Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

Perm Solves – State Key

Permutation key to solvency – rejecting the use of state power kills alt solvency
Hawkes 87 (Dr. Glenn. W. Hawkes, Executive Director, Parents, Teachers & Students for Social Responsibility, [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “Sex, power, and nuclear language,” Sept., v43, no.7, pg. 59-60 TBC 6/30/10)

My third concern is with Conns call for "alternative voices." I agree that we must explore alternatives, and in the process we will no doubt create something of a new language that will guide us on new paths. But there is a strong tendency in the peace community to employ language that is perceived on Main Street, U.S.A., as "alternative"— and thus as unacceptable. We have a rich tradition of exposing nukespeak for what it is, but we have not been skillful in using the public language to our advantage. We have generally avoided using motherhood and apple pic symbols, like the flag. We've seen those symbols abused, and consequently have chosen not to identify with them. Meanwhile, the right wing has successfully manipulated main-stream language to advance its agenda. Just as there is an elitist core of men who monopolize the technostrategic discourse, there is also (to a lesser degree. I think) in the progressive ranks a core of thinkers who tend to use alternative language in a way that diminishes rather than enhances our power. In fact the very idea of possessing political power is often construed as something negative from the activist perspective of which I speak, and from which I hail. The struggle for an alternative future is thus, at times, led by individuals and organizations with an aversion to power politics and a disdain for the public language, a stance that most surely guarantees failure in the political arena. There is an ironic dialectic at work here: the pursuit of alternative futures depends in part upon our understanding and using mainstream symbols. We must use the system to beat the system, employing mainstream language to change mainstream patterns of thought and action. For example, if we are to increase the prospects for a new world order, we might promote nationalism in order to transcend nationalism. We can use any number of historical examples from the founding of our nation: national sovereignty on this continent was pursued in order to preserve the several states, all threatened—as nations are today—with destruction in their condition of disunity. In other words, if we love our nation we must promote a more viable international order to preserve it. It was Jefferson, I think, who always claimed to be a Virginian first and foremost, even after serving as president. He supported national sovereignty because he thought it was the best way to protect and preserve his beloved Virginia. Let's dig out such examples and put them to work in the public language, reinforcing concerns for defense, security, and national interest. Rather than calling for "compelling alternative visions," we should explore "compelling mainstream visions." Changing that one word alerts us to the importance of communicating with the farmer, the auto mechanic, the school teacher, the person selling insurance, and the people who live next door. One way of dealing with the technostratcgic thinkers might be to ignore them while at the same time developing the political clout needed to change national policy.

Perm Solves – Pragmatism

Perm is key – Utopianism fails
Schwartz and Derber 90 (The Nuclear Seduction, http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft1n39n7wg&brand=ucpress TBC 6/30/10)

One reason for the tendency to ignore Lebow's warning is the widespread feeling that, whatever the dangers of political conflict and war, they cannot be eliminated for the foreseeable future. True, peaceful coexistence among nationalities, races, states, and classes is still inconceivable. There is little hope that the leading states will renounce violence as a means to maintain and extend their political power wherever they feel it can succeed. But neither nuclear arms nor war—which together produce the nuclear threat—is likely to disappear soon. The only sensible question to ask is whether chipping away at them can make a difference to the danger. Incremental steps toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, as we have emphasized, are almost meaningless considering the absolute destructive potential and uncontrollability of those that remain. The same is not true of efforts to prevent war and other forms of conventional political violence. Successful incremental steps in this direction matter a great deal—both to those who would have been maimed and killed and to the rest of us, who are thereby spared one more occasion on which events could slip out of hand and terminate civilization. Today George Kennan's proposed 50 percent across-the-board cut in nuclear arms would mean little. A 50 percent cut in superpower military intervention and nuclear risk taking in the Third World might save the planet and would certainly save many lives. The long- term visions of a nonnuclear world and of a world beyond war should not be cast aside. Ultimately they may be the only chance for planetary survival, and they are certainly the only chance for a decent way of life. But we must accept that neither goal can be reached easily or rapidly, and that they may never be reached. We must take what steps we can to reduce the nuclear threat now. Otherwise there may be no long run to worry about.

Perm Solves – Pragmatism

The negative’s alternate can’t generate real change – obtaining a peaceful society requires a way to combat violence. The perm is the best option.

Isaac 2 (Jeffrey C Isaac, Indiana University James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life director, Spring 2002, Ends, Means, and Politics,” Dissent Magazine Vol. 49 Issue 2, p35-6)

And yet the left’s reflexive hostility toward violence in the international domain is strange. It is inconsistent with avowals of “materialism” and evocations of “struggle,” especially on the part of those many who are not pacifists; it is in tension with a commitment to human emancipation (is there no cause for which it is justifiable to fight?); and it is oblivious to the tradition of left thinking about ends and means. To compare the debates within the left about the two world wars or the Spanish Civil War with the predictable “anti-militarism” of today’s campus left is to compare a discourse that was serious about political power with a discourse that is not. This unpragmatic approach has become a hallmark of post–cold war left commentary, from the Gulf War protests of 1991, to the denunciation of the 1999 U.S.-led NATO intervention in Kosovo, to the current post–September 11 antiwar movement. In each case protesters have raised serious questions about U.S. policy and its likely consequences, but in a strikingly ineffective way. They sound a few key themes: the broader context of grievances that supposedly explains why Saddam Hussein, or Slobodan Milosevic, or Osama bin Laden have done what they have done; the hypocrisy of official U.S. rhetoric, which denounces terrorism even though the U.S. government has often supported terrorism; the harm that will come to ordinary Iraqi or Serbian or Afghan citizens as a result of intervention; and the cycle of violence that is likely to ensue. These are important issues. But they typically are raised by left critics not to promote real debate about practical alternatives, but to avoid such a debate or to trump it. As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of “aggression,” but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime—the Taliban—that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most “peace” activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power.