Link – US Exports Offset Russia (Ukraine)

Widespread prolif risks nuclear war—escalates ongoing disputes and risk of terrorist acquisition

Barry, PhD in International Relations, Co-Founder/Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, "Nuclear Proliferation: Avoiding a Pandemic," 9/29/08 www.stimson.org/books-reports/nuclear-proliferation-avoiding-a-pandemic/ AD 9/19/12

The world has been spared the detonation of a nuclear device in anger for more than 60 years. It’s not clear that this remarkable restraint can be sustained indefinitely, particularly in the event of wide-spread proliferation. The East-West conflict during the Cold War was an abstract, ideological struggle. Even then, we came perilously close to nuclear exchanges during the Berlin Crises in the 1950s, the Cuba Crisis in 1962, and at several other times. If nuclear weapons come into the hands of nations with histories of hatred and warfare and on-going disputes, deterrence becomes a far more risky proposition and the likelihood of nuclear warfare far greater. Just think of nuclear weapons in the hands of Israel and Iran in the context of a war between Israel and Hezbollah and Syria in Lebanon. Alternatively, think how unstable Northeast Asia might become if China, Japan, Korea, and Russia all have nuclear weapons. Moreover, every additional nuclear weapon state means a greater risk that nuclear devices come into the hands of terrorist organizations. America’s security depends on the next administration placing the highest priority on reining in the nuclear danger.

Widespread prolif risks nuclear war, shifts traditional interstate relations

Henry D., Executive Director, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; Former Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, former Chairmen of the DoD's Prolif Countermeasures Working Group, adjunct professor at The Institute of World Politics "Avoiding a Nuclear Crowd," 6/1/09, Hoover Institution at Stanford Policy Review, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/5534 AD 9/19/12

Combine these proliferation trends with the others noted above and one could easily create the perfect nuclear storm: Small differences between nuclear competitors that would put all actors on edge; an overhang of nuclear materials that could be called upon to break out or significantly ramp up existing nuclear deployments; and a variety of potential new nuclear actors developing weapons options in the wings. In such a setting, the military and nuclear rivalries between states could easily be much more intense than before. Certainly each nuclear state’s military would place an even higher premium than before on being able to weaponize its military and civilian surpluses quickly, to deploy forces that are survivable, and to have forces that can get to their targets and destroy them with high levels of probability. The advanced military states will also be even more inclined to develop and deploy enhanced air and missile defenses and long-range, precision guidance munitions, and to develop a variety of preventative and preemptive war options. Certainly, in such a world, relations between states could become far less stable. Relatively small developments — e.g., Russian support for sympathetic near-abroad provinces; Pakistani-inspired terrorist strikes in India, such as those experienced recently in Mumbai; new Indian flanking activities in Iran near Pakistan; Chinese weapons developments or moves regarding Taiwan; state-sponsored assassination attempts of key figures in the Middle East or South West Asia, etc. — could easily prompt nuclear weapons deployments with “strategic” consequences (arms races, strategic miscues, and even nuclear war). As Herman Kahn once noted, in such a world “every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.”23 In short, we may soon see a future that neither the proponents of nuclear abolition, nor their critics, would ever want. None of this, however, is inevitable.

Impact – Balkans Conflict Escalates

Baltic conflict escalates to global nuclear war

(Steven, “Ukraine + NATO = Nuclear War,” http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/22397-ukraine-nato-nuclear-war)

Russian aggression draws in Baltic states – leads to nuclear war

Economist 3-29

(“All for one,” Editorial staff, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21599771-alliance-must-banish-suspicion-it-would-not-always-defend-its-eastern-flank-all)

Instead, the West should forcefully reassert NATO’s willingness to defend itself and make it clear that all members of the alliance share its complete protection (see article). In particular, that means other NATO members sending at least a few troops, missiles and aircraft to the Baltics (or to neighbouring Poland), and making clear that bigger forces will follow if there is any continued aggression from Mr Putin.¶ Why go that far? Plenty of people in the West would prefer to “wait and see”. The Balts have the promise of protection, they point out, so there is only danger in provoking Mr Putin. Wishful thinkers say that having made his point in Crimea, he will probably stop while he is still ahead. Instead of ratcheting up tension, the West should provide “off-ramps” that steer Russia towards détente. Other hard-nosed foreign-policy “realists” argue that Russia has legitimate interests in its near-abroad. It is madness, they say, to pick a fight when Russia and the West have other business to be getting on with—Syria’s civil war, Iran’s nuclear programme and China’s growing power.¶ Hot foot from the cold war¶ In fact the opposite is true. The greatest provocation to Mr Putin is to fail to stand up to him, and the least costly time to resist him is now. Emboldened, Mr Putin could test NATO’s resolve by changing the facts on the ground (grabbing a slice of Russian-speaking Latvia, say, or creating a corridor through Lithuania to Kaliningrad) and daring the alliance to risk nuclear war. More likely he would try destabilisation—the sabotage of Baltic railways; the killing of Russians by agents provocateurs; strikes, protests and anonymous economy-wide cyber-attacks. That would make life intolerable for the Balts, without necessarily eliciting a response from the West.¶ Either way, if the Balts begin to disintegrate, it would leave the West with a much less palatable choice than it has today: NATO would have to walk away from its main premise, that aggression against one is aggression on all, or it would have to respond—and to restore deterrence, NATO’s response would have to be commensurately greater. That in turn would pose the immediate threat of escalation

Balkan conflict escalates to bitter front- empirics prove

Sontag,92

[Foreign Affairs editor for the New York Times with a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Geography from Harvard University; “War in the Balkans Creates a Bitter U.S. Front”; June 11th, 1992; http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/11/nyregion/war-in-the-balkans-creates-a-bitter-us-front.html-EW]

With a cigarette dangling from his lips, Vladimir Radojicic, a 34-year-old photographer, projected an unflappable cool during a late-night gathering of Yugoslav immigrants in Manhattan. But when the evening's video began, a taped tour of downtown Belgrade, the tears rolled quietly down his face. Mr. Radojicic, son of a Croatian mother and a Serbian father, is caught quite personally between the warring ethnic factions in his native land. Drafted by both the Serbian and the Croatian armies last fall, he fled instead to the United States. Here, the tensions causing the Balkans to implode have revived Old World rivalries among the more than one million Americans of Balkan descent. Outside Detroit, rival Yugoslav and Albanian youth gangs, the "Yugos" and "Albos," have traded fists and sticks in mall parking lots. In Cleveland, Serbian and Croatian soccer teams have canceled matches because violence during games was escalating. In the Chicago area, a Serbian monastery was defaced with anti-Serbian vulgarities, while a Croatian cultural center was spray-painted with anti-Croatian slogans. The Chicago Commission on Human Rights reported death threats and bomb threats to Serbian community leaders. So Mr. Radojicic did not exactly escape the war he tried to leave behind. "I could not choose to go fight the family of my mother or to go fight the family of my father, so I chose out," Mr. Radojicic (pronounced rah-DOE-yeh-cheech) said. "But now I watch on television as my country falls apart -- everybody guilty and nobody guilty." For Mr. Radojicic and his fellow immigrants, the strife in the Balkans -- which has caused an estimated 16,000 deaths so far -- is more than a war that most Americans can't quite follow. Monitored by short-wave radio, it is their daily obsession, a conflict tearing up not only their relatives' lives back home but their lives here as well. "My phone is constantly bombarded, like Sarajevo," said the Rev. Slavko Soldo, of the Croatian Roman Catholic Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodus in Manhattan. Following the collapse of Communism in Yugoslavia, relations between Serbs and Croats and Albanians and Slovenes here, generally distant, have turned hostile, but, on the whole, in subtle ways. When Vlade Divac, a Serbian center for the Los Angeles Lakers, met Drazen Petrovic, a Croatian guard for the New Jersey Nets, on the court at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., he was snubbed publicly by his former teammate on the Yugoslav National Team. "Hate begets hate," said Darlene Gakovich, a Serbian-American who lives in Madison, Wis. "We have a longtime friend, a Croatian-American, who will not so much as say hello to us now." In New York, car tires have been punctured, and a war of threats has been waged over fax machines. But the hostilities are defused, and diffused, by the relatively small size of the Serbian and Croatian communities in the ethnic expanse of the metropolitan region. In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the 1990 Census counted about 85,000 people of Balkan ancestry, adding together those who identify themselves as Yugoslav, Croat, Serb, Slovene, Bosnian and Herzegovinian. The Serbs and Croats themselves, however, estimate a population of more than 150,000. Concentrated in Queens, particularly in Astoria and Ridgewood, their religious and social lives radiate around two churches in Manhattan -- the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, at 16 West 26th Street, and the Croatian Roman Catholic Church, at 502 West 41st Street. Shifting Power Of Local Factions Following the United Nations' recognition of Croatia as an independent republic at the end of May and the economic sanctions it imposed on Yugoslavia, the balance of power, so to speak, between local Serbs and Croats has shifted. For years, the Croatian-Americans in the New York area, who outnumber the Serbian-Americans, have felt like outsiders to the official Yugoslav presence here. (Some Serbs who fled Communism did, too.) What they had was a grassy area for soccer and picnicking in northern New Jersey called Croatian Land -- "two acres where we could be free and independent," said Josip Kristic (pronounced YOH-seep KREE-steech), director of the Croatian Information Center, in Queens. But at the end of May, things changed. Thousands of Croats gathered to watch the red, white and blue flag of Croatia hoisted over the United Nations. And last week, Croatia's first ambassador arrived to open a mission. At the same time, the Yugoslav consulate, the national airline offices, and the Yugoslav cultural center in New York were closed. A Serbian lawyer employed by JAT, the national airline, said agents of the Treasury Department, who were instructed to seize all Yugoslav assets in this country, arrived without notice last week -- "like a scene from 'The Untouchables,' " she said. "I was so scared," she said. "All of a sudden I was an enemy of the people." Many Croats used to say that news organizations in the United States favored the Serbs, but Serbs are now outraged at what they see as a bias against them. Angry about what he called the "lack of realism" in recent coverage of the war, which followed declarations of independence by Croatia and Slovenia a year ago, the pastor of the Serbian church in Manhattan declined to be interviewed. "In the media, the Serbs have been demonized beyond recognition," said Nadja Tesich, a Serbian-American writer in Manhattan.

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