Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate The January/February 2020 LD topic is: Resolved: States ought to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. This is an excellent topic with a wealth of literature on both sides. At early-bird national circuit tournaments like CPS and Blake the most popular affs were: whole rez (global disarm) and India-Pakistan. North Korea was also read (sometimes coupled with South Korea, likely to avoid "T-States = plural"). Iran will likely be a popular aff as well (perhaps coupled with Israel). Some outlier affs focused on particular weapon systems, like TNWs in Europe. I suspect K teams will gravitate to Israel affs and affs about the effects of nuclear testing on indigenous people (settler colonialism). Having been at the CPS tournament myself, I have seven observations on the topic: 1. The aff ability to fiat away nuclear war is OP It’s not just that the aff gets a nuclear war advantage that everyone, lay judges included, can agree is deadly serious. It’s also not just that they get every nuclear war advantage possible. It’s not even that they get to fiat away the solvency questions of cheating and re-arm (more on this below). It’s that the neg doesn’t get any nuclear war impacts to weigh against that. Do you have an awesome assurance DA that if the US disarmed our allies that rely on our nuclear umbrella for their defense would develop their own nuclear arsenals, thus worsening the proliferation problem? The aff waves the magic wand of fiat and you have no impact. Do you have a nuclear terrorism DA that the nuclear waste from disarm would create an easy target for fissile material for terrorists? Well, almost every terrorism impact card people read is about why nuclear terrorism escalates to nuclear war. Now it’s true that nuclear terrorism, even if it didn’t precipitate a nuclear war, would be a horrific thing. But this is where the real issue for the neg becomes clear: as bad as a nuclear terrorist attack would be, it pales in comparison to the outcome of a nuclear war between two or more nuclear-armed states. Not just qualitatively (a dirty bomb or gun-type atomic bomb vs a hydrogen bomb), or quantitatively (a singular nuclear strike by terrorists vs an exchange of nuclear weapons likely involving a massive second-strike), but in terms of its effects: nuclear winter. The negative is going to have to win that conventional war outweighs (probability) or will be left going for a silly-sounding future weapons impact like nanotech or AI. Now those silly things will win debates (there’s a reason AI keeps Elon Musk up at night), especially when the neg has high-tech, well-developed blocks about them, but starting the debate with a monopoly on nuclear impacts gives the aff a huge lead. This is why I think the boring, obvious, vanilla whole rez aff is still worth reading. In a debate at CPS, the neg won 100% risk of a Russian retaliation impact turn to a PGS (Prompt Global Strike) shift advantage. But the cross-x question “retaliate with what?” devastated the DA. When only one side gets nuclear war impacts, that side is the side you want to be. The Indo-Pak aff is good, but if the aff doesn’t disarm everyone else, there’s good DAs (that end with nuclear war). When you get to fiat away all nuclear war, why would you read anything else? 2. Reciprocal fiat is how the neg stays in the game The aff gets to fiat every country gets rid of its nuclear weapons. That’s a lot. The silver lining here is that the neg should get to fiat the same scope of actors. Any skepticism you have of neg fiat should be set aside given the overwhelming aff advantages discussed above. That means there’s a verifiable cornucopia of advantage counterplans. Lots of people think nuclear weapons are dangerous, but very few of those people think we should get rid of them all. The middle ground, or reform, is also a very well-developed literature base. Counterplans like de-alert, de-targeting, ending launch-on-warning postures, adopting new and securing old arm control treaties, and ending nuclear modernization are all fair game. But let’s talk about the most powerful reform counterplan in the negative arsenal: NFU. A No First Use nuclear policy means that a state won’t be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. A strong criticism of NFU is that it’s just declaratory policy: nothing stops a state from changing its mind. However, fiat solves this argument the same way fiat ensures states won’t re-arm after disarming (in other words, the fatal flaw to NFU and disarm are the same, and if the aff gets to wave fiat as a magic wand to escape it, so does the neg). Now if every state adopted an NFU policy, no state would be allowed to fire first, and if no state can fire first, that means no state can ever fire. NFU allows the negative to have its cake and eat it too: states can keep nuclear weapons, but they’re barred from ever using them (DAs like deterrence and shift are arguably net benefits). The real trick involves thinking on your feet. Smart affs will reference new reasons why nuclear war is likely now. For example, India affs will talk about India’s Cold Start doctrine, which allows Indian troops to cross the Pakistani border if they’re in pursuit of terrorists. Disarm affs might talk about Trump’s nuclear arsenal modernization or leaving arms control treaties. The aff is smart to reference new developments, because it helps persuasively explain why nuclear war might happen now, even if it hasn’t happened in the last 74 years. However, the neg can counterplan out of all of these recent developments. For example:
The aff isn’t out of the game against the NFU counterplan or other reform counterplans though. The best and most important aff argument is inadvertent nuclear war: a nuclear war started by accident or miscalculation. Most reform counterplans will be much weaker against accidental nuclear war. Accidents, by nature, are unpredictable. Complexity and the Titanic effect (the more secure you think you are, the more overconfident and thus actually less secure you are) are other good solvency deficits vs reform. 3. The shift DA is king Bioweapons, hypersonic missiles, space-based weapons, chemical weapons, prompt global strike (PGS), nano-tech, AI. If we didn’t have nuclear weapons to rely on for deterrence, assurance, and coercion, what would we develop in their place to try and re-secure our overwhelming advantage? All of these frightening weapons systems are potential DAs, as losing the nuclear advantage would likely send states scrambling to develop every and any conceivable alternative. Still, I think there is a winner. Hypersonics have uniqueness issues- they’re being developed now by China, Russia, India, and the US (at least). PGS is too small- it’s fast and has high utility, but at the end of the day a fast conventional bomb is still conventional. As horrifying as chemical weapons are, CW impacts just don’t hold water against nuclear winter. Bio-weapons, at the end of the day, are perhaps the only thing as horrifying (if not more so) than nuclear weapons. This matters for two reasons: the link and the impact. The scale of destruction not only keeps the neg in the game in terms of impact calculus, but it means that they’re more likely to be a replacement for nuclear weapons (because they are sufficiently destructive). The link ev bears this out. Check out this fantastic piece of Horowitz ev: The bioweapons DA isn’t immune to uniqueness problems. Advances in synthetic biology have made genetic science kits something available on Amazon, no longer the domain of billion dollar state laboratories. However, there’s still some great ev that only state-run programs can overcome the technical barriers to produce a biological weapon capable of mass destruction. Most important of all, there’s evidence that directly compares the biological and nuclear threats, and concludes that biological weapons are more terrifying. That means the neg doesn’t just have a foot in the door in the impact calc game, they can potentially win it. 4. Early debates will define the scope of aff fiat The central controversy of disarm in the real world is verification, cheating, and getting everyone to play ball together. That’s absolutely true. But the wording of this resolution strongly suggests the aff gets to fiat that everyone (“states”) just does away with (“eliminates”) their nuclear arsenals. That doesn’t mean the neg won’t push back. Crafty definitions of “nuclear arsenal” will be read to try to constrain the aff: The neg will have an intuitive theory argument to support these definitions: the central controversy of disarm is how to get everyone to do it at once and not cheat, and we should debate the central controversy. In my opinion, the aff has the better arg: as hard as it is to be neg against disarm if fiat resolves cheating, it’s impossible to be aff if it doesn’t. This is your standard inherency double-bind: if your interpretation means states can have nuclear weapons, of course they’ll choose to (because of their overwhelming power and utility). 5. Perception means verification and distrust matters, even if fiat solves cheating There are definitely implications to distrust, even if fiat means states can’t re-arm. If countries don't trust others won't rearm, they might still undertake destabilizing actions besides rearming. There is a lot of literature on the consequences of a breakout or latent nuclear weapon capacity: of having the tech and expertise to quickly develop nuclear weapons, even if you don’t have them currently. There’s literature on “virtual nuclear arsenals” that a breakout capability is sufficient to solve deterrence and the benefits of nuclear weapons. This is actually an aff arg- that disarm but breakout capability (even if it’s just perceived, never actualized) preserves deterrence (solving negative DAs). Another aff thought here- if states actually disarm (fiat) there'd be very little reason to not agree to intrusive inspections (verifiability). That might resolve distrust. 6. K cards are a dime a dozen You’d think nuclear disarm would be the ultimate leftist hippy move. You’d be wrong. Critiques of disarm and nuclear weapons discourse are far older than most people reading this. But there’s also plenty of recent evidence incorporating all of the hot new theories in the academy: As your policy teammates can tell you from the arms sales topic, Neil Cooper makes a living criticizing liberal arms control from the left.
I think that the real mileage from the “disarm is utopian” argument we talked about earlier vis-à-vis fiat will be made in K debates. A framework argument (K of fiat) that says the process of debating disarm is bad seems like a tricky argument, especially because the more the aff waves the magic wand of fiat to solve nuclear war, the more the neg can point out that’s a silly starting point for a serious discussion. 7. The backfile check everyone needs to do Spark is the argument that nuclear war is good, usually centered on the argument that the magnitude of the catastrophe would produce a consciousness-change in humanity that would eliminate war forever (think Watchmen, but the original story not the new HBO series). This argument is popular enough that it was recently advanced in the finals of the Wake Forest tournament in college policy debate. On a topic about nuclear disarm, it’s a virtually guaranteed neg argument. Not a good one, and not one you should read, but it’s a backfile you should make sure you have answers to. That's all for now. Feel free to post questions and thoughts in the comments! Do you have a topic you’d like us to address in a future post? Email us at [email protected] Go Pokes!
2 Comments
William Aepli
1/12/2020 07:55:37 pm
Thanks for publishing this! It's cool that you're starting this website, it's got me thinking more about arguments for these two months.
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Matt Liu
1/13/2020 06:20:45 pm
Glad you're finding it helpful!
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