All nations have a right to nuclear weapons

I appreciate my opponent's thoughtful argumentation, and with that, I will launch into some rebuttal of my own. Pro's arguments boil down to three basic premises for supporting the resolution " equality, sovereignty, and mutually assured destruction " so I will begin by addressing each of those in turn, then getting into some counter-rebuttal. 1. Equality One, rights exist for those that use them without taking away the rights of others. It's fine for someone to swing their fist at the air, or even to hit something hard and harm themselves. However, it is not alright to inflict injury to others using one's fist. Those equal rights, therefore, disappear when a person uses them to diminish the rights of others. Therefore, a nation that abuses the rights of other nations utilizing this particular right is no longer entitled to it. Two, let's read that UN quote again. "the United Nations shall promote: universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion." As I brought up with my R2P point in the last round, which went conceded by Pro, the UN has an obligation to prevent a government's transgression against its own people. So based on this respect for "equal rights and self-determination of peoples," the UN can reasonably deny nations that transgress access to more dangerous methods of transgression. I'll get into why nuclear weapons may be used against a country's own people on that point, but even if you don't buy that, this suffices as a reasonable punishment for current transgressions. 2. Sovereignty First, as long as Pro is conceding the point on R2P, he's conceding that there are reasonable cases for abridging the right to sovereignty, as established by the UN Security Council itself. I defined specific reasons for intervention: "instances of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing." I'd say the fact that the U.S. isn't currently engaging in such rights violations validates our continued ownership of nuclear weapons. Since the vast majority of nations I'm including in my arguments have engaged and continue to engage in these types of violations, denying them access to nuclear weapons prevents further major violations. Again, I will get to the argument of using nuclear weapons on the populace in my counter-rebuttal. Second, sovereignty only extends to the borders of a nation. Sovereignty ends when you leave those borders. As nuclear weapons present an obvious security threat to other nations, the sovereignty of a nation likely to use or lose their nuclear weapons threatens the sovereignty of other nations. As with my argument regarding equality, a nation's sovereignty is no longer paramount when it is likely to deny the sovereignty of other nations. 3. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) I'll get into the specific example of the Cold War on my case. Several responses on MAD. First and foremost, it doesn't apply to non-rational actors. MAD requires that all actors be perfectly rational. Whether this is the result of hatred, desperation, or simply mental derangement, there is a distinct possibility that this will not be true. Leaders don't always function rationally. Whether we're talking about Islamic fundamentalism and anger towards Israel, or a North Korean leader whose cult of personality makes him out to be the equivalent of a god, MAD doesn't apply to everyone. Even if they are functioning rationally, there is sometimes a logical reason why an attack would do more harm than a counterattack: "Twenty-two Arab states comprise more than 5 million square miles and more than 350 million people. Israel has just 8,000 square miles and 7.6 million people. These disparities help to explain why Israel has invested so much in maintaining its qualitative military edge. Israel must possess weapons so powerful that even a united attack by all aggressors in the region is overwhelmingly discouraged."[1] Two, even if we buy that MAD prevents nuclear wars, it doesn't prevent warfare as a whole. Despite the threat of nuclear launch, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Balkans, as well as many African and Latin American nations have experienced tremendous conflict.[1] And each war creates another opportunity for their use. Third, MAD is a policy based off of psychology rather than logic. The argument often goes that MAD has kept us safe. "Gen Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold perhaps best answered this by asserting that modern equipment is but a step in time and that 'any Air Force which does not keep its doctrines ahead of its equipment, and its vision far into the future, can only delude the nation into a false sense of security.'"[1] In other words, as nuclear technologies have gotten more destructive, simpler to deliver, and more accurate, and while intel gets better, this concept is disappearing. The main reason MAD survives is because, when one nation attacks another, the nation being attacked will be capable of retaliating powerfully. The advancement of technology has dramatically altered this dynamic, and as such, has removed the benefit of psychology. Alright, onto some counter rebuttal. 1) Terrorism I take issue with the idea that this point should be dropped. The topic is that "all nations have a right to nuclear weapons." I'm not stating that terrorist groups also have that right. I'm stating that a part of providing that right to every country produces concerns that those technologies will disseminate further against international law. The harms of nuclear technologies being lost, given away or stolen, or of nuclear scientists working with terrorist groups, are real and have a place in this debate. And Pro is right " these harms do exist in status quo. But currently, nations that have access to nuclear weapons aren't letting those technologies fall into the wrong hands. The chances of this happening following a more widespread right to develop nuclear weapons increase dramatically for the reasons I've already cited. 2) Rogue states Pro drops the point on Iran. Extend all my points there about harms to Israel " war between them and nuclear blasts in general would be catastrophic for the region. As for his points on NK, Pro repeats his sovereignty argument, which I've already rebutted. He also talks about India. Three responses. One, India and NK are two very different monsters. Much as it is an ill-functioning one, India is a democracy, and is therefore dependent on the will of the people. It is allied with western democracies, and is therefore expected to function in a certain way, not to mention held to that by the international community at large. India stands to lose far more than it gains by engaging in misuse of their nuclear weapons. NK lacks those attachments and is a staunch dictatorship, with little incentive to abide international law. Two, I would hardly regard the human rights abuses of India as being a reason to implement R2P, which again, goes conceded. Their abuses are nowhere near similar to those instigated by NK. Three, even if we accept that India's a bad choice, expanding the right to nuclear weapon development to a larger amount of countries is not warranted. One fault does not justify another. 3) Utilizing nukes within borders Pro says that they're not likely to use them within their own borders since it would reduce available land. This isn't true. For one, much of the land within many nations is simply unusable anyway. Bombing an enemy base in a desert or in the mountains is not going to do any significant harm to the country's resources. For another, fallout hasn't been viewed as a big problem for some nations. Syria certainly didn't seem to care when it launched chemical weapons into one of its own towns, which also cause long-term damage to the area. Lastly, this assumes a reasonable mental calculus. If the leadership is on the verge of being deposed, they won't care what kind of harm they do to the country so long as they retain their position. If the leadership is irrational, then they won't be thinking about future implications anyway, and will solely be focused on eliminating the threat in front of them. As Pro didn't respond to this point, he is granting not only R2P, but also the reality that nuclear weapons make it impossible to intervene in the massive transgressions of many nations. He even recognizes the harm of the Rwandan genocide, the sort of mass death that could easily happen again, except that the policy of allowing all nations to pursue nuclear technologies will ensure that they occur uninterrupted. 4) Possibility of nuke war Pro claims that more advanced methods of communication will prevent nuclear annihilation. First, while this may be true for preventing misunderstandings, it won't prevent accidental launch. Those can happen independent of communication. Second, military information is still often classified in many countries, and therefore kept secret. Secrecy hasn't disappeared because of new communication technologies, and while communication may prevent certain instances of misunderstanding, it won't stop uncertainties from abounding. I'm not sure why this point about the Cold War leading to an arms race matters here. A build-up of nuclear arms isn't necessary for someone to find a need to use them. If anything, I would say that the lower level of build-up will lead to fewer countries implementing the necessary fail safes to prevent nuclear explosions. Alright, with that, I'll leave it to Pro to continue his arguments. 1) http://www.nydailynews.com... 2) http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil... 3) http://www.theguardian.com... 4) http://www.bbc.co.uk...