Russia Adv – 1ac

a2 Backlash

No Backlash –
A. No Country has the ability to compete with the US in military space and too much investment which means we can access the case before your impacts
B. The DA is terminally non-unique since countries are already pissed off at our current force posture means the plan would not push us over the brink
Doleman 10 – Professor of Comparative Military Studies at the US Air Forces School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (US Military Transformation and Weapons in Space, http://www.e-parl.net/pages/space_hearing_images/Backgrounder%20Dolman%20US%20Weapons%20in%20Space.pdf)
Weapons in Space and Hegemonic War and America would respond … finally. But would another state? I have already pointed out that if America were to weaponize space today, it is unlikely that any other state or group of states would find it rational to counter it in kind. The fact is that should the US develop and deploy weapons in outer space it would represent the addition of a potent new military capacity that would assist in extending the period of American hegemony well into the future. This would clearly be threatening, and America must expect severe condemnation and increased competition in peripheral areas. But such an outcome is still less threatening than any other state doing so, for two essential reasons. First, no other state can currently compete with the US in military space. The entry cost to provide the infrastructure necessary is too high; hundreds of billions of dollars, at minimum. The years of investment it would take to achieve a minimal counter-force capability—essentially from scratch—would provide more than ample time for the US to entrench itself in space, and readily counter preliminary efforts to displace it. The tremendous effort in time and resources would be worse than wasted. Most states, if not all, would therefore opt not to counter US deployments in kind. They might oppose US interests with asymmetric balancing, depending on how aggressively America uses its new power, but the likelihood of a hemorrhaging arms race in space should the US deploy weapons there –at least for the next few years—is extremely remote. Second, placement of weapons in space by the United States would be perceived as an attempt at continuing its current military dominance on land, at sea, and in the air. It would enhance military power across the board, and would extend the current period of American hegemony beyond what it would be without space weaponization. Although there is clear opposition to the current international balance of power, the status quo, there is also a sense that it is at least tolerable to the majority of states. A continuation of it is thus minimally acceptable, even to states working towards its demise. So long as the US does not employ its power arbitrarily (and I have argued that space weapons are structurally far less likely to be used in such a manner, and is at least less threatening, than an increase in current capabilities), the situation would be bearable initially and grudgingly accepted over time. On the other hand, an attempt by any other state to dominate space would rightly be perceived as an effort to break the land-sea-air dominance of the United States in preparation for a new international order. The action would be a challenge to the status quo, not a perpetuation of it. Such an event would be disconcerting to the nations that accept the current international order (including the venerable institutions of trade, finance, and law that operate within it) and intolerable to the US. As leader of the current system, the US would enact an immediate counter-space effort. As current hegemon, the US could do no less, save graciously decide to step aside. Because all states are not equal in power or interest, no state other than the US would, or could, publicly proclaim its intent to dominate space without setting off an immediate scramble … at least for the time being.

a2 China First Strike

No risk of an impact—US currently has a huge nuclear advantage

Lieber and Press, ‘7 (July/August, Keir and Daryl, “Superiority Complex,” The Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/china-nukes)

In the 1990s, with the Cold War receding, nuclear weapons appeared to be relics. Russian and Chinese leaders apparently thought so. Russia allowed its arsenal to decline precipitously, and China showed little interest in modernizing its nuclear weapons. The small strategic force that China built and deployed in the 1970s and early 1980s is essentially the same one it has today. But meanwhile, the United States steadily improved its “counterforce” capabilities—those nuclear weapons most effective at targeting an enemy’s nuclear arsenal. Even as it reduced the number of weapons in its nuclear arsenal, the U.S. made its remaining weapons more lethal and accurate. The result today is a global nuclear imbalance unseen in 50 years. And nowhere is U.S. nuclear primacy clearer—or potentially more important—than in the Sino-U.S. relationship. China has approximately 80 operationally deployed nuclear warheads, but only a few of them—those assigned to single-warhead DF-5 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—can reach the continental United States. (There is no definitive, unclassified count of China’s DF-5 ICBMs, but official U.S. statements have put the number at 18.) China has neither modern nuclear ballistic-missile submarines nor long-range nuclear bombers. Moreover, China’s ICBMs can’t be quickly launched; the warheads are stored separately, and the missiles are kept unfueled. (Unlike the solid fuel used in U.S. missiles, the liquid fuel used to propel Chinese ICBMs is highly corrosive.) Finally, China lacks an advanced early-warning system that would give Beijing reliable notice of an incoming attack.

No risk of a Chinese rocket hitting the United States – We would end them first

Lieber and Press, ‘7 (July/August, Keir and Daryl, “Superiority Complex,” The Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/china-nukes)

China has approximately 80 operationally deployed nuclear warheads, but only a few of them—those assigned to single-warhead DF-5 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—can reach the continental United States. (There is no definitive, unclassified count of China’s DF-5 ICBMs, but official U.S. statements have put the number at 18.) China has neither modern nuclear ballistic-missile submarines nor long-range nuclear bombers. Moreover, China’s ICBMs can’t be quickly launched; the warheads are stored separately, and the missiles are kept unfueled. (Unlike the solid fuel used in U.S. missiles, the liquid fuel used to propel Chinese ICBMs is highly corrosive.) Finally, China lacks an advanced early-warning system that would give Beijing reliable notice of an incoming attack. This small arsenal fulfilled China’s strategic requirements in the 20th century, but it is now obsolete. The current Chinese force was designed for a different era:when China was a poor nation with a limited role on the world stage, and when U.S. and Soviet missiles were too inaccurate to carry out a disarming strike—even against Beijing’s small force. But China’s international presence is expanding, and America’s counterforce capabilities have soared. Moreover, one of the biggest constraints that would deter American leaders from contemplating a disarming strike is fading away. In the past, a U.S. preemptive attack would have generated horrific civilian casualties, but that may soon cease to be the case. How the United States achieved nuclear dominance after the Soviet Union collapsed is an open secret. The Navy refitted its entire fleet of nuclear-armed submarines with new, highly accurate Trident II missiles and replaced many of the 100-kiloton W76 warheads on these missiles with 455-kiloton W88 warheads. (One kiloton is the explosive energy released by 1,000 tons of TNT.) The result is an unprecedented combination of accuracy and destructive power, essential for an attack on hardened silos. The Navy also recently tested a GPS guidance system that would dramatically boost the accuracy, and thus lethality, of the submarine missile arsenal. For its part, the Air Force has improved the guidance systems of land-based Minuteman III missiles. Many of these missiles are also being “retipped” with more-powerful warheads—and more-accurate reentry vehicles—taken from recently retired MX (“Peacekeeper”) missiles. The Air Force has also upgraded the avionics on B-2 bombers. These nuclear-mission-capable bombers are already “stealthy,” but the upgrades improve the planes’ ability to penetrate enemy airspace secretly, by flying very low and using the terrain to shield them from radar. Perhaps as important, the United States is pursuing a slew of nonnuclear weapons that will provide officials options they may find more palatable if they decide to attack an adversary’s nuclear arsenal. These include precision “bunker buster” conventional bombs, high-speed long-range cruise missiles, and conventionally armed ballistic missiles—each of which could be used to destroy enemy missile silos. Furthermore, Washington is undertaking initiatives—including advances in antisatellite warfare and in wide-area remote sensing, designed to find “relocatable” mobile missile launchers—that will make China’s nuclear forces vulnerable. Even a missile-defense system substantially boosts U.S. offensive counterforce capabilities. Critics of this system are right in claiming that it could not shield America from even a modest nuclear attack (e.g., 25 warheads), because it would be easily overwhelmed by decoy warheads and the “penetration aids” that would accompany an adversary’s missiles. But it could enhance offensive nuclear capabilities, by “mopping up” a small number of incoming warheads that survived a U.S. first strike. America’s growing counterforce power reflects its concern about China’s emergence as what Pentagon planners call a “peer competitor.” In 2006, the Pentagon warned: “Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States.” Not surprisingly, the U.S. is pursuing dominance over China across the military spectrum—building up its conventional-warfare, space-warfare, and information- warfare capabilities, as well as its missile-defense and offensive nuclear-strike systems. Changes in war plans and shifts in the location of nuclear forces confirm that American nuclear upgrades are linked to the perception that China may become a threat. In 1997, the Clinton administration made the first major change in presidential guidance for nuclear-war plans since the early 1980s, broadening the spectrum of Chinese targets. Leaked excerpts from the Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review called for the United States to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China. And the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Henry A. Obering III, acknowledged that his agency’s plans are not entirely focused on “rogue states” or the “axis of evil.” In fact, the Missile Defense Agency also plans for Chinese contingencies. Perhaps the most concrete sign of the increased prominence of China in U.S. nuclear-war plans is the transfer of five nuclear-armed submarines from their Atlantic base at Kings Bay, Georgia, to the Pacific base at Bangor, Washington; two-thirds of the U.S. strategic submarine fleet is now based in the Pacific. Finally, in May 2006, it was reported that the Pentagon had adopted a new war plan to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack by striking Chinese targets, potentially with nuclear weapons. Of course, it’s difficult to ascertain Washington’s intentions, but as a 2003 Rand report on the future U.S. nuclear arsenal concluded, “What the planned force appears best suited to provide beyond the needs of traditional deterrence is a preemptive counterforce capability against Russia and China. Otherwise, the numbers and the operating procedures simply do not add up” (emphasis in original). These changes do not mean that the United States is adopting a nuclear first-strike strategy—it strongly prefers to fight any future wars without resorting to nuclear weapons. Rather, the United States is honing its nuclear capabilities for three broad purposes: to deter conventional or nuclear attacks, to strengthen its leverage against nuclear-armed adversaries during high-stakes crises or wars, and to give itself better nuclear options in dire circumstances.

No risk of a Chinese rocket hitting the United States – We would end them first

Lieber and Press, ‘7 (July/August, Keir and Daryl, “Superiority Complex,” The Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/china-nukes)

Although China’s long-range missiles are deployed in a lightly populated region, lethal fallout from an attack would travel hundreds of miles and kill more than 3 million Chinese civilians. American leaders might have contemplated such a strike, but only in the most dire circumstances. But things are changing radically. Improved accuracy now allows war planners to target hardened sites with low-yield warheads and even airbursts. And the United States is pushing its breakthroughs in accuracy even further. For example, for many years America has used global-positioning systems in conjunction with onboard inertial-guidance systems to improve the accuracy of its conventionally armed (that is, nonnuclear) cruise missiles. Although an adversary may jam the GPS signal near likely targets, the cruise missiles use GPS along their flight route and then—if they lose the signal—use their backup inertial-guidance system for the final few kilometers. This approach has dramatically improved a cruise missile’s accuracy and could be applied to nuclear-armed cruise missiles as well. The United States is deploying jam- resistant GPS receivers on other weapons, experimenting with GPS on its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and planning to deploy a new generation of GPS satellites—with higher-powered signals to complicate jamming. The payoff for equipping cruise missiles (or nuclear bombs) with GPS is clear when one estimates the civilian casualties from a lower-yield, airburst attack. We asked Matthew McKinzie, a scientific consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council and coauthor of the 2006 study, to rerun the analysis using low-yield detonations compatible with nuclear weapons currently in the U.S. arsenal. Using three warheads per target to increase the odds of destroying every silo, the model predicts fewer than 1,000 Chinese casualties from fallout. In some low-yield scenarios, fewer than 100 Chinese would be killed or injured from fallout. The model is better suited to predicting fallout casualties than to forecasting deaths from the blast and fire, but given the low population in the rural region where the silos are, Chinese fatalities would be fewer than 6,000 in even the most destructive scenario we modeled. And in the future, there may be reliable nonnuclear options for destroying Chinese silos. Freed from the burden of killing millions, a U.S. president staring at the threat of a Chinese nuclear attack on U.S. forces, allies, or territory might be more inclined to choose preemptive action.

No Risk of an Impact – US Nuclear dominance deters china from attacking and intel proves that China’s ICBM’s are terrible

Lieber and Press, ‘7 (July/August, Keir and Daryl, “Superiority Complex,” The Atlantic Monthly, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/china-nukes)

Finally, if China threatened to launch nuclear attacks against America’s allies, its territory, or its forces in Asia, nuclear primacy would make a preemptive first strike more palatable to U.S. leaders. Any decision to attack China’s ICBM force, though, would be fraught with danger. A missile silo might have escaped detection. Furthermore, a strike on China’s 18 ICBMs would leave Beijing with roughly 60 shorter-range nuclear missiles with which to retaliate against U.S. forces and allies in the region. However, in the aftermath of a “clean” disarming strike—one that killed relatively few Chinese—American leaders could credibly warn that a Chinese nuclear response would trigger truly devastating consequences, meaning nuclear attacks against a broader target set, including military, government, and possibly even urban centers. In light of warnings from Chinese defense analysts and from within China’s military that it might use nuclear weapons to avoid losing Taiwan, an American president might feel compelled to strike first. In this terrible circumstance, he or she would reap the benefits of the past decade’s counterforce upgrades. But America’s growing counterforce strength is a double- edged sword. To date, China’s nuclear modernization has progressed very slowly. Beijing is working to deploy new mobile ICBMs and ballistic-missile submarines, but U.S. estimates of when these systems will become operational have repeatedly been pushed back. However, as China’s role in the world changes, and especially as its leaders come to appreciate American counterforce capabilities, Beijing will face increasing pressure to accelerate and expand these programs—and it may already be doing so. Because America has spent decades honing its antisubmarine- warfare skills and technology, a few new Chinese nuclear-armed submarines wouldn’t substantially reduce Beijing’s vulnerability. A more attractive path would be to deploy hundreds of new mobile missiles. Of course, U.S. officials would likely view deployment of these missiles as a sign of growing bellicosity—and, amid worsening relations, would undertake additional military preparations. Furthermore, American efforts to permanently secure nuclear primacy might encourage what defense experts call “crisis instability” and increase the chance of an inadvertent escalation. If China doesn’t redress its nuclear vulnerability in peacetime, it may feel great pressure to do so during a brewing crisis or conventional war—simply to protect its forces. But a Chinese decision to arm a portion of its ICBM force, or to disperse its shorter-range mobile nuclear missiles, might be misinterpreted by the U.S. as nuclear blackmail or preparation for a nuclear attack (for example, on American military bases in Asia). Such a step could trigger the preemptive attack that the Chinese action was meant to forestall. The greatest dangers of nuclear escalation, however, would arise during a conventional military confrontation between the U.S. and China. Contemporary American military doctrine is designed to rattle and confuse an adversary by degrading and overwhelming its command apparatus. Since at least 1991, a high priority in U.S. air campaigns has been to deny the enemy “situational awareness” by targeting its electricity supply, communications infrastructure, radar sites, and military-command bunkers. This may help win conventional battles, but it’s counterproductive if the goal is to prevent nuclear escalation. Glimpsing only a confused picture of the battlefield, and knowing that their radar coverage has been heavily damaged, Chinese leaders would feel tremendous pressure to put their nuclear forces on alert, especially those that can be dispersed (that is, their medium-range mobile missiles). These steps could trigger a U.S. escalation. The previous period of American nuclear primacy—the 1950s and early 1960s—illustrates some of the strategic implications of such preeminence. The United States was able to force the Soviet Union to concede during a series of crises over Berlin from 1958 to 1961. At the peak of the 1961 Berlin crisis, President Kennedy carefully explored launching a surprise nuclear attack to disarm Soviet forces. Soviet leaders, although unaware of these deliberations, knew that any escalation was a losing proposition for them, and they backed down. Also telling is the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The U.S. strategic nuclear advantage helps explain why the Soviet Union sought to place missiles in Cuba in the first place: The Soviets had very few missiles that were capable of reaching American cities. But U.S. nuclear primacy—albeit eroding by 1962—also contributed to the Soviet decision to withdraw the missiles, because Khrushchev believed the United States was prepared to launch a major war, including massive nuclear strikes, against the Soviet Union. America’s nuclear primacy over China likely will have similarly beneficial and dangerous consequences. Optimists might find solace in the argument that nuclear primacy is irrelevant. Perhaps China’s leaders will feel no pressure to build new arms in peacetime or to escalate in wartime, because they believe the United States would never risk launching a counterforce strike.