Jackson Vanik will pass – bipartisan support of congress and interest groups gives momentum

***Impact Debate***

2nc – overview

Only scenario for extinction

A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization. Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankind’s potential permanently.

Its probable - Russia will fight us if we force them

Bandow 12 (Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to Ronald Reagan “NATO and Libya: It's Time to Retire a Fading Alliance,” 1/2/12) http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13982&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatoRecentOpeds+(Cato+Recent+Op-eds)
The Cold War required an extraordinary defense commitment from the U.S. But no longer. Europe still matters, but it faces no genuine military threat. Whatever happens politically in Moscow, there will be no Red Army pouring armored divisions through Germany's Fulda Gap. Washington has much to worry about, but Europe is not on the list. Of course, the Europeans still have geopolitical concerns. Civil wars in the Balkans and Libya threatened refugee flows and economic disruption. However, the Europeans are capable of handling such issues. Potentially more dangerous is the situation in Eastern Europe and beyond, most notably Georgia and Ukraine. But not dangerous to America. The U.S. has survived most of its history with these lands successively part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Nor is there any evidence that Russia wants to forcibly reincorporate its "lost" territories into a renewed Soviet empire. Rather, Moscow appears to have retrogressed to a "great power" like Imperial Russia. The new Russia is concerned about international respect and border security. Threaten that, and war might result, as Georgia learned in 2008. It makes no sense for America to risk war on these nations' behalf. (In fact, with far more at stake Western Europe almost certainly won't do so.) Border security is vital for Russia. Preserving vibrant, boisterously independent countries along Russia's border is not vital for America. Supporting such countries might be nice, but is not worth war, especially nuclear war. And Moscow demonstrated that it is prepared to fight, even with a country nominally slated for NATO membership with a close military relationship with the U.S. It would be foolish to bet that Moscow would back down in any confrontation. Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the Russian General Staff, warned about the danger of continuing NATO expansion: "In certain conditions, I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons." The dramatic decline of Russia's conventional forces has increased Moscow's reliance on nuclear weapons as the great military equalizer.
And good relations are key to solve all global problems

Legvold, 09 (Foreign Affairs, Volume 88 No. 1 2009 http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora88&div=58&g_sent=1&collection=journals#672)
Reversing the collapse of US-Russian relations is one of the great tests facing the Obama administration. Among the major powers, Russia is the hard case,. And the stakes involved in getting US-Russian relations right are high—much higher than the leadership of either country has acknowledged or perhaps even realized so far. If the Obama administration can guide the relationship onto a more productive path, as it is trying to do, it will not only open the way for progress on the day’s critical issues—from nuclear security and energy security to climate change and peaceful change in the pose-Soviet area—but also be taking on a truly historic task. One of the blessings of the post-Cold War era has been the absence of strategic rivalry among great powers, a core dynamic of the previous 300 years in the history of international relations. Should it return, some combination of tensions between the United States, Russia, and China would likely be at its core. Ensuring that this does not happen constitutes the less noticed but more fateful foreign policy challenge facing this US president and the next. Washington has scant chance of mustering the will or the energy to face this challenge, however, without a clearer sense of the scale of the stakes involved. Every tally of the ways in which Russia matters begins, and rightly so, with nuclear weapons. Because the United States and Russia possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, they bear the responsibility for making their stocks safer by repairing the now-shattered strategic nuclear arms control regime. Their cooperation is also crucial if the gravely imperiled nuclear nonproliferation regime is to be saved. Then comes energy. Russia has 30 percent of the world’s gas reserves and sits astride the transport grid by which energy flows from the entire post-Soviet zone to the rest of the world. More recently, tensions have arisen over the Arctic’s hydrogen reserves—which are said to amount to 13-20 percent of the world’s total—not least because of the aggressive way in which Russia has asserted its claims over a large share of them. If the United States and Russia compete, rather than cooperate, over energy in Eurasia and add a military dimension to their disputed claims in the Arctic, as they have begun to do, the effects will be negative for far more than the prices of oil and gas. There is also the struggle against global terrorism, which will be sure to flag without strong collaboration between Washington and Moscow. And it has become clear that the help of Russia is needed if anything approaching stability is to have a chance in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Other issues are also critical but not always recognized as such. Making real progress toward coping with the climate change, including during negotiations at the 2009 UN conference on Climate Change, will depend on whether the three countries that emit 45 percent of the world’s green house gases—the United States, Russia, and China—can cooperate. Any effort to mitigate trafficking in humans, small arms, drugs, endangered species, counterfeit goods, and laundered money must focus on Russia, since these often come from or through that country. Blocking cyberattacks, keeping space safe for commerce and communications, and averting the return of the kind of military air surveillance common during the Cold War will involve Russia, first and foremost. And attempts to reform international financial and security institutions will be optimized only if Russia is given a chance to contribute constructively. If the United States’ interests in a relationship with Russia are this many and this great and if, as Undersecretary of State William Burns said of Washington and Moscow in April, “more unites us than divides us,” then the Obama administration will need to turn a page, and not simply tinker at the edges, as it redesigns US policy towards Russia. Turning a page means setting far more ambitious goals for the relationship than is currently fashionable and then consciously devising a strategy to reach them. It also means integrating the well-intentioned symbolic gestures Washington has made toward Russia recently as well as progress on concrete issues, such as arms control, Itan’s nuclear program, and Afghanistan, into a larger design.

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