Saudi Prolif Terrorism
Saudi prolif causes Nuclear Terrorism
Blank 2003 (Stephen, “Saudi Arabia's nuclear gambit” Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK07Ak01.html)
Obviously, that kind of transformation of the proliferation situation raises the possibility of several more crises in different regions of the world, all of which could occur in relatively simultaneous fashion and which would all involve the linked threats of either terrorists with access to nuclear weapons or states possessing those weapons which extend their protection and deterrence to those terrorists. Furthermore, there are still more considerations. If one looks at the history of Pakistan's nuclear program there immediately arises the issue of Pakistan's widely-reported assistance to North Korea, which at the same time is apparently proliferating missiles all over the Middle East. Adding Saudi Arabia to this chain of proliferators only extends the process of secondary or tertiary proliferation by which new nuclear powers assist other nuclear "wannabes" to reach that state. Thus, the threat expressed by the US of being at the crossroads of radicalism and technology becomes that much more real
Extinction
Sid Ahmed 2004 (Mohamed, Al-Ahram Political Analyst, Éxtinction!,” http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm)
What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This would lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
Impact - Terrorism
US- Saudi Relations solves terrorism
Cordesman 2004 (Anthony, Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is Co-Director of the Center's Middle East Program. He is also a military analyst for ABC and a Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown “Ten Reasons for Reforging the US and Saudi Relationship” Saudi American Forum. Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is Co-Director of the Center's Middle East Program. He is also a military analyst for ABC and a Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown http://www.saudi-american forum.org/Newsletters2004/SAF_Item_Of_Interest_2004_02_01.htm)
Both the US and Saudi Arabia now face a common threat from terrorism, both in terms of internal and regional threats. Saudi Arabia may have been slow to recognize how serious this threat is, but since the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, it has become clear that it is as real for Saudis as it is for Americans. It is also clear that dealing with terrorism requires close cooperation between the two countries, that Saudi Arabia needs US assistance in modernizing many aspects of its internal security operations, and that the US needs Saudi cooperation in reducing the flow of money to terrorists and their ability to manipulate Islamic causes. Furthermore, it is clear that political, social, and economic forces are at work where this cooperation will have to go on for years – if not decades – after Bin Laden and Al Qaida have ceased to be a threat.
Relations solve terrorism
USA Today 2002 (Barbara slavin, LEXIS)
The agreement to go after the two branches was reached while Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was in Saudi Arabia last week and is meant to demonstrate growing U.S.-Saudi cooperation against terrorism before Vice President Cheney’s scheduled arrival here on Sturday. U.S.-Saudi relations have been severely strained since Sept. 11, and both governments are eager to prove that their 50-year-old alliance remains strong. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and crashed a jetliner in Pennsylvania were natives of Saudi Arabia, as is Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attacks. Saudi cooperation is crucial in the war against terrorism in general and against terrorism financing in particular. Instructed by their Muslim faith to donate 2.5% of their net worth each year, the oil-rich Saudis give millions of dollars to religion-based charities that operate throughout the world.
Impact – Dollar Heg
Relations key to Petro Dollar and Global Economy
Freeman 2004 (Chas, Middle East Policy Council President, Federal News Service, p. lexis)
The second matter, and far more grave in many ways, is the demonstration of the end of the special relationship with Saudi Arabia; the end of the discounts and the end of the Saudi emphasis on primacy in the American market signals -- because there's another issue you didn't mention, which we will get into, and that is the part of this special relationship has been the defense of the dollar by the Saudis. Twice within OPEC, other members, Iran in particular, have moved to eliminate the dollar as the unit of account for the oil trade. Were this to occur in the current context of massive budget, balance of trade and balance of payments, deficits for the United States, the results could be absolutely devastating to the global economy and to our own. The reason the Saudis defended the dollar on the two previous occasions was not economic analysis but political affinity for the United States. Question if that affinity is no longer there, will they play that role? And this is a large issue with people like Paul Volcker, saying there is a very substantial danger within the next five years of some sort of dollar collapse, and this is not a minor, minor matter.
Petro Dollar key to Hege
Looney 2004, (Robert E, professor of National Security Affairs, and Associate Chairman of Instruction, Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. “From Petrodollars to Petroeuros: Are the Dollar's Days as an International Reserve Currency Drawing to an End?” Middle East Policy No. 1 Vol. 11, p. 26 http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/nov03/middleEast.asp
Political power and prestige. The benefits of "power and prestige" are nebulous. Nevertheless, the loss of key currency status and the loss of international creditor status have sometimes been associated, along with such non-economic factors as the loss of colonies and military power, in discussions of the historical decline of great powers. Causality may well flow from key currency status to power and prestige and in the opposite direction as well.[8] On a broader scale, Niall Ferguson[9] notes that one pillar of American dominance can be found in the way successive U.S. government sought to take advantage of the dollar's role as a key currency. Quoting several noted authorities, he notes that [the role of the dollar] enabled the United States to be "far less restrained…than all other states by normal fiscal and foreign exchange constraints when it came to funding whatever foreign or strategic policies it decided to implement." As Robert Gilpin notes, quoting Charles de Gaulle, such policies led to a 'hegemony of the dollar" that gave the U.S. "extravagant privileges." In David Calleo's words, the U.S. government had access to a "gold mine of paper" and could therefore collect a subsidy form foreigners in the form of seignorage (the profits that flow to those who mint or print a depreciating currency). The web contains many more radical interactions of the dollar's role. Usually something along the following lines: World trade is now a game in which the U.S. produces dollars and the rest of the world produces things that dollars can buy. The world's interlinked economies no longer trade to capture a comparative advantage; they compete in exports to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign debts and to accumulate dollar reserves to sustain the exchange value of their domestic currencies…. This phenomenon is known as dollar hegemony, which is created by the geopolitically constructed peculiarity that critical commodities, most notably oil, are denominated in dollars. Everyone accepts dollars because dollars can buy oil. The recycling of petro-dollars is the price the U.S. has extracted from oil-producing countries for U.S. tolerance of the oil-exporting cartel since 1973.[10] America's coercive power in the world is based as much on the dollar's status as the global reserve currency as on U.S. military muscle. Everyone needs oil, and to pay for it, they must have dollars. To secure dollars, they must sell their goods to the U.S., under terms acceptable to the people who rule America. The dollar is way overpriced, but it's the only world currency. Under the current dollars-only arrangement, U.S. money is in effect backed by the oil reserves of every other nation.[11] While it is tempting to dismiss passages of this sort as uninformed rants, they do contain some elements of truth. There are tangible benefits that accrue to the country whose currency is a reserve currency. The real question is: if this situation is so intolerable and unfair, why hasn't the world ganged up on the United States and changed the system? Why haven't countries like Libya and Iran required something like euros or gold dinars in payment for oil? After all, with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 the International Monitary Fund's Standard Drawing Rights (unit of account) was certainly an available alternative to the dollar.[12]
Heg Solves Nuclear War
Khalizad, 1995 (Zalmay, Analyst at the RAND, Washington Quarterly, Spring)
Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange.
Economic collapse leads to nuclear extinction
Bearden 2000 (Thomas E., Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and director of the Association of Distinguished American Scientists, CEO of CTEC Inc., Fellow Emeritus at the Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study, 6/24/2K, "The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly", http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm )
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea {[7]} launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China -- whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States -- attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself {[8]}. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
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