10nfl1-Nukes-Cover
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| Rant #2 This topic marks the beginning of my sixth year of involvement with debate, and my fifth year of involvement with LD. In the aforementioned span of time, I have yet to encounter a topic where I am not entirely sure what the affirmatives ground is. This is the first such topic. Granted, we know that affirmative ground can be loosely described as Nukes bad, yo What is less clear, however, is whether the statement Nukes bad, yo means that the affirmative gets to advocate a hypothetical world in which there are no nuclear weapons, or if they have to defend some process of disarmament. Can the affirmative draw their impacts from a world in which all nuclear states have magically gotten rid of their nuclear weapons If so, does the utopian ideal of a nonnuclear world mean that the affirmative gets access to all of the tremendous benefits that would arise in such a world Or, does the affirmative have to concede that this world is not possible (either in a literal sense, or in a debate theory sense, and instead draw impacts from some reduction of nukes, rather than a total elimination Iʼm not entirely sure what the answers to any of these questions are. Understanding affirmative ground is important because affirmative ground defines what negative ground is. Depending on how the previous questions are answered, the negative has 10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 44 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com easy access to some arguments in certain situations, and has almost no access to the same arguments in other situations. For example, if the affirmative gets to draw its offense from some imagined world that is sans nuclear weapons, then nuclear deterrence arguments do not make a lot of sense on the negative. Even if the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is true, the risk of nuclear catastrophe is still greater in the negative world than in the affirmative world. Deterrence doesnʼt matter if there are no nuclear weapons. This is not to say that deterrence arguments cannot be made if the affirmative gets to defend a totally nonnuclear world (negative debaters can still defend that nuclear weapons deter against conventional warfare, biological warfare etc, but rather that deterrence arguments (probably the simplest negative ground on the topic) are substantially harder to access. Another relevant consideration in terms of the distribution of affirmative and negative ground is whether the affirmative has to defend an actual process of disarmament. If the affirmative does, in fact, have this burden, this greatly increases potential ground for the negative. In this case, the negative can defend not only that nuclear weapons are good, but that disarmament is bad. These are two separate things. Disarmament is a lengthy, complicated process that facilitates a great deal of consequences. The negative can fairly easily defend why the process of disarmament is a bad thing, irrespective of the relative goodness or badness of nuclear weapons themselves. Regardless of how these questions are answered, the existence of these questions is a good indication that debates over what the affirmative has to defend, or rather, gets to defend, will be commonplace on this topic. I cant wait Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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