Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

Impacts – Prolif – Root Cause

The concept of proliferation hides the necessity of root cause economic development
Muttimer 94 (David, professor of political science at suniversity of Vermont. Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation” 1994 http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP25-Mutimer.pdf TBC 6/29/10 Pg. 18-19)

In a similar way, the characterisation of the problem of 'proliferation' highlights certain characteristics of the phenomenon, while downplaying and hiding others. That image contains three key metaphors: 'proliferation', 'stability' and balance'. As such, the image highlights the source)spread)recipient nature of the process of arms production and distribution. At the same time, it downplays the structural nature of the arms production and transfer system which bind the suppliers and recipients to each other and it hides the fact that weapons and related technologies are procured for a variety of factors related to external military threat, internal regime support and economic development.42 I will address these features of the problem in more detail below. What is important at this point is to see that the image and the metaphors it entails privilege a certain set of policy responses—those which address the 'spread' of technology highlighted by the image—while denying place to others—policy, for instance, which would seek to address the problems of economic development which may spur the creation of an arms industry.

Representations of the spread of nuclear weapons ignore the root causes of nuclear weapon acquisition
Muttimer 94 (David, professor of political science at suniversity of Vermont. Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation” 1994 http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP25-Mutimer.pdf TBC 6/29/10 Pg. 25)

This image, by highlighting the technological and autonomous aspects of a process of spread, downplays or even hides important aspects of the relationship of nuclear weapons to international security. To begin with, the image hides the fact that nuclear weapons do not spread, but are spread—and in fact are spread largely by the western states. Secondly, the image downplays, to the point of hiding, any of the political, social, economic and structural factors which tend to drive states and other actors both to supply and to acquire nuclear weapons. Finally, the image downplays the politics of security and threat, naturalising the 'security dilemma' to the point that it is considered as an automatic dynamic. The image of PROLIFERATION thus privileges a technical, apolitical policy, by casting the problem as a technical, apolitical one. The Non-Proliferation Treaty controls and safeguards the movement of the technology of nuclear energy. The supporting supplier groups jointly impose controls on the supply—that is the outward flow—of this same technology. The goal, in both cases, is to stem or, at least slow, the outward movement of material and its attendant techniques Such a policy is almost doomed to fail, however, for it downplays and hides the very concerns which motivate the agents of the process. Iraq was driven to acquire nuclear weapons, even in the face of NPT commitments, and so employed technology which is considered so outdated that it is no longer tightly controlled. This simply does not fit with the NPT-NSG-Zangger Committee approach. In addition, in order to gain the necessary material, the Iraqis needed access to external technology. Such technology was acquired by human agents acting for the Iraqi state and was acquired from other agents, who had their own motivational interests to provide the necessary technology. The technology does not 'spread' through some autonomous process akin to that causing a zygote to become a person, but rather they are spread, and so the agents involved are able to sidestep the technologically focused control efforts.

Impacts – Prolif – Root Cause

Representations of proliferation hide the security concerns which drive states to acquire weapons
Muttimer 94 (David, professor of political science at suniversity of Vermont. Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation” 1994 http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP25-Mutimer.pdf TBC 6/29/10 Pg. 34)

The image of PROLIFERATION knits together the metaphors of 'proliferation', 'stability' and 'balance' to shape the policy responses of the international community. The metaphors have certain entailments, which serve to highlight, downplay and hide aspects of the security environment. Thus, the policy responses which are being developed address primarily those aspects highlighted, while ignoring those downplayed and hidden. The image is of an autonomously driven process of spread, outward from a particular source or sources. It is an apolitical image, which strongly highlights technology, capability and gross accounts of number. As such, it is an image that masks the political interests of those supporting the present structure of proliferation control—a structure which strongly reflects this image and its entailments. To begin with, the control efforts are classified by the technology of concern. Thus there are global instruments for controlling the spread of nuclear weapons, of chemical and biological weapons, and a register of conventional arms. There is no global instrument for the control of the spread of missile technology, but the MTCR addresses this technology as a discrete problem, and is considering evolving into a global regime. There is thus little or no recognition in the practical response to PROLIFERATION that the spread of these technologies might all be part of a common 'security' problem. The security concerns which might drive states to acquire one or more of these technologies are hidden by the PROLIFERATION image. This division of the problem into discrete technologies persists, despite the fact that the connection among the various technologies of concern manifests itself in a number of ways. I will mention only two by way of illustration. The first is the common reference to biological weapons as "the poor man's atomic bomb". The implication of this phrase is that a state prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons—in this case for reasons of cost—could turn to biological weapons to serve the same purposes. The second example is of the links being drawn in the Middle East between Arab states' potential chemical arms, and Israel's nuclear arsenal. The Arab states are balking at ratifying the CWC until the Israeli nuclear arms are at least placed on the negotiating table. Conversely, supporters of the Israeli position can cite the Arab states' overwhelming conventional superiority as a justification for Israel's nuclear arms.
Proliferation in the middle east is a direct outgrowth of the proliferation of our own weapons.

Gusterson ’99 (Gusterson, Hugh,”Nuclear Weapons and the Other in Western Imagination” Cultural Anthropology, 14.1 Feb 1999 http://www.jstor.org/stable/656531 Aug 17/2009, p.131-32)NAR

The discourse on nuclear proliferation legitimates this system of domination while presenting the interests the established nuclear powers have in maintaining their nuclear monopoly as if they were equally beneficial to all the nations of the globe. And, ironically, the discourse on nonproliferation presents these subordinate nations as the principal source of danger in the world. This is another case of blaming the victim. The discourse on nuclear proliferation is structured around a rigid segregation of "their" problems from "ours." In fact, however, we are linked to developing nations by a world system, and many of the problems that, we claim, render these nations ineligible to own nuclear weapons have a lot to do with the West and the system it dominates. For example, the regional conflict between India and Pakistan is, in part at least, a direct consequence of the divide-and-rule policies adopted by the British raj; and the dispute over Kashmir, identified by Western commentators as a possible flash point for nuclear war, has its origins not so much in ancient hatreds as in Britain's decision in 1846 to install a Hindu maharajah as leader of a Muslim territory (Burns 1998). The hostility between Arabs and Israelis has been exacerbated by British, French, and American intervention in the Middle East dating back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. More recently, as Steven Green points out, "Congress has voted over $36.5 billion in economic and military aid to Israel, including rockets, planes, and other technology which has directly advanced Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities. It is precisely this nuclear arsenal, which the U.S. Congress has been so instrumental in building up, that is driving the Arab state to attain countervailing strategic weapons of various kinds" (1990).