The US is justified in preempting the spread of nuclear arms.

I will be proposing my arguments against the case for US justification for preemption regarding the spread of nuclear arms. Then in the following round I will rebut Pro's arguments. 1. National & Economic Sovereignty In order for the United States to pursue a preemptive strategy against the spread of nuclear arms they would have to trample the economic and national sovereignty of foreign nations to do so. There is no global market for nukes so in order to preempt the spread of nuclear weapons the United States must then act to preempt the spread of materials used to assemble nuclear bombs. Take this hypothetical example:A small, poor nation discovers a deposit of uranium on its land. The deposit is substantial and selling the material could bring untold wealth to the ailing nation. The nation in question wants to sell the material to its close neighbor and ally who is rumored to be building a nuclear bomb. The poor nation doesn't care, all they see is a client for its sovereign material that it has chosen to mine off of its land. Seeing a potential threat the United States moves in to prevent the sale of the material to the nation rumored to be building a bomb and slaps on economic sanctions for both countries for good measure. Sound familiar? The United States engages in this sort of policy all the time but has no real justification for doing so.If a nation digs up a material on its own land and decides to sell it to a neighbor, that's all legal under economic and national sovereignty. If this material was water or iron or cars it would go over without a hitch but since it is uranium the United States suddenly feels as if it has a justified right to stop it? What if the United States tried to justify blocking the sale of iron between two nations? It would never stand. So why does it stand with nuclear material? Because people feel as though nuclear material is a threat to world peace and US security. Both are false.2. Deterrence = PeaceKenneth Waltz was a great defender of nuclear proliferation because he argued that nuclear deterrence causes peace. If we look at the beginning of the 20th century compared to the end of the 20th century we see two completely different stories. The beginning of the 20th century was marked with unprecedented bloodshed. World War 1 and 2 followed each other by a mere 20 years (1919-1939). Then in 1945 everything changed with the invention of the nuclear bomb. The first half of the century saw two bloody conventional wars. The second half saw a handful of minor conventional wars but no major wars, although the geopolitical stage was set for one.The Cold War never erupted into a conventional war between the US and the USSR because of nuclear weapons. The policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), while terrifying, worked. It worked because it was terrifying. It was deterrence. Nuclear deterrence is so potent because of the terror it inspires. Who wants to risk a bloody conventional war when the threat of nuclear weapons hangs over their heads? It causes peace. India and Pakistan have paired off with nuclear weapons [1] and neither has made any moves to go to war because of the nuclear deterrence. The reason Iran wants a nuclear bomb isn't so it can act aggressively against its neighbors but because it wants to try and counter the nuclear weapons that Israel has [1] by obtaining its own deterrence. There have only been two nuclear bombs used by one nation against another, both in 1945 by the United States. Since then no one has dared to use a nuclear bomb because of rival nuclear deterrence. It is widely known and a policy of the United States to use nuclear weapons as a deterrence [2]. If one nation uses a nuclear bomb, other nations will retaliate. It is this nuclear balance that causes peace. If you threaten the outbreak of a conventional ground war with nukes the cost of initiating a ground war rises to unthinkable levels. The risk involved with such a war rises so high that in every case involving nuclear states since WWII no major war has broken out. Multiple studies have concluded that the addition of nuclear weapons to a conflict scenario reduces the intensity of the conflict and raises the chance for peace [3] [4]. Taking these studies to heart and using historical data we can come up with this argument.i. Nuclear weapons cause peace.ii. The United States wants to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.iii. Therefore, the United States wants to halt the spread of peace.Are we justified in preempting the spread of peace? Especially when preemption damages national and economic sovereignty? No. The fact that the spread of nuclear weapons seems to cause peace and halt the outbreak of conventional warfare through deterrence shows that the United States does not have valid justification for preempting the spread of nuclear weapons. 3. The History of PreemptionFrankly the United States' history of preemption has been an utter failure. In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq on the pretense of finding weapons of mass destruction. We found none [5]. If the mission was to find and destroy WMDs we failed and wasted US lives and money. The United States has acted preemptively through threat of military force and economic sanctions both on North Korea and Iran. North Korea is in possession of a nuclear bomb and Iran is close to getting one [6]. Yet we have hypocritically allowed Israel and India to obtain nuclear weapons without entering the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [1]. And still yet, no nuclear weapons have been used since 1945. Ironically, the fight for the preemption of nuclear weapons in Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea etc has caused more deaths than nuclear weapons have since 1945. 4804 people have died in Iraq since 2003 fighting for this preemptive cause [7]. 0 people have died in nuclear weapons attacks. Is this just? ConclusionJustified - having, done for, or marked by a good or legitimate reason- The United States would have to trampled economic and national sovereignty to pursue it's preemptive policy on nuclear weapons.- Nuclear weapons actually promote peace in unstable and hostile situations through nuclear deterrence. This can be seen through studies, theories and historical data.- Therefore, preempting the spread of nuclear arms preempts the spread of peace.- Preemptive policies in the past have caused more loss of economic capital and human life than nuclear bombs have.- Preemptive policies don't seem to be working.I know I have glaringly left out arguments regarding the spread of nukes to terrorists. I will be focusing on that mainly in my rebuttal. But I will put this thought in your head...There is a very free market for the trade in heavy weapons machinery such as tanks, fighter planes etc. yet it seems no terrorist organizations have obtained an F-16. Just a thought for now...Thanks![1] https://www.mtholyoke.edu...[2] http://www.whitehouse.gov...[3] https://www.mtholyoke.edu...[4] http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu...[5] http://www.cnn.com...[6] http://www.iranwatch.org...[7] http://icasualties.org...