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IMPACT DEFENSE
1nc soft power .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
1nc hard power ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
1nc hard power ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
1nc hard power ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
1nc economy ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
1nc economy ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
economy ext – decoupling now ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8
1nc terrorism ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 9
1nc terrorism ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
terrorism ext – support decreasing ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11
terrorism ext – viewed as counterproductive.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12
terrorism ext – threat exaggerated ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
ext – threat exaggerated ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14
at: no major terrorist attacks b/c they are plotting a big one ........................................................................................................................................................................ 15
1nc nuclear terrorism ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 16
1nc nuclear terrorism ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 17
nuclear terrorism – at: some state will give them weapons ............................................................................................................................................................................ 18
nuclear terrorism – at: terrorists will steal a loose nuke .................................................................................................................................................................................. 19
nuclear terrorism – at: terrorists will create their own .................................................................................................................................................................................... 20
nuclear terrorism – at: terrorists will create their own .................................................................................................................................................................................... 21
1nc bio terror ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 22
1nc bio terror ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 23
bio terror ext – hard to acquire ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 24
bioweapons ext – hard to acquire ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 25
bioweapons ext – no impact ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 26
1nc bio terror – small pox .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 27
1nc bio terror – small pox .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28
1nc chemical terror ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 29
1nc chemical terror ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 30
chemical terror ext – no impact ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31
1nc prolif .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 32
1nc prolif .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 33
1nc biodiversity ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 34
1nc biodiversity ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 35
1nc warming ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 36
1nc warming ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 37
1nc warming ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 38
warming ext – impacts exaggerated .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 39
1nc disease – Generic ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 40
1nc disease – generic .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 41
1nc bird flu ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 42
1nc bird flu ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 43
1nc democracy ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 44
ext – democracy doesn’t solve war ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 45
ext – democracy doesn’t solve war ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 46
1nc human rights .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 47
1nc racism ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 48
1nc women’s rights / Patriarchy ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 49
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1NC SOFT POWER
us soft power is in crisis due to fundamental shifts in attitudes between the US and its allies – one policy
won’t change that
Sloan 2/23/2006 [Stanley R., Director of The Atlantic Community Initiative. The Transatlantic Link: Building a New Foundation, Presentation by
Sloan to to the Conference of Defense Associations Institute. http://cda-cdai.ca/cdai/uploads/cdai/2009/04/2006sloan.pdf.
The recent crisis in transatlantic relations, mainly focused on the policies of the George W. Bush administration, and particularly its choice to
invade Iraq, did not come completely out of the blue. It was built on a series of developments that followed the end of the
Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. The United States emerged from these happy but destabilizing events as the
world’s only true global power –without a clear “enemy” to focus its policies or to guide its alliance policies. The enemy deficit was filled
temporarily with statements about “challenges” and “potential risks.” These were first identified in NATO’s new strategic concept of 1991, and were
subsequently refined in alliance proclamations and most notably by events, particularly the conflicts in the Balkans. By the time we reached the new
millennium, however, another challenge had appeared – this one from inside the transatlantic relationship. The new position of the United States in the
international system had created a tendency toward unilateralism and hegemonic behaviour in US policy. This was observable during the Presidency of Bill
Clinton, but emerged full blown in the first George W. Bush administration. The other part of the challenge was to be found in Europe’s
response. Facing
an American ally that had been “liberated” by its power position, there was a tendency in Europe to
abandon the idea of the transatlantic partnership. Some Europeans advocated embracing “autonomy” and a clear distancing
from the policies and inclinations of their ally that had become a not-so-friendly giant. Even if Europe could not compete with American
mil-itary power, these advocates thought, Europe could build an independent approach based on its impressive soft-power
resources. Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and Europe were facing a new crisis in their relationship. The
hegemony and autonomy challenges were fed by the perception in Washington that Europe had given up being a serious hard power player. This led some
Americans, particularly influential ones in the Bush administration, to dismiss NATO and transatlantic cooperation as increasingly irrelevant to US
interests. Some analysts and officials even suggested that a “new division of labor” not only was becoming a reality, but also should be embraced.
Soft power is ineffective at solving threat
Kagan 2006 [Robert. May 28, 2006. Washington Post. “If Power Shifts In 2008: A Democrat Might Not Be as Different as You Would Think” ]
The case for electing a Democrat is not only to save the party's soul, though that's a worthy task, but to pull the country together to face the difficult times
ahead. The last time the Democrats were in office, the world seemed a comparatively manageable place. They have not yet had to deal with the post-Sept.
11 world. Since the only post-Sept. 11 foreign policy Americans know is Bush's, many believe -- especially many Democrats --
that if only Bush weren't president, the world would be manageable again. Allies could be easily summoned for the
struggle against al-Qaeda or to bring pressure on Iran or to replace American troops in Iraq. Threats could be
addressed without force, through skillful diplomacy and soft power. Maybe some of the threats would disappear. This is
fantasy. The next president, whether Democrat or Republican, may work better with allies and may be more clever in negotiating with
adversaries. But the realities of the world are what they are, and the imperatives of U.S. foreign policy are what they are. The diffuse
threats of the post-Cold War world simply don't unite and energize our European allies as the Soviet Union did, and
even a dedicated "multilateralist" won't be able to get them to spend more money on defense or stop buying oil
from Iran. A smarter negotiating strategy toward Iran might or might not make a difference in stopping its weapons
program. Soft power will go only so far in dealing with problems such as North Korea and Sudan.
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1NC HARD POWER
Alliances and ideology make American leadership resilient – even if we loose hard power
Lawrence Freedman 09 (is a professor of war studies at King’s College London and the author of A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the
Middle East (PublicAffairs, 2008), winner of the 2009 Lionel Gelber Prize.)
DESPITE REGULAR reports of terminal decline, the United States continues .to hold on to its preeminent
international position. It has been able to do this because of two features which distinguish it from the dominant great powers of the
past: American power is based on alliances rather than colonies and is associated with an ideology that is flexible, potentially
universal and inherently subversive of alternative ideological forms. Together they provide a core of relationships
and values to which America can return even after it has overextended itself in a particular area or decided that
intervention in a particular conflict was imprudent and that withdrawal is necessary. What sort of power, then, is the
United States? It entered the Second World War as a great power and finished it as a superpower. In the 1990s it was spoken of as a “hyperpower,”
in a class of its own. More recently there have been concerns that it was too much of a hard power, overreliant on military strength, and not enough of a
soft power, one that would win friends and gain influence through the appeal of its culture and the sensitivity of its diplomacy. Now there seems to be
a compromise view that the United States can combine hard and soft elements of power as appropriate, and strive above all to be a smart power. And who
can object to that?
Obama promises to keep US the strongest military in the world, their Impacts won’t happen.
Ditz 09 (reporter for antiwar.com. Author not really important here, we only use direct Obama quotes)
President Barack Obama declared today that the United States “will maintain our military dominance. We will have
the strongest armed forces in the history of the world. And we will do whatever it takes to sustain our technological
advantage and to invest in the capabilities that we need to protect our interests and to defeat and deter any
conventional enemy.” The news hardly comes as an enormous surprise, given the United States spends nearly as
much on its military as the rest of the world put together, yet that the new president felt the need to make such a
statement at all may be a telling sign that his foreign policy agenda is going to involve a lot of military dominance
the world over. Obama elaborated on the statement, also declaring that he intended to continue the Bush Administration’s program to increase the
size of the Army and Marine Corps, as well as improving the military’s ability to deliver civilian aid and to prepare for what he described as
“unconventional enemies.”
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1NC HARD POWER
Military readiness doesn't matter—other factors
George 99 James George, May 27, 1999, former congressional professional staff member for national security affairs and the author of Cato Policy
Analysis No. 342, "Is Readiness Overrated? Implications for a Tiered Readiness Force Structure", “Is Military Readiness Overated?, ” CATO,
<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5445>
Military readiness promises to be a major issue when Congress marks up a defense bill later this year. Some members of Congress are already using
readiness as a reason to increase funding in the emergency spending bill for the war in Yugoslavia. Most experts cite the initial stages of
the Korean War and the Hollow Force of the late 1970s as cautionary examples of being ill-prepared. A closer look at both those examples,
however, shows that they really had little to do with readiness. Moreover, the current crisis in Yugoslavia illustrates once again why
readiness may be overrated and the funds better spent elsewhere. Although often used as a generic term for all military capabilities,
readiness--defined as the ability to respond with appropriate force with little or no warning--is only one of four
pillars of military preparedness. The other pillars are force structure, modernization and sustainability. Thus, an
effective military force depends on much more than just readiness. Interestingly, the two favorite examples cited by
readiness alarmists fail to prove their case. The performance of Task Force Smith, an ill-prepared battalion quickly sent to the front and fairly
easily routed by the North Koreans during the initial days of the Korean War, is often cited as the worst case. "No More Task Force Smiths" has become a
mantra for the Army. However, critics of Task Force Smith fail to point out that U.S. commanders made the most basic of
military mistakes--including grossly underestimating the enemy and sending TFS to an exposed position. When such
blunders occur, the end result will be the same whether it is an ill-trained Task Force Smith in Korea or well-trained
Marines in Beirut or elite Rangers in Somalia. Moreover, critics also fail to mention that barely a month later the
United States stabilized the situation in South Korea, and in another month the Marines conducted their famous
Inchon Landing. In fact, without the Chinese intervention, the United States would have won the Korean War a
few months after it began. Not bad for a U.S. force that was supposedly ill-prepared. Often overlooked, however, is how
quickly those problems were solved. In some cases, solutions were found without spending a dime. For example, Chief of Naval Operations Adm.
Thomas Hayward instituted his "Not in my Navy" program of zero tolerance for drugs. The drug problem was solved almost overnight. The induction of
too many mentally substandard recruits by mistake which had lowered standards, was identified and corrected. That correction solved most other
personnel problems (and should be a warning to people who want to lower standards today). Some members of Congress are now using the crisis in
Yugoslavia to get more funds for readiness by arguing that the military is now stretched "too thin." (Congress doubled President Clinton's request for $6
billion in emergency spending for the war.) In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. Leaving aside the question of whether the United States should even
be involved in Yugoslavia, the new Clinton Doctrine, which does not plan to use ground troops ( a position that is supported by many Republicans), limits
the stress placed on the military. Those decisions are all deliberate political actions that have absolutely nothing to do with readiness. Under a wellconceived strategy, even a modestly capable force will probably perform well; but under a poorly conceived strategy, even a force with the highest degree
of readiness will probably have serious problems. The experiences of Task Force Smith and the Hollow Force, as well as the invocation of a Clinton
Doctrine that eschews the use of ground forces, have major implications. More forces, for example, could be placed in the reserves and scarce funds spent
elsewhere. In addition, the military could switch to what Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.) has called "Tiered Readiness:" a few forces would be kept on
expensive ready status and be augmented by reserve forces that could be mobilized if a substantial threat to U.S. security arose. Military readiness is
certainly important, and no one is suggesting a return to the truly shallow force of the late 1940s or the Hollow Force of the 1970s. But a close look at
those forces shows that their difficulties involved much more than just poor readiness.
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1NC HARD POWER
Alt caus—DADT
Arana 6/9 Gabriel Arana, June 9 2009, “”DADT” Linked to Poor Performance”, The Advocate,
<http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid88543.asp>
As Washington stalls on repealing "don't ask, don't tell," a recent Cornell
University study confirms what many people had assumed:
"DADT" isn't just bad for gay people, it's bad for the military too. Gay and lesbian study participants who were asked to conceal their
sexual orientation performed 20% worse on spatial reasoning tests and 50% worse on physical endurance tests as
compared to those who were not given this instruction. The findings have clear implications for the battlefield. Gays and lesbians - even those who follow the policy -- are prevented from performing optimally, which may affect the readiness of military
units."It directly counters this argument that 'don't ask, don't tell' allows us to have the highest-performing individuals," said Clayton Critcher, a Ph.D.
student in psychology and one of the study's authors. "It affects everyone around them and the general quality of performance."
Researchers instructed gay and lesbian participants not to reveal their sexual orientation while engaging in an eight to ten minute conversation, then asked
them to take a spatial reasoning test -- adopted from an Army intelligence test -- and hold an exercise grip for as long as possible. Those asked to keep
quiet about being gay in the preceding conversation were able to hold an exercise grip for 11 seconds, compared to an average of 23 for the control group;
they also got 20 percent more questions wrong on the spatial reasoning test. What is especially striking is that study participants did not have to be engaged
in a conversation that might relate to sexuality -- for instance, one about relationships or family life -- in order for their abilities to be affected; the effect
showed up even when the conversation was about academics or school life. "There doesn't even have to be a serious, formal conversation," said Melissa
Ferguson, a psychology professor at Cornell and the study's second author. In explaining the study's findings, the authors suggested thinking of
the mind as a battery. Concealing one’s sexual orientation requires monitoring one's actions and social environment,
tasks that draw on limited mental resources. After the conversation, participants’ “batteries” are lower, causing them
to perform worse on an array of tasks. After a while the effect disappears, though researchers have not determined how long it lasts. The fact
that physical endurance is affected might seem strange, but Critcher explained that physical tasks are mental too. "After a period of exercise, your body is
telling you to stop and you override this," he said. Critcher and Ferguson stressed that this effect is not about "mental anguish"
caused by concealing one's sexual orientation. Even participants who reported they were not fatigued or upset by
the conversation still demonstrated the effect. "It's nothing about participants reporting distress," Ferguson said.
"It's about their actual competence." The study also suggests that the experience of hiding one's sexual identity did not significantly improve
performance, though more research needs to be done. Previous work has shown that gays and lesbians who work under "don't ask, don't tell" may fail to
receive adequate medical or psychological care for fear of revealing their sexual orientation, but this study is the first to draw a direct link between the
policy and performance on tasks that are relevant to military service.
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1NC ECONOMY
The World is not dependent on our economy. Decoupling happening now.
WASSENER, BETTINA 6/30/09 (news rerporter from the new york times. Newyorktime.com)
For a while, when the economic crisis was at its worst, it was a dirty word that only the most provocative of analysts dared to use. Now, the D-word —
decoupling — is making a comeback, and nowhere more so than in Asia. Put simply, the term refers to the theory that
emerging markets — whether China or Chile — will become less dependent the United States as their economies
become stronger and more sophisticated. For much of last year, the theory held up. Many emerging economies had steered clear of
investments that dragged down banking behemoths in the West, and saw nothing like the turmoil that began to engulf the United States and Europe in
2007. But then, last autumn, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused the financial system to convulse and consumer demand to shrivel, emerging
economies around the world got caught in the downdraft, and the D-word became mud. Now, the tables are turning, especially in Asia, where
many emerging economies are showing signs of a stronger recovery than in the West. And economists here have begun to talk
“Decoupling is happening for real,” the chief Asia-Pacific economist at Goldman Sachs in
Hong Kong, Michael Buchanan, said in a recent interview. To be sure, the once sizzling pace of Asian economic growth has slowed
of the decoupling once again.
sharply as exports to and investments from outside the region slumped. Across Asia, millions of people have lost their jobs as business dropped off and
companies cut costs and output. Asia is heavily dependent upon selling its products to consumers in the United States and Europe, and many executives
still say a strong American economy is a prerequisite for a return to the boom of years past. But for the past couple of months, data have
revealed a growing divergence between Western economies and those in much of Asia, notably China and India.
The World Bank last week forecast that the economies of the countries that use the euro and the United States
would contract 4.5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, this year — compared with 7.2 percent and 5.1 percent
growth forecast for China and India. Forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
that were also published last week backed up this general trend. Major statistics for June, due Wednesday, are expected to show manufacturing
activity in China and India are on the mend. By contrast, purchasing managers indexes for Europe and the United States are forecast to be merely less grim
than before but still show contractions. Why this diverging picture? The crisis hit Asia much later. While the American economy began languishing in
2007, Asian economies were doing well until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September. What followed was a rush of stimulus measures — rate cuts
and government spending programs. In Asia’s case, these came soon after things soured for the region; in the United States, they came much later.
Moreover, developing Asian economies were in pretty good shape when the crisis struck. The last major crisis to hit the region
— the financial
turmoil of 1997-98 — forced governments in Asia to introduce overhauls that ultimately left them
with lower debt levels, more resilient banking and regulatory systems and often large foreign exchange reserves. Another
crucial difference is that Asia, unlike the United States and Europe, has not had a banking crisis. Bank profits in
Asia have plunged and some have had to raise extra capital but there have been no major collapses and no bailouts.
The Chinese stimulus package of 4 trillion renminbi yuan, or $585 billion, announced last November, has led to a boom in spending and is a major reason
why economists are optimistic about China, and about much of the region as a whole Asia’s generally lower debt levels also mean there has been no credit
crunch of the kind that has handicapped companies and consumers elsewhere.
“Asia does not have a credit crunch. It has excess liquidity,” Mr. Neumann of HSBC said. “The banking system is stuffed with liquidity.
This is benefiting Asian asset markets — from stocks to property — and is leading to a gradual “financial decoupling” from
the United States and Europe, Mr. Neumann said. “For the past two decades, equities markets have been driven by Western risk capital, not Asian
investors themselves,” he said. “Now, you’re finding that Asian money is increasingly driving the market.” Analysts at Merrill Lynch agree.
In a recent research note they said the Hong Kong stock market, for example, had performed much better than markets in the United States, and property
prices in the city have risen, partly because of capital inflows from mainland China. Of course, none of this means Asia has become completely
independent from the rest of the world. Asia remains heavily reliant on exports for economic growth. The result, despite increased “decoupling,” is that
growth in Asia has slowed down, in some cases sharply. The Indonesian economy, for example, is expected to grow 3.6 percent this year, the Asian
Development Bank forecasts. This compares to more than 6 percent in 2008 and 2007 The bank expects the Indian economy to grow to 5 percent this
year, and the Chinese economy 7 percent — down from 7.1 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in 2008. Nor has the effect been uniform. Developed
Asian economies, like Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, are much more tightly tied into the world economy and financial system. All three are in
recessions. “The United States has deep structural problems that are coming home to roost — Asia hasn’t got those,
and that has been very, very important,” says Mr. Garner of Morgan Stanley
“Emerging Asian nations went into recession last,” he says.
Increasingly, they are looking like they will also to come out first — and strongest.”
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1NC ECONOMY
economic decline doesn’t cause war
Ferguson 2006 [Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
The
next war of the world, Foreign Affairs. V 85. No 5.]
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography
links the great depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But the simple story leaves too
much out. Nazi Germany started the war In Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries
affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of
aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole.
Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the cause rather than the consequences of economic
catastrophe, and some sever economic crises were not followed by war.
The global economy is resilient
Ferguson 2006 [Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
The
next war of the world, Foreign Affairs. V 85. No 5.]
the good news is that global economic volatility
has been significantly lower in recent years than at almost any time in
the last century. By widening and deepening international markets for goods, labor and capital, globalization
appears to have made the world economy less prone to crisis. At the same time, financial innovations have improved the
pricing and the distribution of risk, and policy innovations such as inflation targeting have helped governments to
limit rises in consumer prices (if not asset price) inflation International organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the International
Monetary Fund have helped to avert trade disputes and other sources of economic instability.
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ECONOMY EXT – DECOUPLING NOW
Decoupling happening now. World no longer dependent on US’s economy
NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and MATTHEW SALTMARSH 6/25/09 (reporters for the NYT. Newyorktimes.com)
PARIS — After
bruising global downturns, the American economy has usually led the world back to growth, but
developing countries could be the engine that powers the next recovery. Despite fears just months ago that they would be among
the biggest victims of the financial crisis, emerging giants like China, India and Brazil are set to rebound strongly next year, the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted Wednesday — as Europe, the United States and Japan lag.
“It’s good to have a locomotive out there pulling the train,” Ángel Gurría, the O.E.C.D.’s secretary general said, referring to China, India and Brazil. “But
we can’t put the onus on their shoulders — they help, but they can’t get us out of the hole.” The divergence between the emerging and the
developed countries suggests that the once-popular theory of decoupling — the notion that the emerging markets
could be moving independently of the developed economies — may make a comeback. When the emerging markets were
also brought low by the global financial crisis, the theory was abandoned for talk of “recoupling.” Now, is “re-decoupling” at hand?
Mr. Gurría argues that the net result of faster emerging market growth would be “absolutely positive,” but he acknowledges that one early side effect is
already evident in the form of surging oil prices, which have risen to nearly $70 a barrel, from $33 in February. “Why is oil doubling when we are in the
deepest recession ever?” Mr. Gurría asked. “Decoupling is back as a thesis,” said Adam Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for
International Economics in Washington. “And we should recognize how different the current situation is from past crises.”
Striking a somewhat optimistic note, the O.E.C.D. said that thanks to stimulus programs in the United States and elsewhere, the downturn appeared to be
nearing bottom. It warned, however, that the recovery was likely to be fragile, with unemployment growing and unused production capacity remaining for
years. And increased savings by American corporations and consumers could partly offset the stimulus, tamping down growth in the United States and
around the world. Economists have furiously debated whether decoupling was taking place. It would mean a fundamental shift in the global economy —
that traditionally dependent developing economies move according to their own fundamental trends rather than the ups and downs of the developed
countries. Increasing independence could lead to increasing influence and a relative shift in global economic weight toward the emerging giants, especially
China.The 30 industrialized members of the Paris-based policy and research group account for roughly 60 percent of global economic output. “ I think
it’s clear that the situation in emerging economies has changed if you compare it with where we were 15 years ago,” said Jorgen
Elmeskov, acting head of the O.E.C.D.’s economics department. According to the O.E.C.D.’s semi-annual report, China could
grow 7.7 percent this year and 9.3 percent next year, faster than previous estimates. India could grow 5.9 percent this year and 7.2 percent
next year, and Brazil’s economy, after slowing down, will reverse this year and expand 4 percent next year. The O.E.C.D. predicted the United
States economy would shrink by 2.8 percent this year and grow by 0.9 percent next year, a bit better than the flat performance the organization
estimated in March. By contrast, the Japaneseeconomy is expected to shrink 6.8 percent this year while Europe should contract 4.8 percent in 2009, with
both regions hit harder than in earlier O.E.C.D. forecasts. The decoupling hypothesis has had nearly as many ups and downs as the global economy
itself.As the post-World War II economy recovered and globalization took hold, economists detected a pattern in which a slowdown in the developed
world led to an effect that made conditions far worse in poorer countries, said Mr. Posen. But by 2007 and 2008, he explained, decoupling was gaining
currency as the United States economy slowed but Brazil, Russia, India and China continued to grow. When those countries then hit the wall late last year,
it seemed as if the decoupling thesis was also dead. Now, he said, with China and other emerging countries seemingly leading the
way, the idea that countries like China, India and Brazil are going to play a far bigger role in global economic
expansion is coming back in vogue.
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1NC TERRORISM
Terrorism support is falling now – the impact is non unique
Mack, Andrew 08. (ex Official for the UN and currently lives in England. Often reports for BBC and gives interviews. http://www.bbc.co.uk/)
But the report still found a growing number of incidents. It reported 14,499 terrorist attacks in 2007, half of which led to at least one death (with a total of
22,000 deaths). Meanwhile, the Human Security Brief argues there has been a 40% decline in fatalities from terrorism. It does
this by challenging the figures used by other counts, particularly when it comes to Iraq, questioning whether violent deaths of civilians in Iraq are really due
to terrorism or instead due to a civil war, and if the latter, then why other civil wars - for instance in Sudan or Congo - do not have their fatalities included
in count Removing Iraq does makes a significant difference. The Human Security Brief also argues that if you include civilian casualties, but look at the
latter half of 2007, then there is a decline. The second argument against pessimism from the Human Security Brief is that al-Qaeda is
becoming less popular. There is evidence that in Muslim countries which have been affected by al-Qaeda's terrorism, the
organization has become notably less popular - for instance in Saudi Arabia since 2003. And in Iraq, Sunni insurgents have
turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The brief also points out declining support for attacks on civilians in some Islamic
countries and points to polls which show dramatic falls in support for Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. This, though, is partly a
reaction to the violence that has moved from the tribal areas of Pakistan into the heart of the country.
Terrorist attacks are overrated – more people die from drowning in bathtubs
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008
It may be useful in this connection to consider al-Qaeda's capacity more broadly. Two publications from Washington think tanks, one authored by
Anthony Cordesman of CSIS (2005, 29-31), the other by Brian Jenkins of RAND (2006, 179-84), have independently provided lists of
violence committed by Muslim extremists outside of such war zones as Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Sudan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan,
whether that violence be perpetrated by domestic terrorists or by ones with substantial international connections.
Included in the count are such terrorist attacks as those that occurred in Bali in 2002, in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Turkey in 2003, in the Philippines,
Madrid, and Egypt in 2004, and in London and Jordan in 2005. The lists include not only attacks by al-Qaeda, but also those by its
imitators, enthusiasts, and wannabes as well as ones by groups with no apparent connection to it whatever. Although
these tallies make for grim reading, the total number of people killed in the five years after 9/11 in such incidents comes to
some 200-300 per year. That, of course, is 200-300 too many, but it hardly suggests that al-Qaeda's destructive capacities are
monumental. By comparison, over the same period far more people have perished in the United States alone in
bathtubs drownings (Stossel 2004, 77) or in automobile accidents by people who have abandoned short-haul air flights
because of the increased costs and waiting time imposed after 9/11 by the Transportation Security Administration (Ellig et al.
2006, 35).
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1NC TERRORISM
No risk of attack – viewed as counterproductive
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
One reason al Qaeda and “al Qaeda types” seem not to be trying very hard to repeat 9/11 may be that that dramatic act
of destruction itself proved counterproductive by massively heightening concerns about terrorism around the world. No
matter how much they might disagree on other issues (most notably on the war in Iraq), there is a compelling incentive for states—even
ones such as Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Syria—to cooperate in cracking down on al Qaeda, because they know that they could
easily be among its victims. The FBI may not have uncovered much of anything within the United States since 9/11, but thousands of
apparent terrorists have been rounded, or rolled, up overseas with U.S. aid and encouragement. Although some Arabs and
Muslims took pleasure in the suffering inflicted on 9/11—Schadenfreude in German, shamateh in Arabic—the most common response
among jihadists and religious nationalists was a vehement rejection of al Qaeda’s strategy and methods. When Soviet
troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, there were calls for jihad everywhere in Arab and Muslim lands, and tens of thousands flocked to the country to fight
the invaders. In stark contrast, when the U.S. military invaded in 2001 to topple an Islamist regime, there was, as the political
scientist Fawaz Gerges points out, a “deafening silence” from the Muslim world, and only a trickle of jihadists went to fight the Americans.
Other jihadists publicly blamed al Qaeda for their post-9/11 problems and held the attacks to be shortsighted and
hugely miscalculated.
Terrorist Attacks have been predicted for Years and none have happened. Their Impacts wont happen.
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
For the past five years, Americans have been regularly regaled with dire predictions of another major al Qaeda
attack in the United States. In 2003, a group of 200 senior government officials and business executives, many of them specialists in security and
terrorism, pronounced it likely that a terrorist strike more devastating than 9/11--possibly involving weapons of mass
destruction--would occur before the end of 2004. In May 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft warned that al Qaeda could "hit hard" in
the next few months and said that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on U.S. soil were complete. That fall, Newsweek reported that it was
"practically an article of faith among counterterrorism officials" that al Qaeda would strike in the run-up to the November 2004 election. When that
"October surprise" failed to materialize, the focus shifted: a taped encyclical from Osama bin Laden, it was said, demonstrated that he was too weak to
attack before the election but was marshalling his resources to do so months after it. On the first page of its founding manifesto, the massively funded
Department of Homeland Security intones, "Today's terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon." But if it is so easy
to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not
been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines,
derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other
vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could so easily be exploited? One reasonable explanation is that
almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad. But
this explanation is rarely offered.
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TERRORISM EXT – SUPPORT DECREASING
International response and targeting civilians has decreases appeal of terrorism
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
The post-9/11 willingness of governments around the world to take on international terrorists has been much reinforced
and amplified by subsequent, if scattered, terrorist activity outside the United States. Thus, a terrorist bombing in Bali in 2002
galvanized the Indonesian government into action.
Extensive arrests and convictions—including of leaders who had previously
enjoyed some degree of local fame and political popularity—seem to have severely degraded the capacity of the
chief jihadist group in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah. After terrorists attacked Saudis in Saudi Arabia in 2003, that country, very much
for self-interested reasons, became considerably more serious about dealing with domestic terrorism; it soon clamped
down on radical clerics and preachers. Some rather inept terrorist bombings in Casablanca in 2003 inspired a similarly
determined crackdown by Moroccan authorities. And the 2005 bombing in Jordan of a wedding at a hotel (an unbelievably stupid
target for the terrorists) succeeded mainly in outraging the Jordanians: according to a Pew poll, the percentage of the population
expressing a lot of confidence in bin Laden to “do the right thing” dropped from 25 percent to less than one
percent after the attack.
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TERRORISM EXT – VIEWED AS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
Support for violent jihad is dropped - they are viewed as reckless
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
The results of policing activity overseas suggest that the absence
of results in the United States has less to do with terrorists'
cleverness or with investigative incompetence than with the possibility that few, if any, terrorists exist in the country.
It also suggests that al Qaeda’s ubiquity and capacity to do damage may have, as with so many perceived threats, been exaggerated. Just
because some terrorists may wish to do great harm does not mean that they are able to. Gerges argues that mainstream
Islamists—who make up the vast majority of the Islamist political movement—gave up on the use of force before 9/11, except perhaps
against Israel, and that the jihadists still committed to violence constitute a tiny minority. Even this small group primarily
focuses on various “infidel” Muslim regimes and considers jihadists who carry out violence against the “far
enemy”—mainly Europe and the United States—to be irresponsible, reckless adventurers who endanger the survival of the
whole movement. In this view, 9/11 was a sign of al Qaeda’s desperation, isolation, fragmentation, and decline, not of its
strength.
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TERRORISM EXT – THREAT EXAGGERATED
Terrorist capabilities are over exaggerated
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
Although it remains heretical to say so, the
evidence so far suggests that fears of the omnipotent terrorist—reminiscent of
those inspired by images of the 20-foot-tall Japanese after Pearl Harbor or the 20-foot-tall Communists at various points in
the Cold War (particularly after Sputnik)—may have been overblown, the threat presented within the United States by al
Qaeda greatly exaggerated. The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on
many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists.
Threat is low – no domestic al qaeda cells exist
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
A fully credible explanation for the fact that the United States has suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11 is that the
threat posed by homegrown or imported terrorists—like that presented by Japanese Americans during World War II or by American
Communists after it—has been massively exaggerated. Is it possible that the haystack is essentially free of needles? The FBI embraces a spooky
I-think-therefore-they-are line of reasoning when assessing the purported terrorist menace. In 2003, its director, Robert Mueller, proclaimed, “The greatest
threat is from al Qaeda cells in the U.S. that we have not yet identified.” He rather mysteriously deemed the threat from those unidentified entities to be
“increasing in part because of the heightened publicity” surrounding such episodes as the 2002 Washington sniper shootings and the 2001 anthrax attacks
(which had nothing to do with al Qaeda). But in 2001, the 9/11 hijackers received no aid from U.S.-based al Qaeda operatives for
the simple reason that no such operatives appear to have existed. It is not at all clear that that condition has changed. Mueller also
claimed to know that “al Qaeda maintains the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the U.S. with little warning.” If this was true—if the
terrorists had both the ability and the intent in 2003, and if the threat they presented was somehow increasing—they
had remained remarkably quiet by the time the unflappable Mueller repeated his alarmist mantra in 2005: “I remain very concerned about what
we are not seeing.” Intelligence estimates in 2002 held that there were as many as 5,000 al Qaeda terrorists and supporters in the United States. However,
a secret FBI report in 2005 wistfully noted that although the bureau had managed to arrest a few bad guys here and there after more
than three years of intense and well-funded hunting, it had been unable to identify a single true al Qaeda sleeper cell
anywhere in the country. Thousands of people in the United States have had their overseas communications monitored
under a controversial warrantless surveillance program. Of these, fewer than ten U.S. citizens or residents per year have aroused enough
suspicion to impel the agencies spying on them to seek warrants authorizing surveillance of their domestic communications as well; none of this
activity, it appears, has led to an indictment on any charge whatever. In addition to massive eavesdropping and detention programs, every year some
30,000 “national security letters” are issued without judicial review, forcing businesses and other institutions to disclose confidential information about
their customers without telling anyone they have done so. That process has generated thousands of leads that, when pursued, have led nowhere. Some
80,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants have been subjected to fingerprinting and registration, another 8,000 have been called in for interviews with the FBI,
and over 5,000 foreign nationals have been imprisoned in initiatives designed to prevent terrorism. This activity, notes the Georgetown University law
professor David Cole, has not resulted in a single conviction for a terrorist crime. In fact, only a small number of people
picked up on terrorism charges—always to great official fanfare—have been convicted at all, and almost all of these convictions have
been for other infractions, particularly immigration violations. Some of those convicted have clearly been mental cases or simply flaunting
jihadist bravado—rattling on about taking down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, blowing up the Sears Tower if only they
could get to Chicago, beheading the prime minister of Canada, or flooding lower Manhattan by somehow doing something terrible
to one of those tunnels.
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EXT – THREAT EXAGGERATED
Terrorist aren’t active anymore. They should have blown us up already!
John Mueller 06 (John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006)
Instead, Americans are told--often by the same people who had once predicted imminent attacks--that the absence of international terrorist strikes in the
United States is owed to the protective measures so hastily and expensively put in place after 9/11. But there is a problem with this argument. True, there
have been no terrorist incidents in the United States in the last five years. But nor were there any in the five years before the 9/11 attacks, at a time when
the United States was doing much less to protect itself. It would take only one or two guys with a gun or an explosive to terrorize vast numbers of people,
as the sniper attacks around Washington, D.C., demonstrated in 2002. Accordingly, the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect
to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National
Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched. Moreover, Israel
still experiences terrorism even with a far more extensive security apparatus. It may well have become more difficult for terrorists to get into the country,
but, as thousands demonstrate each day, it is far from impossible. Immigration procedures have been substantially tightened (at considerable cost), and
suspicious U.S. border guards have turned away a few likely bad apples. But visitors and immigrants continue to flood the country. There are over 300
million legal entries by foreigners each year, and illegal crossings number between 1,000 and 4,000 a day--to say nothing of the generous quantities of
forbidden substances that the government has been unable to intercept or even detect despite decades of a strenuous and well-funded "war on drugs."
Every year, a number of people from Muslim countries-perhaps hundreds--are apprehended among the illegal flow from Mexico, and many more probably
make it through. Terrorism does not require a large force. And the 9/11 planners, assuming Middle Eastern males would have problems entering the
United States legally after the attack, put into motion plans to rely thereafter on non-Arabs with passports from Europe and Southeast Asia. If al Qaeda
operatives are as determined and inventive as assumed, they should be here by now. If they are not yet here, they must not be trying very hard or must be
far less dedicated, diabolical, and competent than the common image would suggest.
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AT: NO MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACKS B/C THEY ARE PLOTTING A BIG ONE
Mueller 06 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science,
Ohio State University. Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2006]
Another common explanation is that al Qaeda is craftily biding its time. But what for? The 9/11 attacks took only about two
years to prepare. The carefully coordinated, very destructive, and politically productive terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 were conceived,
planned from scratch, and then executed all within six months; the bombs were set off less than two months after the conspirators
purchased their first supplies of dynamite, paid for with hashish. (Similarly, Timothy McVeigh’s attack in Oklahoma City in 1995 took less than a year to
plan.) Given the extreme provocation of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, one would think that terrorists might be
inclined to shift their timetable into higher gear. And if they are so patient, why do they continually claim that another
attack is just around the corner? It was in 2003 that al Qaeda’s top leaders promised attacks in Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, Italy, Japan,
Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Yemen. Three years later, some bombs had gone off in Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan (as well as in the unlisted Turkey) but not in any other of the explicitly threatened countries. Those
attacks were tragic, but their sparseness could be taken as evidence that it is not only American alarmists who are given to
extravagant huffing and puffing.
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1NC NUCLEAR TERRORISM
no risk of nuclear terror – technical and logistical hurdles like access to heu are impossible to overcome
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ]
It is essential to note, however, that making
a bomb is an extraordinarily difficult task. Thus, a set of counterterrorism and
nuclear experts interviewed in 2004 by Dafna Linzer for the Washington Post pointed to the "enormous technical and logistical
obstacles confronting would-be nuclear terrorists, and to the fact that neither al-Qaeda nor any other group has come
close to demonstrating the means to overcome them." Allison nonetheless opines that a dedicated terrorist group,
al-Qaeda in particular, could get around all the problems in time and eventually steal, produce, or procure a "crude"
bomb or device, one that he however acknowledges would be "large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient" (2004, 97; see
also Bunn and Wier 2006, 139; Pluta and Zimmerman 2006, 61). In his recent book, Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, William Langewiesche
spends a great deal of time and effort assessing the process by means of which a terrorist group could come up with a bomb. Unlike Allison, he
concludes that it "remains very, very unlikely. It's a possibility, but unlikely." Also: The best information is that no one has gotten
anywhere near this. I mean, if you look carefully and practically at this process, you see that it is an enormous
undertaking full of risks for the would-be terrorists. And so far there is no public case, at least known, of any appreciable
amount of weapons-grade HEU [highly enriched uranium] disappearing. And that's the first step. If you don't have that,
you don't have anything.
**insert one of the cards to answer how they get the nuke [from a state / stealing / building their own]
Terrorists will stick with conventional weapons –trends prove
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ]
The bottom line. Keller suggests that "the best reason for thinking it won't happen is that it hasn't happened yet," and that, he worries, "is terrible logic"
(2002). "Logic" aside, there is another quite good reason for thinking it won't happen: the task is bloody difficult. The
science fiction literature, after all, has been spewing out for decades--centuries, even--a wealth of imaginative suggestions
about things that might come about that somehow haven't managed to do so. We continue to wait, after all, for those menacing
and now-legendary invaders from Mars. Meanwhile, although there have been plenty of terrorist attacks in the world since 2001,
all (thus far, at least) have relied on conventional destructive methods--there hasn't even been the occasional gas bomb. In effect the
terrorists seem to be heeding the advice found in a memo on an al-Qaeda laptop seized in Pakistan in 2004: "Make use of that
which is available...rather than waste valuable time becoming despondent over that which is not within your reach"
(Whitlock 2007). That is: Keep it simple, stupid. In fact, it seems to be a general historical regularity that terrorists tend to prefer
weapons that they know and understand, not new, exotic ones (Rapoport 1999, 51; Gilmore 1999, 37; Schneier 2003, 236). Indeed,
the truly notable innovation for terrorists over the last few decades has not been in qualitative improvements in ordnance at all, but rather in a more
effective method for delivering it: the suicide bomber (Pape 2005, Bloom 2005).
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1NC NUCLEAR TERRORISM
Even if they wanted to – chances of success are about 1 in 3 billion
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ]
Even if there is some desire for the bomb by terrorists (something assessed more fully below), fulfillment of that
desire is obviously another matter. Even alarmists Bunn and Wier contend that the atomic terrorists' task "would clearly be among
the most difficult types of attack to carry out" or "one of the most difficult missions a terrorist group could hope to try" (2006, 133-34,
147). But, stresses George Tenet, a terrorist atomic bomb is "possible" or "not beyond the realm of possibility" (Tenet and Harlow 2007, 266, 279). It
might be useful to take a stab at estimating just how "difficult" or "not impossible" their task is, or how distant the
"realm of possibility" might be. After all, lots of things are "not impossible." As I recall, there is a James Bond movie out there someplace in which Our Hero leaps from a lowEvaluating the likelihood
flying plane or helicopter and lands unruffled in the back seat of a speeding convertible next to a bemused blonde. Although this impressive feat is "not impossible," it may not have ever been
. Or it is entirely "not impossible" that a colliding meteor or comet could
destroy the earth, that Vladimir Putin or the British could decide one morning to launch a few nuclear weapons at
Massachusetts, George Bush could decide to bomb Hollywood, that an underwater volcano could erupt to cause a civilization-ending tidal wave, or
that Osama bin Laden could convert to Judaism, declare himself to be the Messiah, and fly in a gaggle of mafioso hit men from Rome to have himself publicly
accomplished--or perhaps more importantly, ever attempted--in real life
crucified.20 In all this, Brodie's cautionary comment in the 1970s about the imaginative alarmists in the defense community holds as well for those in today's terrorism community, both of which are
inhabited by people of a wide range of skills and sometimes of considerable imagination. All sorts of notions and propositions are churned out, and often presented for consideration with the
prefatory works: "It is conceivable that..." Such words establish their own truth, for the fact that someone has conceived of whatever proposition follows is enough to establish that it is conceivable.
experience thus far cannot be too encouraging to the would-be
group, Aum Shinrikyo. Unlike alQaeda, it was not under siege, and it had money, expertise, a remote and secluded haven in which to set up shop, even a
private uranium mine. But it made dozens of mistakes in judgment, planning, and execution (Linzer 2004). Chagrined, it turned to
biological weapons which, as it happened, didn't work either, and finally to chemical ones, resulting eventually in a somewhat
botched release of sarin gas in a Tokyo subway that managed to kill a total of 12 people. Appraising the barriers. As noted earlier, most
discussions of atomic terrorism deal rather piecemeal with the subject--focusing separately on individual tasks such as procuring HEU or
assembling a device or transporting it. But, as the Gilmore Commission, a special advisory panel to the President and Congress, stresses, building a
nuclear device capable of producing mass destruction presents "Herculean challenges" and requires that a whole series of steps
be accomplished. The process requires obtaining enough fissile material, designing a weapon "that will bring that mass together in a
tiny fraction of a second, before the heat from early fission blows the material apart," and figuring out some way to deliver the thing. And it
emphasizes that these merely constitute "the minimum requirements." If each is not fully met, the result is not simply a less powerful weapon, but one that
Whether it is worth a second thought, however, is another matter (1978, 83). At any rate,
atomic terrorist. One group that tried, in the early 1990s, to pull off the deed was the Japanese apocalyptic
can't produce any significant nuclear yield at all or can't be delivered (Gilmore 1999, 31, emphasis in the original). Following this perspective, an approach that seems appropriate is to catalogu e
the barriers that must be overcome by a terrorist group in order to carry out the task of producing, transporting, and then successfully detonating Allison's "large,
cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient" improvised nuclear device. Table 1 attempts to do this, and it arrays some 20 of these--all of which must be surmounted by the
atomic aspirant. Actually, it would be quite possible to come up with a longer list: in the interests of keeping the catalogue of hurdles down to a reasonable number, some of the entries are actually collections of tasks and could be
divided into two or three or more. For example, number 5 on the list requires that heisted highly-enriched uranium be neither a scam nor part of a sting nor of inadequate quality due to insider incompetence; but this hurdle could as
readily be rendered as three separate ones. In assembling the list, I sought to make the various barriers independent, or effectively independent, from each other, although they are, of course, related in the sense that they are
sequential. However, while the terrorists must locate an inadequately-secured supply of HEU to even begin the project, this discovery will have little bearing on whether they will be successful at securing an adequate quantity of the
material, even though, obviously, they can't do the second task before accomplishing the first. Similarly, assembling and supplying an adequately equipped machine shop is effectively an independent task from the job of recruiting a
team of scientists and technicians to work within it. Moreover, members of this group must display two qualities that, although combined in hurdle 9, are essentially independent of each other: they must be both technically skilled
and absolutely loyal to the project. Assessing the probabilities. In seeking to carry out their task, would-be atomic terrorists effectively must go though an exercise that looks much like this. If and when they do so, they are likely to
To bias the case in their favor, one might begin by assuming that they have a
fighting chance of 50 percent of overcoming each of these obstacles even though for many barriers, probably almost all, the odds
against them are much worse than that. Even with that generous bias, the chances they could successfully pull off the mission come
out to be worse than one in a million, specifically they are one in 1,048,567. Indeed, the odds of surmounting even seven of the twenty
hurdles at that unrealistically, even absurdly, high presumptive success rate is considerably less than one in a hundred. If one assumes, somewhat
more realistically, that their chances at each barrier are one in three, the cumulative odds they will be able to pull off the
deed drop to one in well over three billion--specifically 3,486,784,401. What they would be at the (entirely realistic) level one in ten boggles the mind. One
find their prospects daunting and accordingly uninspiring or even dispiriting.
could also make specific estimates for each of the hurdles, but the cumulative probability statistics are likely to come out pretty much the same--or even smaller. For example there may be a few
barriers, such as number 13, where one might plausibly conclude the terrorists' chances are better than 50/50. However, there are many in which the likelihood of success is almost certainly going to
be exceedingly small--for example, numbers 4, 5, 9, and 12, and, increasingly, the (obviously) crucial number 1. Those would be the odds for a single attempt by a single group, and there could be
multiple attempts by multiple groups, of course. Although Allison considers al-Qaeda to be "the most probable perpetrator" on the nuclear front (2004, 29), he is also concerned about the potential
atomic exploits of other organizations such as Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, Chechen gangsters, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and various doomsday cults (2004, 29-42).21 Putting aside the observation
that few, if any, of these appear to have interest in hitting the United States except for al-Qaeda (to be discussed more fully below), the odds would remain long even with multiple attempts. If there
were a hundred determined efforts over a period of time, the chance at least one of these would be successful comes in at less than one one-hundredth of one percent at the one chance in two level.
At the far more realistic level of one chance in three it would be about one in 50 million. If there were 1000 dedicated attempts, presumably over several decades, the chance of success would be less
than one percent at the 50/50 level and about one in 50,000 at the one in three level.22
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NUCLEAR TERRORISM – AT: SOME STATE WILL GIVE THEM WEAPONS
likely hood of a state passing on a nuclear weapons to terrorist is close to none
-
too risky, likely to get caught
can’t contorl where it will be detonated
nuclear states don’t even pass weapons to allied states
terrorists have too many enemies – even ME regimes are on their targets
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ]
If the prospects that terrorists might come up with a bomb are "not impossible," how close to impossible are they? Langewiesche's discussion, as well as
other material, helps us assess the many ways such a quest--in his words, "an enormous undertaking full of risks"--could fail. The odds, indeed, are
stacked against the terrorists, perhaps massively so. Assistance by a state A favorite fantasy of imaginative alarmists envisions that
a newly nuclear country will palm off a bomb or two to friendly terrorists for delivery abroad. As Langewiesche stresses, however, this
is highly improbable because there would be too much risk, even for a country led by extremists, that the ultimate source of the
weapon would be discovered (2007, 20; also Kamp 1996, 33; Bunn 2006, 115; Bunn and Wier 2006, 137).6 Moreover, there is a very considerable
danger the bomb and its donor would be discovered even before delivery or that it would be exploded in a manner and on a target the donor
would not approve (including on the donor itself). It is also worth noting that, although nuclear weapons have been around now for well over half a
century, no state has ever given another state--even a close ally, much less a terrorist group--a nuclear weapon (or chemical,
biological, or radiological one either, for that matter) that the recipient could use independently. For example, during the Cold War, North
Korea tried to acquire nuclear weapons from its close ally, China, and was firmly refused (Oberdorfer 2005; see also Pillar 2003, xxi). There could be
some danger from private (or semi-private) profiteers, like the network established by Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan. However, its activities were rather
easily penetrated by intelligence agencies (the CIA, it is very likely, had agents within the network), and the operation was abruptly closed down when it
seemed to be the right time (Langewiesche 2007, 169-72). In addition, al-Qaeda--the chief demon group and one of the few terrorist groups to
see value in striking the United States--is unlikely to be trusted by just about anyone.7 As Peter Bergen (2007, 19) has pointed out, the
terrorist group's explicit enemies list includes not only Christians and Jews, but all Middle Eastern regimes; Muslims who
don't share its views; most Western countries; the governments of
India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Russia; most news organizations; the
United Nations; and international NGOs. Most of the time it didn't get along all that well even with its host in Afghanistan, the Taliban government
(Burke 2003, 150, 164-65; Wright 2006, 230-1, 287-88; Cullison 2004).
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NUCLEAR TERRORISM – AT: TERRORISTS WILL STEAL A LOOSE NUKE
No way terrorists can manage to steal – and even if they did, they couldn’t set it off
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ]
There has been a lot of worry about "loose nukes," particularly in post-Communist Russia-weapons, "suitcase bombs" in particular, that can be stolen or bought illicitly. However, when asked, Russian nuclear officials and
experts on the Russian nuclear programs "adamantly deny that al Qaeda or any other terrorist group could have bought Sovietmade suitcase nukes." They further point out that the bombs, all built before 1991, are difficult to maintain and have a lifespan of
one to three years after which they become "radioactive scrap metal" (Badkhen 2004). Similarly, a careful assessment of the concern conducted by
the Center for Nonproliferation Studies has concluded that it is unlikely that any of these devices have actually been
lost and that, regardless, their effectiveness would be very low or even non-existent because they require continual maintenance
Stealing or buying a bomb: loose nukes
(2002, 4, 12; see also Smith and Hoffman 1997; Langewiesche 2007, 19). By 2007, even such alarmists at Anna Pluto and Peter Zimmerman were
concluding that "It is probably true that there are no 'loose nukes', transportable nuclear weapons missing from their proper storage locations and
available for purchase in some way (2007, 56). It might be added that Russia has an intense interest in controlling any weapons on its
territory since it is likely to be a prime target of any illicit use by terrorist groups, particularly, of course, Chechen ones with whom it has been
waging an vicious on-and-off war for over a decade (Cameron 2004, 84). Officials there insist that all weapons have either been destroyed or are secured,
and the experts polled by Linzer (2004) point out that "it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out on their own how to
work a Russian or Pakistan bomb" even if they did obtain one because even the simplest of these "has some security
features that would have to be defeated before it could be used" (see also Kamp 1996, 34; Wirz and Egger 2005, 502; Langewiesche 2007, 19). One of
the experts, Charles Ferguson, stresses You'd have to run it through a specific sequence of events, including changes in
temperature, pressure and environmental conditions before the weapon would allow itself to be armed, for the fuses to
fall into place and then for it to allow itself to be fired. You don't get off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off. Moreover, continues Linzer, most
bombs that could conceivably be stolen use plutonium which emits a great deal of radiation that could easily be
detected by passive sensors at ports and other points of transmission. The government of Pakistan, which has been repeatedly threatened by al-Qaeda,
has a similar very strong interest in controlling its nuclear weapons and material--and scientists. Notes Stephen Younger, former head of nuclear weapons
research and development at Los Alamos and director of the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency from 2001 to 2004, "regardless of
what is reported in the news, all nuclear nations take the security of their weapons very seriously" (2007, 93; see also Kamp 1996,
22; Milhollin 2002, 47-48). It is conceivable that stolen bombs, even if no longer viable as weapons, would be useful for the fissile material that could be
harvested from them. However, Christoph Wirz and Emmanuel Egger, two senior physicists in charge of nuclear issues at Switzerland's Spiez Laboratory,
point out that even if a weapon is not completely destroyed when it is opened, its fissile material yield would not be adequate for a primitive design, and
therefore several weapons would have to be stolen and then opened successfully (2005, 502). Moreover, those weapons use (or used) plutonium, a
substance that is not only problematic to transport, but far more difficult and dangerous to work with than is highly enriched uranium.
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Terrorists creating their own weapons is a joke – way to many obstacles
-
access to fissile material
construction
transportation
financial
Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on
International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ]
Since they are unlikely to be able to buy or steal a useable bomb and since they are further unlikely to
have one handed off to them by an established nuclear state, terrorists would need to manufacture the device themselves.
Building a bomb of one's own
Because of the dangers and difficulties of transporting and working with plutonium, a dedicated terrorist group, it is generally agreed, would choose to try to use highly enriched uranium (Kamp
1996, 33; Keller 2002; Milhollin 2002, 46-47; Rees 2003, 44-45; Linzer 2004; Allison 2004, 96-97; Goldstein 2004, 131-32; Cameron 2004, 84; Wirz and Egger 2005, 500; Bunn and Wier 2006, 135;
Langewiesche 2007, 21-23).8 The goal would be to get as much of this stuff as necessary (more than 100 pounds is required to reach critical mass) and then fashion it into an explosive.9 Most likely
The process is
a daunting one, and it requires that a whole cascade of events click perfectly and in sequence. This is a key issue. Those, like
this would not be a bomb that can be dropped or hurled, but rather an "improvised nuclear device" (IND) that would be set off at the target by a suicidal detonation crew.
Allison, who warn about the likelihood of a terrorist bomb, argue that a terrorist group could, if often with great difficulty, surmount each obstacle--that
doing so in each case is "not impossible." But it is vital to point out that while it may be "not impossible" to surmount each individual step,
the likelihood that a group could surmount a series of them rather quickly does approach impossibility. Let us assess the
problem. Procuring fissile material. To begin with, stateless groups are simply incapable of manufacturing the required fissile
material for a bomb since the process requires an enormous effort on an industrial scale (Milhollin 2002, 45-46; Allison 2004; Cameron 2004, 83; Bunn
and Wier 2006, 136-37; Bunn and Wier 2006, 136-37; Langewiesche 2007, 20; Perry et al. 2007). Moreover, they are unlikely to be supplied with the
material by a state for the same reasons a state is unlikely to give them a workable bomb. Thus, they would need to steal or illicitly purchase
this crucial material. Although there is legitimate concern that some material, particularly in Russia, may be somewhat inadequately secured (though
things have improved considerably), it is under lock and key, and even sleepy, drunken guards, notes Langewiesche, will react with hostility (and
noise) to a raiding party. Thieves also need to know exactly what they want and where it is, and this presumably means trusting bribed, but not necessarily
dependable, insiders. And to even begin to pull off such a heist, they need to develop a highly nuanced "sense for streets" in foreign lands filled with
people who are often congenitally suspicious of strangers (2007, 33-48). Corruption in some areas may provide an opportunity to buy the relevant
material, but purchasers of illicit goods and services would have to pay off a host of greedy confederates, any one of whom
could turn on them or, either out of guile or incompetence, furnish them with stuff that is useless.
Not only could the exchange prove to be a scam, it could also prove to be part of a
sting--or become one. Although there may be disgruntled and much underpaid scientists in places like Russia, they would have to consider the costs of detection. A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear
scientist was once a national hero for his lead work on his country's atomic bomb. But when he was brought down for selling atomic secrets to other governments, he was placed under severe house
arrest, allowed no outside communication or contact, including telephone, newspapers, or internet, and is reportedly in declining health (Langewiesche 2007, 75-76).10 Renegade Russian scientists
who happen not to be national heroes could expect a punishment that would be considerably more unpleasant. Once it is noticed that some uranium is missing, the authorities would investigate the
. There is
something decidedly worse than being a disgruntled Russian scientist, and that is being a dead disgruntled Russian
scientist. Thus even one initially tempted by, seduced by, or sympathetic to, the blandishments of the sneaky foreign terrorists might
well quickly develop second thoughts and go to the authorities. It is also relevant to note that in the last ten years or so, there have been 10
few people who might have been able to assist the thieves, and one who seems suddenly to have become prosperous is likely to arrest their attention right from the start
known thefts of highly enriched uranium--in total less than 16 pounds or so, far less than required for an atomic explosion. Most arrestingly, notes
Linzer, "the thieves--none of whom was connected to al Qaeda--had no buyers lined up, and nearly all were caught while trying to peddle their
acquisitions" (Linzer 2004; see also Cameron 2004, 83-84; Younger 2007, 87; Pluta and Zimmerman 2006, 60). Though, of course, there may have been
additional thefts that went undiscovered (Bunn and Wier 2006, 137; Tenet and Harlow 2007, 276-77). If terrorists were somehow successful at
obtaining a critical mass of relevant material, they would then have to transport it hundreds of miles out of the country over unfamiliar
terrain and probably while
being pursued
by security forces (Langewiesche 2007, 48-50). Crossing international borders would be facilitated by following established smuggling
routes and, for a considerable fee, opium traders (for example) might provide expert, and possibly even reliable, assistance. But the routes are not as chaotic as they appear and are often under the
watch of a handful of criminal and congenitally suspicious and careful regulators (Langewiesche 2007, 54-65). If they became suspicious of the commodity being smuggled, some of these might find
it in their interest to disrupt passage, perhaps to collect the bounteous reward money likely to be offered by alarmed governments once the uranium theft had been discovered. Moreover, it is not at
all clear that people engaged in the routine, if illegal, business of smuggling would necessarily be so debased that, even for considerable remuneration, they would willingly join a plot that might end
Once outside the country with their precious booty, terrorists
would have to set up a large and well-equipped machine shop to manufacture a bomb and then populate it with a
very select team of highly skilled scientists, technicians, and machinists. They would have to be assembled and retained for the task while no
up killing tens of thousands of innocent people.11 Constructing an atomic device.
consequential suspicions are generated among friends, family, and police about their curious and sudden absence from normal pursuits back home. They would also have to be utterly devoted to the
cause, of course. And, in addition, they would have to be willing to risk their lives, and certainly their careers, because after their bomb was discovered, or exploded, they would likely become the
targets in an intense worldwide dragnet operation facilitated by the fact that their skills would not be common ones.12 Applying jargon that emerged in the aftermath of an earlier brutal conspiracy,
their names would become Mudd. More than a decade ago Allison boldly insisted that it would be "easy" for terrorists to assemble a crude bomb if they could get enough fissile material (Allison et
Continued….
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Continues…
al. 1996, 12).13 Atomic scientists, perhaps laboring under the concern, in Langewiesche's words, that "a declaration of safety can at any time be proved spectacularly wrong" (2007, 49), have been
physicists Wirz and Egger have published a paper that does
that the task "could hardly be accomplished by a subnational group" (2005, 501). They point out that
precise blueprints are required, not just sketches and general ideas, and that even with a good blueprint they "would most certainly be forced to
redesign" (2005, 499-500). The process could take months or even a year or more (Pluta and Zimmerman 2006, 62), and in distinct contrast
with Allison, they stress that the work, far from being "easy," is difficult, dangerous, and extremely exacting, and that the technical
requirements "in several fields verge on the unfeasible." They conclude that "it takes much more than knowledge of the workings of nuclear
weapons and access to fissile material to successfully manufacture a usable weapon" (2005, 501-2). These problems are also emphasized in
comparatively restrained in cataloguing the difficulties terrorists would face in constructing a bomb. But
so, and it concludes
an earlier report by five Los Alamos scientists: although schematic drawings showing the principles of bomb design in a qualitative way are widely
available, the detailed design drawings and specifications that are essential before it is possible to plan the fabrication
of actual parts are not available. The preparation of these drawings requires a large number of man-hours and the direct participation of individuals thoroughly informed in several quite distinct areas:
the physical, chemical, and metallurgical properties of the various materials to be used, as well as the characteristics affecting their fabrication; neutronic properties; radiation effects, both nuclear and biological; technology
concerning high explosives and/or chemical propellants; some hydrodynamics; electrical circuitry; and others (Mark et al. 1987, 58).14 Moreover, stresses physicist David Albright, the process would also require "good managers and
organization people" (Keller 2002). The Los Alamos scientists additionally point out that the design and building would require a base or installation at which experiments could be carried out over many months, results could be
assessed, and, as necessary, the effects of corrections or improvements could be observed in follow-on experiments. Similar considerations would apply with respect to the chemical, fabrication, and other aspects of the
program (Mark et al. 1987, 64-65). Although they think the problems can be dealt with "provided adequate provisions have been made," they also stress
that "there
are a number
of obvious potential hazards in any such operation, among them those arising in the handling of a high explosive; the possibility of
inadvertently inducing a critical configuration of the fissile material at some stage in the procedure; and the chemical toxicity or
radiological hazards inherent in the materials used. Failure to foresee all the needs on these points," they conclude laconically, "could bring the operation to a close" (Mark et al. 1987, 62, emphasis added; see also
Pluta and Zimmerman 2006, 64). Or, as Gary Milhollin puts it, "a single mistake in design could wreck the whole project" (2002, 48). Younger has more recently made a similar argument: it would be wrong to assume that nuclear
weapons are now easy to make....I am constantly amazed when self-declared "nuclear weapons experts," many of whom have never seen a real nuclear weapon, hold forth on how easy it is to make a functioning nuclear
explosive....While it is true that one can obtain the general idea behind a rudimentary nuclear explosive from articles on the Internet, none of these sources has enough detail to enable the confident assembly of a real nuclear explosive (2007, 86, 88).15
Although he remains concerned that a terrorist group could buy or steal a nuclear device or be given one by an established nuclear country (2007, 93), Younger is quick to enumerate the difficulties the group would confront when trying to fabricate one on their own. He stresses
that uranium is "exceptionally difficult to machine" while "plutonium is one of the most complex metals ever discovered, a material whose basic properties are sensitive to exactly how it is processed. Both need special machining technology that has evolved through a process
of trial and error." Others contend the crudest type of bomb would be "simple and robust" and "very simple" to detonate (Bunn and Wier 2006, 140). Younger disagrees: Another challenge...is how to choose the right tolerances. "Just put a slug uranium into a gun barrel and
shoot it into another slug of uranium" is one deception of how easy it is to make a nuclear explosive. However, if the gap between the barrel and the slug is too tight, then the slug may stick as it is accelerated down the barrel. If the gap is too big, then other more complex,
issues may arise. All of these problems can be solved by experimentation, but this experimentation requires a level of technical resources that, until recently, few countries had. How do you measure the progress of an explosive detonation without destroying the equipment
doing the measurement? How do you perform precision measurements on something that only lasts a fraction of a millionth of a second? (2007, 89) All this work would have to be carried out in utter secret, of course, even while local and international security police are likely
to be on the intense prowl. "In addition to all the usual intelligence methods," note the Los Alamos scientists, "the most sensitive technical detection equipment available would be at their disposal," and effective airborne detectors used to prospect for uranium have been
around for decades and "great improvement in such equipment have been realized since" (Mark et al. 1987, 60). As Milhollin presents the terrorists’ problem, "the theft of the uranium would probably be discovered soon enough,
and it might be only a short matter of time before the whole world showed up on their doorstep" (2002, 48).16 Moreover, points out Langewiesche, people in the area may observe with increasing curiosity and puzzlement the
constant coming and going of technicians unlikely to be locals (2007, 65-69).17 In addition, the bombmakers would not be able to test the product to be sure they were on the right track (Linzer 2004; Mark et al. 1987, 64). The
the effective recruitment of people who at once have great technical skills and will remain completely devoted
to the cause. This is not an impossible task--some of the terrorists who tried to commit mayhem in Britain in 2007 had medical degrees--but it certainly
vastly complicates the problem. In addition, corrupted co-conspirators, many of them foreign, must remain utterly reliable, no
process of fabricating an IND requires, then ,
curious outsider must get wind of the project over the months or even years it takes to pull off, and international and local security
services must be kept perpetually in the dark. Transporting and detonating the device. The finished product could weigh a
ton or more (Mark et al. 1987, 55, 60; Bunn and Wier 2006, 142). Encased in lead shielding to mask radioactive emissions, it would then have to
be transported to, and smuggled into, the relevant country. This would presumably require trusting it to the tender mercies of the
commercial transportation system, supplying a return address, and hoping that the employees and policing agencies, alerted to the dangers by news of the purloined uranium,
would remain oblivious. Or the atomic terrorists could try to use established smuggling routes, an approach that, again, would require the completely reliable complicity of a considerable number of
received by a dedicated and technically-proficient group of collaborators
criminals. The enormous package would then have to be
. For this
purpose, it would be necessary earlier to have infiltrated such people into the country or else to have organized locals. In a still-secret 2005 report, the FBI allowed as how it had been unable to find a
single true al-Qaeda sleeper cell anywhere in the United States after years of devoted and well-funded sleuthing (Ross 2005), something that apparently continues to be true.18 (In interesting synergy,
that would be exactly the number of weapons of mass destruction uncovered by the U.S. military in Iraq over the same period.) They don’t seem to have found any since that time, either. This does
not conclusively prove either that there are no such cells in the United States or that al-Qaeda is incapable of infiltrating some in when the need arises, of course. But, while absence of evidence may
not be conclusive evidence of absence, it should not be taken to be evidence of existence either. And while it is conceivable that locals could be organized for the destructive enterprise, they would
of necessity have to be considerably higher up on brain chain than the ones so far apprehended--higher up, for example, than those who took violent jihadist videos into a store to be duplicated or
The IND would then have to be moved over local and unfamiliar roads by
manner that did not arouse suspicion. And, finally, at the target site, the crew, presumably suicidal,
would have to set off its improvised and untested nuclear device, one that, to repeat Allison's description, would be "large,
cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient" (2004, 97). While doing this they would have to hope, and fervently pray, that the
who schemed to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch.19
this crew to the target site in a
machine shop work has been perfect, that there have been no significant shakeups in the treacherous process of transportation, and that the thing, after
all this effort, doesn't prove to be a dud. Assessing the financial costs. The discussion so far has neglected to consider the financial costs
of the extended operation in all its cumulating, or cascading, entirely, but these could easily become
monumental
. There would be expensive equipment
to buy, smuggle, and set up, and people to pay--or pay off. Some operatives might work for free out of utter dedication to The Cause, but the vast conspiracy requires in addition the subversion of a
considerable array of criminals and opportunists, each of whom has every incentive to push the price for cooperation as high as possible. Alarmists Zimmerman and Lewis (2006) suggest the entire
caper could be pulled off for $10 million. The conspirators would be lucky to buy off three people with such a paltry sum. Moreover, the terrorists would be required to expose their ultimate goals to
at least some of the corrupted, and at that point (if not earlier) they would become potential extortion victims. They could not afford to abandon unreliable people who know their goals (though they
could attempt to kill them), and such people would now enjoy essentially monopoly powers ever to escalate their price. The cost of the operation in bribes alone could easily become ten times the
sum suggested by Zimmerman and Lewis. And even at that, there would be, of course, a considerable risk that those so purchased would, at an exquisitely opportune moment of their choosing,
decide to take the money and run--perhaps to the authorities representing desperate governments with essentially bottomless bankrolls and an overwhelming incentive to expend resources to arrest
the atomic plot and to capture or kill the scheming perpetrators.
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1NC BIO TERROR
Bioweapons are hard to come by and don’t cause mass casualties
O’Neill 8/19/2004 [Brandan, “Weapons of Minimum Destruction” http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA694.htm]
** Rapoport is a professor of political science at University of California, Los Angeles and editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence,
Yet, as Rapoport points out, while the Aum Shinryko attack certainly had tragic consequences, it also showed up the limitations of
WMD attacks in terms of causing casualties or destruction. He says that even though Aum Shinryko had 'extraordinary
cover for a long time' - meaning that the Japanese authorities were nervous about monitoring the group on the grounds that it was a religious outfit
- and despite the fact that it had '20 members with graduate degrees in science, significant laboratories and assets of
over a billion dollars', it still did not succeed in its aim of taking hundreds or thousands of casualties, of causing
mass destruction. For Rapoport this shows that such weapons are far from easy to use, especially when the groups using them
must move around quickly, 'as all terrorists must do'. According to Rapoport, the most striking thing about the Aum Shinryko attack is
that no one died from inhaling the sarin gas itself - in every fatal case, the individual had made contact with the liquid. He cites Parachini again, who says
that the individuals killed by Aum Shinryko are the only people to have lost their lives as a result of a WMD attack by a terrorist group over the past 25
years. (There were also five deaths as a result of anthrax attacks post-9/11, but Parachini doesn't include those because the individual responsible and the
motivation for those attacks remain unknown.)
Even if terrorists had biological agent they would not be able to disperse them effectively
Smithson, 2005. (Amy E., PhD, is a the project director for biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center. “Likelihood of Terrorists
Acquiring and Using Chemical or Biological Weapons”. http://www.stimson.org/cbw/?SN=CB2001121259]
Terrorists cannot count on just filling the delivery system with agent, pointing the device, and flipping the switch to
activate it. Facets that must be deciphered include the concentration of agent in the delivery system, the ways in which the
delivery system degrades the potency of the agent, and the right dosage to incapacitate or kill human or animal targets. For
open-air delivery, the meteorological conditions must be taken into account. Biological agents have extreme sensitivity to
sunlight, humidity, pollutants in the atmosphere, temperature, and even exposure to oxygen, all of which can kill the
microbes. Biological agents can be dispersed in either dry or wet forms. Using a dry agent can boost effectiveness because drying and milling the agent
can make the particles very fine, a key factor since particles must range between 1 to 10 ten microns, ideally to 1 to 5, to be breathed into the lungs.
Drying an agent, however, is done through a complex and challenging process that requires a sophistication of
equipment and know-how that terrorist organizations are unlikely to possess. The alternative is to develop a wet
slurry, which is much easier to produce but a great deal harder to disperse effectively. Wet slurries can clog sprayers and undergo
mechanical stresses that can kill 95 percent or more of the microorganisms.
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1NC BIO TERROR
No impact to bio weapons – they are minimally destructive
O’Neill 8/19/2004 [Brandan, “Weapons of Minimum Destruction” http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA694.htm]
David C Rapoport, professor of political science at University of California, Los Angeles and editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence,
has examined what he calls 'easily available evidence' relating to the historic use of chemical and biological weapons. He
found something surprising - such weapons do not cause mass destruction. Indeed, whether used by states, terror groups or dispersed in
industrial accidents, they
tend to be far less destructive than conventional weapons. 'If we stopped speculating about
things that might happen in the future and looked instead at what has happened in the past, we'd see that our fears
about WMD are misplaced', he says. Yet such fears remain widespread. Post-9/11, American and British leaders have issued dire warnings about terrorists getting hold of WMD and causing mass murder
and mayhem. President George W Bush has spoken of terrorists who, 'if they ever gained weapons of mass destruction', would 'kill hundreds of thousands, without hesitation and without mercy' (1). The British government has
spent £28million on stockpiling millions of smallpox vaccines, even though there's no evidence that terrorists have got access to smallpox, which was eradicated as a natural disease in the 1970s and now exists only in two highsecurity labs in America and Russia (2). In 2002, British nurses became the first in the world to get training in how to deal with the victims of bioterrorism (3). The UK Home Office's 22-page pamphlet on how to survive a terror
attack, published last month, included tips on what to do in the event of a 'chemical, biological or radiological attack' ('Move away from the immediate source of danger', it usefully advised). Spine-chilling books such as Plague Wars:
A True Story of Biological Warfare, The New Face of Terrorism: Threats From Weapons of Mass Destruction and The Survival Guide: What to Do in a Biological, Chemical or Nuclear Emergency speculate over what kind of
horrors WMD might wreak. TV docudramas, meanwhile, explore how Britain might cope with a smallpox assault and what would happen if London were 'dirty nuked' (4). The term 'weapons of mass destruction' refers to three
types of weapons: nuclear, chemical and biological. A chemical weapon is any weapon that uses a manufactured chemical, such as sarin, mustard gas or hydrogen cyanide, to kill or injure. A biological weapon uses bacteria or viruses,
such as smallpox or anthrax, to cause destruction - inducing sickness and disease as a means of undermining enemy forces or inflicting civilian casualties. We find such weapons repulsive, because of the horrible way in which the
when it comes to
chemical and biological weapons, 'the evidence suggests that we should call them "weapons of minimum
destruction", not mass destruction', he says. Chemical weapons have most commonly been used by states, in military warfare. Rapoport explored various state uses of
victims convulse and die - but they appear to be less 'destructive' than conventional weapons. 'We know that nukes are massively destructive, there is a lot of evidence for that', says Rapoport. But
chemicals over the past hundred years: both sides used them in the First World War; Italy deployed chemicals against the Ethiopians in the 1930s; the Japanese used chemicals against the Chinese in
the 1930s and again in the Second World War; Egypt and Libya used them in the Yemen and Chad in the postwar period; most recently, Saddam Hussein's Iraq used chemical weapons, first in the
war against Iran (1980-1988) and then against its own Kurdish population at the tail-end of the Iran-Iraq war. In each instance, says Rapoport, chemical weapons were used more in desperation than
from a position of strength or a desire to cause mass destruction. 'The evidence is that states rarely use them even when they have them', he has written. 'Only when a military stalemate has developed,
which belligerents who have become desperate want to break, are they used.' (5) As to whether such use of chemicals was effective, Rapoport says that at best it blunted an offensive - but this very
rarely, if ever, translated into a decisive strategic shift in the war, because the original stalemate continued after the chemical weapons had been deployed. He points to the example of Iraq. The
Baathists used chemicals against Iran when that nasty trench-fought war had reached yet another stalemate. As Efraim Karsh argues in his paper 'The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis': 'Iraq
employed [chemical weapons] only in vital segments of the front and only when it saw no other way to check Iranian offensives. Chemical weapons had a negligible impact on the war, limited to
tactical rather than strategic [effects].' (6) According to Rapoport, this 'negligible' impact of chemical weapons on the direction of a war is reflected in the disparity between the numbers of casualties
caused by chemicals and the numbers caused by conventional weapons. It is estimated that the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war killed 5,000 - but the Iranian side suffered around 600,000 dead in total,
meaning that gas killed less than one per cent. The deadliest use of gas occurred in the First World War but, as Rapoport points out, it still only accounted for five per cent of casualties. Studying the
amount of gas used by both sides from1914-1918 relative to the number of fatalities gas caused, Rapoport has written: 'It took a ton of gas in that war to achieve a single enemy fatality. Wind and sun
regularly dissipated the lethality of the gases. Furthermore, those gassed were 10 to 12 times as likely to recover than those casualties produced by traditional weapons.' (7) Indeed, Rapoport
discovered that some earlier documenters of the First World War had a vastly different assessment of chemical weapons than we have today - they considered the use of such weapons to be
preferable to bombs and guns, because chemicals caused fewer fatalities. One wrote: 'Instead of being the most horrible form of warfare, it is the most humane, because it disables far more than it
kills, ie, it has a low fatality ratio.' (8) 'Imagine that', says Rapoport, 'WMD being referred to as more humane'. He says that the contrast between such assessments and today's fears shows that actually
looking at the evidence has benefits, allowing 'you to see things more rationally'. According to Rapoport, even Saddam's use of gas against the Kurds of Halabja in 1988 - the most recent use by a
state of chemical weapons and the most commonly cited as evidence of the dangers of 'rogue states' getting their hands on WMD - does not show that unconventional weapons are more destructive
than conventional ones. Of course the attack on Halabja was horrific, but he points out that the circumstances surrounding the assault remain unclear. 'The estimates of how many were killed vary
greatly', he tells me. 'Some say 400, others say 5,000, others say more than 5,000. The fighter planes that attacked the civilians used conventional as well as unconventional weapons; I have seen no
study which explores how many were killed by chemicals and how many were killed by firepower. We all find these attacks repulsive, but the death toll may actually have been greater if conventional
Rapoport says that terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons
is similar to state use - in that it is rare and, in terms of causing mass destruction, not very effective. He cites the work of
journalist and author John Parachini, who says that over the past 25 years only four significant attempts by terrorists to use WMD
have been recorded. The most effective WMD-attack by a non-state group, from a military perspective, was carried out by the Tamil
Tigers of Sri Lanka in 1990. They used chlorine gas against Sri Lankan soldiers guarding a fort, injuring over 60 soldiers but killing
none. The Tamil Tigers' use of chemicals angered their support base, when some of the chlorine drifted back into Tamil
territory - confirming Rapoport's view that one problem with using unpredictable and unwieldy chemical and biological weapons over conventional
weapons is that the cost can be as great 'to the attacker as to the attacked'. The Tigers have not used WMD since.
bombs only were used. We know that conventional weapons can be more destructive.'
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BIO TERROR EXT – HARD TO ACQUIRE
Bio weapons aren’t easy to come by – terrorists can’t overcome biological and physical hurdles
Leitenberg 12/2005 [Milton, one of America’s leading scientific experts on biological weapons. He is a senior research scholar at the University of
Maryland and has been writing in the field for nearly 40 years. ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS AND BIOTERRORISM THREAT
Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College]
Five essential requirements must be mastered in order to produce biological agents: • One must obtain the appropriate strain of
the disease pathogen. • One must know how to handle the organism correctly. • One must know how to grow it in a way that will produce
the appropriate characteristics. • One must know how to store the culture, and to scale-up production properly. • One must know how
to disperse the product properly. 139 A U.S. military field manual dating back to the 1960s remarks on the attributes of a desirable BW agent, that in
addition to its pathogenicity, “means must be available for maintaining the agent’s virulence or infectivity during production, storage, and transportation.”
140 One should add, most particularly during its dispersal as well. Two members of Sweden’s biodefense program stress methods on how to optimize
formulations of BW agents as the most critical step of all: “They key competence is . . . how to formulate the organisms to facilitate aerosolization of
particles that cause severe disease by inhalation.” 141 It is interesting that the classified 1999 DIA report quoted earlier in the section on state
programs contained a single sentence regarding the possible use of BW agents by terrorist groups: “Terrorist use should also
be anticipated primarily in improvised devices, probably in association with an explosive.” 142 No anticipation of the capability
for aerosol distribution was mentioned, no overflight of cities, sports stadiums, etc. In a recent BW “Risk Assessment”
published elsewhere, a group of authors from the Sandia National Laboratory listed a series of factors closely paralleling the above as “Technical Hurdles
to Successful BW Deployment”: acquisition of a virulent agent; production of the agent in suitable form and quantity; and, effective deployment of the
agent. This was summed up in simple words as “obtaining a pathogen or toxin . . ., isolation, amplification, protection against environmental degradation,
and development of an effective dissemination method.” They concluded that “Even a low-consequence event requires a 47
considerable level of expertise to execute.” 143 Dr. Steven Block, Chair of the U.S. DoD Defense Science Board Summer Study on
biological weapons in the late 1990s explained the same requirements. A lesson from the Aum Shinrikyo case is that any group bent on
developing offensive bio-weapons capabilities must overcome two significant problems, one biological and the other
physical. First, it must acquire and produce stable quantities of a suitably potent agent. For a variety of reasons, this is
not the trivial task that it is sometimes made out to be. Second, it must have an effective means of delivering the agent
to the intended target. For most, but not all, bio-weapon agents, this translates into solving problems of dispersal. Programs in both the United States and
the USSR devoted years of effort to perfecting these aspects. 144 Unfortunately, a recent example provides the sort of grossly
uninformed description that is more frequently provided to the general public. Speaking at the Harvard Medical School on June
1, 2005, and trading on his training as a medical doctor as he frequently does, Senator Frist claimed that “. . . a few technicians of middling skill using a
few thousand dollars worth of readily available equipment in a small and apparently innocuous setting [could] mount a first- order biological attack. It is
even possible to synthesize virulent pathogens from scratch, or to engineer and manufacture prions . . .” He repeated that this was “the single greatest
threat to our safety and security today.” 145 The remarks are a travesty: “. . . a few technicians . . . middling skill . . . few
thousand dollars,” leading to a “first-order ading to a “ ading to a “ ” a biological attack, and additionally extending this to “synthesizing
virulent pathogens” in the same breath. To bolster his argument, Senator Frist larded his presentation with other gross inaccuracies, claiming that “During
the Cold War, the Soviet Union . . . stockpiled 5,000 tons annually of biowarfare- engineered anthrax resistant to 16 antibiotics.” The only source in the
world for the tonnage of anthrax stockpiled by the USSR is Dr. Ken Alibek. 146 He has never quoted a figure higher than 200 tons, and he has never
claimed that the 200 tons was produced “annually,” or in any single year. The USSR’s anthrax stockpile consisted of a genetically unmodified classical
strain (or strains). 147 The antibiotic resistant strain which was developed by Soviet BW laboratories in the mid- to late-1980s was not resistant to 16
antibiotics, but to half that number, and had not yet reached the point of being stockpiled Page 56 48 by the time that the Soviet BW program began to be
cut back in 1989. Finally, the 5,000-ton figure is the approximate sum of the annual production capacities of all Soviet-era BW mobilization production
facilities that would have initiated production only with the onset of, or just prior to a (nuclear) war with the United States. No such quantities of BW
agents were ever produced in the USSR
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BIOWEAPONS EXT – HARD TO ACQUIRE
Terrorist capabilities are exaggerated – they aren’t capable of developing bioweapons
Leitenberg 12/2005 [Milton, one of America’s leading scientific experts on biological weapons. He is a senior research scholar at the University of
Maryland and has been writing in the field for nearly 40 years. ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS AND BIOTERRORISM THREAT
Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College]
Scenarios for national BW exercises that posit various BW agents in advanced states of preparation in the hands of
terrorist groups simply disregard the requirements in knowledge and practice that such groups would need in order
to work with pathogens. Unfortunately, 10 years of widely broadcast public discussion has provided such groups, at least on a general level, with
suggestions as to what paths to follow. If and when a nonstate terrorist group does successfully reach the stage of working with
pathogens, there is every reason to believe that it will involve classical agents, without any molecular genetic modifications.
Preparing a dry powder preparation is likely to prove difficult, and dispersion to produce mass casualties equally so.
Making predictions on the basis of what competent professionals may find “easy to do” has been a common error
and continues to be so. The utilization of molecular genetic technology by such groups is still further off in time. No serious
military threat assessment imputes to opponents capabilities that they do not have. There is no justification for
imputing to real world terrorist groups capabilities in the biological sciences that they do not posess. • Framing “the
threat” and setting the agenda of public perceptions and policy prescriptions. For the past decade the risk and immanence of the use of
biological agents by nonstate actors/terrorist organizations—“bioterrorism”—has been systematically and deliberately
exaggerated. It became more so after the combination of the 9/11 events and the October- November 2001 anthrax distribution in the United States
that 89 followed immediately afterwards. U.S. Government officials worked hard to spread their view to other countries. An edifice of institutes, programs,
conferences, and publicists has grown up which continue the exaggeration and scare-mongering. In the last year or two, the drumbeat had picked up. It
may however become moderated by the more realistic assessment of the likelihood of the onset of a natural flu pandemic, and the accompanying
realization that the U.S. Government has been using the overwhelming proportion of its relevant resources to prepare for the wrong contingency.
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BIOWEAPONS EXT – NO IMPACT
Aum Shinrikyo proves even if terrorists had the resources – the impact would be low
Smithson, 2005 [Amy E., PhD, is a the project director for biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center. “Likelihood of Terrorists Acquiring
and Using Chemical or Biological Weapons”. http://www.stimson.org/cbw/?SN=CB2001121259]
The Japanese cult Aum
Shinrikyo was brimming with highly educated scientists, yet the cult's biological weapons
program turned out to be a lemon. While its poison gas program certainly made more headway, it was rife with lifethreatening production and dissemination accidents. After all of Aum's extensive financial and intellectual
investment, the Tokyo subway attack killed a dozen people, seriously injured just over fifty more, and mildly injured just under 1,000.
In 96 percent of the cases worldwide where chemical or biological substances have been used since 1975, three or
fewer people were injured or killed.
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1NC BIO TERROR – SMALL POX
Small pox has more bark then bite – its infection rate is too low
Pennington 03 (Hugh, Department of Medical Biology, University of Aberdeen, Medical School Building, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD,
United Kingdom)
Smallpox was declared to be eradicated on 8 May 1980, during the Thirty-third World Health Assembly. However, concerns about the possible
use of the virus as a weapon of bioterrorism have increased in recent years. Governments have responded by initiating
selective vaccination programmes and other public health measures. This review uses historical data from 20th century
outbreaks to assess the risks to current populations (which have declining immunity) from a deliberate release of virus. The data
presented supports the conclusion of a previous reviewer (Mack) that "smallpox cannot be said to live up to its reputation. Far
from being a quick-footed menace, it has appeared as a plodding nuisance with more bark than bite." Its R value (the
average number of secondary cases infected by a primary case) is lower than that for measles, human parvovirus,
chickenpox, mumps, rubella, and poliomyelitis; only the value for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is lower.
Like SARS, close person-to-person contact is required for effective spread of the disease, and exposure to the virus in hospitals
has played an important role in transmission for both viruses. In the present paper the dangers of mass vaccination are emphasized, along with the
importance of case isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine of close contacts for outbreak control. The need for rapid diagnosis and the continued
importance of maintaining a network of electron microscopes for this purpose are also highlight
Preventative measures solve
Burcum 2/3/2003 [Jill, Star Tribune “Doctors who treated smallpox not alarmist about disease threat”
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/notalarmistthreat.html]
Yet as the nation prepares to defend against smallpox as a weapon of terror, Kersey and two other Minnesota doctors
who once treated the deadly disease say their concerns about the risks to Americans today aren't keeping them
awake at night. Kersey, university colleague Dr. Ashley Haase and Dr. David Williams of the Mayo Clinic are part of an elite medical
group: the 200 to 400 U.S. doctors who have seen smallpox victims. Their expertise has largely been overlooked during
federal bioterrorism planning. All three say they are reassured by planning done during the past year to prepare the nation
to deal with a bioterrorism attack. Their experience also suggests that smallpox is readily recognized and that it typically doesn't
spread beyond bedside contacts of victims -- even in the medical conditions of war-torn Pakistan in the 1960s, where all three saw the
disease. And they know the vaccine works. All three were immunized. None became infected, even after touching smallpox victims. For all these
reasons, they believe the disease probably would be brought under control quickly in the United States, but they emphasize that
the medical system must prepare for an outbreak. "Now that I work in cancer, I see hundreds of thousands of people dying of this," Kersey said. "I can't
imagine that happening with smallpox."
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1NC BIO TERROR – SMALL POX
No spread – Pakistan proves
Burcum 2/3/2003 [Jill, Star Tribune “Doctors who treated smallpox not alarmist about disease threat”
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/notalarmistthreat.html]
Mack said he is not especially concerned that vaccine-resistant smallpox strains might have been engineered as weapons. He
said such strains, if they exist, would spread in the ways he witnessed in Pakistan and could be contained. But he said
public health authorities haven't asked him to assist in smallpox defense planning. All three Minnesota doctors also said they have not yet been asked to
help. Kersey, Haase and Williams have spent much of their careers in areas of medicine unrelated to smallpox, and they said they will leave decisions on
vaccine strategy to public health experts. Memories revived None of the three Minnesota doctors knew one another in 1960s Pakistan. Now they're
surprised to find themselves digging up distant memories. "If you'd have told me back then that I'd be sitting here in 2003 talking about smallpox, I
wouldn't have believed you," said Haase, an internationally known AIDS researcher and head of the Microbiology Department at the University of
Minnesota. Haase, 63, was a senior medical school student in 1965 when an international study program sent him to Lahore, Pakistan, to test a new drug
to treat smallpox. He had never seen smallpox before he arrived. In Pakistan he sought out victims, driving around the countryside in a jeep with a
Pakistani military translator. When the two men arrived in one of the dusty villages dotting the Himalayan foothills of northern Pakistan, they would ask
for the village chief. Then they would share tea, as custom dictated, and ask if any villagers had smallpox. If the answer was yes, Haase would ask to see
the smallpox victims. Most often, they were cared for by family members in dark, cramped, homes. Haase didn't need much light to make a diagnosis. The
pustules are distinctive, usually appearing on the face, legs and arms. After observing one or two cases, "I could see from 200 feet away whether someone
had been a victim or not," Haase said. Sometimes, he would encounter smallpox victims along the road. One woman was journeying to a distant part of
Pakistan to visit relatives. She had the disease's pustules but felt strong enough to make the trip. The woman, and others like her, probably helped keep
smallpox circulating in Pakistan, Haase said. The virus can be shed in pustule scabs. Still, cases were rare, indicating that the disease did
not spread easily without prolonged, close contact, he said.
That was good, because the drug Haase tested didn't work. It often made
people vomit. Some patients' families got angry and forced him to leave villages in a hurry. Williams, 70, a retired lung specialist at the Mayo Clinic, was a
Methodist medical missionary stationed in Pakistan from 1965 until late 1973. He still remembers his first smallpox case at the United Christian Hospital
in Lahore. The man, who lived in the countryside, arrived covered with pustules. The diagnosis was obvious. Williams and the other doctors sent the man
elsewhere for treatment after a day or so. No one else at the hospital contracted the disease, including the men in the open ward where the man stayed, he
said. Although most staff members were vaccinated, many patients were not. Williams believes the man survived. The two other smallpox patients he saw
probably weren't as fortunate. Williams once traveled to Afghanistan to help deliver supplies to a small hospital. In the hospital's courtyard were two
women with smallpox. The hospital staff kept them outside to prevent the disease from spreading, he said. With the advanced medical care
available in the United States, Williams said he believes any cases here would be recognized as quickly as they were in
Pakistan. The smallpox survival rate might be higher now because of better medical care, he said. It is fatal about 30 percent
of the time. "In that country and at that state of health care, we were able to contain and eradicate smallpox; we ought
to be able to reproduce at least that much in the United States," Williams said. Kersey, 64, had much the same experience at a
hospital in Karachi, in southern Pakistan. That's where he saw the three smallpox patients whose pustule-marked faces still are imprinted on his
memory. Yet no one else in the hospital became infected; most staff members were vaccinated. In the slums of Karachi, where he
volunteered to care for patients, it was different. The crowded conditions, malnutrition and other health problems helped the disease spread. "These were
extraordinarily poor health conditions," he said. And smallpox wasn't the only threat. Far more common, Kersey said, were
leprosy, malaria, rabies and deaths from a disease that still kills millions of people -- diarrhea. That's a point to
consider, he said, as the nation prepares for bioterrorism. "This is important, but you need to put it in perspective in
terms of all the health problems," he said. "We need to be concerned about anthrax and smallpox, yes, but we can't forget about cancer, heart
disease, suicides or alcohol-related traffic deaths either."
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1NC CHEMICAL TERROR
Chemical weapons are dangerous to manufacture and producing large quantities is too difficult
Smithson, 2005. (Amy E., PhD, is a the project director for biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center. “Likelihood of Terrorists
Acquiring and Using Chemical or Biological Weapons”. http://www.stimson.org/cbw/?SN=CB2001121259]
Chemical weapons formulas have been published and publicly available for decades. Mustard agents came of age during World War
I, and nerve agents were discovered in the mid-1930s. The production processes used over seventy years ago are still viable. The
ingredients and equipment a group would need to produce these agents are readily available because they are also the same items that are
used to make various commercial items that we use everyday---from ballpoint pens to plastics to ceramics to fireworks. Scientists with a solid chemical
background could likely make certain agents in small quantities. However, two factors stand in the way of manufacturing chemical
agents for the purpose of mass casualty. First, the chemical reactions involved with the production of agents are
dangerous: precursor chemicals can be volatile and corrosive, and minor misjudgments or mistakes in processing could easily
result in the deaths of would-be weaponeers. Second, this danger grows when the amount of agent that would be
needed to successfully mount a mass casualty attack is considered. Attempting to make sufficient quantities would
require either a large, well-financed operation that would increase the likelihood of discovery or, alternatively, a long,
drawn-out process of making small amounts incrementally. These small quantities would then need to be stored safely in a manner that
would not weaken the agent's toxicity before being released. It would take 18 years for a basement-sized operation to produce the
more than two tons of sarin gas that the Pentagon estimates would be necessary to kill 10,000 people, assuming the
sarin was manufactured correctly at its top lethality.
No impact to chemical weapons – they are minimally destructive
O’Neill 8/19/2004 [Brandan, “Weapons of Minimum Destruction” http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA694.htm]
David C Rapoport, professor of political science at University of California, Los Angeles and editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence,
has examined what he calls 'easily available evidence' relating to the historic use of chemical and biological weapons. He
found something surprising - such weapons do not cause mass destruction. Indeed, whether used by states, terror groups or dispersed in
industrial accidents, they
tend to be far less destructive than conventional weapons. 'If we stopped speculating about
things that might happen in the future and looked instead at what has happened in the past, we'd see that our fears
about WMD are misplaced', he says. Yet such fears remain widespread. Post-9/11, American and British leaders have issued dire warnings about terrorists getting hold of WMD
and causing mass murder and mayhem. President George W Bush has spoken of terrorists who, 'if they ever gained weapons of mass destruction', would 'kill hundreds of thousands, without
hesitation and without mercy' (1). The British government has spent £28million on stockpiling millions of smallpox vaccines, even though there's no evidence that terrorists have got access to
smallpox, which was eradicated as a natural disease in the 1970s and now exists only in two high-security labs in America and Russia (2). In 2002, British nurses became the first in the world to get
training in how to deal with the victims of bioterrorism (3). The UK Home Office's 22-page pamphlet on how to survive a terror attack, published last month, included tips on what to do in the
event of a 'chemical, biological or radiological attack' ('Move away from the immediate source of danger', it usefully advised). Spine-chilling books such as Plague Wars: A True Story of Biological
Warfare, The New Face of Terrorism: Threats From Weapons of Mass Destruction and The Survival Guide: What to Do in a Biological, Chemical or Nuclear Emergency speculate over what kind of
horrors WMD might wreak. TV docudramas, meanwhile, explore how Britain might cope with a smallpox assault and what would happen if London were 'dirty nuked' (4). The term 'weapons of
mass destruction' refers to three types of weapons: nuclear, chemical and biological. A chemical weapon is any weapon that uses a manufactured chemical, such as sarin, mustard gas or hydrogen
cyanide, to kill or injure. A biological weapon uses bacteria or viruses, such as smallpox or anthrax, to cause destruction - inducing sickness and disease as a means of undermining enemy forces or
inflicting civilian casualties. We find such weapons repulsive, because of the horrible way in which the victims convulse and die - but they appear to be less 'destructive' than conventional weapons.
when it comes to chemical and biological weapons, 'the
evidence suggests that we should call them "weapons of minimum destruction", not mass destruction', he says. Chemical
'We know that nukes are massively destructive, there is a lot of evidence for that', says Rapoport. But
weapons have most commonly been used by states, in military warfare. Rapoport explored various state uses of chemicals over the past hundred years: both sides used them in the First World War;
Italy deployed chemicals against the Ethiopians in the 1930s; the Japanese used chemicals against the Chinese in the 1930s and again in the Second World War; Egypt and Libya used them in the
Yemen and Chad in the postwar period; most recently, Saddam Hussein's Iraq used chemical weapons, first in the war against Iran (1980-1988) and then against its own Kurdish population at the tailend of the Iran-Iraq war. In each instance, says Rapoport, chemical weapons were used more in desperation than from a position of strength or a desire to cause mass destruction. 'The evidence is
that states rarely use them even when they have them', he has written. 'Only when a military stalemate has developed, which belligerents who have become desperate want to break, are they used.' (5)
As to whether such use of chemicals was effective, Rapoport says that at best it blunted an offensive - but this very rarely, if ever, translated into a decisive strategic shift in the war, because the
original stalemate continued after the chemical weapons had been deployed. He points to the example of Iraq. The Baathists used chemicals against Iran when that nasty trench-fought war had
reached yet another stalemate. As Efraim Karsh argues in his paper 'The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis': 'Iraq employed [chemical weapons] only in vital segments of the front and only when it
saw no other way to check Iranian offensives. Chemical weapons had a negligible impact on the war, limited to tactical rather than strategic [effects].' (6) According to Rapoport, this 'negligible'
impact of chemical weapons on the direction of a war is reflected in the disparity between the numbers of casualties caused by chemicals and the numbers caused by conventional weapons. It is
estimated that the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war killed 5,000 - but the Iranian side suffered around 600,000 dead in total, meaning that gas killed less than one per cent. The deadliest use of gas
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1NC CHEMICAL TERROR
occurred in the First World War but, as Rapoport points out, it still only accounted for five per cent of casualties. Studying the amount of gas used by both sides from1914-1918 relative to the
number of fatalities gas caused, Rapoport has written: 'It took a ton of gas in that war to achieve a single enemy fatality. Wind and sun regularly dissipated the lethality of the gases. Furthermore, those
gassed were 10 to 12 times as likely to recover than those casualties produced by traditional weapons.' (7) Indeed, Rapoport discovered that some earlier documenters of the First World War had a
vastly different assessment of chemical weapons than we have today - they considered the use of such weapons to be preferable to bombs and guns, because chemicals caused fewer fatalities. One
wrote: 'Instead of being the most horrible form of warfare, it is the most humane, because it disables far more than it kills, ie, it has a low fatality ratio.' (8) 'Imagine that', says Rapoport, 'WMD being
referred to as more humane'. He says that the contrast between such assessments and today's fears shows that actually looking at the evidence has benefits, allowing 'you to see things more rationally'.
According to Rapoport, even Saddam's use of gas against the Kurds of Halabja in 1988 - the most recent use by a state of chemical weapons and the most commonly cited as evidence of the dangers
of 'rogue states' getting their hands on WMD - does not show that unconventional weapons are more destructive than conventional ones. Of course the attack on Halabja was horrific, but he points
out that the circumstances surrounding the assault remain unclear. 'The estimates of how many were killed vary greatly', he tells me. 'Some say 400, others say 5,000, others say more than 5,000. The
fighter planes that attacked the civilians used conventional as well as unconventional weapons; I have seen no study which explores how many were killed by chemicals and how many were killed by
firepower. We all find these attacks repulsive, but the death toll may actually have been greater if conventional bombs only were used. We know that conventional weapons can be more destructive.'
Rapoport says that
terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons is similar to state use - in that it is rare and, in terms of
causing mass destruction, not very effective. He cites the work of journalist and author John Parachini, who says that over the past 25
years only four significant attempts by terrorists to use WMD have been recorded. The most effective WMD-attack by a nonstate group, from a military perspective, was carried out by the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka in 1990. They used chlorine gas against Sri
Lankan soldiers guarding a fort, injuring over 60 soldiers but killing none. The Tamil Tigers' use of chemicals angered their support
base, when some of the chlorine drifted back into Tamil territory - confirming Rapoport's view that one problem with using
unpredictable and unwieldy chemical and biological weapons over conventional weapons is that the cost can be as great 'to the attacker as to
the attacked'. The Tigers have not used WMD since.
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CHEMICAL TERROR EXT – NO IMPACT
Aum Shinrikyo proves even if terrorists had the resources – the impact would be low
Smithson, 2005. (Amy E., PhD, is a the project director for biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center. “Likelihood of Terrorists
Acquiring and Using Chemical or Biological Weapons”. http://www.stimson.org/cbw/?SN=CB2001121259]
The Japanese cult Aum
Shinrikyo was brimming with highly educated scientists, yet the cult's biological weapons
program turned out to be a lemon. While its poison gas program certainly made more headway, it was rife with lifethreatening production and dissemination accidents. After all of Aum's extensive financial and intellectual
investment, the Tokyo subway attack killed a dozen people, seriously injured just over fifty more, and mildly injured just under 1,000.
In 96 percent of the cases worldwide where chemical or biological substances have been used since 1975, three or
fewer people were injured or killed.
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1NC PROLIF
Non-unique—the number of proliferating countries is declining
Garden '1 [Timothy Garden, professor at King's College London and Indiana University, former Commandant of the Royal College of Defence
Studies, former Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur; March 1; 2001; “Why States Pursue Nuclear
Weapons;” Indiana University; http://www.tgarden.demon.co.uk/writings/articles/2001/010301nuc.html]
Nuclear weapons are in decline. Both the number of nuclear states and the total number of weapons peaked in the
1980s. The decline in numbers of warheads is likely to continue unless missile defence deployments cause countermoves in China and
Russia. The advantages of nuclear status are much more limited in the 21st Century than they were in the early years
of the nuclear world. In those states where international isolation and insecurity feed on one other, nuclear weapons may still appear to provide
some kind of solution. Unfortunately the suspicion of a nuclear programme will increase the international isolation. Regional
status can still be a factor, and increasingly it is likely that deterring intervention by the international community will be a motive for acquiring nuclear
weapons. The problem is limited in scale, and can be addressed by reducing isolation, promoting democracy, and where necessary extending
security guarantees. Confidence building measures have a place, but need time to work. In all of this the nuclear weapon states need to continue their
agreed path to nuclear disarmament.
Prolif is slow and not strategic – most countries will choose not to develop weapons
Mueller, 2007 [John, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. Radioactive Hype. The National Interest, September/October 2007, pp. 59-65 ]
Despite the predictions of generations of alarmists, nuclear proliferation has proceeded at a remarkably slow pace. In
1958 the National Planning Association predicted "a rapid rise in the number of atomic powers . . . by the mid-1960s", and a couple of years later, John
Kennedy observed that there might be "ten, fifteen, twenty" countries with a nuclear capacity by 1964. But over the
decades a huge number of countries capable of developing nuclear weapons has not done so-Canada, Sweden and Italy, for
example-and several others-Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan-have backed away from or reversed nuclear-
weapons programs. There is, then, no imperative for countries to obtain nuclear weapons once they have achieved
the appropriate technical and economic capacity to do so. Insofar as states that considered acquiring the weapons, they
came to appreciate several defects: The weapons are dangerous, distasteful, costly and likely to rile the neighbors. If one
values economic growth and prosperity above all, the sensible thing is to avoid the weapons unless they seem vital for security. It has
often been assumed that nuclear weapons would prove to be important status symbols. However, as Columbia's Robert Jervis
has observed, "India, China, and Israel may have decreased the chance of direct attack by developing nuclear weapons, but it is hard to argue
that they have increased their general prestige or influence." How much more status would Japan have if it possessed nuclear weapons?
Would anybody pay a great deal more attention to Britain or France if their arsenals held 5,000 nuclear weapons, or would anybody pay much less if they
had none? Did China need nuclear weapons to impress the world with its economic growth? Perhaps the only such benefit the weapons have conferred
is upon contemporary Russia: With an economy the size of the Netherlands, it seems unlikely that the country would be invited to participate in the G-8
economic club if it didn't have an atomic arsenal. It is also difficult to see how nuclear weapons benefited their owners in
specific military ventures. Israel's nuclear weapons did not restrain the Arabs from attacking in 1973, nor did Britain's
prevent Argentina's seizure of the Falklands in 1982. Similarly, the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the
enveloping allied forces did not cause Saddam Hussein to order his occupying forces out of Kuwait in 1990. Nor did
the bomb benefit America in Korea or Vietnam, France in Algeria or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
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1NC PROLIF
Prolif is not a threat to regional peace –
Mueller, 2007 [John, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political
Science, Ohio State University. Radioactive Hype. The National Interest, September/October 2007, pp. 59-65 ]
Alarmists about proliferation (which seems to include almost the totality of the foreign-
policy establishment) may occasionally grant that
countries principally obtain a nuclear arsenal to counter real or perceived threats. But many go on to argue that newly nuclear countries
will
then use nuclear weapons to dominate the area. This argument was repeatedly used with dramatic urgency for the dangers to
world peace and order supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein, and it is now being dusted off and applied to Iran. Exactly
how this domination business is to be carried out is never made very clear. The United States possesses a tidy array of thousands
of nuclear weapons and can't even dominate downtown Baghdad-or even keep the lights on there. But the notion apparently is that should an
atomic Iraq (in earlier fantasies) or Iran (in present ones) rattle the occasional rocket, all other countries in the area, suitably
intimidated, would supinely bow to its demands. Far more likely is that they will make common cause with each
other against the threatening neighbor, perhaps enlisting the convenient aid eagerly proffered by other countries,
probably including the United States and conceivably even Israel.
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1NC BIODIVERSITY
biodiversity is not key to the eco system survival
Science 1997 [ August 29, 2997, No. 5330 vol 277, page 1260-61]
We continue to lose species and genetic diversity locally, nationally, and planet-wide. In deciding priorities for conservation, there is an
urgent need for criteria that help us to recognize losses with potentially serious consequences . It would be naive to assume that speciespoor ecosystems are always malfunctional; some of the world's most extensive and ancient ecosystems--boreal forests,
bogs, and heathlands--contain few species. For both species-rich and species-poor ecosystems, we need to establish whether current losses in
biodiversity are likely to seriously impair functioning and reduce benefits to humans. This problem is serious enough that the United States and the United
Kingdom have invested recently in costly ventures specifically designed to test experimentally the consequences of reduced diversity on ecosystems.
Model communities with controlled levels of species diversity have been created in the Ecotron at Silwood Park in southern England and at the Cedar
Creek Reserve in Minnesota to assess the effects of diversity on various ecosystem properties such as primary productivity, nitrogen mineralization, and
litter decomposition. Early publications from both sites ( 1, 2) claimed to demonstrate benefits to ecosystem function arising from higher levels of
biodiversity, and these have been highlighted by commentators ( 3, 4) excited by the prospect of a scientific underpinning for conservation measures.
This view that "biodiversity begets superior ecosystem function" is not shared by all ecologists ( 5, 6). There are
obvious conflicts with published evidence from work on natural rather than synthesized ecosystems. As early as 1982,
Leps et al. ( 7) had suggested that ecosystem processes were determined primarily by the functional characteristics of
component organisms rather than their number. The same conclusion was drawn by MacGillivray et al. ( 8) who showed that differences
between five adjacent ecosystems in northern England in their responses to frost, drought, and burning were predictable from the functional traits of the
dominant plants but were independent of plant diversity.
Greenpeace exaggerates biodiversity problems
Entropy 2002 [November-December 2002, http://entropy.brneurosci.org./reviews/skeptical.html]
This book systematically examines the doomsday claims of environmentalists, such as claims of continuing deterioration
of air and water quality, widespread increases in disease and starvation, and soaring species extinction rates - which if true, would be
symptoms of an incipient ecological calamity. The author argues that many of these claims are either highly exaggerated or totally
false. Far from benign, the environmentalists' exaggerated claims cause politicians to waste billions trying to solve
nonexistent problems, while real ecological problems, drowned in a barrage of hype, are not addressed. A typical example was the
hysteria in the 1980s about "acid rain" caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. After more than half a billion dollars of
research, it was finally discovered that SO2 and NOx, far from causing an "ecological Hiroshima", actually act as free fertilizer for
plants, causing them to grow faster, while producing only modest health risks for humans. Yet schoolchildren are still told horror stories
about ecological harm supposedly caused by acid rain. Foreigners hearing these stories believe America to be a polluted wasteland, and continually repeat
false stories created by environmentalists such as the myth that American settlers deforested the Great Plains. The wild claims of environmentalists also
lend support to anti-globalization activists. If one accepts their claim that mankind is destroying the planet, and that mankind is
the most destructive force in nature, it is only a small leap to conclude that the best solution would be to eliminate
Western society and modern technology altogether. Indeed, some environmentalists have openly proposed this. At best, a pre-industrial
economy could support one tenth our current population. If we reverted to such medieval conditions, the fate of the 5.4 billion people who remain can be
left as an exercise for the reader. An example of how a group's credibility can be destroyed by making false claims is the claim of one advocacy group a
few years ago that a million children disappear in the U.S. each year. This number was widely reported by the media, and if true would be a scandal of
horrendous scale. Finally, someone in the news media calculated that the disappearance of a million children per year would mean that one of every three
children has disappeared. In fact, the true number of children that had been reported as being abducted by strangers, according to the National Incidence
Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children (NISMART). was fewer than 300 - a number 3,000 times lower than the advocacy group
claimed. Thoroughly discredited, the organization has since faded into obscurity. Similarly, Greenpeace claimed that 50% of Earth's
biodiversity will be lost in 75 years, when the actual number of species lost predicted by reputable sources is 0.7%
over 50 years - still too high, but indicating a 47-fold exaggeration by Greenpeace. The statistic commonly cited by
environmentalists of 40,000 species disappearing each year was simply picked out of a hat. This number is 10,000
times higher than the rate observed by biologists. The author gives numerous other examples of false and exaggerated statements by
Greenpeace, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, World Watch Institute, and other environmental activist groups.
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1NC BIODIVERSITY
Biodiversity loss is environmentalist fear mongering – species loss is slow and there is no impact,
Foster 4/25/2008 [Peter, award-winning journalist and author. “Biodiversity claims will make you sick: Foster
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/25/biodiversity-claims-will-make-you-sick-foster.aspx]
‘Biodiversity loss — it will make you sick.” This is the latest claim from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, the huge
environmental organization and supposed guardian of endangered species. According to an IUCN-sponsored book, Sustaining Life, the world stands to
lose a whole range of undiscovered medicinal marvels because of fast-disappearing plant, fish and animal species: “The experts warn that we may
lose many of the land and marine-based life forms of economic and medical interest before we can learn their
secrets, or, in some cases, before we know they exist.” But hang on. According to the IUCN’s own figures, the annual rate of extinction
of known species is around zero! Meanwhile claims of species loss of 40,000 a year, which are endlessly regurgitated, are based
on ultra-pessimistic assumptions about the ongoing fate of undiscovered species. Obviously no medicinal benefits could have come
from species that we don’t know. And to deliver a list of cures that might come from unknown species is disingenuous,
especially if you are part of a scheme that is effectively holding up pharmaceutical research. The authors do provide one example: of the
extinction of “gastric brooding frogs” which they claim “could have” led to new insights into the treatment of peptic ulcers. But if these
frogs were only found in “undisturbed rain forests” in Australia in the 1980s, and had such potential value, why were they allowed to go
extinct? The story sounds fishy, but not as fishy as the whole thesis of a “biotic holocaust” that allegedly endangers the future
of medicinal discovery. In fact, the IUCN book is pure propaganda ahead of the massive meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD),
which is due to bog down expensively in Bonn next month. There, delegates “will look to accelerate action to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity by
2010.” But how can you reduce the rate of biodiversity loss if almost none is being recorded, and 99.9% of it is simply
assumed? Here we come upon the distinctive odour of a dangerous and far-from-extinct species: the United Nations socialistus rattus rattus.
Biodiversity, and its related UN convention, is the lesser-known twin to that mother of all UN boondoggles: “addressing” man-made climate change. It is
a child of Maurice Strong’s Rio, which was in turn a child of the Brundtland report’s concept of “sustainable development.” The whole thrust of this vast
organizational wetland is anti-growth and pro-regulation. As such, it threatens human welfare far more than the loss of any drug that might be stumbled
upon in an unknown species of salamander wallowing somewhere up the Orinoco. As Bjorn Lomborg noted in The Skeptical Environmentalist, we do
not have any practical means of testing the medical benefits of even a fraction of the plants and animals that we do
know about. The Economist has also stressed that the notion of “billion-dollar blockbuster drugs” waiting to be discovered
in the jungle is bogus.
Financial Post
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1NC WARMING
Warming is dead—solar hibernations
SSRC 6/17 Space and Science Research Center, 2009, John Casey [former consultant to NASA, space shuttle engineer, military missile and computer
systems officer; BS in physics and mathematics], <http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html>
According to Center Director John Casey, “The
climate change predictions which I started to pass out to our government and
media in early 2007 based upon the ‘RC Theory’ have now come to pass, exactly as forecast. Global warming has
ended, conclusively, as predicted. The Earth’s average temperature has begun its steep decline within the time frame
I said it would. And last but not least, the Sun has entered a state of ‘hibernation’ when I said it would. This new solar
period is one of the most amazing events in the history of science. During solar hibernations, the Sun makes significant reductions
in output which always, always, brings long cold climates to the Earth. Unbelievably, this historic phenomena is still largely and
intentionally unreported by the media and our leaders and therefore unknown by the American people . The new cold climate will usher in
global travail that will be amplified specifically because of the catastrophic climate change policies of the
administration of President Barack Obama that will leave most citizens unprepared.”
Alt caus—cow farts
FAO 06
November 26 2006, Christopher Matthews, Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations, “Livestock a major threat to environment “,
<http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html>
According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas
emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. Says Henning Steinfeld,
Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch and senior author of the report: “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to
today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.” With increased prosperity, people are consuming more
meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes
in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes. Long shadow The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other
agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 percent to global agricultural output. For many poor
farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops. But
such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow –Environmental Issues and Options. “The
environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it
warns. When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related
activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296
times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced
methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes
significantly to acid rain.
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1NC WARMING
All impacts to warming are grossly exaggerated and have no impact – there is no proof warming is
anthropogenic
Foster 6/16/2009 [Peter, award-winning journalist and author “300,000 non-deaths” National Post. Peter Foster, Climate change, Junk Science
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/06/16/junk-science-week-peter-foster-300-000-non-deaths.aspx]
The Global Humanitarian Forum — former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s personal, Geneva-based NGO — will next week convene a conference
devoted to “the significant and rapidly growing human impact of climate change.” We may be sure that Prof. Roger Pielke of the University of
Colorado will not be among the invitees. That’s because he dubbed the alarmist report on which the conference is based “a methodological
embarrassment and poster child for how to lie with statistics.”
The GHF report and conference are part of the relentless diplomatic
push ahead of the Copenhagen meetings in December at which a successor to Kyoto is meant to be hatched. Mr. Annan predicted “mass starvation, mass
migration and mass sickness” unless there is agreement. The GHF’s report, titled “The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis,” claims that predominantly
man-made
climate change is already killing 300,000 people a year, and causing suffering to hundreds of millions, at an annual cost
of US$125-billion. The impact is projected to get much worse, killing half a million annually by 2030. These claims have no
basis in fact or science. Prof. Pielke pointed out that the report’s assertions fly in the face of even those meant to support it.
He noted that the Geo-Risks group at Munich Re insurance (on some of whose projections the GHF report is based) earlier this year acknowledged that
human-caused impact on natural disasters simply could not be seen. Moreover, no clear link was likely to be observed
in the near future. The GHF report meanwhile itself acknowledges that “there is not yet any widely accepted global estimate of
the share of weather-related disasters that are attributable to climate change.” So make one up. And emotionalize the issue
with lots of colour pictures of poor people. Also, claim validation in the fact that “The frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters is often
associated with climate change in public debate and common perceptions.” Even if those “ perceptions” are entirely based on the type of
alarmist junk peddled by the GHF. The figure of 300,000 is arrived at, according to Prof. Pielke by “an approach that is grounded
in neither logic, science or common sense.” The report relies for most of its death projections on material from the World Health
Organization (which has also admitted deep in the footnotes that the impact of anthropogenic climate change can’t be
accurately measured). Nevertheless, using the WHO’s pick-a-number modelling approach, the GHF attributes 4%-5%
of diarrhea deaths, 4% of malaria deaths and 4%-5% of dengue fever deaths (in 2010) to greenhouse-gas emissions. These percentages
render absolute numbers that, more than suspiciously, exactly double the number of deaths projected in a 2003 WHO report. The
remainder of deaths are attributed to bad weather, but again the figures are misleading. The report compares the number of “loss events” reported from
earthquakes vs. weather disasters from 1980 through 2005 (the year of Hurricane Katrina). Then it draws nice straight trend lines (see graphic), notes that
weather disaster loss events have increased relative to those due to earthquakes, and attributes the difference to climate change (since earthquakes
obviously have nothing to do with climate change). But how much of the increased losses relate to increased insurance, and to increased building in
weather-prone regions vs. earthquake-prone ones? More fundamentally, why should there be any correlation at all between
earthquakes and the weather? Obviously, the notion that there are three times as many floods (as opposed to flood-related “loss
events”) today than in 1980 is ridiculous, but that is the impression created by the report. The report also relies (almost
inevitably) on the widely criticized Stern Review for its mammoth economic loss projections. However, not content
with
Lord Stern’s grossly doctored estimates of doom, the GHF report takes his assumptions about the adverse impact of a rise of 2.5C on
GDP and doubles it! Prof. Pielke concludes that you can’t counter the GHF’s claims “because there is no data on which
to adjudicate them. We can rely on hunches, feelings, divine inspiration, goat entrails or whatever, but you cannot
appeal to the actual data record to differentiate these claims. So when people argue about them they are instead arguing about feelings
and wishes, which does not make for a good basis for science.” That, nevertheless, is a very human way to look at things. For many
people, climate change is a moral issue and thus the facts and the science are beyond question. Man-made climate change is unquestionably real,
unquestionably bad and will hurt poor people most. That is all the platform needed by those motivated to posture on the side of the angels (and receive
massive government funding, along with high personal status and power, for doing so). This alleged moral imperative ensures a drumbeat
of worst-case scenarios, such as those presented yesterday in yet another — even more dangerous — report from the Obama White House, which
is designed to influence Congress as it debates climate-change legislation.
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1NC WARMING
Global temperature has stabilized – new forecasting using ocean temperature proves
Spotts 2008 [Peter N. Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor. “A 10-year timeout for global warming, study says” lexis]
Global warming is taking a break that could last for another 10 years or so. That's the latest word from a team of climate
researchers in Germany. Global average temperatures should remain above normal, the team suggests. But additional warming already on hold over the first seven years of this decade - is likely to remain that way for another decade. The reason?
The team says it expects natural shifts in ocean circulation to affect temperatures in ways that temporarily out-wrestle
the effects of rising greenhouse-gas emissions. The forecast is "very bold," cautions Tom Delworth, a scientist at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University. But, he adds, it represents the cutting edge
of climate modeling. The German effort is one of the first widely published attempts to offer climate forecasts on time scales of a decade or so,
rather than a century or more. The findings appear in Thursday's edition of Nature Even without global warming, decades-long natural shifts in climate
can have big social and economic effects. These changes are thought to drive highs and lows in the average intensity of a string of hurricane seasons or the
recurrence of persistent periods of drought, for instance. That alone makes the effort to forecast them worthwhile, researchers say. But these shorter-term
climate forecasts also can act as a more immediate reality check on century-scale climate projections, since the same computer models are being used for
both tasks. And they have the potential to identify more clearly those cases where global warming is responsible for triggering a decade's climate patterns,
rather than natural variability. "These are nice first steps," Dr. Delworth says of the efforts so far. The latest attempt comes from climate modelers at the
Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences in Keil, Germany, and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. But they used their global model in a
slightly unorthodox way. Climate models are bursting with equations that describe physical processes taking place in and among ice and snow, the ocean,
and atmosphere. Typically, scientists plug in a small handful of outside "forcing" conditions - the amount of light the sun emits as it undergoes its own
cycles, as well as levels of man-made and natural greenhouse gases and tiny particles called aerosols. Then they let the model run. In the process, the model
recreates natural variations. But until now, these variations have often been considered "noise" that interferes with teasing out
global warming's long-term trajectory. But the German team was looking to more finely model that noise to forecast
climate change on much shorter time scales. To do that, they borrowed a page from weather forecasters, who plug in
measurements from weather balloons, satellites, and other sensor platforms as a starting point for their computer
calculations. For decadal-scale climate forecasts, however, the atmosphere changes far too rapidly to be of much use, some researchers say. Instead,
the German team wanted to use slower, large-scale ocean circulation patterns and their interaction with the
atmosphere. But such ocean measurements are few and far between. So the German team used ocean-surface temperature patterns
as stand-ins. They used these temperatures over a wide swath of the planet as the kick-off point for their model, in addition to the external forcings they
typically use. Then they let the model run with no more interventions. The team found that the models' ability to predict changes improved significantly
with the ocean-temperature measurements added. The result: Surface temperatures over much of Europe and North America
are expected to cool slightly over the next decade. Meanwhile, ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific will remain
largely unchanged. On balance, that yields a period of relatively stable global average temperatures.
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WARMING EXT – IMPACTS EXAGGERATED
Their impacts are political hype
Gordon 6-29 John Steel Gordon (BA in history), 6/29/2009, “Global Warming and the Backgammon Effect,” Commentary Magazine,
<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/gordon/71771>
In the many thoughtful, and enlightening comments to my previous post there is much discussion about whether there is a consensus among climate
scientists as to the existence of, and threat posed by, global warming. It seems to me that the evidence that the world has gotten warmer in the last two
centuries is pretty solid. But how much of that warming is due to the natural causes that ended the “Little Ice Age,” which
began about 1300 and ended in the mid-19th century? And how much is anthropogenic, due to recent industrialization? The Little Ice Age was
itself preceded by the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from around 1000 to 1300 and was certainly not anthropogenic in origin. In his column this
morning, Paul Krugman is at great pains to keep the lid on this debate, accusing global warming “deniers” of treason against the planet–as though they
give their true allegiance to some other planet and can always slip away to it when things get too hot here. There is, of course, no dispassionate discussion
of the actual science in Krugman’s column. He simply declares, ex cathedra, that the threat is real and embodies the opposition in an obscure Georgia
Congressman shouting “Hoax!” on the House floor. Even by Krugman standards, this morning’s column is a pretty shoddy piece of work. But why is the
Nobel-Prize-winning economist so exercised about global warming as to be reduced to name calling instead of examining the data? Why are so many
climate scientists and liberal politicians so certain of the data on global warming that they think the debate is over? I think it is a case of the “backgammon
effect.” In backgammon, the players move their pieces according to the dictates of a pair of dice. A single bad throw of the dice can convert a nearcertain winner into a near-certain loser. Being human, players sometimes misread the dice and misplay accordingly. They get a six-four,
for instance, but play a six-three. The opponent, if he is paying attention, points out the error, it’s corrected, and the game goes on. Interestingly, the
player who misreads the dice and thus misplays almost always does so to his own advantage. Is he cheating? Not at all. He is
simply misperceiving the real world because his self-interest leads him to do so. He wants a six-three and so he sees one in a sixfour. It’s as simple as that. Do climate scientists in general and liberal politicians to a man want global warming to be both
real and anthropogenic in origin? You bet, because it’s in their self-interest for it to be so. After all, if it is, then both
groups are greatly empowered by the necessity to do something about it. Only government–guided by experts–
would be able to reverse a gathering climate catastrophe. The government would need vast new po10wers to do so.
And as James Madison explained two centuries ago, “Men love power.” Consider an earlier example. In 1936, John Maynard
Keynes published his seminal work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It provided both a theory justifying active government
intervention in the economy and the means by which to do so. Keynsianism empowered both politicians and economists. So both politicians and
economists quickly declared it to be true beyond any doubt. Keynsianism swept the economics profession almost overnight (Paul Samuelson’s thoroughly
Keynsian and deeply influential text book first came out in 1946). Within a generation, Richard Nixon was able to say without fear of contradiction, “We
are all Keynsians now.” Thus was another “consensus” born, just as “stagflation,” impossible in Keynsian theory, began to blight the economy of the
1970’s. It is a basic axiom in police work to “follow the money.” In politics it is an equally good idea to “follow the power” if you want to understand
what’s really going on.
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1NC DISEASE – GENERIC
No terminal impact – diseases are either too fast or too slow
The Independent 03 [UK “Future Tense: Is Mankind Doomed?”, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0725-04.htm 7/25/03]
Maybe - though plenty of experienced graduate students could already have a stab. But nature knows that infectious
diseases are very hard to
get right. Only HIV/Aids has 100 per cent mortality, and takes a long time to achieve it. By definition, lethal diseases kill their host. If they
kill too quickly, they aren't passed on; if too slowly, we can detect them and isolate the infected. Any mutant
smallpox or other handmade germ would certainly be too deadly or too mild. And even Sars killed fewer people
worldwide than die on Britain's roads in a week. As scares go, this one is ideal - overblown and unrealistic.
No chance viruses will kill us all – too many die out
Posner in ‘5 Judge 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (Richard, , Skeptic, “Catastrophe”, 11:3, Proquest)
Another great twentieth-century pandemic, AIDS, which has already killed more than 20 million people,4 illustrates the importance to the spread of a
disease of the length of the infectious incubation period. The longer a person is infected and infectious-yet either asymptomatic or insufficiently ill to be
isolated from the healthy population-the farther the disease will spread before effective measures, such as quarantining, are taken. What has proved to be
especially pernicious about AIDS is that its existence was not discovered until millions of people had been infected by and were transmitting the AIDS
virus (HTV), which has an average infectious incubation period of 10 years. Given the length of that period, the only thing that may have prevented AIDS
from wiping out the human race is that it is not highly infectious, as it would be if HIV were airborne rather than being transmissible only by being
introduced into a victim's bloodstream. Even by unsafe sex it is "generally poorly transmitted. For example, the probability of transmission from a single
anal receptive sexual contact with an infected partner is estimated at 1 in 100 to 1 in 500."5 However, the length of HIVs infectious incubation period and
the difficulty of transmission may be related; for, given that difficulty, were the virus unable to "hide" from its host's immune system for a considerable
time, it would be detected and destroyed before it had a chance to replicate itself in another host.6 AIDS illustrates the further point that
despite the progress made by modern medicine in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, developing a vaccine or
cure for a new (or newly recognized or newly virulent) disease may be difficult, protracted, even impossible. Progress has been made in
treating ATDS, but neither a cure nor a vaccine has yet been developed. And because the virus's mutation rate is high, the treatments may not work in the
long run.7 Rapidly mutating viruses are difficult to vaccinate against, which is why there is no vaccine for the common
cold and why flu vaccines provide only limited protection.8 Paradoxically, a treatment that is neither cure nor
vaccine, but merely reduces the severity of a disease, may accelerate its spread by reducing the benefit from avoiding
becoming infected. This is an important consideration with respect to AIDS, which is spread mainly by voluntary intimate contact with infected
people. Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of
its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been
enormously destaictive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the
entire human race. There is a biological reason. Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in
an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too
quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet
there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race. The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would
cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times,
when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite wider human
contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease. The reason is improvements in medical science.
But the comfort is a small one. Pandemics can still impose enormous losses and resist prevention and cure: the lesson of the AIDS pandemic. And there is
always a first time.
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Large scale epidemics or mutations are unlikely and won’t lead to extinction
Chicago Times 3/26/06 (staff writer)
However, every new disease-of-the-year doesn't blow up to the catastrophic scale of HIV, which was first recognized two decades
ago and is now estimated to be killing almost three million people a year. The impact of most new diseases is ghastly for victims but
very small for humanity as a whole. How do a few microbial species go on to cause widespread illness and death, while others don't? Like any
organism entering a new environment, the microbe population either must have within it some genetic variants that are
somewhat well-adapted to their new human host, or, once in the host, it has to throw up new, better-adapted forms
quickly through mutation or by scavenging genetic material from other strains or species. That's probably why a
large proportion of new human diseases are RNA viruses, which mutate and scavenge more readily than DNA viruses, bacteria or other
pathogens. Chance mutations that improve an organism's ability to thrive are extremely rare, even among viruses. This
year, the world is watching and waiting to find out if the H5N1 bird-flu strain is capable of producing mutants that can
spread directly from person to person. Two years ago, we were wondering if SARS would beat the odds and go global. But it's not all
up to the pathogen; as its hosts, we help determine its success.
Global warming makes the impact inevitable
BBC 06/26/2002 [ “New Study Says Climate Change Is Increasing Environmental Disease”
http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/zarticles/0626_climate_change_great_lakes.htm]
Outbreaks of human malaria, butterflies beset with parasites, disease-stricken corals, and trees overgrown with
fungus. That is the gloomy picture of tomorrow's planet painted by scientists in the United States. After sifting through hundreds of
scientific papers, they warn that infectious diseases will rise as the world gets warmer. One consequence is that entire species of
animals could be wiped out. Human tropical diseases may spread outside their normal geographical range, affecting
more and more people. Endangered wild animals such as lions and eagles could also succumb to infections. Political plea
The warning comes in a review published in the journal Science. According to the team of US experts, it is the first broad look at the effect
of climate change on various pathogens of crops, plants, wild animals and humans. Dr Richard Ostfeld of the New Yorkbased Institute of Ecosystem Studies told BBC News Online: "Disease now has to be considered another main player on the
climate warming stage. "We need to be taking climate warming much more seriously than we currently are. "By 'we' I refer to international
agencies but also the US Government." Plant stress Driving the predicted rise in infectious diseases are changes in temperature, rainfall, and humidity,
which give bugs a boost. The theory is that pathogens would be able to spread over a wider range, and increase their
survival rate. Climate differences might also "stress" plants and animals, making them more susceptible to infection, say the scientists, led by Professor
Drew Harvell of Cornell University.
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1NC BIRD FLU
The risk of mutation is extremely low
Easterbrook 06. [Gregg, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, May 8, 2006 Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2141277/]
At the same time, a
bird flu pandemic appears extraordinarily unlikely. First, a pandemic would require the worrisome H5N1
strain to mutate significantly. Currently H5N1 is not transmissible from person to person. A bird can transmit the disease to
another bird, and a person who is in close contact with an infected bird can catch it from the bird, but an infected person cannot transmit the disease to
another person. Since the overwhelming majority of the global population never comes into close physical contact with
birds, the existing H5N1 strain poses almost no threat—as evidenced by the low fatality numbers thus far. If bird flu mutated
in a way that allowed person-to-person transmission, this would be very dangerous. But the odds of such a mutation appear low, as explained in
depth here. Animal influenzas have become person-to-person transmissible in the past. Many commentators who have looked at the flu pandemic of
1918-19, which the WHO says killed 20 million to 40 million people, projected the same death rate onto today's far larger global population, and gasped.
But there were three flu pandemics during the 20th century, and each was less virulent than the last. The 1957 pandemic,
caused by the H2N2 virus, killed 1 million to 4 million worldwide, though the global population was significantly higher in 1957 than in 1918-19. The 1968
Hong Kong flu, caused by the H3N2 strain, also killed 1 million to 4 million, but again the global population had increased. (Go here and click "influenza
pandemics of the last century.") In other words, the death ratio of flu pandemic declined throughout the century—fewer killed
compared to larger numbers of people alive. Contemporary bird flu panic is most mistaken in overlooking the
improvements in global public health made since the pandemics of the past. The 1918-19 pandemic came before antibiotics and sulfa drugs
and occurred at a time when public health was poor in many nations owing to five years of brutal war. Post-antibiotics and with most of the world at
peace, the 1957 and 1968 pandemics were much less destructive. Today, a person-to-person H5N1 strain would be loosed on a globe
where public health has made further gains and which is mostly at peace. The point isn't that antibiotics could be used against the
flu, which is unaffected by the chemical descendants of penicillin. It's that antibiotics, vaccines, and many other public health
improvements make today's global population more resistant to all diseases than populations of the past. Whether a person
exposed to a pathogen contracts the disease is tremendously influenced by the state of the person's health. The body of a person in good basic
health—that is, not already sickened by something else—will fight off most pathogens. This is why hospital patients often contract pneumonia,
strep, and staph while doctors and nurses do not contract these diseases. Today the majority of the citizens of the world are in good basic health. If a
transmissible H5N1 mutation happens, it likely won't jump wildly from person to person, leaving piles of the dead to be placed upon
pyres, because most people's bodies will defeat the pathogen. The global decline in malnutrition will also help us. A malnourished person
is far more susceptible to disease than a well-nourished person. "Chronic hunger is on the decline," the latest report from the United Nations' Food and
Agriculture Organization states. (Go here and click "United Nations 2005 hunger report.") Today an estimated 17 percent of citizens of developing
nations are malnourished. That figure is an outrage. But it is also believed to be the lowest such figure in human history. About a third of the developing
world was malnourished when the 1968 pandemic occurred. And perhaps as much as half the developing world was malnourished in 1918-19. The lack of
mention of improved global public health in discussion of bird flu hazards is telling. One reason for it is that the media and politicians often
seem uninformed about public health trends. (Quickly, are cancer rates rising or declining? OK, I gave it away.) Another reason is a lack
of basic understanding of evolutionary biology; runaway genetic effects are not observed in nature because natural selection has
spent eons conditioning living things to resist runaway genetic effects. Then there is science fiction, from Kurt Vonnegut's "ice
nine" to Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain, which has created the illusion that very tiny amounts of something can instantly cause global catastrophe.
(In Fatal Contact, one single exposed person rapidly infects much of the population of United States.) Finally, preposterous movies such as Outbreak and
best sellers such as The Cobra Event, which depicted an unstoppable super-ultra-plague and which Bill Clinton read while at the White House, have left
our collective heads spinning. Right now the ultimate book proposal might be for a plagiarized "memoir" full of invented scenes about someone who
contracts bird flu while finding suppressed documents about Jesus. Hmm—excuse me, I gotta call my agent!
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1NC BIRD FLU
Threat of bird flu low - USAID prevention and survailiance proramm has been a huge sucesss globally
Frontline 6/2009 [“Avian Flu Threat Was Reduced by $949M in Aid” http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_jun09/p1_birdflu060902.html]
Just three years after the H5N1 avian influenza virus spread rapidly across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle
East, killing dozens of people and sparking fears of a global pandemic, a vigorous global effort led by USAID has
apparently helped reverse the geographic spread of the disease. The virus now has an endemic presence in only five
countries: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Leading all other international efforts, the U.S. government committed $949
million to combat avian flu globally, including $543 million from USAID. “USAID’s system has proved extraordinarily
efficient— we’ve had substantial progress in 53 countries,” said Dennis Carroll, special advisor to the Acting Administrator on
pandemic influenza. Compared to 55 countries affected by H5N1 outbreaks between 2003 and 2006, only nine countries have reported
outbreaks in poultry or humans during 2009. Bangladesh had a dramatic turnaround. Outbreaks in poultry dropped sharply from 221 in the
flu season between October 2007 and March 2008, to just 31 in the 2008-2009 flu season. Despite this progress, the disease is still a threat: more than 60
percent of at least 420 humans who caught the disease have died; and the H5N1 virus continues to mutate, raising the possibility that it could someday
trigger an influenza pandemic in humans. Since 2005, USAID has worked with the Departments of State, Agriculture, Health
and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support national planning,
surveillance, response, containment, risk awareness, and pandemic preparedness. These efforts have increased
country-level capacities to respond to and limit disease spread. Three years ago, USAID began working with the United
Nations and other partners to strengthen surveillance systems in Vietnam, China, Indonesia, and other countries so that outbreaks of the
disease would be quickly reported to health and agriculture officials. As a result, detection times fell from 12 days in 2006 to five days in
2009. Shorter detection times means that outbreaks can be contained before the disease has a chance to spread further. USAID trained
82,000 people in rapid response to poultry outbreaks and human cases; and provided 700,000 sets of protective clothing to 84 countries to protect
response workers. The Agency also stockpiled supplies for disinfection in these countries. Increased surveillance helped identify how avian flu has spread.
In Indonesia, Egypt, and Bangladesh, the disease was likely circulating on commercial farms and spread through the movement of poultry to bird markets
and to holding centers where birds are processed for shipment to urban areas. USAID provided training and supplies in these countries and in Vietnam to
clean and disinfect holding centers and markets to reduce the amount of H5N1 virus. To minimize the chances of human infections with
H5N1, USAID supported public awareness campaigns—including distribution of posters at public events and TV and radio spots— to
inform people of the risk posed by the disease and the importance of preventing and containing it. In addition to activities intended to prevent the
emergence of a pandemic, USAID has also been working through its Humanitarian Pandemic Preparedness Initiative with the United Nations,
international and national NGOs, and militaries to improve pandemic preparedness in developing countries. About 96 percent of
mortality due to an influenza pandemic would be concentrated in developing countries, estimates say. Following its success with H5N1 avian
flu, USAID now intends to broaden its efforts to monitor and respond to other zoonotic diseases—illnesses that are spread
to humans from animals. Initial focus areas will be the Congo Basin, Southeast Asia, and the Amazon, where there is rich wildlife and increasing human
contact and where many diseases have emerged in the past. In fiscal year 2009, Congress appropriated new funding for USAID to build a global early
warning surveillance and response network for the next generation of emerging pandemic threats.
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1NC DEMOCRACY
Democracy doesn't prevent wars—history and theory prove
Schwartz and Skinner '01 Thomas and Kiron K (Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, associate professor of
history and political science at Carnegie Mellon University); December 22, 2001; “The Myth of Democratic Peace”; JAI Press; ORBIS
Here we show that neither
the historical record nor the theoretical arguments advanced for the purpose provide any
support for democratic pacifism. It does not matter how high or low one sets the bar of democracy. Set it high
enough to avoid major exceptions and you find few, if any, democracies until the Cold War era. Then there were no wars
between them, of course. But that fact is better explained by NATO and bipolarity than by any shared form of government.
Worse, the peace among the high-bar democracies of that era was part of a larger pacific pattern: peace among all nations of the
First and Second Worlds. As for theoretical arguments, those we have seen rest on implausible premises. Why, then, is the belief that
democracies are mutually pacific so widespread and fervent? The explanation rests on an old American tendency to slip
and slide unawares between two uses of the word "democracy": as an objective description of regimes, and as a term of
praise--a label to distinguish friend from foe. Because a democracy (term of praise) can do no wrong--or so the thinking seems to run--at
least one side in any war cannot be a democracy (regime description). There lies the source of much potential mischief in
foreign policy. The Historical Problem Democratic pacifism combines an empirical generalization with a causal attribution: democracies do not fight each
other, and that is because they are democracies. Proponents often present the former as a plain fact. Yet regimes that were comparatively
democratic for their times and regions have fought each other comparatively often--bearing in mind, for the
purpose of comparison, that most states do not fight most states most of the time. The wars below are either
counter-examples to democratic pacifism or borderline cases. Each is listed with the year it started and those combatants that have
some claim to the democratic label. American Revolutionary War, 1775 (Great Britain vs. U.S.) Wars of French Revolution (democratic period), esp. 1793,
1795 (France vs. Great Britain) Quasi War, 1798 (U.S. vs. France) War of 1812 (U.S. vs. Great Britain) Texas War of Independence, 1835 (Texas vs.
Mexico) Mexican War, 1846 (U.S. vs. Mexico) Roman Republic vs. France, 1849 American Civil War, 1861 (Northern Union vs. Southern Confederacy)
Ecuador-Columbia War, 1863 Franco-Prussian War, 1870 War of the Pacific, 1879 (Chile vs. Peru and Bolivia) Indian Wars, much of nineteenth century
(U.S. vs. various Indian nations) Spanish-American War, 1898 Boer War, 1899 (Great Britain vs. Transvaal and Orange Free State) World War I, 1914
(Germany vs. Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, and U.S.) Chaco War, 1932 (Chile vs. Argentina) Ecuador-Peru, 1941 Palestine War, 1948 (Israel vs.
Lebanon) Dominican Invasion, 1967 (U.S. vs. Dominican Republic) Cyprus Invasion, 1974 (Turkey vs. Cyprus) Ecuador-Peru, 1981 NagornoKarabakh, 1989 (Armenia vs. Azerbaijan) Yugoslav Wars, 1991 (Serbia and Bosnian-Serb Republic vs. Croatia and Bosnia; sometimes Croatia vs. Bosnia)
Georgia-Ossetia, 1991 (Georgia vs. South Ossetia) Georgia-Abkhazia, 1992 (Georgia vs. Abkhazia and allegedly Russia) Moldova-Dnestr Republic, 1992
(Moldova vs. Dnestr Republic and allegedly Russia) Chechen War of Independence, 1994 (Russia vs. Chechnya) Ecuador-Peru, 1995 NATO-Yugoslavia,
1999 India-Pakistan, 1999
Status quo solves—democracy widespread now
Diamond 2000 [Larry Diamond, fellow at Standford's Hoover Institute; 2000; “A Report Card on Democracy;” Hoover Digest;
<http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3491911.html>]
If the twentieth century was the century of totalitarianism, total war, genocide, and brutality, it was also the century of democracy. As
Freedom House notes in its latest annual survey of freedom in the world, there was not a single country in 1900 that would qualify by today’s standards as
a democracy. By 1950, only 22 of the 80 sovereign political systems in the world (28 percent) were democratic. When the third wave of global
democratization began in 1974, there were 39 democracies, but the percentage of democracies in the world was about the same (27 percent). Yet by
January 2000, Freedom House counted 120 democracies, the highest number and the greatest percentage (63) in the
history of the world.
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Democracy doesn't prevent war—contradictory definitions
Schwartz and Skinner '01 Thomas and Kiron K (Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, associate professor of
history and political science at Carnegie Mellon University); December 22, 2001; Wall Street Journal
Criticism of democratic pacifism is not new either. In Federalist 6, Alexander Hamilton attacked “the paradox of perpetual peace” as wrong and
dangerous—wrong because it is naive about popular passions, dangerous because quack nostrums steal attention from real remedies. In a “republic,” Kant
thought, a majority would refuse to bear the cost of aggressive war. Hamilton saw, on the contrary, that majorities can be as
belligerent as monarchs, clamoring for war not forced by foes. Majorities did just that in 1812 and 1848. In the latter
case, President Polk, who wanted to fight Mexico, had to resist popular pressure to fight Britain, too, over the U.S.-p boundary. In 1898 President
McKinley gave in to popular pressure for war with Spain. In 1917 President Wilson easily ignited mass belligerency
after campaigning against war the year before. Another Kantian argument is that democratic decision making faces
procedural hurdles and the need to enlist popular support, delaying decisions on both sides when democracies are in conflict and leaving time for
peaceful resolution. But sometimes popular support is there already, sometimes the problem facing leaders is not to enlist it but to resist it, and
often enough they have manufactured it with remarkable alacrity. Besides, democracies today have semimobilized standing forces with
executive authority to use them. A newer argument, the current favorite, is that states project internal norms outward: Because the democratic
norm is that of peaceful conflict resolution, democrats follow it in conflicts with foreign democrats. But since when are norms projected outward? Hockey
teams have “norms” for peacefully settling internal conflicts, but externally they compete as ruthlessly as possible. So do corporations and armies. How are
states different? All durable states enjoy internal peace, but the democratic ones foster competition for power. Isn’t that the democratic “norm”? What do
the facts show? Assuming lax enough tests of democracy, exceptions to democratic pacifism abound. With limited suffrage but the mother
of parliaments, Britain fought
of 1793 and 1795. In 1848
the United States in 1776 and 1812 and revolutionary France in its comparatively democratic years
the United States fought Mexico, not a perfect democracy but a good one for the times: Mexico’s elected
Congress chose and deposed President Santa Anna and ratified the terms of peace. In the American Civil War, North and South shared
a democratic history of fourscore and several years. One side had slaves, but so had the other, and if they were not democracies there were none.
After the Civil War, the hardest cases for democratic pacifism were the Boer and Spanish-American Wars and especially World War I. Woodrow
Wilson proclaimed a war for democracy against “Prussian dictatorship,” but that was propaganda. Germany had
civil rights, an elected parliament, competing parties, universal male suffrage, and an unparalleled system of social
democracy. Although appointed by the kaiser, ministries typically fell when their programs lost parliamentary votes. The kaiser was commander in
chief, but so was the king of the Belgians, and so today is the king of Spain, lauded for using that power to defend democracy. On the other side, Britain
and France ruled most of their subjects with bullets, not ballots. Britain still had a potent House of Lords, and, unlike Germany, the United States
disenfranchised a large minority of adult male citizens: Their color was wrong. Our point is not that Germany was a perfect democracy or the United
States no democracy at all, only that democratic pacifists who microscopically examine Germany for nondemocratic bacteria
do not subject the Allies to similar scrutiny: Either World War I was between democracies or there were none. We
can exclude those and other cases (the U.S.-French Naval War in 1797, Roman Republic versus France in 1849, Franco-Prussian War in 1870, War of the
Pacific in 1879, Israel versus Lebanon in 1948 and 1967, United States versus Guatemala in 1954, Ecuador versus Peru in 1981 and 1995, Armenia versus
Azerbaijian in 1992, recent Balkan wars, and so on) with tougher tests of democracy, including constitutional longevity. That pretty much shrinks the
democratic category to the Cold War democracies, to those states that have continuously enjoyed high-class democratic regimes since soon after World
War II. Indeed there have been no wars between them. But mutual democracy is not the best explanation. Pick two states and a year at
random and most likely they did not fight then. More important, most of the Cold War democracies formed a North Atlantic cluster riven by no deep
disputes but menaced by the Soviet Empire, which did nothing to lure any away. That made them do two things: aim their weapons eastward
and pool their forces in a security organization—one strong enough to enforce peace between them if need be. Of
the high-class democracies outside NATO, some (Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland) were neutrally clamped between NATO and the Soviet Empire,
others (Costa Rica, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) lay far from sister democracies, and the remaining few (maybe Ireland, San Marino) were tabbies
nestled next to tigers. In their heroic defense of democratic pacifism, political scientists Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett use statistical methods to argue that
these explanations are not enough: Mutual democracy still has some effect on mutual peace when one controls for “alliance” and other factors. But
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alliances are a dime a dozen. No mere alliance, NATO was an armed and integrated organization. To control for “alliance” and find that NATO and our
other factors do not fully explain peace between the Cold War democracies is like controlling for “passage of laws” and finding that the Social Security Act
does not fully explain why retirees mysteriously received checks after 1935 but not before. Adopt a tough enough test of democracy and
democratic pacifism applies to naught but the Cold War democracies. Relax the test just a bit and the doctrine
becomes false. But those democracies were either so far apart, so effectively neutralized in the vice jaws of NATO
and the Soviet Empire, or so integrally organized against a common foe that the fifty-year peace between them—
virtually the whole case for democratic pacifism—has better explanations than the magic of mutual democracy. Yes,
“magic.” For no one has plausibly said how mutual democracy blocks war. Democratic pacifism is not the first doctrine to come into vogue among
intellectuals, though logic and history point away. Its initial appeal is understandable: If true, it reconciles principle and prudence, gratifying the
soft of heart and hard of head in one fell swoop. But true it is not. Why, then, has it survived scrutiny by scholars and statesmen who
should know better? The answer we think is the dual use Americans make of the word democracy. It has a descriptive use,
marking off states that prize liberty and have popular elections to choose and change governments. But it is also a term of praise, used to
distinguish good guys (like us) from bad guys (like them). Since aggressors cannot be democracies (“good guy” use), democracies
(descriptive use) cannot be aggressors, can they?.
Democracies don’t solve war
Ferguson 2006 [Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
The
next war of the world, Foreign Affairs. V 85. No 5.]
others seek the cause of conflict in the internal political arrangements of states. It has
become fashionable among political scientiststo
posit a causal link between democracy and peace, extrapolating from the observation that democracies tend not to
go to war with one another. The corollary, of course, is that dictatorships generally are more bellicose. By that logic,
the rise of democracy during the twentieth century should have made the world more peaceful. Democratization may well
have reduced the incidence of war between states. But waves of democratization in the 1920s, 1960s, and 1980s seem to have
multiplied the number of civil wars. Some of those (such as the conflicts in Afghanistan, Burundi, China, Korea, Mexico, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Russia, Rwanda, and Vietnam) were among the deadliest conflicts of the century. Horrendous numbers of fatalities were also
caused by genocidal or “politicidal” campaigns waged against civilian populations, such as those carried out by the Young Turks against the Armenians and
the Greeks during World War I, the Soviet government from the 1920s until the 1950s, the Nazis between 1993 and 1945 – to say nothing of those
perpetrated by the communist tyrannies of Mao in China and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Indeed, such civil strife has been the most common form of conflict
during the past 50 years. Of the 24 armed conflicts recorded as “ongoing” by the University of Maryland’s Ted Robert Gurr and George Mason
University’s Monty Marshal in early 2005, nearly all were civil wars.
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1NC HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights high now, Obama proves
Pillay 09 (Navanethem, writer for the new york times. United Nations high commissioner for human rights May 13, 2009. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/opinion/14iht-edpillay.html)
For the first time, the United States is becoming a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the world’s main
human rights forum. President Obama’s decision to seek membership is a welcome step to restoring international
trust in U.S. support for human rights. Critics of the council point to the fact that among its 47 members there are countries with less-than-
pristine human rights records. Why would the U.S. want to join human rights violators, they ask? To those critics I say two things: Is there any country
that has a blemish-free record? Human rights violations are not the bane of any particular country or region. And even if such a thing were possible, what
impact would a club of the virtuous have on those outside? Council membership is not a reward for good behavior. It is a responsibility, one that exposes
members to increased accountability before their peers. One of the true innovations of the three-year-old council is its
assessment of the human-rights record of every country in the world, including its own members. Almost 80
countries have been scrutinized. Only time can tell whether this new country-by-country review will effectively
change for the better the human rights situation on the ground. But there are already hopeful signs that it will, and
little doubt that this initiative carries promising potential.
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1NC RACISM
Racism is at an insignificant level
McWhorter 08 John McWhorter, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute; June 5, 2008; “Racism in Retreat;” The Sun,
<http://www.nysun.com/opinion/racism-in-retreat/79355/>
His victory demonstrates the main platform of my race writing. The guiding question in everything I have ever written on race is: Why do so many people
exaggerate about racism? This exaggeration is a nasty hangover from the sixties, and the place it has taken as a purported badge of intellectual and moral
gravitas is a tire-block on coherent, constructive sociopolitical discussion. Here's a typical case for what passes as enlightenment. On my desk(top) is an
article from last year's American Psychologist. The wisdom imparted? To be a person of color these days is to withstand an endless barrage of racist
"microaggressions." Say to someone, "When I look at you, I don't see color" and you "deny their ethnic experiences." You do the same by saying, "As a
woman, I know what you go through as a racial minority," as well as with hate speech such as "America is a melting pot." Other "microaggressions"
include college buildings being all named after straight, white rich men (I'm not kidding about the straight part). This sort of thing will not do. Why
channel mental energy into performance art of this kind? Some may mistake me as implying that it would be okay to stop talking about racism. But that
interpretation is incorrect: I am stating that it would be okay to stop talking about racism. We need to be talking about serious activism focused on results.
Those who suppose that the main meal in the aforementioned is to decry racism are not helping people. At this point, if racism was unattended to for 10
years, during that time it would play exactly the same kind of role it does in America now — elusive, marginal, and insignificant. Note that I did not say
that there was no racism. There seems to be an assumption that when discussing racism, it is a sign of higher wisdom to neglect the issue of its degree.
This assumption is neither logical nor productive. I reject it, and am pleased to see increasing numbers of black people doing same. Of course there is
racism. The question is whether there is enough to matter. All evidence shows that there is not. No, the number of black men in prison is not
counterevidence: black legislators were solidly behind the laws penalizing possession of crack more heavily than powder. In any case, to insist that we are
hamstrung until every vestige of racism, bias, or inequity is gone indicates a grievous lack of confidence, which I hope any person of any history would
reject. Anyone who intones that America remains permeated with racism is, in a word, lucky. They have not had the misfortune of living in a society riven
by true sociological conflict, such as between Sunnis and Shiites, Hutus and Tutsis — or whites and blacks before the sixties. It'd be interesting to open up
a discussion with a Darfurian about "microaggressions." To state that racism is no longer a serious problem in our country is neither ignorant nor cynical.
Warnings that such a statement invites a racist backlash are, in 2008, melodramatic. They are based on no empirical evidence. Yet every time some stupid
thing happens — some comedian says a word, some sniggering blockhead hangs a little noose, some study shows that white people tend to get slightly
better car loans — we are taught that racism is still mother's milk in the U.S. of A. "Always just beneath the surface." Barack Obama's success is the most
powerful argument against this way of thinking in the entire four decades since recreational underdoggism was mistaken as deep thought. A black man
clinching the Democratic presidential nomination — and rather easily at that — indicates that racism is a lot further "beneath the surface" than it used to
be. And if Mr. Obama ends up in the White House, then it might be time to admit that racism is less beneath the surface than all but fossilized.
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1NC WOMEN’S RIGHTS / PATRIARCHY
Women’s rights are high now, examples prove.
Smith 08 (Dee Dee, “The Womens Rights Movement) http://activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_womens_rights_movement)
The success of the women’s rights movement is evident when we see females like Senator Hillary Clinton and many
others running for and holding political offices. It is also evident in institutions of higher learning, religious
institutions and even in the board room. Nonetheless, because young women in America have always enjoyed these liberties, are these
freedoms as valued as they were by the foremothers of the movement? Recently many news stories have spoken of the injustices concerning women in
the Middle East. One such story was told on court television. It was about a woman from Iran who risked all that she had to escape that country. She’d
desired that her daughters experience the freedoms of a more liberated/equal society. Her hopes for her daughters included higher education, equal
employment opportunities, freedom to marry/not marry, freedom to reproduce/not reproduce and protection from sexual abuse/violence. Because the
daughters came to America at very young ages, they never really witnessed or experienced the oppression their mother fought so hard to escape.
Consequently, to the mother’s dismay, the daughters did not value freedom in the same way that the mother had. The Women’s Rights Movement Historians credit Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the birth of the women’s rights movement. Although the heart of the struggle
centered around achieving the right to vote, these women and many other women's rights activists fought for the complete equality of/justice for women
in America. Some of the battles fought and accomplishments won by t his movement include:
* The right to vote * Gender
equality/equal employment opportunity * Protection of women’s rights in divorce * Laws/tough penalties for
rape and sexual violence against women * The promotion of higher education for women * Passing of sexual
harassment laws * Implementation of laws/services to stop/protect against domestic violence * Reduction of
poverty and economic growth for women
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