The United States should develop missile defense systems.

Thank you, Con - my reply: The Value of Life, Role of Government, Social Contract, and Psychological Impact: I'm confused as to how a missile defense system will bulk up the economy and or give our government prestige? It seems like a Machiavellian idea of fear over love, and giving the citizens themselves false information -- the government doesn't have a RIGHT to interfere in citizen's lives -- just like it interferes with drug policies etc - the government is a tool for the citizens, the citizens are not a tool for the government. Nuclear threats are not made every day, and we have organizations like the NTI trying to fix that in peaceful ways (http://www.nti.org...). When you have countries like the United States violating and pulling out of nuclear treaties, of course you are going to have countries that feel threatened by them and pointing weapons across the ocean at them. The psychological effect it has on other countries will be discussed in the next section, but here I will discuss the psychological effects this has on American citizens. American citizens are already overtly cautious, xenophobic, and stressed with fear from terrorist attacks that could not have been anticipated. With Nuclear defense missiles that only have a 50% chance of success, this will A. Cause them stress at just the mere fact of thinking that we are in need of them, and B. Stress them at the news that they only have a 50% success rate to begin with. (CPSR, Volume 19, 2) Life is valued, but true information is valued more. We have a social contract for informing out citizens of true threats, not misinforming and scaring out citizenry. That is dishonest and cruel, and goes against human values. Threat, Global Repercussions, and Economic Repercussions: No country has deployed or initiated to deploy nuclear weapons other than the United States on Japan. Wouldn't putting them up threaten more countries and make them think we are bigger bullies and military heads? When Russia placed weapons in Cuba, America reacted with military and diplomatic efforts to remove the threat, and it worked. There are no nuclear weapons that a country possesses now that can even reach the United States. North Korea gave up the means for nuclear weapons in exchange for aid (http://www.newser.com..., http://www.foxnews.com..., Iran doesn't possess the weapons yet (http://www.globalsecurity.org...), and the middle east is in too much turmoil nor has the technology to create such weapons. I will play devil's advocate here and ask my opponent why Iran can not create nuclear weapons as a sort of missile defense mechanism against Israel? If Iran has the weapons, Israel is less likely to use their weapons on Iran. What my opponent doesn't realize is that it does not create trust but singed feelings and more distrust and fear. The U.S. wanting to place Missile defense systems in other countries is also dividing them. Let's take Europe as an example, where if America places the systems in Poland, it will divide the diplomatic continent because of their reliance on Russia's natural gas. Russia has already threatened to take military efforts if such a thing is installed, and that would also include drastic problems for our allies in Europe. If the United States is looking to avoid conflict and protect people with these systems, it is not realizing the reality of the situation. Russia feels threatened, as they should, because setting up something as such is both threatening and insulting. We can also see the legitimacy of Russia being threatened by the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treat (That could be seen as a Social Contract violation in itself). With steps like this, America building anything in another country with the word "missile" in it is a threat to other countries. It is like America is taunting them to reply, be it not with nuclear weapons, but with military force. (http://www.eurotopics.net...) As for economics - With the new horrible economic crisis the U.S. is under, I doubt that putting *more* money into our military is a proper idea. We are already trillions of dollars in debt, to start off, and the housing market collapsing, the stock market depleting, and other problems skewed here and there, tells us it is not a proper time to invest in defense but a better time to invest in helping us get out of this problem. "One hundred and twenty-two billion dollars have been spent on Theatre and National Missile Defence (NMD) since World War II. The Pentagon forecasts it will cost 26.6 billion dollars to maintain a single missile defence site in Alaska, with an additional 4 billion dollars in annual maintenance fees. Each ballistic missile test conducted by the US has cost over 100 million dollars, with around half resulting in failures. In total, the US has spent 5.6 trillion dollars in nuclear arsenals. I'm sure we can all think of better uses for the money being spent. It has twice as much funding as any other weapon system. The last US financial budget included the elimination of 141 programs for $15 billion. In addition to restraining discretionary spending, the 2007 Budget proposed reforms to mandatory programs that would cut an additional $59 billion. The government is drastically cutting programs to fuel unnecessary spending. To put it in perspective, remember this is a single defense program, not the entire Armed forces budget; education receives 54billion, National Science Administration receives a measly 6 billion." (http://www.whitehouse.gov..., Spiral http://www.debate.org...) Character Limit.