Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

Link – Accidents/Miscalc

Their accidents and miscalc args are double standards that drive prolif

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

Second, turning to the surveillance and early-warning systems that the United States has but threshold nuclear nations lack, one finds that these systems bring with them special problems as well as benefits. For example, it was the high-technology Aegis radar system, misread by a navy operator, that was directly responsible for the tragically mistaken U.S. decision to shoot down an Iranian commercial jetliner on July 3, 1988, a blunder that cost innocent lives and could have triggered a war. Similarly, and potentially more seriously, At 8:50 a.m., on November 9, 1979, the operational duty officers at NORAD-as well as in the SAC command post, at the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC), and the alternate National Military Command Center (ANMCC) at Fort Richie, Maryland-were suddenly confronted with a realistic display of a Soviet nuclear attack apparently designed to decapitate the American command system and destroy U.S. nuclear forces: a large number of Soviet missiles appeared to have been launched, both SLBMs and ICBMs, in a full-scale attack on the United States. [Sagan 1993:228-2291 American interceptor planes were scrambled, the presidential "doomsday plane" took off (without the president) to coordinate a possible nuclear war, and air traffic controllers were told to bring down commercial planes before U.S. military commanders found that a training tape had mistakenly been inserted into the system (Sagan 1993:230). More seriously still, on October 28, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States was at a high level of alert and had its nuclear weapons cocked at the ready, another accident with a training tape caused U.S. radar operators to believe that a missile had been launched at Florida from Cuba. When there was no nuclear detonation, they realized they had mistaken a satellite for a missile (Sagan 1993: 130-1 3 1). Also during the Cuban Missile Crisis, at a time when sentries at U.S. military bases had been told to be alert to Soviet saboteurs, a bear climbing a fence at a base in Duluth was mistaken for a saboteur, and the alarm set off throughout the region was, in Wisconsin, mistaken for the nuclear war alarm. An officer had to drive onto the runway to block the nuclear-armed F-106As, already taxiing, from taking off (Sagan 1993: 1,99). Looking next at the U.S. safety record in transporting and handling nuclear weapons, again there is more cause for relief than for complacency. There have, for example, been at least twenty-four occasions when U.S. aircraft have accidentally released nuclear weapons and at least eight incidents in which U.S. nuclear weapons were involved in plane crashes or fires (Sagan 1993: 185; Williams and Cantelon 1988:239-245). In 1980, during routine maintenance of a Titan I1 missile in Arkansas, an accident with a wrench caused a conventional explosion that sent the nuclear warhead 600 feet through the air (Barasch 1983:42). In another incident an H-bomb was accidentally dropped over North Carolina; only one safety switch worked, preventing the bomb from detonating (Barasch 1983:41). In 1966 two U.S. planes collided over Palomares, Spain, and four nuclear weapons fell to the ground, causing a conventional explosion that contaminated a large, populated area with plutonium. One hydrogen bomb was lost for three months. In 1968 a U.S. plane carrying four H-bombs caught fire over Greenland. The crew ejected, and there was a conventional explosion that scattered plutonium over a wide area (Sagan 1993: 156-203). None of these accidents produced nuclear explosions, but recent safety studies have concluded that this must partly be attributed to good luck. These studies revealed that the design of the W-79 nuclear artillery shell contained a previously unsuspected design flaw that could lead to an unintended nuclear explosion in certain circumstances. In consequence the artillery shells had to be secretly withdrawn from Europe in 1989 (Sagan 1993: 184; Smith 1990). In other words, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has its own safety problems related to its dependence on highly computerized warning and detection systems, its Cold War practice of patrolling oceans and skies with live nuclear weapons, and its large stockpile size. Even where U.S. scientists have developed special safety technologies, they are not always used. The presumption that Third World countries lack the technical competence to be trusted with nuclear weapons fits our stereotypes about these countries' backwardness, but it distracts us from asking whether we ourselves have the technical infallibility the weapons ideally require.

Link – Safety

Sharing safety tech is possible – the only reason it doesn’t happen is because of racist policies

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

3. Third World Governments Lack the Technical Muturity to Handle Nuclear Weapons The third argument against horizontal proliferation is that Third World nations may lack the technical maturity to be trusted with nuclear weapons. Brito and Intriligator, for example, tell us that "the new nuclear nations are likely to be less sophisticated technically and thus less able to develop safeguards against accident or unauthorized action" (1982:137). And the Washington Post quotes an unnamed Western diplomat stationed in Pakistan who, worrying that India and Pakistan lack the technology to detect an incoming attack on their weapons, said, the United States has "expensive space-based surveillance that could pick up the launches, but Pakistan and India have no warning systems. I don't know what their doctrine will be. Launch when the wind blows'?" (Anderson 1998:Al). In terms of safety technologies, U.S. weapons scientists have over the years developed Insensitive High Explosive (IHE), which will not detonate if a weapon is-as has happened with U.S. nuclear weapons-accidentally dropped. U.S. weapons scientists have also developed Permissive Action Links (PALS), electronic devices that block the arming of nuclear weapons until the correct code is entered so that the weapons cannot be used if stolen and will not go off if there is an accident during routine transportation or storage of the weapons. Obviously the United States could, if it were deeply concerned about safety problems in new nuclear nations, share such safety technologies, as it offered to do with the Soviets during the Cold War.'? It has chosen not to share its safety technologies with such nations as India and Pakistan partly out of concern that it would then be perceived as rewarding proliferation. 122

Your arg is a racist double standard – Even Western nations disregard safety for power projection

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

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Quite aside from the question of whether the United States itself could discreetly do more to improve the safety of nuclear arsenals in new nuclear nations, if one reviews the U.S. nuclear safety record, the comforting dichotomy between a high-tech, safe "us" and the low-tech, unsafe "them" begins to look distinctly dubious. First, the United States has not always made use of the safety technologies at its disposal. Over the protests of some weapons designers, for example, the Navy decided not to incorporate state-of-the-art safety technologies into one of its newest weapons: the Trident 11. The Trident I1 does not contain Insensitive High Explosive because IHE is heavier than ordinary high explosive and would, therefore, have reduced the number of warheads each missile could carry. The Trident I1 designers also decided to use 1.1 class propellant fuel rather than the less combustible, hence safer, 1.3 class fuel, because the former would give the missile a longer range. After the Trident I1 was deployed, a highlevel review panel appointed by President Bush recommended recalling and redesigning it for safety reasons, but the panel was overruled partly because of the expense this would have involved (Drell, Foster, and Townes 1991; Smith 1990).