Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

A2: Countries Too Poor For Nukes

Double standard – every argument against proliferation is an argument against the West having nuclear weapons as well.

Gusterson 99 (Hugh, professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science, http://people.reed.edu/~ahm/Courses/Stan-PS-314-2009-Q1_PNP/Syllabus/EReadings/Gusterson1999Nuclear.pdf, AD: 6/29/10) jl

1. Third World Countries Are Too Poor to Afford Nuclear Weapons It is often said that it is inappropriate for Third World countries to squander money on nuclear (or conventional) weapons when they have such pressing problems of poverty, hunger, and homelessness on which the money might more appropriately be spent. Western disapprobation of Third World military spending was particularly marked when India conducted its "peaceful nuclear explosion" in May 1974. At the time one Washington official, condemning India for having the wrong priorities, was quoted as saying, "I don't see how this is going to grow more rice" (New York Times 1974x8). The next day the New York Times picked up the theme in its editorial page: The more appropriate reaction [to the nuclear test] would be one of despair that such great talent and resources have been squandered on the vanity of power, while 600 million Indians slip deeper into poverty. The sixth member of the nuclear club may be passing the begging bowl before the year is out because Indian science and technology so far have failed to solve the country's fundamental problems of food and population. [New York Times 1974bl Similar comments were made after India's nuclear tests of 1998. Mary McGrory, for example, wrote in her column in the Wushington Post that "two large, poor countries in desperate need of schools, hospitals, and education are strewing billions of dollars for nuclear development" (1998b:Cl); and Rupert Cornwell, writing in the British Independent, said that "a country as poor as India should not be wasting resources on weapons that might only tempt a preemptive strike by an adversary; it is economic lunacy" (1998:9). Such statements are not necessarily wrong, but, read with a critical eye, they have a recursive effect that potentially undermines the rationale for military programs in the West as well. First, one can interrogate denunciations of profligate military spending in the Third World by pointing out that Western countries, despite their own extravagant levels of military spending, have by no means solved their own social and economic problems. The United States, for example, which allots 4 percent of its GNP (over $250 billion per year) to military spending against India's 2.8 percent (Gokhale 1996), financed the arms race of the 1980s by accumulating debt-its own way of passing the begging bowl-at a rate of over $200 billion each year. Meanwhile in America advocates for the homeless estimate that 2 million Americans have nowhere to live,' and another 36 million Americans live below the official poverty line (Mattern 1998). The infant mortality rate is lower for black children in Botswana than for those in the United States (Edelman 1991). As any observant pedestrian in the urban United States knows, it is not only Indians who need to beg. Second, American taxpayers have consistently been told that nuclear weapons are a bargain compared with the cost of conventional weapons. They give "more bang for the buck." If this is true for "us," then surely it is also true for "them": if a developing nation has security concerns, then a nuclear weapon ought to be the cheapest way to take care of them (Rathjens 1982:267). Third, critics of U.S. military spending have been told for years that military spending stimulates economic development and produces such beneficial economic spin-offs that it almost pays for itself. If military Keynesianism works for "us," it is hard to see why it should not also work for "them." And indeed, "Indian decision-makers have perceived high investments in nuclear research as a means to generate significant long-term industrial benefits in electronics, mining, metallurgy and other non-nuclear sectors of the economy" (Potter 1982: 157). In other words, "they" may use the same legitimating arguments as "we" do on behalf of nuclear weapons. The arguments we use to defend our weapons could as easily be used to defend theirs. We can only argue otherwise by using a double standard.

A2: Deterrence Fails in 3^rd World Countries

Their warrants are contrived – most deterrence structures of other countries would be more stable

Gusterson 99 (Hugh, professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science, http://people.reed.edu/~ahm/Courses/Stan-PS-314-2009-Q1_PNP/Syllabus/EReadings/Gusterson1999Nuclear.pdf, AD: 6/29/10) jl

During the Cold War Americans were told that nuclear deterrence prevented the smoldering enmity between the superpowers from bursting into the full flame of war, saving millions of lives by making conventional war too dangerous. When the practice of deterrence was challenged by the antinuclear movement of the 1980s, Pentagon officials and defense intellectuals warned us that nuclear disarmament would just make the world safe for conventional war.' Surely, then, we should want countries such as Pakistan, India, Iraq, and Israel also to enjoy the stabilizing benefits of nuclear weapons. This is, in fact, precisely the argument made by the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. He said at apress conference in 1998, alluding to the fact that Pakistan had a nuclear capability for many years before its actual nuclear tests, "The nuclear weapon is a peace guarantor. It gave peace to Europe, it gave peace to us. . . . I believe my work has saved this country for the last twenty years from many wars" (NNI-News 1998). Western security specialists and media pundits have argued, on the other hand, that deterrence as practiced by the superpowers during the Cold War may not work in Third World settings because Third World adversaries tend to share common borders and because they lack the resources to develop secure second-strike capabilities. On closer examination these arguments, plausible enough at first, turn out to be deeply problematic, especially in their silences about the risks of deterrence as practiced by the superpowers. I shall take them in turn. First, there is the argument that deterrence may not work for countries, such as India and Pakistan, that share a common border and can therefore attack one another very quickly.10A s one commentator put it, In the heating conflict between India and Pakistan, one of the many dangers to be reckoned with is there would be no time for caution. While it would have taken more than a half-hour for a Soviet-based nuclear missile to reach the United States-time at least for America to double-check its computer screen or use the hotline-the striking distance between India and Pakistan is no more than five minutes. That is not enough time to confirm a threat or even think twice before giving the order to return fire, and perhaps mistakenly incinerate an entire nation. [Lev 1998:A19] This formulation focuses only on the difference in missile flight times while ignoring other countervailing differences in missile configurations that would make deterrence in South Asia look more stable than deterrence as practiced by the superpowers. Such a view overlooks the fact that the missiles deployed by the two superpowers were, by the end of the Cold War, MIRVed and extraordinarily accurate. MIRVed missiles-those equipped with Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles-carry several warheads, each capable of striking a different target. The MX, for example, was designed to carry ten warheads, each capable of landing within 100 feet of a separate target. The unprecedented accuracy of the MX, together with the fact that one MX missile could-in theory at least-destroy ten Soviet missiles, made it, as some arms controllers worried at the time, a destabilizing weapon that, together with its Russian counterparts, put each superpower in a "use-it-or-lose-it" situation whereby it would have to launch its missiles immediately if it believed itself under attack. Thus, once one adds accuracy and MIRVing to the strategic equation, the putative contrast between stable deterrence in the West and unstable deterrence in South Asia looks upside down, even if one were to grant the difference in flight times between the Cold War superpowers and between the main adversaries in South Asia. But there is no reason to grant the alleged difference in flight times. Lev says that it would have taken "more than half an hour" for American and Russian missiles to reach their targets during the Cold War (1998:A19). While this was more or less true for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), it was not true for the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) the superpowers moved in against each other's coasts; these were about ten minutes of flight time from their targets. Nor was it true of the American Jupiter missiles stationed in Turkey, right up against the Soviet border, in the early 1960s. Nor was it true of the Pershing 11s deployed in Germany in the 1980s. When the antinuclear movement claimed that it was destabilizing to move the Pershings to within less than ten minutes of flight time of Moscow, the U.S. government insisted that anything that strengthened NATO's attack capability strengthened nuclear deterrence. Here again one sees a double standard in the arguments made to legitimate "our" nuclear weapons. Finally, even if we were to accept that the superpowers would have half-an hour's warning against five minutes for countries in South Asia, to think that this matters is to be incited to a discourse based on the absurd premise that there is any meaningful difference between half an hour and five minutes for a country that believes itself under nuclear attack (see Foucault 1980a: ch. 1). While half an hour does leave more time to verify warnings of an attack, would any sane national leadership feel any safer irrevocably launching nuclear weapons against an adversary in half an hour rather than five minutes? In either case, the time frame for decision making is too compressed.