Nuclear proliferation increases the probability of international peace, deters wars

Nuclear proliferation is key to stability and deterrence-Iran proves

“Why Iran Should Get the Bomb,” Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137731/kenneth-n-waltz/why-iran-should-get-the-bomb.

In 1991, the historical rivals India and Pakistan signed a treaty agreeing not to target each other's nuclear facilities. They realized that far more worrisome than their adversary's nuclear deterrent was the instability produced by challenges to it. Since then, even in the face of high tensions and risky provocations, the two countries have kept the peace. Israel and Iran would do well to consider this precedent. If Iran goes nuclear, Israel and Iran will deter each other, as nuclear powers always have. There has never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, deterrence will apply, even if the Iranian arsenal is relatively small. No other country in the region will have an incentive to acquire its own nuclear capability, and the current crisis will finally dissipate, leading to a Middle East that is more stable than it is today. ¶ For that reason, the United States and its allies need not take such pains to prevent the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon. Diplomacy between Iran and the major powers should continue, because open lines of communication will make the Western countries feel better able to live with a nuclear Iran. But the current sanctions on Iran can be dropped: they primarily harm ordinary Iranians, with little purpose. ¶ Most important, policymakers and citizens in the Arab world, Europe, Israel, and the United States should take comfort from the fact that history has shown that where nuclear capabilities emerge, so, too, does stability. When it comes to nuclear weapons, now as ever, more may be better.

Even if war is “possible”, nuclear proliferation is critical for deterrence, four reasons and empirics prove

First, wars can be fought in the face of deter­rent threats, but the higher the stakes and the closer a country moves toward winning them, the more surely that country invites retaliation and risks its own destruction. States are not likely to run major risks for minor gains. Wars between nuclear states may escalate as the loser uses larger and larger warheads. Fearing that states will want to draw back. Not escalation but de-escalation becomes likely. War remains possible but victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. If states can score only small gains because large ones risk retaliation, they have little incentive to fight.¶ ¶ Second, states act with less care if the expect­ed costs of war are low and with more care if they are high. In 1853 and 1854, Britain and France expected to win an easy victory if they went to war against Russia. Prestige abroad and political popularity at home would be gained. if not much else. The vagueness of their plans was matched by the carelessness of their acts. In blundering into the Crimean War they acted hastily on scant information, pandered to their people's frenzy for war, showed more concern for an ally's whim than for the adversary's situation, failed to specify the changes in behaviour that threats were supposed to bring. and inclined towards testing strength first and bargaining second. In sharp contrast, the presence of nuclear weapons makes States exceedingly cautious. Think of Kennedy and Khruschev in the Cuban missile crisis. Why fight if you can't win much and might lose everything?¶ ¶ Third, the question demands a negative answer all the more insistently when the deter rent deployment of nuclear weapons contributes more to a country's security than does conquest of territory. A country with a deter-rent strategy does not need the extent of terri­tory required by a country relying on a conven­tional defence in depth. A deterrent strategy makes it unnecessary for a country to fight for the sake of increasing its security, and this removes a major cause of war.¶ ¶ Fourth, deterrent effect depends both on one's capabilities and on the will one has to use them. The will of the attacked, striving to preserve its own territory, can ordinarily be presumed stronger than the will of the attacker striving to annex someone else's territory. Knowing this, the would-be attacker is further inhibited.¶ ¶

2NC-A2 Outdated Evidence

Nuclear proliferation is a key instrument of peace

Robert Spalding 13, fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Nuclear weapons are the U.S.’s instruments of peace,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nuclear-weapons-are-the-uss-instruments-of-peace/2013/10/04/6f6969ba-2d14-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_story.html

The U.S. rebalance — or “pivot” — to the Asia-Pacific must be peaceful and affordable. Unfortunately, our country neglects the one aspect of national defense that can deliver this outcome: nuclear weapons.¶ As I entered active duty as a bomber pilot at the end of the Cold War, I was among those who questioned the continued relevance of nuclear weapons. The Cold War was over and, thankfully, we had escaped nuclear armageddon. I believed it was time to put away the bomb and focus on more relevant conventional capabilities. Lately, however, I have become keenly aware of the need for our nuclear force.¶ The United States won the Cold War by maintaining a credible nuclear force to stand in opposition to the Soviet Union. U.S. nuclear weapons defended Europe against a numerically superior conventional force. Missile-equipped submarines and the bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles of Strategic Air Command were the nuclear triad that deterred the Soviets from attacking. These forces were at the forefront of our defense strategy and received priority in both rhetoric and ­funding.¶ The U.S. nuclear force exists to keep a threshold on the level of violence. This is especially important when disagreements between nuclear powers move beyond dialogue. While numerous smaller wars existed in proxy states during the Cold War, direct conflict between nuclear powers always deescalated back to dialogue. It is possible that the international body politic that arose after World War II is the reason we have not witnessed a third world war. Yet it is also possible that has not occurred because the threat of nuclear holocaust is too menacing. More likely, it is a combination of the two.¶ To be credible, nuclear weapons must be a key component underpinning relevant U.S. foreign policy. It erodes morale and encourages perpetually low funding when the Nuclear Posture Review adds “as long as nuclear weapons exist” to the phrase “safe, secure and effective,” as if it is a foregone conclusion that these weapons will be eliminated. Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, France, Britain and North Korea all treat nuclear weapons as a key component in their nation’s strategy, and they are modernizing weapons and/or delivery systems.¶ Nuclear weapons are instruments of peace. Airmen and sailors nobly ensure that nuclear conflict will be deterred by being ready to use them. Americans may feel guilty for possessing such terrible capacity to destroy life. Despite their distastefulness, however, nuclear weapons probably have saved lives. A new day dawned on Aug. 6, 1945. Many who worked on the Manhattan Project believed that they had condemned the world. They could not have known that they might have liberated it. Since Aug. 9, 1945, approximately 7 million to 10 million people have died from conflict. Before the introduction of nuclear weapons, two world wars alone led to the deaths of 70 million to 100 million — a difference of a decimal point.¶ Nuclear weapons are an affordable deterrent. The cost of the triad represents less than 3 percent of the $526 billion Defense Department budget. In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service lost about $16 billion, or three times the amount it cost U.S. taxpayers for intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers, two-thirds of the triad. Although the nuclear budget needs to rise to offset the more than 20 years of neglect in modernization, a modest increase would barely register in the overall defense budget.¶

2NC-Focus on Nuclear War Bad

Nuclear war may be bad, but the aff’s concentration on the magnitude of nuclear destruction only obscures the benefits of nuclear proliferation through deterrence.

Kenneth Waltz 81, professor at UC Berkeley and Columbia University, one of the most prominent scholars in international relations, founder of neorealism theory, 1981, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better,” Adelphi Papers, https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/waltz1.htm.

Countries more readily run the risks of war when defeat, if it comes, is distant and is expected to bring only limited damage. Given such expectations, leaders do not have to be insane to sound the trumpet and urge their people to be bold and courageous in the pursuit of victory. The outcome of battles and the course of campaigns are hard to foresee because so many things affect them, including the shifting allegiance and determination of alliance members. Predicting the result of conventional wars has proved difficult.¶ ¶ Uncertainty about outcomes does not work decisively against the fighting of wars in con­ventional worlds. Countries armed with con­ventional weapons go to war knowing that even in defeat their suffering will be limited. Calculations about nuclear war are differently made. Nuclear worlds call for and encourage a different kind of reasoning. If countries armed with nuclear weapons go to war, they do so knowing that their suffering may be unlimited. Of course, it also may not be. But that is not the kind of uncertainty that encourages anyone to use force. In a conventional world, one is uncertain about winning or losing. In a nuclear world, one is uncertain about surviving or being annihilated. If force is used and not kept within limits, catastrophe will result. That prediction is easy to make because it does not require close estimates of opposing forces. The number of one's cities that can be severely damaged is at least equal to the number of strategic warheads an adversary can deliver. Variations of number mean little within wide ranges. The expected effect of the deterrent achieves an easy clarity because wide margins of error in estimates of probable damage do not matter. Do we expect to lose one city or two, two cities or ten? When these are the pertinent questions, we stop thinking about running risks and start worrying about how to avoid them. In a conventional world, deterrent threats are ineffective because the damage threatened is distant, limited, and problematic. Nuclear weapons make military miscalcu­lations difficult and politically pertinent pre­diction easy.¶ ¶ Dissuading a would-be attacker by throwing up a good-looking defence may be as effective as dissuading him through deterrence. Begin­ning with President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara in the early 1960s, we have asked how we can avoid. or at least post­pone, using nuclear weapons rather than how we can mount the most effective defence. NATO's attempt to keep a defensive war con­ventional in its initial stage may guarantee that nuclear weapons, if used, will be used in a losing cause and in ways that multiply destruc­tion without promising victory. Early use of very small warheads may stop escalation. Defensive deployment, if it should fail to dis­suade, would bring small nuclear weapons into use before the physical, political and psychological environment had deteriorated. The chances of de-escalation are high if the use of nuclear weapons is carefully planned and their use is limited to the battlefield. We have rightly put strong emphasis on strategic deterrence, which makes large wars less likely, and wrongly slighted the question of whether nuclear weapons of low yield can effectively be used for defence, which would make any war at all less likely still.¶ ¶ Lesser nuclear states, with choices tightly constrained by scarcity of resources, may be forced to make choices that NATO has avoided, to choose nuclear defence or nuclear deter­rence rather than planning to fight a conven­tional war on a large scale and to use nuclear weapons only when conventional defences are breaking. Increased reliance on nuclear defence would decrease the credibility of nuclear deterrence. That would be acceptable if a nuclear defence were seen to be unassail­able. An unassailable defence is fully dis­suasive. Dissuasion is what is wanted whether by defence or by deterrence.¶ ¶ The likelihood of war decreases as deterrent and defensive capabilities increase. Whatever the number of nuclear states, a nuclear world is tolerable if those states are able to send con­vincing deterrent messages: It is useless to attempt to conquer because you will be severe­ly punished. A nuclear world becomes even more tolerable if states are able to send con­vincing defensive messages: It is useless to attempt to conquer because you cannot. Nuclear weapons and an appropriate doctrine for their use may make it possible to approach the defensive-deterrent ideal, a condition that would cause the chances of war to dwindle. Concentrating attention on the destructive power of nuclear weapons has obscured the important benefits they promise to states trying to coexist in a self-help world.

A2: Nuclear Terrorism

Nuclear proliferation actually prevents nuclear states from aggressive action, decreasing the likelihood of giving nuclear weapons to terrorists, empirics prove

Kenneth Waltz 12, professor at UC Berkeley and Columbia University, one of the most prominent scholars in international relations, founder of neorealism theory, July/August 2012,

“Why Iran Should Get the Bomb,” Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137731/kenneth-n-waltz/why-iran-should-get-the-bomb.

Nevertheless, even some observers and policymakers who accept that the Iranian regime is rational still worry that a nuclear weapon would embolden it, providing Tehran with a shield that would allow it to act more aggressively and increase its support for terrorism. Some analysts even fear that Iran would directly provide terrorists with nuclear arms. The problem with these concerns is that they contradict the record of every other nuclear weapons state going back to 1945. History shows that when countries acquire the bomb, they feel increasingly vulnerable and become acutely aware that their nuclear weapons make them a potential target in the eyes of major powers. This awareness discourages nuclear states from bold and aggressive action. Maoist China, for example, became much less bellicose after acquiring nuclear weapons in 1964, and India and Pakistan have both become more cautious since going nuclear. There is little reason to believe Iran would break this mold. ¶ As for the risk of a handoff to terrorists, no country could transfer nuclear weapons without running a high risk of being found out. U.S. surveillance capabilities would pose a serious obstacle, as would the United States' impressive and growing ability to identify the source of fissile material. Moreover, countries can never entirely control or even predict the behavior of the terrorist groups they sponsor. Once a country such as Iran acquires a nuclear capability, it will have every reason to maintain full control over its arsenal. After all, building a bomb is costly and dangerous. It would make little sense to transfer the product of that investment to parties that cannot be trusted or managed.

A2: Nuclear Accidents

No impact to accidents, 20 scenario proves, it has never led to nuclear war

Alan F. Phillips 98, part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, “20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War,” Nuclear Files, http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm.

On the American side many "false alarms" and significant accidents have been listed , ranging from trivial to very serious, during the Cold War . Probably many remain unknown to the public and the research community because of individuals' desire to avoid blame and maintain the good reputation of their unit or command. No doubt there have been as many mishaps on the Soviet Side.¶ Working with any new system, false alarms are more likely. The rising moon was misinterpreted as a missile attack during the early days of long-range radar. A fire at a broken gas pipeline was believed to be enemy jamming by laser of a satellite's infrared sensor when those sensors were first deployed.¶ The risks are illustrated by the following selection of mishap. If the people involved had exercised less caution, or if some unfortunate coincidental event had occurred, escalation to nuclear war can easily be imagined. Details of some of the events differ in different sources: where there have been disagreements, I have chosen to quote those from the carefully researched book, The Limits of Safety by Scott D. Sagan. Sagan gives references to original sources in all instances.¶ The following selections represent only a fraction of the false alarms that have been reported on the American side. Many probably remain unreported, or are hidden in records that remain classified. There are likely to have been as many on the Soviet Side which are even more difficult to access.¶ 1) November 5, 1956: Suez Crisis Coincidence¶ British and French Forces were attacking Egypt at the Suez Canal;. The Soviet Government had suggested to the U.S. that they combine forces to stop this by a joint military action, and had warned the British and French governments that (non-nuclear) rocket attacks on London and Paris were being considered. That night NORAD HQ received messages that:¶ (i) unidentified aircraft were flying over Turkey and the Turkish air force was on alert¶ (ii) 100 Soviet MIG-15's were flying over Syria¶ (iii) a British Canberra bomber had been shot down over Syria¶ (iv) the Soviet fleet was moving through the Dardanelles.¶ It is reported that in the U.S.A. General Goodpaster himself was concerned that these events might trigger the NATO operations plan for nuclear strikes against the U.S.S.R.¶ The four reports were all shown afterwards to have innocent explanations. They were due, respectively, to:¶ (i) a flight of swans¶ (ii) a routine air force escort (much smaller than the number reported) for the president of Syria, who was returning from a visit to Moscow¶ (iii) the Canberra bomber was forced down by mechanical problems¶ (iv) the Soviet fleet was engaged in scheduled routine exercises.¶ 2) November 24, 1961: BMEWS Communication Failure¶ On the night of November 24, 1961, all communication links went dead between SAC HQ and NORAD. The communication loss cut off SAC HQ from the three Ballistic Missile Early Warning Sites (BMEWS) at Thule (Greenland,) Clear (Alaska,) and Fillingdales (England,). There were two possible explanations facing SAC HQ: either enemy action, or the coincidental failure of all the communication systems, which had redundant and ostensibly independent routes, including commercial telephone circuits. All SAC bases in the United States were therefore alerted, and B-52 bomber crews started their engines, with instructions not to to take off without further orders. Radio communication was established with an orbiting B-52 on airborne alert, near Thule. It contacted the BMEWS stations by radio and could report that no attack had taken place.¶ The reason for the "coincidental" failure was the redundant routes for telephone and telegraph between NORAD and SAC HQ all ran through one relay station in Colorado. At that relay station a motor had overheated and caused interruption of all the lines.¶ 3) August 23, 1962: B-52 Navigation Error¶ SAC Chrome Dome airborne alert route included a leg from the northern tip of Ellesmore Island, SW across the Arctic Ocean to Barter Island, Alaska. On August 23, 1962, a B-52 nuclear armed bomber crew made a navigational error and flew 20 degrees too far north. They approached within 300 miles of Soviet airspace near Wrangel island, where there was believed to be an interceptor base with aircraft having an operational radius of 400 miles.¶ Because of the risk of repetition of such an error, in this northern area where other checks on Navigation are difficult to obtain, it was decided to fly a less provocative route in the future. However, the necessary orders had not been given by the time of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, so throughout that crisis the same northern route was being flown 24 hours a day.¶ 4) August-October, 1962: U2 Flights into Soviet Airspace¶ U2 high altitude reconnaissance flights from Alaska occasionally strayed unintentionally into Soviet airspace. One such episode occurred in August 1962. During the Cuban missile crisis on October of 1962, the U2 pilots were ordered not to fly within 100 miles of Soviet airspace.¶ On the night of October 26, for a reason irrelevant to the crisis, a U2 pilot was ordered to fly a new route, over the north pole, where positional checks on navigation were by sextant only. That night the aurora prevented good sextant readings and the plane strayed over the Chukotski Peninsula. Soviet MIG interceptors took off with orders to shoot down the U2. The pilot contacted his U.S. command post and was ordered to fly due east towards Alaska. He ran out of fuel while still over Siberia. In response to his S.O.S., U.S. F102-A fighters were launched to escort him on his glide to Alaska, with orders to prevent the MIG's from entering U.S. airspace. The U.S. interceptor aircraft were armed with nuclear missiles. These could have been used by any one of the F102-A pilots at his own discretion.¶ 5) October 24, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: A Soviet Satellite Explodes¶ On October 24, a Soviet satellite entered its own parking orbit, and shortly afterward exploded. Sir Bernard Lovell, director of the Jodrell Bank observatory wrote in 1968: "the explosion of a Russian spacecraft in orbit during the Cuban missile crisis... led the U.S. to believe that the USSR was launching a massive ICBM attack." The NORAD Command Post logs of the dates in question remain classified, possibly to conceal reaction to the event. Its occurrence is recorded, and U.S. space tracking stations were informed on October 31 of debris resulting from the breakup of "62 BETA IOTA."¶ 6) October 25, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Intruder in Duluth¶ At around midnight on October 25, a guard at the Duluth Sector Direction Center saw a figure climbing the security fence. He shot at it, and activated the "sabotage alarm." This automatically set off sabotage alarms at all bases in the area. At Volk Field, Wisconsin, the alarm was wrongly wired, and the Klaxon sounded which ordered nuclear armed F-106A interceptors to take off. The pilots knew there would be no practice alert drills while DEFCON 3 was in force, and they believed World War III had started.¶ Immediate communication with Duluth showed there was an error. By this time aircraft were starting down the runway. A car raced from command center and successfully signaled the aircraft to stop. The original intruder was a bear.¶ 7) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: ICBM Test Launch¶ At Vandenburg Air Force Base, California, there was a program of routine ICBM test flights. When DEFCON 3 was ordered all the ICBM's were fitted with nuclear warheads except one Titan missile that was scheduled for a test launch later that week. That one was launched for its test, without further orders from Washington, at 4a.m. on the 26th.¶ It must be assumed that Russian observers were monitoring U.S. missile activities as closely as U.S. observers were monitoring Russian and Cuban activities. They would have known of the general changeover to nuclear warheads, but not that this was only a test launch.¶ 8) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Unannounced Titan Missile Launch¶ During the Cuba crisis, some radar warning stations that were under construction and near completion were brought into full operation as fast as possible. The planned overlap of coverage was thus not always available.¶ A normal test launch of a Titan-II ICBM took place in the afternoon of October 26, from Florida to the South Pacific. It caused temporary concern at Moorestown Radar site until its course could be plotted and showed no predicted impact within the United States. It was not until after this event that the potential for a serious false alarm was realized, and orders were given that radar warning sites must be notified in advance of test launches, and the countdown be relayed to them.¶ 9) October 26, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Malstrom Air Force Base¶ When DEFCON 2 was declared on October 24, solid fuel Minuteman-1 missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base were being prepared for full deployment. The work was accelerated to ready the missiles for operation, without waiting for the normal handover procedures and safety checks. When one silo and missile were ready on October 26 no armed guards were available to cover transport from the normal separate storage, so the launch enabling equipment and codes were all placed in the silo. It was thus physically possible for a single operator to launch a fully armed missile at a SIOP target.¶ During the remaining period of the Crisis the several missiles at Malstrom were repeatedly put on and off alert as errors and defects were found and corrected. Fortunately no combination of errors caused or threatened an unauthorized launch, but in the extreme tension of the period the danger can be well imagined.¶ 10) October, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: NATO Readiness¶ It is recorded on October 22, that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and NATO Supreme Commander, General Lauris Norstad agreed not to put NATO on alert in order to avoid provocation of the U.S.S.R. When the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered DEFCON 3 Norstad was authorized to use his discretion in complying. Norstad did not order a NATO alert. However, several NATO subordinate commanders did order alerts to DEFCON 3 or equivalent levels of readiness at bases in West Germany, Italy, Turkey, and United Kingdom. This seems largely due to the action of General Truman Landon, CINC U.S. Air Forces Europe, who had already started alert procedures on October 17 in anticipation of a serious crisis over Cuba.¶ 11) October, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: British Alerts¶ When the U.S. SAC went to DEFCON 2, on October 24, Bomber Command (the U.K.) was carrying out an unrelated readiness exercise. On October 26, Air Marshall Cross, CINC of Bomber Command, decided to prolong the exercise because of the Cuba crisis, and later increased the alert status of British nuclear forces, so that they could launch in 15 minutes.¶ It seems likely that Soviet intelligence would perceive these moves as part of a coordinated plan in preparation for immediate war. They could not be expected to know that neither the British Minister of Defense nor Prime Minister Macmillian had authorized them.¶ It is disturbing to note how little was learned from these errors in Europe. McGeorge Bundy wrote in Danger and Survival (New York: Random House 1988), "the risk [of nuclear war] was small, given the prudence and unchallenged final control of the two leaders."¶ 12) October 28, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Moorestown False Alarm¶ Just before 9 a.m., on October 28, the Moorestown, New Jersey, radar operators informed the national command post that a nuclear attack was under way. A test tape simulating a missile launch from Cuba was being run, and simultaneously a satellite came over the horizon.¶ Operators became confused and reported by voice line to NORAD HQ that impact was expected 18 miles west of Tampa at 9:02 a.m. The whole of NORAD was reported, but before irrevocable action had taken place it was reported that no detonation had taken place at the predicted time, and Moorestown operators reported the reason for the false alarm.¶ During the incident overlapping radar's that should have confirmed or disagreed were not in operation . The radar post had not received routine information of satellite passage because the facility carrying out that task had been given other work for the duration of the crisis.¶ 13) October 28, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: False Warning Due to Satellite¶ At 5:26 p.m. on October 28, the Laredo radar warning site had just become operational. Operators misidentified a satellite in orbit as two possible missiles over Georgia and reported by voice line to NORAD HQ. NORAD was unable to identify that the warning came from the new station at Laredo and believed it to be from Moorestown, and therefore more reliable. Moorestown failed to intervene and contradict the false warning. By the time the CINC, NORAD had been informed, no impact had been reported and the warning was "given low credence."¶ 14) November 2, 1962: The Penkovsky False Warning¶ In the fall of 1962, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was working with the Soviets as a double agent for the (U.S.) C.I.A. He had been given a code by which to warn the CIA if he was convinced that a Soviet attack on the United States was imminent. He was to call twice, one minute apart, and only blow into the receiver. Further information was then to be left at a "dead drop" in Moscow.¶ The pre-arranged code message was received by the CIA on November 2, 1962.¶ It was known at the CIA that Penkovsky had been arrested on October 22. Penkovsky knew he was going to be executed. It is not known whether he had told the KGB the meaning of the code signal or only how it would be given, nor is it known exactly why or with what authorization the KGB staff used it. When another CIA agent checked the dead drop he was arrested.¶ 15) November, 1965: Power Failure and Faulty Bomb Alarms¶ Special bomb alarms were installed near military facilities and near cities in the U.S.A., so that the locations of nuclear bursts would be transmitted before the expected communication failure. The alarm circuits were set up to display a red signal at command posts the instant that the flash of a nuclear detonation reached the sensor and before the blast put it out of action. Normally the display would show a green signal, and yellow if the sensor was not operating or was out of communication for any other reason.¶ During the commercial power failure in the NE United States, in November 1965, displays from all the bomb alarms for the area should have shown yellow. In fact, two of them from different cities showed red because of circuit errors. The effect was consistent with the power failure being due to nuclear weapons explosions, and the Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning went on full alert. Apparently the military did not.¶ 16) January 21, 1968: B-52 Crash near Thule¶ Communication between NORAD HQ and the BMEWS station at Thule had 3 elements:¶ 1. Direct radio communication.¶ 2. A "bomb alarm" as described above.¶ 3. Radio Communication relayed by a b-52 bomber on airborne alert.¶ On January 21, 1968, a fire broke out in the b-52 bomber on airborne alert near Thule. The pilot prepared for an emergency landing at the base. However the situation deteriorated rapidly, and the crew had to bale out. There had been no time to communicate with SAC HQ, and the pilotless plane flew over the Thule base before crashing on the ice 7 miles miles offshore. Its fuel and high explosive component of its nuclear weapons exploded, but there was no nuclear detonation.¶ At that time, the "one point safe" condition of the nuclear weapons could not be guaranteed, and it is believed that a nuclear explosion could have resulted form accidental detonation of the high explosive trigger. Had there been a nuclear detonation even at 7 miles distant, and certainty much nearer the base, all three communication methods would have given an indication consistent with a succsessful nuclear attack on both the base and the B-52 bomber. The bomb alarm would have shown red, and the other two communication paths would have gone dead. It would hardly have been anticipated that the combination could have been caused by accident, particularly as the map of the routes for B-52 airborne flights approved by the President showed no flight near to Thule. The route had been apparently changed without informing the White House.¶ 17) October 24-25, 1973: False Alarm During Middle East Crisis¶ On October 24, 1973, when the U.N. sponsored cease fire intended to end the Arab-Israeli war was in force, further fighting stared between Egyptian and Israeli troops in the Sinai desert. U.S. intelligence reports and other sources suggested that the U.S.S.R. was planning to intervene to protect the Egyptians. President Nixon was in the throes of Watergate episode and not available for a conference, so Kissinger and other U.S. officials ordered DEFCON 3. The consequent movements of aircraft and troops were of course observed by Soviet intelligence. The purpose of the alert was not to prepare for war, but to warn the U.S.S.R. not to intervene in the Sinai. However, if the following accident had not been promptly corrected then the Soviet command might have had a more dangerous interpretation.¶ On October 25, while DEFCON 3 was in force, mechanics were repairing one of the Klaxons at Kinchole Air Force Base, Michigan, and accidentally activated the whole base alarm system. B-52 crews rushed to their aircraft and started the engines. The duty officer recognized the alarm was false and recalled the crews before any took off.¶ 18) November 9, 1979: Computer Exercise Tape¶ At 8:50 a.m. on November 9, 1979, duty officers at 4 command centers (NORAD HQ, SAC Command Post, The Pentagon National Military Command Center, and the Alternate National Military Command Center) all saw on their displays a pattern showing a large number of Soviet Missiles in a full scale attack on the U.S.A. During the next 6 minutes emergency preparations for retaliation were made. A number of Air Force planes were launched, including the President's National Emergency Airborne Command Post, though without the President! The President had not been informed, perhaps because he could not be found.¶ No attempt was made to use the hot line either to ascertain the Soviet intentions or to tell the Soviets the reasons for U.S. actions. This seems to me to have been culpable negligence. The whole purpose of the "Hot Line" was to prevent exactly the type of disaster that was threatening at that moment.¶ With commendable speed, NORAD was able to contact PAVE PAWS early warning radar and learn that no missiles had been reported. Also, the sensors on the satellites were functioning that day and had detected no missiles. In only 6 minutes the threat assessment conference was terminated.¶ The reason for the false alarm was an exercise tape running on the computer system. U.S. Senator Charles Percy happened to be in NORAD HQ at the time and is reported to have said there was absolute panic. A question was asked in Congress. The General Accounting Office conducted an investigation, and an off-site testing facility was constructed so that test tapes did not in the future have to be run on a system that could be in military operation.¶ 19) June , 1980: Faulty Computer Chip¶ The Warning displays at the Command Centers mentioned in the last episode included windows that normally showed¶ 0000 ICBMs detected 0000 SLBMs detected¶ At 2:25 a.m. on June 3, 1980, these displays started showing various numbers of missiles detected, represented by 2's in place of one or more 0's. Preparations for retaliation were instituted, including nuclear bomber crews staring their engines, launch of Pacific Command's Airborne Command Post, and readying of Minutemen missiles for launch. It was not difficult to assess that this was a false alarm because the numbers displayed were not rational.¶ While the cause of that false alarm was still being investigated 3 days later, the same thing happened and again preparations were made for retaliation. The cause was a single faulty chip that was failing in a random fashion. The basic design of the system was faulty, allowing this single failure to cause a deceptive display at several command posts.¶ The following incident is added to illustrate that even now, when the Cold War has been over for 8 years errors can still cause concern. This particular one could have hardly brought nuclear retaliation.; but there are still 30,000 nuclear weapons deployed, and two nuclear weapon states could get into a hostile adversarial status again.¶ 20) January, 1995: Russian False Alarm¶ On January 25, 1995, the Russian early warning radar's detected an unexpected missile launch near Spitzbergen. The estimated flight time to Moscow was 5 minutes. The Russian President, the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff were informed. The early warning and the control and command center switched to combat mode. Within 5 minutes, the radar's determined that the missile's impact would be outside the Russian borders.¶ The missile was Norwegian, and was launched for scientific measurements. ON January 16, Norway had notified 35 countries including Russia that the launch was planned. Information had apparently reached the Russian Defense Ministry, but failed to reach the on-duty personnel of the early warning system.¶ See article in Scientific American by Bruce G. Blair, Harold A. Feiveson and Frank N. von Hippel¶

Deters Conventional

Nuclear weapons deter conventional conflicts

Justin Pollard 09, UC Berkeley Department of Economics, April 2009, “Nuclear Proliferation and the Deterrence of Conventional War,” UC Berkeley https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/justin_pollard_thesis.pdf.

It seems counterintuitive to think that the spread of nuclear weapons could make the ¶ world a safer place, doesnít it? Indeed, it appears painfully logical at first glance to think that a ¶ world of ubiquitous nuclear armament is a more dangerous and unstable one. Certainly, a ¶ weapon of the nuclear magnitude has the potential to destroy millions of lives. Thus, it seems ¶ that each newly born nuclear warhead increases the potential for destruction. Further, the spread ¶ of these weapons across countries may increase the chances, however finite, of nuclear war, ¶ contributing to an ever more dangerous environment (Waltz, 1981). However, there is another ¶ story that lives in parallel to this one. ¶ Imagine a situation in which engaging in a dispute involved risking the possibility of such ¶ unbearable destruction that a participant would never enter that dispute in the first place. This ¶ explanation may be an equally convincing story when trying to describe the consequences of ¶ nuclear proliferation. The spread of these weapons could, in fact, could make the expected cost ¶ of conventional war so high (due to the potential for a nuclear strike) that no country would be ¶ willing to risk its consequences. If this logic is valid, the spread of nuclear arms could actually ¶ contribute to a more peaceful world (Waltz, 1981).

Conventional Conflicts O/W

Conventional conflicts outweigh nuclear ones, it’s the key factor that drove proliferation in the first place

Zachary Keck 13, Managing Editor of The Diplomat, Deputy Editor of e-International Relations, July 03, 2013, The Diplomat, “Why Countries Build Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century”, http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/why-countries-build-nuclear-weapons-in-the-21st-century/.

Although some of the earliest nuclear proliferation cases followed this pattern, it has been increasingly rare as the taboo against the first use of nuclear weapons has become more entrenched. Instead, the primary security factor driving nuclear weapons proliferation today is the disparity in conventional military power. This is likely to continue in the future, with profound consequences for which states do and don’t seek nuclear weapons.¶ Although conventional military power’s importance in nuclear proliferation has certainly increased in recent decades, it wasn’t completely negligible in earlier years. France’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon is a case in point. The historical narrative on France’s nuclear program has been that it was motivated by Charles De Gaulle’s intense nationalism and lack of faith in extended deterrence. ¶ The archival record does not completely support this interpretation, however. To begin with, as Jacques Hymans finds from his careful review of the historical record, it was Mendes France not De Gaulle who made the first crucial decisions to pursue the bomb. The timing of President France’s decision is telling; specifically, he ordered the initial preparations be made for building an atomic weapon three days after the Nine-Power Conference laid out the terms for West Germany’s rearmament, largely over Paris’s objections.¶ President France’s rationale was straight forward. As Hymans explains, he believed that “French military power must remain at least one order of magnitude superior to Germany’s; thus, the fewer the restrictions on German conventional weapons, the greater the need for a French atomic force.” Given France’s suffering at the hands of the German military in WWI and WWII, his decision isn’t too hard to comprehend.¶ Israel’s decision to pursue the bomb was also motivated almost entirely by its perceived conventional inferiority vis-à-vis its Arab neighbors. Although these neighbors did not possess nuclear weapons, Israeli leaders in the late 1950s and 1960s could not be optimistic about the military balance both then and into the future. After all, Egypt alone is 55 times larger than Israel and, in 1967, had about eleven times its population. Israeli leaders therefore calculated that acquiring a nuclear weapon was the surest way to negate this inherent conventional imbalance, and thereby ensure the Jewish state’s survival.¶ As the nuclear taboo has become more entrenched over the decades, states have had less to fear from a neighbor acquiring an atomic weapon. Consequentially, conventional military power has surpassed nuclear arsenals in terms of its importance in driving nuclear proliferation.¶ North Korea illustrates this nicely. Although Pyongyang began its nuclear program during the Cold War, it only started making substantial progress in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Notably, this was when the nuclear threat it faced was declining as the U.S. withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea.¶ By contrast, it was also the time when North Korea had the most to fear from the conventional military balance on the Peninsula. Not only had it lost its great power protectorate in the Soviet Union, but South Korea’s economic ascendancy, combined with its inherent demographic advantage, meant that Pyongyang’s military position was growing precarious even if America was not part of the equation.¶ Of course, the U.S. military is part of the equation on the Korean Peninsula, and its stunning victory in the first Gulf War left little doubt about its conventional dominance in the post-Cold War era. Subsequent years have confirmed this dominance, as well as the United States’ willingness to use it to overthrow adversarial governments. This was ominous indeed for policymakers in Pyongyang, who rightly calculated that they couldn’t match America’s conventional military might. Consequently, they sought to negate its military superiority by acquiring the ultimate deterrent.¶ The Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program has followed a similar trajectory. Although the initial decision to restart the Shah’s nuclear program was motivated almost entirely by Saddam Hussein’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs, Tehran only began making real progress on the nuclear front in the middle to late 1990s. Saddam Hussein can hardly explain this trajectory, given that his threat to Iran was significantly diminished following the first Gulf War, and it was eliminated entirely after 2003.¶ Iran’s nuclear program is better explained, then, by the rise in the potential conventional threat the U.S. poses to Iran. In the post-Cold War era, this began in full force when the U.S. decided to reactivate the 5th Fleet in July 1995, after a 45-year hiatus. Suddenly, U.S. Naval might was permanently stationed on Iranian shores.¶ Further underscoring this danger to Iran, the following year President Bill Clinton signed the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, confirming that President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s outreach to the U.S. had failed. The U.S. threat to Iran has only grown more precarious since 2003; not surprisingly, Iran’s nuclear program has made its greatest advances during this time.¶ The conventional military balance’s primacy in influencing horizontal nuclear proliferation is also evident from the states that have not chosen to go nuclear. For instance, no Northeast Asian country went nuclear following China or North Korea’s nuclear tests, nor did Israel’s nuclear arsenal cause a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.¶ The fact that conventional military power is the strongest factor driving nuclear proliferation should guide how we think about proliferation threats in the future. For instance, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, its neighbors will be unlikely to follow suit. Not only do these states lack the necessary technical capacity, but they have little to fear from Iran’s nearly non-existent power projection capabilities.¶ On the other hand, the rise in China’s conventional military strength makes it likely that Eastern Asia will be the region where the most potent proliferation risks emanate from. Countries with territorial disputes with China—first and foremost, Japan— will have the strongest motivation to build the bomb. Unfortunately, for non-proliferation advocates, many of China’s neighbors—including Japan and South Korea— already have robust civilian nuclear programs. This breakout capability will only make it more tempting for policymakers to order a mad dash for the bomb.

Aff

Prolif Bad

Nuclear proliferation is bad, causes war and terrorism

Theodore B. Taylor 87, Chairman, NOVA, Damascus, Maryland. Dr. Taylor, a former nuclear weapons¶ designer, received the US Atomic Energy Commission’s 1965 Lawrence Memorial¶ Award and was Deputy Director of the Defense Nuclear Agency. He is a Fellow of¶ the American Physical Society, 1987, “Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Stanford, http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/taylor.pdf.

Nuclear proliferation - be it among nations or terrorists - greatly increases¶ the chance of nuclear violence on a scale that would be intolerable.¶ Proliferation increases the chance that nuclear weapons will fall into the¶ hands of irrational people, either suicidal or with no concern for the fate of¶ the world. Irrational or outright psychotic leaders of military factions or¶ terrorist groups might decide to use a few nuclear weapons under their¶ control to stimulate a global nuclear war, as an act of vengeance against¶ humanity as a whole. Countless scenarios of this type can be constructed.¶ Limited nuclear wars between countries with small numbers of nuclear¶ weapons could escalate into major nuclear wars between superpowers. For¶ example, a nation in an advanced stage of “latent proliferation,” finding¶ itself losing a nonnuclear war, might complete the transition to deliverable¶ nuclear weapons and, in desperation, use them. If that should happen in a¶ region, such as the Middle East, where major superpower interests are at¶ stake, the small nuclear war could easily escalate into a global nuclear war.¶ A sudden rush of nuclear proliferation among nations may be triggered¶ by small nuclear wars that are won by a country with more effective¶ nuclear forces than its adversary, or by success of nuclear terrorists in¶ forcing adherence to their demands. Proliferation of nuclear weapons¶ among nations could spread at an awesome rate in such circumstances,¶ since “latent proliferation” is far along in at least several dozen nations, and¶ is increasing rapidly as more nuclear power plants and supporting facilities¶ are built in more countries.¶ In summary, much more serious international attention than is now¶ evident needs to be given to the consequences of nuclear proliferation¶ among nations, terrorists, or criminals. Continuing to neglect this menace is¶ a recipe for disaster.

Kenneth Waltz’s theory is completely wrong

Liam Maddrell 14, on the editorial board of Alochonaa, 3-26-14, “More is Not Better – Why Kenneth Waltz is Wrong on Nuclear Proliferation,” Alochonaa, http://alochonaa.com/2014/03/26/more-is-not-better-why-kenneth-waltz-is-wrong-on-nuclear-proliferation-3/.

This reliance on theory to justify the spread of nuclear weapons is dangerous. ‘Waltz himself argues that the assumptions on which theories are built are radical simplifications of the world and are useful only because they are as such. Any radical simplification conveys a false impression of the world’ (Molloy 2006, p127). While Waltz argued that a limited nuclear war would not end the world if it didn’t threaten the central balance (Waltz 1981, p16), it must be concluded that ‘an exchange of nuclear weaponry would probably eliminate all involved states as viable societies and most likely, a number of innocent neighbouring states would also face destruction and disarray’ (Burns 2009, p198).¶ Waltz uses the absence of war between great powers, the so-called Nuclear Peace, as justification for the proliferation of nuclear weapons (Waltz 1981, p11-13). However the actual reasons for the general peace that has prevailed since World War Two are more readily described by the concepts of collective security and Democratic Peace Theory (Griffiths 2011, p27-29). Thus it is a requirement in understanding the security-insecurity trade-off to understand that it is relationships between the actors that is paramount. (Williams ed. 2008, p6). It is due to this fact about the need for good relations that the school of ‘the democratic peace, has established impressive empirical support for the thesis that democracies do not go to war against one another’ (Griffiths 2011, p39).¶ Furthermore Waltz’s own statement that ‘miscalculation causes wars, [where] one side expects victory at an affordable price, while the other side hopes to avoid defeat’ (Waltz 1981, p7), adequately explains why the general peace has been maintained in a bipolar or unipolar system that includes non-democratic nations. It is not because of the threat of mutual suicide that prevented war, but rather in a bipolar or unipolar world such grand miscalculations required to incite a general war are highly improbable (Molloy 2006, p125).

Kenneth Waltz is wrong about Iran, 8 reasons

Hossein Mousavian and Kaveh Afrasiabi 12, Hossein Mousavian is a research scholar at Princeton University and former Iran nuclear negotiator and author of the new book, Iranian Nuclear Crisis, A Memoir. Kaveh Afrasiabi is a former political science professor at Tehran University, author of books on Iran’s foreign affairs and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team from 2005 to 2006, 7-16-12, “Eight Reasons Why Waltz Theory On Nuclear Iran Is Wrong,” AL Monitor, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/eight-reasons-why-the-waltz-theo.html#.

Although Waltz’s arguments — particularly about the destabilizing effects of Israel’s nuclear arsenal — make sense, the main problem is that his core assumptions about Iran are simply wrong and do not correspond with Iran’s behavior and intentions. ¶ First, Iran does not share Waltz’s Israel-centric view of the proliferation dynamic in the Middle East. Iran’s political leaders have repeatedly described Israel’s nuclear arsenal as “irrelevant” and “useless,” and suggested that it has not been a factor in various Arab-Israel conflicts. ¶ Second, only by its constant threats of military action against it has Israel raised its threat status to alarming levels in Iran. Normally, Israel does not rank at the top of Iran’s national security considerations, in light of Iran’s preoccupation with its border security and stability in its vicinity — above all in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea region, Iran’s two main energy hubs.¶ Third, Waltz’s nuclear realpolitik misses the special attributes of Iran’s post-revolutionary political order and lumps Iran with other states in the international system, thus ignoring the distinctions between revolutionary and status-quo powers.¶ Following Waltz’s logic of balancing, during the Iran-Iraq war when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein repeatedly used chemical weapons against Iran, Tehran would have reciprocated by stockpiling and using weapons of mass destruction. But, under the moral guidance of the late Imam Khomeini, Iran did not do so, despite the heavy toll of some 60,000 casualties of Iraq’s chemical warfare. Indeed, it is doubtful that Iran’s behavior can be captured by the narrow prism of the realist paradigm, and alternative paradigms must be found to explain this “anomaly.” ¶ Fourth, yet another, and even more important, anomaly is that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has re-confirmed a religious edict, or fatwa, that explicitly and unequivocally bans the manufacturing, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons, which are deemed “inhuman” and “weapons of the past.” ¶ Fifth, backing words with action, Iran has placed its entire uranium-.enrichment program under the scrutiny of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, which have repeatedly confirmed the absence of military diversion. Lest we forget, in May 2010, Iran signed an agreement with Turkey and Brazil to ship out the bulk of its medium-enriched uranium for a fuel swap. More recently, Iran has said that it is willing to reach a compromise on the issue of 20% enrichment provided that the world powers reciprocate in terms of sanctions. Clearly, these actions do not fit the portfolio of a nuclear proliferator and, indeed, are anomalous to the theory of Iranian proliferation.¶ Sixth, yet another key flaw in Waltz’s argument is that he focuses narrowly on the Middle East and ignores the international dimension of Iran’s foreign behavior, namely the fact that since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has acted as a revisionist power committed to the ideal of restructuring the unjust global hierarchy and democratizing the hierarchical world order. This was perfectly understood by the late French thinker Michel Foucault, who observed the revolution first-hand and had a premonition that this was a truly historical event that contested not just the ancient regime in Iran but also “the weight of the entire world order.” ¶ Seventh, during the past 33 years, Iran has been remarkably consistent in its foreign policy of supporting the third world and disarmament causes, championed by the Non-Aligned Movement, a grouping of some 120 nations that is slated to be led by Iran as of August 2012 for the next three years. Undoubtedly, Iran will utilize its NAM leadership to advance the movement’s multiple causes, including fighting global poverty, inequality and proliferation and promoting disarmament. Simultaneously, this will enable Iran to further defend its “inalienable nuclear right” to possess a civilian nuclear fuel cycle, while vigorously pushing for a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone. Put simply, Iran does not want nuclear weapons, nor does it think that there is any compelling reason that it should get them. ¶ Eighth, yet another important issue overlooked by Waltz and a number of other western pundits spinning out theories about Iranian proliferation is that most Iranians believe that an Iranian bomb would spur the Gulf Cooperation Council states headed by Saudi Arabia to get their own bombs, thus hurling the sub-region into a costly, dangerous and ultimately unnecessary nuclear arms race.¶ In conclusion, the whole Waltzian idea that “more nuclear weapons” is better for world security is a dangerous fallacy irrespective of his good intentions and an affront to the important objective of global disarmament, which would put this goal on an indefinite backburner.

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