Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File

AT: U.S. Russia War

(a) Limited nuclear war in the periphery. A war breaks out in the Middle East, and resort is made to nuclear weapons, killing a few hundred thousand people. The United States and the Soviet Union place their nuclear forces on the highest alert. As the tension continues to build up, a state of emergency is declared in the US. Normal democratic procedures are suspended, and 'dissidents' are rounded up. A similar process occurs in many countries allied militarily to the US, and also within the Soviet bloc. A return to the pre-crisis state of affairs does not occur for years or decades. As well as precipitating bitter political repression, the crisis contributes to an increased arms race, especially among nonnuclear and small nuclear powers, as no effective sanctions are applied to those who used nuclear weapons. Another similar limited nuclear war and superpower crisis becomes likely ... or perhaps the scene shifts to scenario b or c. (b) Limited nuclear war between the superpowers. A limited exchange of nuclear weapons between the US and the Soviet Union occurs, either due to accident or as part of a threat-counterthreat situation. A sizable number of military or civilian targets are destroyed, either in the US or the Soviet Union or in allied states, and perhaps 5 or 10 million people are killed. As in scenario a, states of emergency are declared, political dissent repressed and public outrage channelled into massive military and political mobilisation to prepare for future confrontations and wars. Scenario c becomes more likely. (c) Global nuclear war. A massive nuclear exchange occurs, killing 200 million people in the US, Soviet Union and Europe. National governments, though decimated, survive and apply brutal policies to obtain economic and military recovery, brooking no dissent. In the wake of the disaster, authoritarian civilian or military regimes take control in countries relatively unscathed by the war, such as Australia, Japan and Spain. The road is laid to an even more devastating World War IV. Many other similar scenarios could be presented. One feature of these scenarios is familiar: the enormous scale of physical destruction and human suffering, which is only dimly indicated by the numbers of dead and injured, whether this is hundreds, or hundreds of millions. This destruction and suffering is familiar largely because many people have repeatedly warned of the human consequences of nuclear war. What has been almost entirely absent from peace movement analysis and planning is any consideration of the political consequences of nuclear war. In this paper I critically analyse the idea that nuclear war will kill most people on earth, and present some possible reasons for the prevalence of this and related beliefs. I argue that exaggerated ideas about nuclear war are both a cause and an effect of a limited political analysis which underlies much activity directed towards eliminating nuclear war. 

U.S. President Barack Obama made a good start at resetting the relationship with Russia in his first visit to Moscow. He made concrete progress on important agenda items. The agreement on strategic arms, measures to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, broadening cooperation on Afghanistan, and reestablishing a substantive exchange between the U.S. and Russian military take the agenda he and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev agreed upon in London a significant step forward. No less important is that the presidents agreed to a structure to oversee the future relations and took personal responsibility for the work of that institution. Obama also carried his "vision of the possible" to the Russian people more broadly. The speech at the New Economic School was addressed to the coming generation and spoke to exactly the right points. We shall have to see whether the Russian people, particularly a quite cynical younger generation, listened. But Obama’s points about the young taking responsibility for a 21st century agenda and making the decisions that will shape it was on target. He effectively combined the sense of America committed to certain principles in a new era with a challenge to new Russia's emerging leaders to join us in tackling an agenda of the future.

Ext #2 – No War

No scenario for any conventional war going nuclear between the U.S. and Russia

Manning 0 (Robert Manning, Former C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies, and Director, Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, March 10, 2000, The Washington Post)

We don't want to go any lower because we need these weapons for nuclear deterrence, according to State Department spokesman James Rubin. But how many nukes do we need for deterrence to be credible? China, which President Clinton has talked of as a "strategic partner," has a grand total of 20 - count them - strategic warheads that could hit the United States. Nuclear wannabes like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq would have only a handful if they did manage to succeed in joining the nuclear club. Russia, which has 6,000 strategic warheads, is no longer an adversary. During the Cold War, it was not hard to envision a conventional war in Europe escalating into nuclear conflict. But today it is difficult to spin a plausible scenario in which the United States and Russia escalate hostilities into a nuclear exchange. Russia has no Warsaw Pact, and not much of a conventional force to speak of. Yet U.S. nuclear planners still base their targeting plans on prospective Russian targets, though no one will say so.

Russia doesn’t have the means or capabilities.

Rothstein et. al. 2k8(Linda, editor, Catherine, managing editor, and Jonas, assistant editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, BAS, November/December, http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd04rothstein)

Is an incoming nuclear missile attack plausible? Yes, but unlikely. The Cold War is over, and the ballistic missile threat from nuclear-capable nations is extremely minor. In February 2001, the Defense Intelligence Agency listed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "countries of concern" that might someday field long-range, WMD-capable missiles, and Russia and China as nations expanding their long-range missile programs. One presumes Iraq is now off the list. As to Iran and North Korea, both nations have decent missile capabilities, but Iran cannot strike the United States, and most analysts believe the same about North Korea, despite its boasts. On the other hand, North Korea has nuclear material, and Iran is believed to be working toward a nuclear weapons capability. China has a whopping 20 Dong Feng missiles that can reach America. (The United States has close to 6,000 operational strategic nuclear weapons, as the Bulletin's May/June "Nuclear Notebook" reported.) Russia's capabilities are more comparable to America's, and Russia is expanding its capabilities, according to the July/August "Nuclear Notebook," but a planned attack from Moscow is extremely improbable.

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