AT Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear T
The free dictionary (legal dictionary) defines Nuclear Power As
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Nuclear+Power

A form of energy

produced by an atomic reaction, capable of producing an alternative

source of electrical power to that supplied by coal, gas, or oil.
That means nuclear power is civilian nuclear power- things like space propulsion cant be
done by fossil fuels

Google Dictionary
electric or motive power generated by a nuclear reactor.

Violation: Affirmative advocates for extra planks like NPT, and

also defends disarmament which is a reduction in nuclear
weapons not power.
Under their interpretation any country can prohibit their
nuclear weapons programs which explodes aff limits. We lose all
core neg ground, desal, warming, etc. the framers intent was
some about nuclear energy not weapons; we ALREADY DEBATD
THAT TOPIC. TVA the affirmative can defend a ban on the
production of nuclear power as a way to prevent future
countries from getting access to weapons with a prolif
advantage. Our TVA solves all your offense but also gives the neg
ground which lead to better engagement.
Another TVA: Environmental injustice- colonial legacy of
nuclear power definitely exists. Garners same discussion
through different mechanism too. Still gives neg ground.
Voter is Education and Advocacy Skills for topicality- only portable skill from debate esp
since resolution is the nexus point for clashing advocacies.
Competing interpretations- Reasonability brightline debate collapses to competing
interpretations or the brightline is arbitrary which is bad for fairness.
No Reverse Voter- Sketchy debaters get away with baiting theory and they kill substance
education bc no recourse to substance. Reading new shells solves reciprocity
Drop debater on T- its a question of advocacy so aff loses if judge cant vote for their
advocacy.

Heg Good
Critiquing the American empire is dangerous whining.
Embracing their criticism devastates US hegemony
Kagan, PhD, 98 PhD, graduate of Harvards Kennedy School of Government, adjunct history professor at
Georgetown, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [Robert, Foreign Policy, The
benevolent empire]

Those contributing to the growing chorus of antihegemony and multipolarity may know they are
playing a dangerous game, one that needs to be conducted with the utmost care, as French
leaders did during the Cold War, lest the entire international system come crashing down around
them. What they may not have adequately calculated, however, is the possibility that Americans will not
respond as wisely as they generally did during the Cold War. Americans and their leaders should not
take all this sophisticated whining about U.S. hegemony too seriously. They certainly should not take it more seriously
than the whiners themselves do. But, of course, Americans are taking it seriously. In the United States these
days, the lugubrious guilt trip of post-Vietnam liberalism is echoed even by conservatives, with William Buckley, Samuel
Huntington, and James Schlesinger all decrying American "hubris," "arrogance," and "imperialism." Clinton
administration officials, in between speeches exalting America as the "indispensable" nation, increasingly behave as if
what is truly indispensable is the prior approval of China, France, and Russia for every military action. Moreover, at
another level, there is a stirring of neo-isolationism in America today, a mood that nicely complements the
view among many Europeans that America is meddling too much in everyone else's business and taking too little time to
mind its own. The existence of the Soviet Union disciplined Americans and made them see that their enlightened selfinterest lay in a relatively generous foreign policy. Today, that discipline is no longer present. In other words, foreign

grumbling about American hegemony would be merely amusing, were it not for the very
real possibility that too many Americans will forget - even if most of the rest of the
world does not - just how important continued American dominance is to the
preservation of a reasonable level of international security and prosperity. World leaders may want to
keep this in mind when they pop the champagne corks in celebration of the next American humbling.

Threats are inevitable. Retreat from primacy magnifies every

international problem and escalates conflict
Sowell 6 [Thomas Sowell, Senior fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, Where is the West? 11-192006, http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell110906.php3]
European nations protesting Saddam Hussein's death sentence, as they protested against forcing secrets out of captured
terrorists, should tell us all we need to know about the internal degeneration of western society, where so many confuse
squeamishness with morality. Two

generations of being insulated from the reality of the

international jungle, of not having to defend their own survival because they have been
living under the protection of the American nuclear umbrella, have allowed too many
Europeans to grow soft and indulge themselves in illusions about brutal realities and
dangers. The very means of their salvation have been demonized for decades in antinuclear movements and protesters calling themselves "anti-war." But there is a huge
difference between being anti-war in words and being anti-war in deeds. How many times, in
its thousands of years of history, has Europe gone 60 years without a major war, as it has since World War II? That

peace has been due to American nuclear weapons, which was all that could deter the Soviet Union's
armies from marching right across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean. Having overwhelming military force on
your side, and letting your enemies know that you have the guts to use it, is being
genuinely anti-war. Chamberlain's appeasement brought on World War II and
Reagan's military buildup ended the Cold War. The famous Roman peace of
ancient times did not come from negotiations, cease-fires, or pretty talk. It came from the
Roman Empire's crushing defeat and annihilation of Carthage, which served as a warning to
anyone else who might have had any bright ideas about messing with Rome. Only after the Roman

Empire began to lose its own internal cohesion, patriotism and fighting
spirit over the centuries did it begin to succumb to its external enemies and finally
collapse. That seems to be where western civilization is heading today. Internal cohesion? Not only does much of
today's generation in western societies have a "do your own thing" attitude, defying rules and flouting authority are
glorified and Balkanization through "multiculturalism" has become dogma. Patriotism? Not only is patriotism disdained,
the very basis for pride in one's country and culture is systematically undermined in our educational institutions at all
levels. The achievements of western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they
were peculiarities of the west. The

classic example is slavery, which existed all over the world for
thousands of years and yet is incessantly depicted as if it was a peculiarity of Europeans
enslaving Africans. Barbary pirates alone brought twice as many enslaved Europeans to North Africa as there were
Africans brought in bondage to the United States and the American colonies from which it was formed. How many schools
and colleges are going to teach that, going against political correctness and undermining white guilt? How

many
people have any inkling that it was precisely western civilization which eventually turned
against slavery and began stamping it out when non-western societies still saw nothing wrong with it?
How can a generation be expected to fight for the survival of a culture or a civilization
that has been trashed in its own institutions, taught to tolerate even the
intolerance of other cultures brought into its own midst, and conditioned to regard
any instinct to fight for its own survival as being a "cowboy"? Western nations that
show any signs of standing up for self-preservation are rare exceptions. The United States and Israel are the
only western nations which have no choice but to rely on self-defense and both are
demonized, not only by our enemies but also by many in other western nations. Australia recently told its Muslim
population that, if they want to live under Islamic law, then they should leave Australia. That makes three western nations
that have not yet completely succumbed to the corrosive and suicidal trends of our times. If

and when we all

succumb, will the epitaph of western civilization say that we had the power to annihilate
our enemies but were so paralyzed by confusion that we ended up being
annihilated ourselves?

The aff may be a good idea in the abstract but their wishful
thinking is suicide. We must use our power to prevent dangers
Sowell, 06 ( Thomas, senior fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, Serious or Suicidal, Jewish World
Review, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell010306.asp)
Just last year, before the American election, Osama bin

Laden warned that those places that voted for

the re-election of the President would become targets of terrorist retribution. We could
ignore him then. But neither we, nor our children, nor our children's children will ever be able to ignore him again
if he gets nuclear weapons from a nuclear Iran. We will live at his mercy of which he has none if he can wipe out New
York or Chicago if we do not knuckle under to his demands, however outrageous those demands might be. We

will
truly have passed the point of no return. What will future generations think of us, that we drifted on past
the warning signs, preoccupied with library records and with giving foreign terrorists the same legal rights as American
citizens? We

could deter the nuclear power of the Soviet Union with our own nuclear
power. But you cannot deter suicidal terrorists. You can only kill them or stop them from getting what
they need to kill you. We are killing them in Iraq, though our media seem wholly uninterested
in that part of the story, just as they seem uninterested in the fact that the fate of
Western civilization may be at stake just across the border in Iran. Of course they would
like us to prevent Iran from going nuclear if it can be done nicely by diplomacy, with the approval of the
U.N., and in ways that do not offend "world opinion." It is as if we were on the Niagara River and
wanted to go ashore before it was too late, but did not want to turn on the motors for fear
of disturbing the neighbors with excessive noise. But at that point, the choice is between
being serious or being suicidal. That is where we are internationally today. Many years ago, there was a
book with the title "The Suicide of the West." It may have been ahead of its time . The squeamishness,

indecision, and wishful thinking of the West are its greatest dangers because
the West has the power to destroy any other danger . But it does not have the
will. Partly this is because most of our Western allies have been sheltered from the brutal
realities of the international jungle for more than half a century under the American
nuclear umbrella. People insulated from dangers for generations can indulge themselves
in the illusion that there are no dangers as much of Western Europe has. This is part of the "world
opinion" that makes us hesitant to take any decisive action to prevent a nightmare
scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of hate-filled fanatics. Do not look for Europe to
support any decisive action against Iran. But look for much of their intelligentsia, and
much of our own intelligentsia as well, to be alert for any opportunity to wax morally
superior if we do act. They will be able to think of all sorts of nicer alternatives to taking out Iran's nuclear
development sites. They will be able to come up with all sorts of abstract arguments and moral equivalence, such as: Other
countries have nuclear weapons. Why not Iran?

Debating abstract questions is much easier

than confronting concrete and often brutal alterna(tives. The big question is
whether we are serious or suicidal.

The alternative is to endorse and align yourself with American

hegemony. The only tangible threat to US Primacy is
isolationism rhetoric of support is critical to preserving
international stability
Kristol & Kagan 96 (William Kristol visiting professor in government at Harvard University and Robert Kagan senior
associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and PhD in American History, Toward a Neo-Reganite Foreign Policy,
Foreign Affairs. July/August, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=276 AFM)

TWENTY YEARS later, it

is time once again to challenge an indifferent America and a confused

American conservatism. Today's lukewarm consensus about America's reduced role in a
post-Cold War world is wrong. Conservatives should not accede to it; it is bad for the country and, incidentally,
bad for conservatism. Conservatives will not be able to govern America over the long term if they fail to offer a more

Having
defeated the "evil empire," the United States enjoys strategic and ideological
predominance. The first objective of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve and
enhance that predominance by strengthening America's security, supporting its friends,
elevated vision of America's international role. What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony.

advancing its interests, and standing up for its principles around the world. The aspiration to benevolent hegemony might
strike some as either hubristic or morally suspect. But a hegemon is nothing more or less than a leader with preponderant
influence and authority over all others in its domain. That is America's position in the world today. The leaders of Russia
and China understand this. At their April summit meeting, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin joined in denouncing
"hegemonism" in the post-Cold War world. They meant this as a complaint about the United States. It should be taken as a
compliment and a guide to action. Consider the events of just the past six months, a period that few observers would
consider remarkable for its drama on the world stage. In East Asia, the carrier task forces of the U.S. Seventh Fleet helped
deter Chinese aggression against democratic Taiwan, and the 35,000 American troops stationed in South Korea helped
deter a possible invasion by the rulers in Pyongyang. In Europe, the United States sent 20,000 ground troops to
implement a peace agreement in the former Yugoslavia, maintained 100,000 in Western Europe as a symbolic
commitment to European stability and security, and intervened diplomatically to prevent the escalation of a conflict
between Greece and Turkey. In the Middle East, the United States maintained the deployment of thousands of soldiers
and a strong naval presence in the Persian Gulf region to deter possible aggression by Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the
Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, and it mediated in the conflict between Israel and Syria in Lebanon. In the Western
Hemisphere, the United States completed the withdrawal of 15,000 soldiers after restoring a semblance of democratic
government in Haiti and, almost without public notice, prevented a military coup in Paraguay. In Africa, a U.S.
expeditionary force rescued Americans and others trapped in the Liberian civil conflict. These were just the most visible
American actions of the past six months, and just those of a military or diplomatic nature. During the same period, the
United States made a thousand decisions in international economic forums, both as a government and as an amalgam of
large corporations and individual entrepreneurs, that shaped the lives and fortunes of billions around the globe. America
influenced both the external and internal behavior of other countries through the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank. Through the United Nations, it maintained sanctions on rogue states such as Libya, Iran, and Iraq. Through

aid programs, the United States tried to shore up friendly democratic regimes in developing nations. The enormous web of
the global economic system, with the United States at the center, combined with the

pervasive influence of
American ideas and culture, allowed Americans to wield influence in many other ways of
which they were entirely unconscious. The simple truth of this era was stated last year by a Serb leader
trying to explain Slobodan Milosevic's decision to finally seek rapprochement with Washington. "As a pragmatist," the
Serbian politician said, "Milosevic knows that all satellites of the United States are in a better position than those that are
not satellites." And America's allies are in a better position than those who are not its allies. Most of the world's major
powers welcome U.S. global involvement and prefer America's benevolent hegemony to the alternatives. Instead

of
having to compete for dominant global influence with many other powers, therefore, the
United States finds both the Europeans and the Japanese -- after the United States, the two most
powerful forces in the world -- supportive of its world leadership role. Those who anticipated the dissolution
of these alliances once the common threat of the Soviet Union disappeared have been proved wrong. The principal
concern of America's allies these days is not that it will be too dominant but that it will
withdraw. Somehow most Americans have failed to notice that they have never had it so
good. They have never lived in a world more conducive to their fundamental interests in
a liberal international order, the spread of freedom and democratic governance, an international economic
system of free-market capitalism and free trade, and the security of Americans not only to live within their own borders
but to travel and do business safely and without encumbrance almost anywhere in the world. Americans

have
taken these remarkable benefits of the post-Cold War era for granted, partly because it has all
seemed so easy. Despite misguided warnings of imperial overstretch, the United States has so far exercised
its hegemony without any noticeable strain, and it has done so despite the fact that Americans appear to
be in a more insular mood than at any time since before the Second World War. The events of the last six
months have excited no particular interest among Americans and, indeed, seem to have
been regarded with the same routine indifference as breathing and eating. And that is
the problem. The most difficult thing to preserve is that which does not appear to need
preserving. The dominant strategic and ideological position the United States now enjoys
is the product of foreign policies and defense strategies that are no longer being pursued.
Americans have come to take the fruits of their hegemonic power for granted. During the
Cold War, the strategies of deterrence and containment worked so well in checking the ambitions of America's adversaries
that many American liberals denied that our adversaries had ambitions or even, for that matter, that America had
adversaries. Today

the lack of a visible threat to U.S. vital interests or to world peace has
tempted Americans to absentmindedly dismantle the material and spiritual foundations
on which their national well-being has been based. They do not notice that potential challengers are
deterred before even contemplating confrontation by their overwhelming power and influence. The ubiquitous
post-Cold War question -- where is the threat? -- is thus misconceived. In a world in
which peace and American security depend on American power and the will to use it, the
main threat the United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness. American
hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international
order. The appropriate goal of American foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that
hegemony as far into the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States needs a neo-Reaganite
foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence.

Case
Prolif decreases the risk of warrobust statistical, empirical
evidence proves.
Asal and Beardsley 7 (Victor, Assistant Prof. Pol. Sci.SUNY Albany, and Kyle, Assistant Prof. Pol. Sci.Emory U.,
Journal of Peace Research, Proliferation and International Crisis Behavior, 44:2, Sage)

As Model 1 in Table IV illustrates, all of our variables are statistically significant except for the protracted conflict
variable. Our

primary independent variable, the number of nuclear actors involved in the crisis,

has a negative relationship with the severity of violence and is significant . This lends
preliminary support to the argument that nuclear weapons have a restraining affect on crisis
behavior, as stated in H1. It should be noted that, of the crises that involved four nuclear actorsSuez Nationalization
War (1956), Berlin Wall (1961), October Yom Kippur War (1973), and Iraq No-Fly Zone (1992)and five nuclear actors
Gulf War (1990)only two are not full-scale wars. While this demonstrates that the pacifying effect of more nuclear actors
is not strong enough to prevent war in all situations, it does not necessarily weaken the argument that there is actually a
pacifying effect. The positive and statistically significant coefficient on the variable that counts the number of crisis actors
has a magnitude greater than that on the variable that counts the number of nuclear actors. Since increases in the number
of overall actors in a crisis are strongly associated with higher levels of violence, it should be no surprise that many of the
conflicts with many nuclear actorsby extension, many general actors as wellexperienced war. Therefore, the results can
only suggest that, keeping

the number of crisis actors fixed, increasing the proportion of nuclear

actors has a pacifying effect. They do not suggest that adding nuclear actors to a crisis will decrease the risk of
high levels violence; but rather, adding more actors of any type to a crisis can have a destabilizing effect. Also in Table
IV, Model

2 demonstrates that the effect of a nuclear dyad is only approaching statistical

significance, but does have a sign that indicates higher levels of violence are less likely in crises with opponents that
have nuclear weapons than other crises. This lukewarm result suggests

that it might not be necessary for

nuclear actors to face each other in order to get the effect of decreased propensity for
violence. All actors should tend to be more cautious in escalationwhen there is a nuclear
opponent, regardless of their own capabilities. While this might weaken support for focusing on specifically
a balance of terror as a source of stability (see Gaddis, 1986; Waltz, 1990; Sagan and Waltz, 2003; Mearsheimer, 1990),

it

supports the logic in this article that nuclear weapons can serve as a deterrent of aggression from
both nuclear and non-nuclear opponents.6 Model 3 transforms the violence variable to a binary indicator of
war and demonstrates that the principal relationship between the number of nuclear actors and violence holds for the
most crucial outcome of full-scale war. Model

4 demonstrates that accounting for the presence of new

nuclear actors does not greatly change the results. The coefficient on the new nuclear actor
variable is statistically insignificant, which lends credence to the optimists view that new
nuclear-weapon states should not be presupposed to behave less responsibly than the USA,
USSR, UK, France, and China did during the Cold War. Finally, Model 5 similarly illustrates that crises
involving superpowers are not more or less prone to violence than others. Superpower activity appears to not be driving
the observed relationships between the number of nuclear-crisis actors and restraint toward violence. It is important to

establish more specifically what the change in the probability of full-scale war is when nuclear actors are involved. Table V
presents the probability of different levels of violence as the number of nuclear actors increases in the Clarify simulations.
The control variables are held at their modes or means, with the exception of the variable that counts the number of crisis
actors. Because it would be impossible to have, say, five nuclear-crisis actors and only two crisis actors, the number of
crisis actors is held constant at five. As we can see, the

impact of an increase in the number of nuclear

actors is substantial. Starting from a crisis situation without any nuclear actors, including
one nuclear actor (out of five)reduces the likelihood of fullscale war by nine percentage
points. As we continue to add nuclear actors, the likelihood of full-scale war declines sharply,
so that the probability of a war with the maximum number of nuclear actors is about three
times less than the probability with no nuclear actors . In addition, the probabilities of no
violence and only minor clashes increase substantially as the number of nuclear actors
increases. The probability of serious clashes is relatively constant. Overall, the analysis lends
significant support to the more optimistic proliferation argument related to the expectation
of violent conflict when nuclear actors are involved. While the presence of nuclear
powers does not prevent war, it significantly reduces the probability of full-scale war, with
more reduction as the number of nuclear powers involved in the conflict increases. As
mentioned, concerns about selection effects in deterrence models, as raised by Fearon (2002), should be taken seriously.
While we control for the strategic selection of serious threats within crises, we are unable to control for the non-random
initial initiation of a crisis in which the actors may choose to enter a crisis based on some ex ante assessment of the
outcomes. To

account for possible selection bias caused by the use of a truncated sample that

does not include any non-crisis cases, one would need to use another dataset in which the crisis cases are a
subset and then run Heckman type selection models (see Lemke and Reed, 2001). It would, however, be difficult to think
of a different unit of analysis that might be employed, such that the set of crises is a subset of a larger category of
interaction. While dyadyear datasets have often been employed to similar ends, the key independent variable here, which
is specific to crises as the unit of analysis, does not lend itself to a dyadic setup. Moreover, selection bias concerns are
likely not valid in disputing the claims of this analysis .

If selection bias were present, it would tend to bias

the effect of nuclear weapons downward, because the set of observed crises with nuclear
actors likely has a disproportionate share of resolved actors that have chosen to take their
chances against a nuclear opponent. Despite this potential mitigating bias, the results are
statistically significant, which strengthens the case for the explanations provided in this
study.

Deterrence failure is very unlikely. Proliferation saves more

lives than it costs.
Preston 7 (Thomas, Associate Prof. IRWashington State U. and Faculty Research AssociateMoynihan Institute of Global
Affairs, From Lambs to Lions: Future Security relationships in a World of Biological and Nuclear Weapons, p. 31-32)

1.) The Cost of Deterrence Failure Is Too Great Advocates

of deterrence seldom take the position that it

will always work or that it cannot fail. Rather, they take the position that if one can achieve the
requisite elements required to achieve a stable deterrent relationship between parties, it

vastly decreases the

chances of miscalculation and resorting to wareven in contexts where it might otherwise be

expected to occur (George and Smoke 1974; Harvey 1997a; Powell 1990, 2003; Goldstein 2000).
Unfortunately, critics

of deterrence take the understandable, if unrealistic, position that if deterrence

cannot be 100 percent effective under all circumstances, then it is an unsound strategic
approach for states to rely upon, especially considering the immense destructiveness of nuclear weapons. Feaver (1993,
162), for example, criticizes reliance on nuclear deterrence because it can fail and that rational deterrence theory can only
predict that peace should occur most of the time (e.g., Lebow and Stein 1989). Yet,

were we to apply this

standard of perfection to most other policy approaches concerning security matters

whether it be arms control or proliferation regime efforts, military procurement policies,
alliance formation strategies, diplomacy,

or sanctions none could be argued with any more certainty to

completely remove the threat of equally devastating wars either. Indeed, one could easily make the
argument that these

alternative means have shown themselves historically to be far less effective

than nuclear arms in preventing wars. Certainly, the twentieth century was replete
with examples of devastating conventional conflicts which were not deterred through
nonnuclear measures. Although the potential costs of a nuclear exchange between small
states would indeed cause a frightful loss of life, it would be no more costly (and likely far less
so) than

large-scale conventional conflicts have been for combatants. Moreover, if nuclear

deterrence raises the potential costs of war high enough for policy makers to want to
avoid (rather than risk) conflict, it is just as legitimate (if not more so) for optimists to argue in favor
of nuclear deterrence in terms of the lives saved through the avoidance of far more
likely recourses to conventional wars, as it is for pessimists to warn of the potential costs of deterrence failure.
And, while some accounts describing the "immense weaknesses" of deterrence theory (Lebow and Stein 1989, 1990) would
lead one to believe deterrence was almost impossible to either obtain or maintain, since 1945 there has not been one single
historical instance of nuclear deterrence failure (especially when this notion is limited to threats to key central state
interests like survival, and not to minor probing of peripheral interests). Moreover, the

actual costs of twentieth-

century conventional conflicts have been staggeringly immense, especially when compared to
the actual costs of nuclear conflicts (for example, 210,000 fatalities in the combined
1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings compared to 62 million killed overall during
World War II, over three million dead in both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, etc.) (McKinzie et al. 2001, 28).3
Further, as Gray (1999, 158-59) observes, "it

is improbable that policymakers anywhere need to be

educated as to the extraordinary qualities and quantities of nuclear armaments. " Indeed, the
high costs and uncontestable, immense levels of destruction that would be caused by nuclear
weapons have been shown historically to be facts that have not only been readily apparent and salient to a wide range of
policy makers, but ones that have

clearly been demonstrated to moderate extreme policy or risk-

taking behavior (Blight 1992; Preston 2001) Could it go wrong? Of course. There is always that potential with human

beings in the loop. Nevertheless, it has also been shown to be effective at moderating policy maker behavior and
introducing an element of constraint into situations that otherwise would likely have resulted in war (Hagerty 1998).

And a consensus of experts vote neg

Seliktar 11Ofira Seliktar, Political Science Professor at Gratz 2011, Assessing Irans Nuclear Rationality, The Eye of the
Beholder Problem, J. of the ME and Africa, v. 2, issue 2, p. Taylor and Francis

Nuclear optimists have outranked nuclear pessimists both numerically and in most discursive venues.
A majority of noted IR professors (such as John Mearsheimer, Steven Walt, Robert Jervis, Robert Betts, and
Francis Gavin) are in the former category. Most top-ranking Iran experts (such as Ray Takeyh, Karim
Sadjapour, Abbas Milani, Kenneth Pollack, and Daniel Byman) have also embraced nuclearoptimism.
Prestigious think tankssuch as the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Carnegie
Endowment for Peace, and the International Crisis Group) have published reports based on the
assumption that Iran has the required nuclear rationality. Foreign Affairs (published by CFR), Foreign Policy
(published by Carnegie), Middle East Journal (published by the Middle East Institute), and the Middle East Policy Journal
(published b
Middle East Policy Center) have likewise embraced nuclear optimism. 57 Invoking the 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) on Iran, the

intelligence community seems inclined to adopt nuclear optimism . The

NIE regards Tehran as a rational actor, whose decisions are guided by a cost/benefit approach rather than a rush to
weapons. 58

Conventional wars outweigh:

Prolif reduces the frequency and impact of conventional war.
Even if conflicts occur they are carefully limitedas soon as you
start adding nuclear states into a crisis scenario the likelihood of
escalation drastically decreases. Prefer this impact to nebulous
conflict scenarios. Asal and Beardsly is the only evidence that
uses statistical, empirical and predictive studies.
Default to deterrenceother strategies empirically fail more
arms control and diplomacy have horrible recordsthats
Preston.
Prefer our evidenceits grounded in history, which should be
your guide because its not tainted by ideology. Empirics proveconventional wars were the means for colonialism, not nuclear
weapons, means only we control causality: nukes deter
conventional wars.
The benefits far outweigh the costs. Even if some deterrence
failure happens it is VERY unlikely because powers quickly
learn the consequences of weapons and moderate the own
behavior. Thats Preston.
Conventional war outweighs
Conventional conflicts are inevitable and deadly. 62 million died
in World War II vs. only 200,000 from nuclear weapons. Only a
nuclear deterrent can deescalate these conflicts. VietnamCambodia, Iran-Iraq, Iraq-Kuwait, Eretria-Ethiopia, VietnamChina and El Salvador-Honduras all killed millions.
And, nuclear power plants would be hit in a conventional war,
causing the same nuclear fallout that would happen from a
nuclear conflict.