Tier Tournament [Top], R1: All nations have a right to nuclear weapons

One last time, thanks to CJKAllstar, this has been a great debate to start off this tournament, and I really appreciate the high level of insight he brought here. I'll finish with some rebuttal and summary on the three major issues and conclude. 1. MAD a. Rationality Pro states and restates that "realization of the threat of retribution" is sufficient deterrence. However, he misses the one key factor: fear of that reprisal. The leadership needs to be afraid of the return shot. A religious extremist who is willing to blow themselves up in a restaurant in Israel is also willing to sacrifice their lives to a nuclear strike. The USSR comparison doesn't work. Their desperation doesn't rank against countries like Syria, where the dictator is fighting a tremendous number of rebel soldiers and will almost certainly be killed if he loses the war. If he started to lose and had a nuclear weapon handy, he would have little issue with launching a nuclear strike, since he's dead in any case. That's real desperation. But none of this matters because Pro admits that there are some instances where this could happen. And all I need is one. Remember, Pro has yet to show any reason why a nuclear strike is likely in status quo. If I can prove that even one country is likely to do so post-plan, it dramatically outweighs his arguments. We could look to desperation in Iraq as it tries to get its government up and running against an insurgency, Libya which continues to be dramatically unstable, or Afghanistan as it tries to keep the Taliban at bay. I stated all of these examples in R2, they go dropped. The only response he has to this massive harm is that they present a threat regardless of whether they have nukes. This is confounding considering that, in R2, Pro made a point of providing a large number of reasons why people are specifically afraid of nuclear weapons being used over other weapons. And the weapon they were in awe of was "1400 times" weaker than those available today. It seems difficult to believe another weapon could cause that kind of harm and be easily accessible. Pro even admits this, saying that "nuclear weapons only gives him the opportunity to do more damage cheaper". Irrationality may be the source of the problem, but their capacity to use it to dole out mass death dramatically increases with access to nukes. Pro tries to say that irrational nations won't have access to these weapons. First off, this contradicts his entire C2 is predicated on the price of nuclear weapons dropping, increasing access. Any increase is sufficient to increase the probability of their acquisition. Second, this also contradicts his stance, since the resolution states that all nations have a right to nuclear weapons, yet he's admitting it's beneficial and perhaps even necessary for nations deny access to those weapons. Third, nations desperate for cash may indeed sell their weapons to these groups. Pro's case removes the inherent barrier and depends on another one that may or may not exist. Fourth, there is incentive for nations to give these weapons to other nations, since this is one way to avoid MAD " give the weapons to someone else and let them be the ones who incur the response. Pro talks about how dictators would have to sign a bill, and would therefore showcase rationality. However, there is no bill. We're not arguing a specific policy here, just a concept. Keep that in mind, because there is no requirement for any leader to sign onto anything. Lastly, Pro misses the point on how rational actors can weigh the harms and still launch a nuke. The fear of retribution requires that the ramifications of a given act are similar to the benefits of committing said act. Not everyone's going to be able to stockpile weapons like Israel has, and so a disseminated population with the same number of nukes as a concentrated population is at a significant disadvantage. So irrational actors won't be deterred by MAD. Some rational actors won't see MAD as an issue. Hence, allowing more countries access leads to a significant increase in the probability of a nuclear strike. b. Psychology The capacity to rapidly hit another country's weapons silos and missile launchers can end their ability to retaliate. With satellite imaging and high precision, this can be accomplished. For those countries who have these, the psychology of MAD is lost, and therefore they can engage in nuclear strikes. The probability that they will do so only goes up in a world where more countries are allowed access. c. Use on citizens Pro's rebuttal here is that countries might stop it. However, Pro provides no analysis as to why external nations would risk nuclear war to save the citizens of another nation. We allowed the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, and the deaths of 150,000 people, without any military response whatsoever. It seems unlikely that their use of nukes changes the equation. d. Nuclear proliferation =/= less war Pro concedes that more nukes won't slow general warfare. Each war creates a new opportunity for desperation, and therefore each is an increased opportunity for nuclear war. e. The Cold War Pro concedes that uncertainty is the key factor when it comes to getting closer to nuclear war. His sole response here is repetitious, since it asserts that a country with a nuclear weapon is more likely to launch a nuclear strike against one without, despite the presence of nuclear umbrellas to prevent this very thing (more on that later). Since Pro makes no attempt to minimize the harms of uncertainty, all of my analysis flows across here. Extend my point that we still had 19 close calls with the USSR. Each one was a possible nuclear holocaust. We do not want more. Extend my point that the uncertainty is exponentially increased when you have more than 1 nation with nukes to worry about. Extend my point that monitoring multiple countries at a time with little to no uncertainty is a near impossible task - "awareness and prevention" don't increase. Extend my point that many nations cannot monitor other nations effectively at all, and therefore are in a permanent state of uncertainty. Each of these is a unique and devastating harm to Pro's case. 2. Intervention policy Remember that Pro completely dropped the necessity for intervention, which I stated in R2. If any capacity for intervention is lost, this is a huge blow to his case. He says we can still intervene in humanitarian crises because no one would dare use a nuclear weapon. However, this seems to make a lot of assumptions, specifically with regards to the mindset of the countries involved. The intervening country doesn't want a nuclear war. If they invade the country, there is a possibility that the country will launch a nuke in retaliation, since they are infringing on their sovereignty and are likely to try to remove them from power. So with a choice between helping foreign peoples and avoiding nuclear war, most nations will decide on the latter. The oppressive country is committing massive human rights abuses. They obviously don't care much for the lives of their people, and are willing to put them at risk. They may care for themselves, but they probably have a number of safe houses and bunkers available. The worst response a nation like the U. S. could give to that is to launch nuclear weapons, which affect large areas. The leadership is going to know that, and they won't believe threats of reprisal. So MAD is functioning in favor of the abuser, and therefore the chance of intervention goes down. More people are harmed by oppressive leaders without that intervention. 3. What it means to have a nuclear weapon Realize that any possible benefit from retaliation that Pro is getting is non-unique. He states that retaliation won't happen if the nation being attacked doesn't have nukes, but this ignores my point that nuclear umbrellas ensure that practically every nation is covered. They don't have to have nukes in order for someone to retaliate. He hasn't given any specific reason why each nation should be able to retaliate on its own, just stating that there needs to be a response. That response exists now. So really, what occurs when everyone gets a weapon? Let's assume, for the moment, that no nation ever uses them. There are two main harms, both of which go dropped by Con: a. They have increased coercive powers, since they can always simply threaten to launch a nuke. I brought up evidence that North Korea has done exactly this. This action harms international relations, reducing any actual chance of sustained peace to a minimum. b. They can give those weapons to terrorist groups. Assuming those groups (which, by the way, have no reason to be deterred by MAD, since they call no single nation home) decide to use their weapons, they wreak mass havoc and death. Assuming they don't use them, they're a constant threat on a massive scale. Terrorists would present a security risk unlike any other " non-state actors with the capacity to destroy whole cities in an instant " and they could demand practically anything to stay quiescent. Conclusion: At best, Pro is garnering some small impact of MAD, meaning a small reduced likelihood of any individual nation attacking another. I think I've shown that MAD is unlikely to deter anyone, but perhaps he is winning something here. But the harms outweigh. More rational and irrational leaders would have to believe in that faulty psychology for any benefit. Even if they all believe MAD to some extent, as the US and USSR did, each uncertain interaction could result in nuclear annihilation. Terrorists will acquire weapons and, quite literally, hold the world hostage *puts his pinky to his lips*. Dictators will continue to abuse their people, tying the hands of other nations with the very MAD he supports. And meanwhile, relations between nations will get more and more tense as each threatens the other for concessions. Avoid this nightmare.