United States Weapons Posture and Arsenal Topic Open Thread
Non-proliferation - The recent developments with both North Korea and Iran have renewed interested in a proliferation topic. Greta Stahl coordinated work on this subject and has written this paper. She has also provided a supplemental bibliography of scholarly work in this field.
I like this topic--anyone who knows me recognizes tha I am an arms control wonk. That, and the literature is detailed, interesting, and contains CONTROVERSIES. We can figure out the division of ground later.
I have two comments on issues raised in the paper:
1. There are other interesting aff areas that we can consider as aff, including:
* Reprocessing (plutonium)
* Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty
* Massive conventional bombs (MOA
* Missile/delivery mechanism controls
* WMD-related export controls
These are only additional considerations--the rez should be scaled to keep the topic reasonable.
2. The literature on space weapons is good, but it is not deep enough to sustain a season of debate by itself, based on my reading of a good chunk of the open-source lit. The controversies are real and detailed, but, as many commentators note, the debate is not yet 'mature' in the same way as nuclear deterrence theory, etc. To me, this recommends it as an area in a list.
American space weapons policy proposals generally fall into four genres:
1. Sanctuary (DeBlois et al): prohibit domestic research/testing/deployment, work to prohibit int'l research/testing/deployment
2. Hedging (Krepon et al, ev above): prohibit domestic testing/deployment, work to prohibit int'l research/testing/deployment
3. Incrementalism (O'Hanlon et al.): essentially the squo--smallish research/testing program with an eye towards deployments in a 5-15 year timeframe
4. Assymetric Dominance (Dolman et al): rapid US deployments designed to lock other states out of space
All have good solvency cards, each answers the other, etc-- means a good debate.
I disagree a bit on the viability of a 'restraint only' space arms control aff. Here is some solvency ev:
Michael Krepon, arms control expert and President Emeritus, The Stimson Center, with Chrisopher Clary, SPACE ASSURANCE OR SPACE DOMINANCE: THE CASE AGAINST WEAPONIZING SPACE, 2003, Henry L. Stimson Center, p. 88-89.
The prospects of space warfare are low at present. By virtue of its leadership position in space commerce and military power, the United States now has unprecedented capacity to shape whether space becomes weaponized.
As Philip E. Coyle and John B. Rhinelander have observed, “Not since the development of the atomic bomb has the United States had an equivalent opportunity and incentive to show leadership for restraint in the development of a new class of weapons, namely weapons in space.”2 If the United States exercises restraint in the flight-testing and deployment of space weaponry, while maintaining readiness to respond if others do so first, there is a reasonable chance that these thresholds will not be crossed. If, however, the United States takes the lead in flight-testing and deploying space weaponry, other states will surely follow suit. The salience of space warfare will remain low if such techniques are not tested or deployed. They can remain even lower if the United States adopts a prudent hedging strategy.
Quick clarification: Based on the 'update' in Stahl's paper, it might be more accurate to describe O'Hanlon as an advocate of hedging. Regardless, there are plenty of people who defend the current slow research/testing policy.
This site is mentioned in the paper, but I think it is worth repeating:
http://www.spacedebate.org/
The folllowing-multipart post is from Ryan Galloway.
As a potential "friendly amendment" to all the hard work Greta has
done on the proliferation paper thus far.
It seems a way to include a central controversy in the proliferation
debate in a way that is not a list might be:
Resolved: That the United States federal government should
substantially increase compliance with its obligations under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Alternate Wording: That the USFG should substantially fulfill its
obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
First question: why is this important to do?
I think we need to openly acknowledge the fact that there is a large
section of our community right now that is "anti-list." In my own
mind, I am agnostic on the question of list vs. anti-list: I think
certain topics work better with lists, and others don't.
However, this is not the reaction of most. Many see lists as a
savior, many see lists as the bane of their existence. I think the
best way to shore up support for what I think is a great controversy
at its core is to provide the community with options for a list and
non-list approaches.
I agree with Steve's assessment that -I like this area, -I think Greta
has done a lot of great work, -but we should think about non-list ways
to write the resolution.
Second question: what controversy does this present?
This topic essentially presents a core question in the
non-proliferation literature--should the US re-commit itself to the
central international non-proliferation bargain, or go another way?
It seems the Bush administration has chosen a different path with
agreements like the India deal, but there seems to be a solid case to
be made to go and shore up the NPT. Its been a while since I've been
deep on this literature, but even a few searches seem to support the
idea that: the NPT is in trouble now, a lot of nations around the
world think the reason why is that the Nuclear Weapons States (NWS's)
have given up on their half of the bargain, and the US could take
measures to shore this up.
I'll address a couple of case ideas, outline the NEG. ground, and then
address a couple of concerns. I did a few searches and there seems to
be a lot out there on the question of compliance by the US with the
NPT, especially after the failure of the 2005 review conference.
Possible cases:
Disarm/Substantially move toward disarm (Article VI obligation)--also
outlined in Greta's paper
Civilian Nuclear Power Sharing (Article III obligation)
Ban the India Deal
Ban Mini-Nukes/bunker busters
No First Use (outlined in Greta's paper)
Ratify the CTBT (we don't even need to add it to the end of a list
topic...its just here)
Galloway post - part 2
NEG. ground
NPT is cover for nations to develop nukes
Politics: NPT is unpopular with conservatives, big flip-flop for Bush
administration
Nuclear Apartheid K: Locks in squo of 5 nuclear super-powers
Prolif Good (duh)
Potential for any number of relations disads, the one immediately
springing to mind is US-India relations under fears we'd re-neg on the
deal
Concerns
I begin this section with what I feel is a statement of the obvious.
It is too darn hard to be AFF. I think we hurt ourselves by making
this last topic too small, and not AFF. biased enough. I also think
having a ballot item or two that has a simpler wording that allows for
AFF. flexibility is one we should think about.
I think this committee has two central philosophical questions to
answer this year:
#1: Should we be trying to write topics in an AFF. biased manner?
#2: If we answer 'yes' to question #1, what is the best path to take?
I answer question #1: yes. The tilt has happened. We have seen
topics that make it too hard to be AFF. Judges give the Negative all
kinds of ground on theory debates, even in the face of mounting NEG.
win percentages. It merely acknowledges reality that the topic
committee cannot exist in a vacuum and pretend that the Negative will
have a fighting chance almost no matter what the topic says.
I have a much longer rant about this. I will just say that I think
the late backlash against the courts topic that the AFF. would be able
to do anything under the overrule topic hurt the topic because it
caused us to write it too small. The "explosion of AFF ground" never
happened in part because overrule was solid to begin with, and in part
because competing interpretations paradigm would have never let it
happen.
Question #2 is a lot trickier. I have heard two schools of thought.
The first school is to "squeeze the AFF" under the hopes that judges
will force negatives to be more specific. Write a topic with good
AFF's, but a few good AFF's. This is the school of thought that
guided topics like Treaties and Courts.
The second school of thought is to give the AFF more flexibility to
write affirmatives that have the potential to duck/turn generics.
There may be other ways to help the Affirmative out, and my own
personal thought is a middle ground (some AFF flex within a range of
good AFF's).
Given that there are differing schools on this question, it might be
best to provide the community with options in both schools and to let
them choose the resolution that strikes their fancy. Have options
that include both lists of AFF's and broader wordings on the final
ballot.
So one answer to: "is this too AFF biased" is to say "I don't care."
This would not be entirely true, I do care, but I think even the
objections to upholding the NPT are severe enough to fuel an entire
year of NEG. ground.
Galloway post 3/3
-Is this way too broad? Its broad, but not way too broad. Our
obligations are pretty clearly laid out. Here's a card on this
question:
Sharon Squassoni, April 26, 2005,
http://www.ndu.edu/library/docs/crs/crs_RS22125_26apr05.pdf
"The main obligations of the nuclear weapon states are not to transfer
or help nonnuclear weapon states acquire nuclear weapons (Article I),
not to supply certain nuclearrelated items unless they are under
safeguards (Article III), to facilitate the exchange of peaceful
nuclear energy technology (Article IV), and to pursue negotiations
toward nuclear disarmament (Article VI)."
The obvious concern many would have would be the "weapon of the week"
case. Maybe there is a way we can deal with this in the resolution
writing. Maybe this is something we're not even that worried about.
Let aff's have the flexibility to write their weapon of the week case.
-Is this too narrow? Now, to speak out of the other side of my mouth.
Do we make the AFF defend the NPT and create a year of "NPT bad"
debates ONLY? Does this give the AFF. enough flexibility? Is it
possible the AFF could "increase compliance" with the NPT and yet link
duck the "NPT Good/Bad Debate?"
In reality, I think this is the larger concern. Maybe we are locking
ourselves into a year of NPT good/bad debates with this topic.
At the same time, many feel the CTBT debate alone is fertile enough
ground for an entire year. And the AFF certainly would have very
viable affs like No First Use, Disarm, etc. into the mix.
One way to address this concern would be to list other arms control
treaties we are out of compliance with. We could add treaties like
the MTCR as an example of other AFF's.
This is obviously a very rough sketch, and obviously a lot of AFF's
under this topic can be found under the original Stahl proposal. The
main purpose is to provide a friendly amendment to the paper as a
possible avenue to come up with a wording that is not list based.
Sorry if this is a bit random, the idea hit me in the night with some
baby cries in the background, but I think this would work. If prolif
wins, I would be more than happy to follow up on resolutions in this
direction. If people want more follow-up, I can process the searches
I did, and can do more.
RG
A news story of interest to folks curious about a prolif topic from the Washington Post. Thanks to Alex Lennon from the CSIS for the heads-up.
"Bush Urged to Develop Overall Nuclear Arms Policy"
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 18, 2007; A05
A prestigious scientific committee made up of retired nuclear weapons lab directors and former Defense and Energy department officials is recommending that, before the United States moves ahead on the development of new nuclear warheads, the Bush administration should develop a bipartisan policy regarding the size of the future stockpile, testing and nonproliferation.
The committee's report, which is due out next month, comes at a time when the Bush administration is asking Congress to approve $88 million for cost and engineering plans that could lead to a decision next year for production of a new Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) for the nation's current submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile.
Full story available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/17/AR2007031701372_pf.html
This topic is nearly identical to the WMD topic that was on the high school topic in 01-02. Any debater who is a sophomore in college and debated 4 years in HS, will have had experience with this topic. Maybe that isn't a high enough percentage of the community to be a problem for you, but I'd like to find something entirely new.
I think anyone that was a freshman or sophmore and exposed to the 'nealry identical' topic will be astounded on how different it is in college. I think the time gap is more than sufficient.
I like David's notion of controversy. While there is certainly controversy in the other areas, there is a significant differrence with this topic. Not only is there controversy surrounding the nuances of arms control policies but there is also controversy about the grand bold strokes of government action in the world. This is a level of sophistication and simplicity in the controversy that I find the other topics lacking, some more so than others. This also seems to be the biggest problem, its breadth/limit, but I turn to the resolution proper and not the topic area for those limits.
I think there are some other sources the debate community should explore as well. The department of defense has some pretty smart folks doing work on arms control at several locations. Examples include:
National Defense University where there are a LOT of good pubs:
http://www.ndu.edu/WMDCenter/
http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/home.html
I think they Strategic Forum
Naval Postgraduate School, which sponsors the Center for Contemporary Conflict that publishes a journal (don't know the frequency off-hand). Most of the NPS work can be found at:
http://www.nps.edu/Research/index.html
Look for the "Strategic Insights" jounral.
Those two are the most impressive.
I also recommend anything that Brad Roberts has published. Also, Keith Payne (cited in Greta's bibliography) publishes with some frequency and he has quals in both academia and the defense community.
Those are some starting points....I may come up with more later,
Dan
For all,
How much has the literature changed on the CTBT since the treaties topic? A fair number of people who debated treaties make this aff/debate seem like one of the better debate areas they debated. And given the large number of talented debaters/researchers that ran the CTBT on treaties, could any number of teams put out their old CTBT file, cut some updates, and then just cut some odd new advantages every once in a while that aren't really a big part of the literature?
I guess my big concern about the CTBT is that well, it would kinda suck to spend a lot of the summer going through old ctbt files rather than reading something kind of new..
Generally though, I think this is a relatively new topic for most of the debaters next year. Some of us debated the WMD topic in high school, but that was a long time ago etc.
To further Kade's point regarding the WMD overlap - at most, half of the field will have debated the WMD topic, and 1/4 will have done so during their freshmen year of high school, when most did not do much research or really gain a lot of "topic specific education." It seems that the framing of the debate also will allow for a lot just straight case debate. "1 off and case" would not have to be reserved for k teams; that could be your disad and 8 minutes of case impact turns with deterrence good. The one off, court cap and gender turns strat never seemed that viable. This division of ground appears unique to this topic as opposed t0 middle east engagement or some of the other topic areas, in part because of the stability of present policy in those areas but also because various plan mechanisms have a less clear tie to one side or the other of the debate.
Anyone who thinks it would suck to go back through CTBT stuff clearly didn't debate that topic-the CTBT debate was AWESOME, probably the best part of a great treaties topic (and this is even coming from when i was a frosh who tried to run the CTBT and kept getting waxed because every team had their great specific strat for the CTBT since it was the most common aff on the topic). Since virtually no one in college now has debated the CTBT, i think it would be educational to go back through those backfiles, and with all the proliferation changes since then (the development of the North Korea situation, the upcoming India nuclear deal, the invasion of Iraq, Iranian nuclearization, all of which were claimed as advantages that the CTBT could solve at the time) I hardly fear that the literature will be stale. I debated the CTBT right after a senior year of WMD debates, including quite a few about the CTBT, and trust me, college debates will go leagues deeper than even the best high school debaters did at the time.
Plus, prolif debates are just cool.