Oil 1 Peak Oil 21


Russian economic decline = nuke war



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Russian economic decline = nuke war



Russian Decline leads to nuclear war
Sergei Rogov writer for Washington quarterly 1992 “International Security and the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” USA Institute, Washington Quarterly, Spring,
Continued economic chaos, political turmoil, and ethnic fighting in the former USSR will quite possibly spill over into neighboring areas, creating new sources of instability. Even major civil and interstate wars involving nuclear weapons cannot be excluded. Obviously, this possibility would have a very negative impact on all of Europe as well as Southwest and Northeast Asia.

Terrorism is bad (nuke war)



Terrorism sparks retaliation that leads to nuclear war
Patrick F.Speice William and Mary Law Review 47.4 Feb 2006 "Negligence and nuclear nonproliferation: eliminating the current liability barrier to bilateral U.S.-Russian nonproliferation assistance programs."  1427(59). Expanded Academic ASAP.
The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses. (49) Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. (50) In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. (51) This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States or its allies by hostile states, (52) as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. (53)

Russian authoritarianism = nukes



Russian authoritarianism spurs nuclear war
Victor Irsraelyan Soviet ambassador, diplomat, and arms control negotiator 1998 “Russia at the Crossroads: Don’t Tease a Wounded Bear” Washington Quarterly
The first and by far most dangerous possibility is what I call the power scenario. Supporters of this option would, in the name of a “united and undivided Russia,” radically cbange domestic and foreign policies Many would seek to revive a dictatorship and take urgent military steps to mobilize the people against the outside “enemy. “ Such steps would include Russia’s denunciation of the commitment to no-first-use of nuclear weapons; suspension oftbe Strategic Anns Reduction Treaty (START) I and refusal to ratify both START II and the Cbemical Weapons Convention; denunciation of the Biological Weapons Convention; and reinstatement of a full-scale armed force, including the acquisition of additional intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads, as well as medium- and short-range missiles such as the 8S-20. Some oftbese measures will demand substantial financing, wbereas others, such as the denunciation and refusal to ratify arms control treaties, would, according to proponents, save money by alleviating the obligations ofthose agreements. In this scenario, Russia’s military planners would shift Western countries from the category of strategic partners to tbe category of countries repl’esenting a threat to national security. This will revive the strategy of nuclear deterrence—and indeed, realizing its unfavorable odds against the expanded NATO, Russia will place new emphasis on the first-use of nuclear weapons, a trend that is underway already. The power scenario envisages a hard-line policy toward the CIS countries, and in such circumstances the problem of the Russian diaspora in those countries would be greatly magnified. Moscow would use all the means at its disposal, including economic sanctions and political ultimatums, to ensure the rights of ethnic Russians in CIS countries as well as to bave an influence on other issues. Of those means, even the use of direct military force in places like the Baltics cannot be ruled out. Some will object that this scenario is implausible because no potential dictator exists in Russia who could carry out this strategy, I am not so sure. Some Duma members _ such as Victor Antipov, Sergei Baburin, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Albert Makashov, who are leading politicians in ultranationalistic parties and fractions in the parliament __are ready to follow this path to save a “united Russia.” Baburin’s “Anti-NATO” deputy group boasts a membership of more than 240 Duma members, One cannot help but remember that when Weimar Germany was isolated, exhausted, and humiliated as a result of World War I and the Versailles Treaty, Adolf Hitler took it upon himself to “save” his country. It took the former corporal only a few years to plunge the world into a second world war that cost humanity more than 50 million lives. I do not believe that Russia has the economic strength to implement such a scenario successfully, but then again, Germany’s economic situation in the 1920s was hardly that strong either. Thus, I am afraid that economics will not deter the power scenario’s would-be authors from attempting it Baboon, for example, warned that any political leader who would “dare to encroach upon Russia” would be decisively repulsed by the Russian Federation “by all measures on heaven and earth up to the use of nuclear weapons.” nlO In autumn 1996 Oleg Grynevsky, Russian ambassador to Sweden and former Soviet arms control negotiator, while saying that NATO expansion increases the risk of nuclear war, reminded his Westem listeners that Russia has enough missiles to destroy both the United States and Europe, nIl Former Russian minister of defense Igor Rodionov warned several times that Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal could become uncontrollable. In this context, one should keep in mind that, despite dmmatically reduced nuclear arsenals __and tensions—Russia and the United States remain poised to launch their missiles in minutes. I cannot but agree with Anatol Lieven, who wrote, “It may be, therefore, that with all the new Russian order’s many problems and weaknesses, it will for a long time be able to stumble on, until we all fall down together.” n12

A2: Dutch Disease




2NC Dutch disease answers



1. Dutch disease doesn’t exist
BARRIE MCKENNA a Globe and Mail correspondent and columnist in Washington July 15, 2008 “Oil wealth: Proving to be more purse than curse” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinions/columnists/Barrie+McKennaBio.html
WASHINGTON -- The world has known a plethora of famous curses - from King Tut's tomb to the Bambino and the Chicago Cubs' billy goat. None of these, however, has grabbed the attention of serious academics quite like the curse of oil. The theory is a simple one: Countries rich in oil and other natural resources typically - and counterintuitively - do less well economically over the long haul than other countries. The oil curse theory is a close relative of the so-called Dutch disease, a term coined by The Economist in 1977 to describe the vanishing manufacturing sector in the Netherlands after the discovery of natural gas a decade earlier. In a nutshell, a resource boom attracts a sudden flood of investment, pushes up the value of the currency and weighs down other sectors, including manufacturing and farming. Over the ensuing decades, economists have produced considerable research to support the oil curse. It has become a virtual economic truism, often helping to guide development aid by such institutions as the World Bank. Subsequent research has also linked resource wealth to weaker government institutions. Alas, like all curses, this one was bound to be broken some time. The Boston Red Sox, of course, have won the World Series twice in three years after 86 years of futility. Economists Michael Alexeev of Indiana University and Robert Conrad of Duke University argue in a new paper that, like the Bambino's, the curse of oil is really just a myth. "While mineral wealth may have some negative consequences for a country, the general curse of natural resources as understood in the current literature does not seem to exist," the authors conclude in a recently released paper, The Elusive Curse of Oil. The paper is due to be published in the Review of Economics and Statistics. The authors say there is "little or no evidence" that an abundance of natural resources slows down long-term economic growth. They also debunk the notion that oil wealth degrades public institutions. Institutions may not be markedly better, they said, but they are not any worse. The economists point to the post-Soviet collapse experience of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as a "natural experiment" of the influence of oil and mineral resources. All three Slavic nations emerged from the Soviet era with similar cultural, governmental and economic backgrounds, but with distinctly unequal resource wealth. Russia was a powerhouse, Ukraine had less and Belarus had none. If the curse exists, Belarus would have emerged the big winner. That isn't the case. It's Russia, and it isn't even close, based on key measures, including gross domestic product per capita, rule of law, control of corruption and government effectiveness. "The comparison of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine is instructive because of its stark divergence from the prediction based on the natural resource curse," the study notes. So what about Canada? There's been a lively academic debate for decades about whether the country has enjoyed the full fruits of its various resource bonanzas - from fur and lumber to gold, hydro, Hibernia and the oil sands. The consensus among economists is that Canada is a winner, and its resources are a big part of that success. The country ranks highly in various global measures of well being (including fourth in the 2007-08 United Nations' Human Development Index and 5th in the 2007 Legatum Prosperity Index). And yet the debate endures, particularly now as a boom in one part of the country (Alberta) hurts another (Quebec and Ontario) by pushing the dollar higher and making other exports less competitive. Some economists argue that the latest energy boom hasn't necessarily been good for Canada, as high oil prices drag down large swaths of the economy. The more pertinent question is: Where would Canada be without its oil, its trees and its minerals? The implication of the latest research is that it would be a lot less well off. And don't forget: Everything worked out pretty well for the Dutch in the end.



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