to the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran War – Extinction

Iran war tanks the global economy and causes extinction


Avery, 13 --- Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen (11/6/2013, John Scales Avery, “An Attack On Iran Could Escalate Into Global Nuclear War,” http://www.countercurrents.org/avery061113.htm)

Despite the willingness of Iran's new President, Hassan Rouhani to make all reasonable concessions to US demands, Israeli pressure groups in Washington continue to demand an attack on Iran. But such an attack might escalate into a global nuclear war, with catastrophic consequences. As we approach the 100th anniversary World War I, we should remember that this colossal disaster escalated uncontrollably from what was intended to be a minor conflict. There is a danger that an attack on Iran would escalate into a large-scale war in the Middle East, entirely destabilizing a region that is already deep in problems. The unstable government of Pakistan might be overthrown, and the revolutionary Pakistani government might enter the war on the side of Iran, thus introducing nuclear weapons into the conflict. Russia and China, firm allies of Iran, might also be drawn into a general war in the Middle East. Since much of the world's oil comes from the region, such a war would certainly cause the price of oil to reach unheard-of heights, with catastrophic effects on the global economy. In the dangerous situation that could potentially result from an attack on Iran, there is a risk that nuclear weapons would be used, either intentionally, or by accident or miscalculation. Recent research has shown that besides making large areas of the world uninhabitable through long-lasting radioactive contamination, a nuclear war would damage global agriculture to such a extent that a global famine of previously unknown proportions would result. Thus, nuclear war is the ultimate ecological catastrophe. It could destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere. To risk such a war would be an unforgivable offense against the lives and future of all the peoples of the world, US citizens included.

Extinction


Avery, 13 --- Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen (11/6/2013, John Scales Avery, “An Attack On Iran Could Escalate Into Global Nuclear War,” http://www.countercurrents.org/avery061113.htm)

Despite the willingness of Iran's new President, Hassan Rouhani to make all reasonable concessions to US demands, Israeli pressure groups in Washington continue to demand an attack on Iran. But such an attack might escalate into a global nuclear war, with catastrophic consequences. As we approach the 100th anniversary World War I, we should remember that this colossal disaster escalated uncontrollably from what was intended to be a minor conflict. There is a danger that an attack on Iran would escalate into a large-scale war in the Middle East, entirely destabilizing a region that is already deep in problems. The unstable government of Pakistan might be overthrown, and the revolutionary Pakistani government might enter the war on the side of Iran, thus introducing nuclear weapons into the conflict. Russia and China, firm allies of Iran, might also be drawn into a general war in the Middle East. Since much of the world's oil comes from the region, such a war would certainly cause the price of oil to reach unheard-of heights,


North Korea War

North Korea causes a full-blown nuclear war – Trump’s strategy backfires


Cohen 4/17 (Ben, Founder and Editor of The Daily Banter, frmr Huffington Post, “The Planet is Legitimately Freaking Out About World War III”, http://thedailybanter.com/2017/04/the-planet-is-legitimately-freaking-out-about-world-war-iii/)

This is all to say that there is no Trumpian view of the world -- it is just a cynical mishmash of paranoid delusion, miscalculated aggression and unguided bravado. 'America First' means whatever Trump feels at any particular moment, and the rest of us will be left picking up the pieces. In Trump's ego based world view, there are no consequences for American force -- he can just kick some ass, take the glory and leave without worry about what the CIA refer to as "blowback". The 'America First' philosophy is based on an infantile assumption that America can take what it wants and is not responsible for its actions. In the reality, other countries will respond to Trump's aggression and hostility in kind, making the survival of our species all the less likely. Because in the age of awesomely destructive nuclear weapons, we can incinerate ourselves in the blink of an eye. Should Trump keep pushing North Korea without regard for the consequences, a conflict could spiral out of control incredibly quickly. As the New York Times reported today: What is playing out, said Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who tracks this potentially deadly interplay, is “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.” But the slow-motion part appears to be speeding up, as President Trump and his aides have made it clear that the United States will no longer tolerate the incremental advances that have moved Mr. Kim so close to his goals.... While all historical analogies are necessarily imprecise — for starters, President John F. Kennedy dealt with the Soviets and Fidel Castro in a perilous 13 days in 1962, while the roots of the Korean crisis go back a quarter-century — one parallel shines through. When national ambitions, personal ego and deadly weapons are all in the mix, the opportunities for miscalculation are many. Despite Trump's insistence that American dick swinging will make North Korea give up its nukes, history shows us that the exact opposite is true. When Bush invaded Iraq (a country with no nuclear weapons) and threatened North Korea, it prompted Kim Jong Il to ramp up its nuclear efforts. Faced with more threats today, the hermit kingdom will almost certainly double down on its efforts to develop more powerful nuclear weapons again, making the likelihood of a horrendous accident infinitely more likely, and the consequences of a war even more deadly. Trump is making the world a more dangerous place by the day, and if cooler heads do not prevail we may well be on the cusp of an almighty global conflict that Trump's people have wanted all along.

North Korea War – Extinction

Causes North Korean preemptive nuclear strikes – The timeframe is short, but solveable


Talmadge 4/14 (Eric, staff @ Chicago Tribune, “North Korean official: Ready for war if Trump wants it”, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-trump-north-korea-20170413-story.html)

President Donald Trump's tweets are adding fuel to a "vicious cycle" of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea's vice foreign minister told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Friday. The official added that if the U.S. shows any sign of "reckless" military aggression, Pyongyang is ready to launch a pre-emptive strike of its own. Vice Minister Han Song Ryol said Pyongyang has determined the Trump administration is "more vicious and more aggressive" than that of Barack Obama. He added that North Korea will keep building up its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity" and said Pyongyang is ready to go to war if that's what Trump wants. Tensions between Pyongyang and Washington go back to President Harry Truman and the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. But the heat has been rising rapidly since Trump took office in January. This year's joint war games between the U.S. and South Korean militaries are the biggest so far — the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier has been diverted back to the waters off Korea after heading for Australia, and U.S. satellite imagery suggests the North could conduct another underground nuclear test at any time. Pyongyang recently tested a ballistic missile and claims it is close to perfecting an intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear warhead that could attack the U.S. mainland. You wouldn't let a little thing like not having a corkscrew stop you from enjoying that bottle of wine you just bought, right? Watch these videos to see what lengths people will go to to open a bottle of wine in a pinch. Many experts believe that at its current pace of testing, North Korea could reach that potentially game-changing milestone within a few years under Trump's watch as president. Despite reports that Washington is considering military action if the North goes ahead with another nuclear test, Han did not rule out the possibility of a test in the near future.


Aggression causes North Korea to respond with preemptive nuclear strikes; they’ve explicitly said so


Fox News 4/13 (“From Afghanistan to Syria: Trump's major military operations in his first 100 days”, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/13/from-afghanistan-to-syria-trumps-major-military-operations-in-his-first-100-days.html)

Trump has not indicated further military action, though he did issue a warning to North Korea on Thursday, calling it a "problem" country that "will be taken care of." Trump made the comments after he was asked about the U.S. military's decision to drop the largest non-nuclear weapon. When asked whether dropping the bomb sends a message to North Korea as it continues to pursue nuclear and other weapons, Trump said it makes no difference. "North Korea is a problem, the problem will be taken care of," Trump said. North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol said Friday Pyongyang is ready to launch a preemptive strike if the U.S. shows any sign of "reckless" military aggression. The foreign minister added that North Korea will keep building up its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity," and said the country is ready to go to war if that is what Trump wants.

Draws in Russia & China – Kills millions immediately & collapses relations with China


Cohen 4/14 (Ben, Founder and Editor of The Daily Banter, frmr Huffington Post, “Er, is Trump About to Kick Off World War III?”, http://thedailybanter.com/2017/04/er-is-trump-about-to-kick-off-world-war-iii/)

Just for fun, let's do a quick list as to why attacking North Korea is a very, very bad idea: 1. North Korea will respond, and it will almost certainly attack South Korea. While it is unclear who would win should conflict arise, North Korea's enormous army and possession of nuclear weapons means both sides would incur extreme losses if violence escalated. As the New York Times notes: In the event of war, North Korean plans are thought to call for nuclear attacks against major ports and air bases in South Korea and Japan, halting any American invasion before it could fully begin. In the meantime, nuclear and chemical strikes against major population centers would be intended to shock the world into capitulating. Missile defense would be of limited use against short-range rockets and of no use against North Korea’s hundreds of artillery pieces, many of which target Seoul, the South Korean capital. Not good. 2. Hitting North Korea would irreversibly damage relations with China. President Xi has already informed Trump that destabilizing the region with an attack would be a huge problem for China due to the number of refugees it would create, and they would seek retribution against American in one form or another. 3. An attack would almost certainly spur Russia to side with China and orchestrate a co-ordinated response that would play itself out elsewhere. It is not in the interests of the United States to fight a Cold (or real) war with Russia and China given both are geopolitical power houses with rapidly growing economies and militaries to match. It is clear that Trump's aggressive posture towards North Korea is a giant distraction from his rapid succession of domestic failures and plummeting poll numbers. He has bombed Afghanistan with the biggest non-nuclear weapon in America's arsenal and now sent war ships to threaten North Korea -- all of this after only three months in office. Creating conflict abroad is a classic technique used by strongmen (and women) throughout history, but rarely has it been as stupidly executed and poorly disguised. Trump is blundering full steam ahead into a quagmire he is not capable of comprehending let alone extricate the US from. He apparently only learned from the Chinese president that the situation in North Korea was "not so easy", and yet has gone ahead anyway with the proverbial nuclear option. As with everything Donald Trump related, this won't end well so let's hope cooler heads prevail and the international community comes together to put a stop to what could well be the beginnings of a global conflict we likely won't recover from.


Aggression causes all-out nuclear war – Timeframe is short


Deutsche Welle 4/15 (“North Korea vows to respond to US aggression with 'nuclear attack'”, http://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-vows-to-respond-to-us-aggression-with-nuclear-attack/a-38435453)

With the US Navy deployed near the Korean Peninsula, and experts speculating that Pyongyang was preparing another nuclear test, the tensions have been rising in recent days. The huge military parade on Saturday showed off what appeared to be the country's increasingly sophisticated military hardware, including ballistic missiles, to the accompaniment of marching music and a large audience. "We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war with our style of nuclear attack," Choe Ryong Hae, a top North Korean officer, said. Choe is considered by outside analysts to be the country's most powerful official after the leader Kim Jong Un. US President Donald Trump's recent bombings in Syria and Afghanistan have stoked fears about a possible US attack on North Korea. The communist country has been regularly conducting nuclear and missile tests defying United Nations' resolutions and sanctions. Previously, the North Korean military threatened to unleash a "merciless" response against American targets, including the naval task force the US recently deployed. "The closer such big targets as nuclear powered aircraft carriers come, the greater would be the effect of merciless strikes," according to the statement carried by the KCNA news agency. At the same time, the army urged Washington to "come to its senses" and find a "proper" solution to the current stand-off. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Friday "everybody will end up as a loser" if a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula. All sides need to show restraint, he added, or risk the situation getting out of hand. "One has the feeling that a conflict could break out at any moment," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after meeting his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Attacks ensure use-it-or-lose-it pressure for preemptive strikes


Stafford 1-4 (Tim, Research Fellow with Pacific Forum-Centre for Strategic and International Studies, “Donald Trump’s Misguided Nuclear Proposals”, https://rusi.org/commentary/donald-trumps-misguided-nuclear-proposals)

The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction rested upon the inevitability of a retaliatory response to any first strike nuclear attack, something enhanced by the heightened survivability afforded by large arsenals. Indeed, one of the dangers that plagues many of today’s deterrence relationships is the absence of such a dynamic. Defence planners in Moscow fear that Russia’s second-strike capacity could be neutralised by the increasing effectiveness of US missile defences. Likewise, the small nature of the North Korea’s nuclear arsenal means that any major military contingency on the peninsula could confront the Kim regime with a ‘use it or lose it’ dilemma that would incentivise first-use.

China gets drawn in, causes global nuclear war


Dyer 4/13 (Gwynne, London-based independent journalist, “‘Solving’ North Korea”, https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2017/04/13/solving-north-korea/)

This does not necessarily mean that the US would launch a large nuclear attack against North Korea. If you are really serious about carrying out a “disarming strike” that destroys all of North Korea’s nukes, you probably should do exactly that (You never get a second chance to go first). But maybe the US Air Force would promise that “precision” non-nuclear weapons could accomplish that goal and maybe some gullible people would believe it. It would still turn into a nuclear war in the end, unless American “surgical strikes” miraculously eliminated every last one of North Korea’s nukes at the same time. Kim Jong-un’s regime would find itself in the position known in nuclear strategy as “use them or lose them” and it is hard to believe that it would not launch whatever it had left. The targets would be in South Korea, of course, but probably also American bases in Japan. Maybe even Japanese cities, if North Korea had enough weapons left. The regime would know it was going under – the US would not take this huge risk and then leave it in power – so it would take as many of its enemies as possible down with it. North America would probably not be hit, because Western intelligence services do not believe that Pyongyang has ballistic missiles that can reach that far yet. (But “intelligence” is not the same as knowing for sure, and they could be wrong.) At worst, the victims would be one or two cities in the Pacific north-west of the US. This would be a very bad outcome for people living in Seattle or Portland, but it would not actually be a “nuclear holocaust”. The kind of war that the superpowers would have fought at the height of the Cold War, with thousands of nuclear weapons used by each side, would have killed hundreds of millions and might even have triggered a “nuclear winter”. A nuclear war over Korea would be a much smaller catastrophe, perhaps involving a few million deaths – unless China got drawn in. Unfortunately, that is not inconceivable, because China, much as it dislikes and mistrusts the North Korean regime, is determined not to see it destroyed. Many people are uncomfortable with this kind of analysis, especially when it draws comparisons between “bad” and “less bad” nuclear wars. Herman Kahn, the dean of nuclear strategists in the 1960s and 70s, was frequently the target of this kind of criticism: how could he talk about potential mass death in such a cold-blooded way? His response was always the same: “Would you prefer a nice, warm mistake?” “Thinking About the Unthinkable”, as he put it in one of his books, is absolutely necessary if the Unthinkable is not happen. In this case, that means taking the possibility that China might be drawn into the conflict seriously. The destruction of the North Korean regime would bring American military power right to China’s own border. You might reasonably ask: So what? This is the 21st Century and what matters strategically is the big, lethal long-range weapons (like nukes), not the whereabouts of a few American infantry battalions. Quite right in theory. Not necessarily right in practice. During the Korean War, when American troops were operating very close to the Chinese frontier in late 1950, the Chinese regime sent troops in to save the North Korean regime — and succeeded. The scenario this time, with nuclear weapons already being used on both sides of the North Korea-South Korea frontier, would be different, but it could be even more dangerous. China has lots of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles too.

Draws in China


Allison 17 (Graham, May/June, director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, “How the US & China Will Go To War”, http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1770556-how-the-us-china-will-go-to-war)

THE SPARK to a Sino-American clash need not initially involve American or Chinese military forces. Instead, it might result from a confrontation with or between third-party allies. Such a scenario nearly became reality in 2010, when North Korea sank the South Korean warship Cheonan, killing forty-six South Korean sailors. China supported North Korea’s denial of involvement. Seoul, meanwhile, insisted that Pyongyang be held accountable. Ultimately, the two Koreas and their allies stepped back from the brink. But with a new set of background conditions and accelerants today, it is not clear that it would be so easy to avoid war, especially if the third parties involved were less inured to the sort of slow, grinding tensions that the Korean Peninsula has endured for decades.

Escalates to nuclear war


Leverett 3/19 (Flynt, Professor of International Affairs and Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University, “TRUMP'S DIPLOMACY-FREE ASIA STRATEGY RISKS WORLD WAR”, http://www.newsweek.com/trump-diplomacy-free-asia-strategy-risks-world-war-569718)

Barring major changes in Trump’s Asia strategy, North Korea will likely keep developing its strategic deterrent. This will continue raising risks that conventional conflict on the Korean peninsula escalates rapidly to nuclear war. China is reacting deliberately to what it sees as provocative U.S. policies. President Xi wants a summit with Trump before July’s G20 summit. Chinese officials and analysts also say Xi wants to keep Sino-U.S. relations on a relatively even keel through this fall’s 19th Party Congress. The Congress will approve Xi’s second term as China’s top leader. Xi wants to be seen as a steady steward of Chinese interests in a global order still significantly influenced by Washington. Meanwhile, China may not mind if Trump renegotiates America’s economic relationships in Asia—especially to the extent this happens at the expense of U.S. allies. But if Trump keeps building what China sees as a more robust and ultimately offensive regional military posture, Beijing will respond. China will leverage its own economic and political ties to U.S. allies in Asia to constrain and undermine Trump’s strategy. Recently impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye will probably be replaced by a progressive figure espousing engagement with Pyongyang and more multilateral regional security approaches. This could position Beijing to contain and ultimately reverse U.S. THAAD deployments. Overall, Trump’s Asia strategy is unlikely to boost Sino-U.S. cooperation on regional security. Instead, it will almost certainly intensify Sino-U.S. security competition.


Turns Case

Groupthink means the impact turns the case – He can grind the government to a halt while precipitating foreign policy disasters


Bernstein 2/24 (Jonathan, staff @ Bloomberg View, “The dangers of having a weak president”, http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/opinion/commentary/ct-donald-trump-weak-president-dangerous-20170224-story.html?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)

Since Trump tends to lash out when losing, he remains a danger to democracy even if he is weakened, Ezra Klein argues. He could do plenty of lashing out in ways that tend to de-legitimize important democratic institutions such as the courts, Congress, the media and political parties. On the other hand: As Politico's Tara Palmeri reports, while Trump needs to be carefully managed in order to keep him from saying and doing inappropriate things, it's not especially difficult to manipulate him. Former campaign staff explain that Trump merely needed to be fed a constant diet of positive news clips, easily generated from friendly news outlets, in order to keep him from his worst instincts. What's striking is how easy the process sounds: Trump needs good reviews, but is satisfied even if they appear in the Republican-aligned media which virtually every normal politician would discount as validation. And since, beyond the cable news networks he obsessively monitors, he doesn't search out information on his own, his staff can control what he reads. Does this mean Trump isn't really a danger? Well, no. And not only because we know he can, as Klein points out, poison the public sphere with illiberal comments. For one thing, presidential weakness is bad for the nation. Without a strong president to push hard on executive branch departments and agencies, they're liable to atrophy. It's not that individual bureaucrats aren't capable and well-meaning; many of them are. But bureaucratic incentives can lead agencies to ignore pressing problems, especially new ones, if they're not prodded. And those who can be tempted by laziness or flat-out corruption will be more likely to give in to that temptation when the agency isn't being challenged to fulfill presidential requests (or if it feels safe to ignore them). President Trump criticized the news media and denounced the use of anonymous sources during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Feb. 24, 2017 (C-SPAN) For another, presidents who get frustrated because they can't get Congress, the courts or even the executive branch to do what they want may turn to those within the presidential branch (that is, the White House staff and other agencies within the Executive Office of the President) to do their bidding. That's the story of Watergate, in which a president attempted to use those who would follow his orders to do things that normally take persuasion. It's not clear how big a threat that may be with President Bluff and Bluster, who rarely seems interested in following up on any of his threats. But it's possible. More likely, however, is the possibility that one or another faction within the administration will be able to manipulate the president into doing something destructive, or carry out big policy initiatives without his knowledge. The former is the story of the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policy; the latter, Iran-Contra. That's particularly a problem given the seemingly random way in which Trump hires people, meaning that there are plenty of odd agendas floating around the presidential branch (fewer now, to be sure, with Michael Flynn gone) and among his executive branch appointees. With an influential president, odd agendas aren't a huge problem, and can even be a plus in that they can work against groupthink and complacency. With a weak president, however, ambitious or reckless people with crackpot ideas may run wild, with potentially catastrophic outcomes. All of these are threats to the nation. All have subsets which are potential threats to democratic government. One more point: The dangers of an oppressive government do not require an unusually powerful president. It's possible for a weak president to be in office when the power of the federal government grows larger, as was the case during George W. Bush's first term as a result of the September 11 attacks.


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