Prolif good – War

AT Prolif Slow (General)

S. Paul Kapur examines the stability/instability paradox in the South Asian context and takes aim at the widely held scholarly consensus that it is the paradox that explains continuing conflict in a nuclear South Asia. Whereas the stability/instability paradox is expected to impede escalation of conflict between two nuclear powers, in the South Asian case, the nuclear shield has actually made Pakistan’s leadership more adventurous as they believe that fear of nuclear escalation would prevent India from using its conventional superiority against Pakistan and lead the international community to intervene before conflict could escalate. South Asian violence, according to Kapur, “has resulted from a strategic environment in which nuclear escalation is a serious possibility in the event that a limited Indo-Pakistani confrontation spirals into a full scale conventional conflict.”

The third chapter is about the impact of discourse on state behavior wherein the author focuses on a broader issue of why states develop nuclear programs, as opposed to examining the reasons behind nuclear weapons acquisition. Itty Abraham suggests that the focus of most scholarship on nuclear weapons proliferation is in determining when and why states decide to pursue a nuclear weapons program which he terms as “the discourse of control.” In such a context, non-proliferation policy paradoxically becomes a reason for states to become nuclear powers. Nuclear power for India became a symbol of Indian independence. Indian leaders had always viewed their nation as a major global power, and nuclear power was a symbol of India’s technological sophistication. Abraham argues that “India’s atomic energy program represented the zenith of Indian developmentalism, technologically and symbolically,” and therefore the question of giving up the nuclear project did not even arise, as it would be “equivalent to giving up the project of a sovereign Indian state.”

Neorealism dictates that states will continue to proliferate indefinitely if they have the technical capabilities

Potter and Mukhatzhanova 8 (William C. Potter is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova is Research Associate at the James Martin Center. “Divining Nuclear Intentions”, Summer, International Security, Volume 33, Issue 1)

Much of the thinking about nuclear proliferation has been informed by realist perspectives, which assume that states are unitary actors that seek nuclear weapons because their security—precarious in an anarchic world—demands it. From a classical realist perspective, the quest for nuclear weapons is a rational form of self-help designed to maximize power.22 Neorealism embraces the same basic assumptions as classical realism, but it is more attentive to the impact of structural differences in the international system on the occurrence of war and peace.23 Applied to the proliferation arena, neorealism offers an elegant and simple explanation for why and when nations would go nuclear. In its view, regime type, domestic politics, and personalities are of no consequence, and all that really matters is an understanding of the balancing dynamic in which one state's pursuit of nuclear weapons begets another.24 Employing this logic, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Van Evera, and Benjamin Frankel, among others, thought it likely that the decline of bipolarity after the end of the Cold War would generate a new spate of proliferators, including countries such as Germany, Japan, and Ukraine.25 Taken to its logical conclusion, unadulterated neorealism predicts a lengthy nuclear proliferation chain that extends to as many states as have access to technical know-how and material to build nuclear weapons.

AT Prolif Slow (No Tipping Point)

We are at the nuclear tipping point – consensus of experts

Potter and Mukhatzhanova 8 (William C. Potter is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova is Research Associate at the James Martin Center. “Nuclear Phobia”, International Herald Tribune, September 23, Infotrac)

Judging by the comments of most political figures, scholars and media pundits, regardless of political orientation, the future of nuclear proliferation is bleak. This time, the sky is surely falling. At the very least, the world is at a "tipping point" in the direction of a nuclear armed crowd with far more countries actively pursuing and acquiring nuclear weapons. On this point, Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ban Ki-moon and John McCain all agree. This proliferation pessimism often finds expression in metaphors about nuclear dominoes, chains, cascades and waves. In most cases the gloomy scenario anticipates a reactive process in which Iran's "going nuclear" leads to decisions by other states in the region and possibly elsewhere to follow suit in quick succession.

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