Prolif good – War



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AT Safety Measures




Small countries will build large arsenals and lack stable C and C


Busch ‘4 (Nathan, Visiting Ass. Prof. Public & Int’l Affairs – Center for Int’l. Trade & Security – UGA, “ No End in Sight: The continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation”, p. 287-288)

Both David Karl and Jordan Seng argue that the nuclear weapons in developing countries will be relatively easy to control, even without sophisticated use-control devices, because their arsenals will be small and their command systems simple. But there are serious problems with this argument. First, as we have seen, there is little evidence to suggest that emerging NWSs will remained satisfied with small arsenals and simple command structures. Instead, most evidence suggests that they will tend to develop larger, more complex systems, which increase organizational difficulties and will be much harder to control. As the Russian case demonstrates, complex systems can deteriorate during economic crises due to a lack of resources for maintenance and repairs. Moreover, even if some emerging NWSs do keep their arsenals small and simple, their controls could still be severely weakened during domestic upheavals. The most serious weaknesses in Russia’s controls were caused less by the size of its nuclear arsenal or the complexity of its command structure than by the type of nuclear controls that it inherited from the Soviet Union. To be sure, the scope of Russia’s problems has been exacerbated by size and complexity, but because Russia’s nuclear controls relied heavily on guards, gates, and guns, Russia still would have had difficulties maintaining its nuclear controls even if its nuclear system had been much smaller. Emerging NWSs probably will have problems similar to Russia’s during political upheavals because they are likely to rely on the “3 G’s” for their nuclear command-and-control systems. Indeed, we have seen that the arsenals in China, India, and Pakistan are potentially vulnerable to accidental or unauthorized use, even though they are comparatively smaller.
New proliferants won’t see any need for safety measures – proves our pessimism arguments

Busch ‘4 (Nathan, Visiting Ass. Prof. Public & Int’l Affairs – Center for Int’l. Trade & Security – UGA, “ No End in Sight: The continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation”, p. 298)

As we have seen, both optimists and pessimists do, or should, acknowledge at it is in the interests of every NWS to maintain safety and security for their nuclear weapons and fissile materials. And yet, the cases in this study suggest that NWSs, or certain groups within NWSs, simply may not see the necessity for rigorous safety and security measures. In particular, emerging WSs will tend to marginalize such measures in their single-minded pursuit their weapons programs." This is the most fundamental weakness in the optimists' arguments, since they assume that states will always clearly understand—and pursue—their interests." For example, we have seen extensive evidence that India and Pakistan ye underdeveloped safety and safeguards cultures.69 Both countries have been willing to risk accidents and potential catastrophes in numerous areas their nuclear programs, and neither state has been willing to correct these problems. The marginalizing of safety and security is not unique to India d Pakistan. For example, even after Russian facilities encountered severe , difficulties with fissile material security and the United States assisted them the MPC&A upgrades, many facilities still do not choose to follow the procedures or use the technologies necessary for fissile material security. We ye seen similar problems in China. Although Chinese officials have admitted that their fissile material controls are based on the Russian model, they ye demonstrated little interest in improving their fissile material controls cause, they argue, China is currently stable. But since China has had severe domestic upheavals in the past and could have more in the future, this situation appears unjustified. Because it is highly unlikely that emerging NWSs would see their self-interests any more clearly than have the current NWSs, have reason to side with the pessimist position.7°



AT Small Arsenals



Double bind – either small states can’t build survivable deterrents creating instability or they will build large unstable arsenals for second strike creating C and C problems

Busch ‘4 (Nathan, Visiting Ass. Prof. Public & Int’l Affairs – Center for Int’l. Trade & Security – UGA, “No End in Sight: The continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation”, p. 282-283)

The evidence concerning the likelihood of NWSs developing survivable forces is somewhat mixed. On the other hand, it is very difficult to build survivable forces. The United States and the Soviet Union exerted tremendous efforts to develop systems that would be capable of surviving a first strike. These systems included resilient command and communications systems, extensive forced, deployed in rapid response configurations that allowed for launch-on-warning; sophisticated early-warning systems; and hardened shelters for political leaders. Still, some analysts have questioned whether their nuclear forces and command structures were, in fact, survivable. China’s nuclear forces have also been vulnerable to a first strike, since for many years they relied on a deterrence based on an outdated ICM force of roughly eighteen missiles capable of striking the United States. Because it would require several hours of preparation with the missiles exposed before their weapons could be launched, China’s forces would be highly vulnerable to a nuclear first strike by NWSs with advanced surveillance systems, such as those possessed by the United States. India and Pakistan also rely on small forces and rudimentary command and communication structures that could be destroyed by a first strike. In addition, analysts have argued that a conventional or nuclear strike by India could destroy the launch strips at Pakistani air force bases, thereby eliminating or significantly weakening Pakistan’s current retaliatory capability. Because it is very difficult to create survivable forces, there are risks that nuclear powers night engage in a nuclear first strike and that vulnerable nuclear powers will face a “use them or lose them” scenario. On the other hand, pressures to build survivable forces are likely to cause NWSs to develop larger and more advanced arsenals, dispersed weapon deployments, and more complicated command structures. Of the established NWSs, the United States, Russia, Great Britain, and France all developed these capabilities fairly early. And China appears to be developing similar capabilities. Although China initially stored its missiles unfueled and without the warheads mated, concerns about survivability they are causing China to move to a mobile system, in which the missiles will be stored fully fueled, possibly with mated warheads. Moreover, both India and Pakistan appear to be moving in a similar direction. Whether or not India adopts a system similar to the one called for in its 1999 draft nuclear doctrine, it is moving toward weaponization and deployment of mobile missile systems that could allow for a rapid-response capability. Pakistan, as well, appears to be moving toward mobile systems, and might very well adopt a rapid-response capability, a launch-on-warning policy, and a predelegation of launch authority. Thus, virtually every nuclear power so far has yielded-or is yielding-to pressures to build larger, more robust, more complex nuclear systems, and it is reasonable to expect that other emerging NWSs will behave similarly. Larger and more complex systems might be more survivable (though they still might be vulnerable to a nuclear first strike), but they also significantly increase command-and-control difficulties, as we will see in the next section.

Actual dynamics of conflict prove there will be a rapid arsenal buildup and according loss of command and control.


Glenn ‘4 (David, Chronicle of Higher Education, “A Bomb in Every Backyard”, 9-3, 51:2, Proquest)

As he became acquainted with the optimist-pessimist debate, Mr. Busch says, he realized that "neither side -- and, for what it's worth, especially the optimists -- has devoted enough effort to testing their theories empirically." He arranged to spend the 1998- 99 academic year as a graduate research assistant at the Los Alamos lab, studying early records of the U.S. nuclear program and observing current operations. In the following years, he compiled similar information from Russia, China, and the new nuclear states in South Asia. (His project excluded Britain and France, on the grounds that their systems are very similar to those of the United States, and Israel, because its nuclear program, which has never been formally acknowledged, is so cloaked in secrecy that little is known about it.) "I've tried to develop the most comprehensive study of the safety and management of nuclear-weapons operations," he says. "There have been quite a few studies of command-and-control systems" -- that is, systems for operating the weapons during war -- "but relatively little attention has been given to the related question of the control of fissile material or the 'loose nukes' problem." One of the optimists' central predictions is that new nuclear states will tend to develop only small arsenals, and that they will be content to maintain their weapons unassembled. Pessimists, on the other hand, worry that new nuclear powers will want fairly large, "survivable" arsenals that will not be vulnerable to being wiped out by a surprise first strike from an adversary. Columbia's Mr. Waltz, whose 1981 paper "The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better" was a founding document of proliferation optimism, says that that is a foolish worry. "What American writers generally misunderstand is how easy it is to create an arsenal that is perceived by adversaries as being survivable," he says. If Country X is known to have even as few as five or six weapons in dispersed locations, Mr. Waltz argues, its adversaries will probably not entertain any dreams of wiping out that arsenal in a surprise first strike. For how could they be absolutely certain that all five or six bombs would be destroyed? Even if just one or two of Country X's bombs survived, it would be able to exact a terrible revenge. "Already," Mr. Waltz says, "we in the U.S. don't know exactly how many weapons North Korea might have, so they're already able to deter us." In a 1993 paper, the pessimist Peter D. Feaver, now a professor of political science at Duke University, replied to such arguments by saying that even if countries were never quite sure how many nukes their adversaries had, that did not mean that they would feel secure about their own weapons. "The question can be turned on its head," he wrote. "Will a proliferator ever truly feel that its arsenal is invulnerable?" Mr. Busch's book supports Mr. Feaver's position. China and Pakistan do worry about the survivability of their forces, he says, and that fear may in turn impel them to build larger and more complex arsenals. (Pakistan fears that even if India does not know exactly where its bombs are, it might be able to launch a crippling first strike by strafing Pakistan's air strips.) "As countries build larger arsenals," Mr. Busch says, "they encounter what we refer to as the always/never dilemma." That is, a nuclear power always wants to be able to use its weapons in a time of crisis, but it never wants the weapons to be used inadvertently or without a clear command from the central government. There are trade-offs between those two goals. As a country builds a larger, more dispersed, survivable arsenal (fulfilling the "always" goal), its command-and-control systems become more complex, and there is more danger that weapons will be lost or seized by rogue officers. India's official nuclear doctrine, for example, calls for weapons eventually to be maintained in an assembled "rapid response" state, which might increase the risk of an accident.
Empirical evidence shows new weapon states won’t develop command and control systems but will build large assembled arsenals

Busch ‘4 (Nathan, Visiting Ass. Prof. Public & Int’l Affairs – Center for Int’l. Trade & Security – UGA, “ No End in Sight: The continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation”, p. 283)

These case studies very clearly illustrate Peter Feaver’s arguments about the always/never dilemma. In the early stages of their nuclear programs, the United States, the Soviet Union, china, India, and Pakistan relied on the unassembled weapons. But the pressures to build survivable forces have led, or are currently leading, these states to move toward assembled weapons and dispersed deployments. These systems require advanced weapons designs and safety devices to avoid accidental detonations and sophisticated command-and-control systems to prevent accidental and unauthorized use. Although it is possible that proliferating countries could find alternative ways to compensate for some of these risks, the cases in this study suggest reasons to doubt, at least, that emerging NWSs will consistently develop advanced safety and command-and-control systems.


The fact that superpowers did build big arsenals proves states don’t adopt rational safe nuclear policies

Feaver ’97 (Peter, Ass. Prof. Pol. Sci. – Duke, Security Studies, “Neooptimists and the Enduring Problem of Nuclear Proliferation”, 6:4, p. 99)

BOTH SENG AND Karl lean heavily on the putative virtues of a small and simple arsenal.16 They concede that command and control problems attend large and complex arsenals, but claim this is precisely why we need not worry about minor proliferators. The small size and simple procedures associated with the arsenals of minor proliferators effectively neutralize most of the historical analogies proffered by nuclear pessimists. Every example of dangerous nuclear behavior by one of the superpowers can be explained away as the obvious, perhaps unavoidable consequence of trying to maintain a large and unwieldy nuclear force posture. From the point of view of rhetoric, this is a shrewd tactical withdrawal on the part of nuclear optimists; it concedes a large and mounting pile of evidence that neither superpower behaved as chastely as rational deterrence theory would expect, but neatly dismisses all of these implications as irrelevant.17 Such a concession, however, undermines a core assumption of nuclear optimism (neoand paleo-), namely that when states are faced with nuclear options they will pick ones that lead to more-safe rather than less-safe behavior (on which more later).
Israel proves new powers will build larger than necessary arsenals

Feaver ’97 (Peter, Ass. Prof. Pol. Sci. – Duke, Security Studies, “Neooptimists and the Enduring Problem of Nuclear Proliferation”, 6:4, p. 100)

Small and simple arsenals are, ceteris paribus, easier to protect against unauthorized use and are less prone to the kind of "normal accidents" problems afflicting large, tightly connected systems.18 Whether the states have small and simple arsenals, however, and whether they will always remain so, is debatable. For instance, the Israeli arsenal may in fact be much larger than one hundred weapons as claimed by Seng, if the information from Vanunu can be believed.19 Even at one hundred, the Israeli arsenal would be considerably larger than Israel needs if the rest of the neooptimists' argument about the ease of hiding weapons and the impossibility of preventive war is correct; viewed this way, the arsenal appears relatively large, raising doubt as to whether Israeli leaders are as sanguine about the virtues of extremely small arsenals as are the neooptimists.
New proliferants won’t trust minimum deterrence even if it works – they will shoot for large arsenals

Feaver ’97 (Peter, Ass. Prof. Pol. Sci. – Duke, Security Studies, “Neooptimists and the Enduring Problem of Nuclear Proliferation”, 6:4, p. 105-106)

Thus, the neooptimists' case reduces to the same argument paleooptimists advanced. The spread of nuclear proliferation is stabilking, they claim, because even the most backward minor proliferator will have an arsenal capable of providing some minimal existential deterrence—and states, recognizing this, will never try to provoke the minor proliferator. Since the proliferator will never be provoked, the proliferator will never feel compelled to worry about the reliability of his nuclear arsenal and will never adopt unsafe practices designed to boost its deterrent value. I remain unpersuaded by this logic for five reasons. First, no state I know of has ever relied on existential or minimum deterrence for very long. Certainly, none of the first generation nuclear powers ever acted as if they believed in true minimum deterrence. Even France and China spent the money to buy a fairly robust missile capability. If neooptimists code these countries—each with at least four hundred weapons aboard a wide mix of delivery systems kept at fairly high levels of readiness— as the minimum deterrent models for minor proliferators, then neooptimists have to admit of all the organizational and complexity concerns pessimists have raised.34 The acid test will be in South Asia and that test is in its infancy (on which more in the conclusion). The fact is that states have shown a proclivity for worst-case strategizing and this leads them to distrust existential deterrence schemes.


Smaller arsenals may be simpler but will also be unreliable and more accident prone

Feaver ’97 (Peter, Ass. Prof. Pol. Sci. – Duke, Security Studies, “Neooptimists and the Enduring Problem of Nuclear Proliferation”, 6:4, p. 100-101)

Neooptimists thus see a virtue where pessimists have seen a vice. Financial constraints, neooptimists argue, will keep arsenals small and simple. The factors that constrain the size of the arsenal, however, such as financial pressures and the effects of the nonproliferation regime, also affect other features of the arsenal directly related to desirable nuclear behaviors. The constraints may tend to keep arsenals small but they also tend to keep the arsenals untested, unproven, and probably unsafe. Smallness and simplicity are not intrinsically preferable (except for the fact that fewer numbers of warheads would translate into a statistically lower probability of accidents, provided that the small size has not encouraged risk-prone deployment patterns and ceteris paribus). Smallness and simplicity may make safe behaviors more affordable and assertive control more tractable, ceteris paribus, but they do not in and of themselves constitute safe behavior. It is one thing to say that minor proliferators will find it easier to maintain smaller arsenals than they would larger arsenals. It is another thing to say that they will, in fact, maintain small arsenals adequately. The Iraqi "arsenal" was so small that it was nothing more than a laboratory design, but we know from postwar inspectors that it would have been prone to accidental use if it had been built—perhaps precisely because Iraq was forced to design its weapon in secret and with scant resources.23


Smaller arsenals will have insufficient training to avoid command instability in a crisis – even if they are simpler the increase in other dangers more than offsets this

Feaver ’97 (Peter, Ass. Prof. Pol. Sci. – Duke, Security Studies, “Neooptimists and the Enduring Problem of Nuclear Proliferation”, 6:4, p. 102-103)

Are small and simple arsenals really more responsive in a crisis? Neooptimists dismiss some of the most damning near-nuclear accidents from die cold war era as merely a consequence of die rigid and complex standard operating procedures associated with the large superpower arsenals. Seng claims, with rather unjustified enthusiasm, that smaller arsenals should be able to "spin on a dime."27 He overstates his case. Given a certain level of operational skill, it is easier to improvise with a smaller than a larger arsenal. Will minor proliferators, however, have die kind of military that is proficient enough to improvise at all? Some will and some will not. Doctrinal skill varies widely across different militaries and even within different subelements of the same military.28 Of course, the nuclear operators may be die better trained elements of die minor proliferator, but not under conditions of opacity. Improvisation and operational flexibility are not simply a matter of size; they must be trained into military units. This argument points to a limitation of small-N comparative static analyses. Holding everything constant and then varying the size of the arsenal yields an expectation that command and control problems will ease. If you take the exact same country with the exact same deployment and skill profile, it will find controlling a smaller arsenal easier than controlling a larger arsenal. Counterfactual reasoning supports this logic, but since there are so few cases of nuclear proliferation to study we cannot be very confident of the magnitude of the effect.29 Since the purpose of neooptimism is to assuage us on the safeness of minor proliferators, it is not sufficient to know whether a certain kind of proliferation is relatively safer than another. We must also know how much safer—that is, whether it is safe enough to compensate for other problems. One must also examine whether the factor that is driving the smallness will also result in changes in other relevant parameters, for instance the alert level of the arsenal or the reliability of the weapon's design. One must also have some sense of the magnitude of effect and of other necessary conditions; the smaller size may only afford a meaningful improvement in nuclear command and control during a crisis if it is coupled with a competent military. Weighing all the factors in the U.S. case, for instance, it is not at all certain that nuclear operations were safer in the late-1950s than in the late-1960s; the arsenal was smaller in the earlier period, but the advantages of size were offset by a variety of unsafe operational practices including airborne alerts, a relatively wide scope of predelegated authority, an absence of use-control devices, and a general ignorance among top-level civilian leaders about operational realities. In sum, neooptimists have helpfully fleshed out the ways in which small size facilitates command and control. In so doing, however, they may be overstating both the virtues of smallness and simplicity and the likelihood that minor proliferators will adopt the specific kinds of small and simple arsenals necessary for the rosy scenario.



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