Yes War No War 2.0

Yes War
Resource Wars

Resource scarcity is the most rational reason for conflict
Gartzke et. al 01 Associate Professor, Political Science at University of California, San Diego
(Eric, Investing in Peace: Economic Interdependence and International Conflict,
International Organization, Spring 2001, Vol. 55, No. 2, pp.391-438,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3078636) //BZ
Explanations for war are legion. However, work by James Fearon and others shows that most purposive theories of war are
internally inconsistent in that they do not account for the behavior of interest.40 Fearon points out that theories of war
commonly conflate the motives for conflict with the choice of method for conflict resolution.
Costly contests involve at least two elements. First, there is zero-sum competition for an
excludable good.41 States differ over issues or territory that each cannot possess
simultaneously. Second, states choose a settlement method. The choice of method is non-zero-sum.
Transaction costs deprive "winners" of benefits and increase the burden for "losers" so that all
are better off selecting methods that minimize costs. Since war is expensive, fighting makes sense
only if equivalent settlements cannot be obtained using cheaper methods. A theory of war, then, explains
why efficient settlements are at times unobtainable ex ante. Fearon follows Geoffrey Blainey in arguing that wars result from
uncertainty about conditions likely to influence eventual settlements as well as incentives states have to misrepresent these
conditions.42 States possess private information about strategic variables (capabilities, resolve, and so on). If
states could credibly share private information, efficient ex ante bargains could be identified. Instead, uncer-
tainty provides weak or unresolved states an opportunity to conceal weakness even as
competition creates incentives to bluff. States "pool," claiming to be resolved and capable
regardless of their true nature. Such "cheap talk" claims do not allow observers to differentiate resolved or capable
opponents from the weak or unresolved. Only by imposing costly contests-by fighting or similar acts-can
states distinguish resolute opponents from those seeking to bluff. States fight largely
because they cannot agree on bargains that each prefers to what each expects to
obtain from fighting.

Resource wars historically common and increasingly likely
Proniska 5 Assistant Professor Section of Strategic Studies of the Institute of International
Relations at the University of Warsaw (Kamila,
Resource Wars in Contemporary International Relations,
The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs, 2005, Issue 3, pp. 29-44)//BZ
As far as human existential needs are concerned there is nothing more fundamental than access
to clean water. So it is water, too, that was the first natural resource to be bitterly fought over.
But as civilization advanced new resources became so indispensable to societies and
economies that states were prepared to go to any lengths to assure themselves of
undisrupted supplies. Contemporary conflicts over resources are an increasingly frequent
and complicated and multidimensionalphenomenon. Three basic planes on which resources
and conflicts interconnect can be distinguished. The first is when resources are the proximate
cause of a conflict; the second, when developments in strategic thinking have made them a
means and instrument of war and successive revolutions in science and technology turned them
into an indispensable element of warfare; the third, when profits from sales of natural resources
can be used to finance armed conflicts.1 Based on these interconnection conflicts can be
subdivided into those in which the resource factor predominates and those in which resources,
though not central, are one of many catalysts. If we designate the first group as resource
conflicts in the strict sense we must also note a marked increase in the number of these in
contemporary international relations. There are several factors, economic, political and
geostrategic, driving this tendency. The first, and fundamental, factor contributing to the rise
and proliferation of resource conflicts is systematic growth of the global demand for natural
resources. Add two other factorsresource deficits in some countries and regions,
which could exert a powerful influence on states foreign policy and military
strategy, and a growing awareness of the finitude of supplies and incremental depletion of
most of them worldwide, which is raising anxieties in the international community over global
resource security and sensitizing governments to these problems and we have the makings of
new conflicts. A basic role in creating conflict situations is also played by the fact that, on the
one hand, a substantial proportion of the worlds resources and many transportation routes are
located in areas situated in some of its most politically and economically unstable regions and,
on the other, that many countries are dependent on imports of these particular materials. It is
not unknown for abundance of resources to be deemed an engine of conflict in itself,3 though
the truth is that whether a country becomes a potential battleground depends on many factors of
an economic, political, social and military nature.4 Another frequent cause of conflicts is inter-
state rivalry over access to resources, which is particularly likely to arise when ownership
rights in the areas where deposits occur are unclear. Taking a dichotomous perspective, the
problem of the growing number of resource conflicts in the contemporary world can be reduced
to two discrete but indirectly related issues: resource scarcity and resource abundance. Scarcity,
whether the result of natural depletion and exhaustion of resources or the artificial actions of
governments (boycotts, embargoes, cartel arrangements, etc.), but perceived as a threat to
national economic security cranks up rivalry in international commodity markets. 5 Abundance
generates additional sources of divisions and conflicts. States battle for spheres of influence,
dispute borders and lay claim to resource-rich territories.

Resource wars escalate
Billion 7 Professor at the University of British Columbia with the Department of Geography
and the Liu Institute for Global Issues (Philippe, Scales, Chains and Commodities: Mapping
Out Resource Wars, Geopolitics, 1/4/07, Vol. 12, No. 1, p.200-205)//BZ
0'Lear and Diehl make three claims: that scale matters in the analysis of resource and
environmental conflicts; that conflict analyses focusing on resources have failed to engaged with
that dimension and concept, while falling into the trap of only examining conflicts at the
empirically "available" scale; and that 'resource scale" (a measure of "the range of actors or the
number of inter- connected places") could inform better theorization and more effective policies
dealing with these types of conflicts. They also present three hypotheses for (future) research:
that "the greater the resource scale of a conflict or the more interlocking resource
scales present in a conflict, the longer and more severe that conflict is likely to be";
that "commodity chains that are long and involve high value resources exacerbate local conflict";
and that "some actors jump conflict scales [or escalate and diffuse hostilities purposely for their
own [resource-related] benefit". In short, scale has been largely 'ignored' in studies of resource
conflicts and the 'more scales' involved the more severe and protracted a conflict would be.
There is no doubt that the use of singular scale, and in particular national level scale, variables is
proving inadequate and sometimes plain wrong for the analysis of conflicts involving a great
variety of actors over extended historical periods and diverse spatial scales, as suggested by the
lack of consensus presented by much of the quantitative studies literature examined by O'I.ear
and Diehl (see in particular the special issue of the journal of Conflict Resolution, August 2005).
The paper, however, presents only limited evidence to back the more specific claims or discuss
the hypotheses, mostly drawing on a selected range of studies (the Homer- Dixon and Collier
'schools') and the 'singular' empirical case of the Democratic Republic of Congo since the late
1990s (which itself encompasses 'plural' cases of conflict). Starting with the understanding that
scale is both describing a 'physical reality' and a socially constructed concept taking part in a
number of processes such as hierarchisation, scale appears as largely 'unavoidable' in the study
of possible linkages between armed conflicts and natural resources or environmental factors.

Threatened resources cause countries to lash out Germany proves
Copeland 96 Associate Professor of International Relations Theory at the University of
Chicago (Dave, Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,
International Security, Spring 1996, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 5-41)//BZ
There is great continuity between German decision-making up to World War I and up to World
War I1 in terms of the causal role of economic fact0rs.6~ This derives from one overriding fact:
Germany in the 1930s, as before World War I, was a state capable of great military power, but its
small territory possessed few natural resources compared with the great powers surrounding it.
In consequence, Germany would always remain highly dependent on outsiders for the food and
raw materials vital to its economic health, unless it expanded. Moreover, since the
surrounding great powers were better able to fashion self-sustaining imperial realms, should
they ever move in this direction by closing their borders to trade-as they began to do in the early
1930s-long- term German economic viability and therefore security would be threatened. These
two realities implied that Germanys potential military superiority might have to be used, as in
World War I, to generate the territorial mass needed for survival against what in 1914 were
referred to as the economic world empires. The strategic obsessions of Adolf Hitler and the
Nazi regime revolved around this dilemma which the First World War had failed to solve. In
Mein Kampf, Hitler foresaw that, because Germanys small size constrained its living space
(Lebensraurn), its dependence on foreign states for food would only increase as the population
grew faster than the yields on arable land.70 By the mid-l930s, his anxiety shifted somewhat:
Germanys problem was not simply the supply of food, but even more seriously, the supply of
raw materials needed for industrial strength. This dual problem could be overcome by one
strategy: war against the system, with the acquisition of Russian land west of the Urals as the
prime territorial objective. By destroying Russia, in one stroke Germany could acquire the land
needed for vital food and raw materials, while preventing the rise of the state most likely to
overwhelm Germany in the future.71 Even if we question critical aspects of Hitlers worldview, it
is important to note not only that his strategic objectives mirrored much of pre-1914 thinking,
but that without his mass appeal and the loyalty of subordinates, Hitler could not have initiated
world war. Would Hitlers arguments have made as much sense to his followers, if Germany had
possessed the land mass of Russia or the British Empire, or if world trade had not been
disrupted by the Great Depression? Implicit in what follows is the argument that had Germany
been less dependent on vital goods, and had expectations for future trade not been so
pessimistic following U.S., British, and French efforts to create closed trading blocs, it would
have been much more difficult for Hitler to pull Germany into war: the expected value of the
trading option would have been much higher- or at least not as negative-thus dampening the
necessity for war.

Resource wars highly likely empirical and future predictive
Stalley 3 Assistant Professor of Political Science at the George Washington University (Phillip,
Environmental Scarcity and International Conflict, Conflict Management and Peace, 2003,
Vol. 20, No. 1, http://cmp.sagepub.com/content/20/2/33 )//BZ
A combination of expanding population and declining renewable resources is a feature of the
early twenty-first century. By the year 2025, the world population is expected to total eight
billion people, an increase of one-third in just a quarter of a century. Ninety percent of this
growth will occur in the developing world where many governments are already strapped in
their capacity to provide basic goods and services to their population. At the same time, many
vital environmental resources are increasingly in short supply. The World Wildlife Federation
estimates that the world is currently consuming 20 percent more natural resources per year
than can be regenerated (Williams 2002). The World Bank has declared some twenty countries
to be chronically water scarce (Butts 1997. I). Already today, around 20 percent of the world, or
L2 billion people, lack access to safe drinking water and over the next twenty-five years
worldwide per capita supply of water is anticipated to decline by approximately 33 percent
(Myers I993. 54; Butts I997. 9). Along with water shortages, many countries face the dilemma of
soil degradation and the loss of cropland due to pollution, desertification, and erosion. Grain
area per person. a standard measure of available cropland, has been cut in half since 1950,
while grain productivity declined 9 percent in the fourteen years from its historic high in I984
until 1998 (Brown. Gardnerand Halweil I999. 33. 62). China, already near the bottom of the
developing world in terms of cropland availability, loses 1.5 percent of its cropland per year to
erosion, salinization, and urban expansion (Homer-Dixon I999. 23). In short, there is an
abundance of evidence that demonstrates the world faces a mounting environmental challenge.
Not surprisingly, facts such of these have helped to spur an increased concern about the political
ramifications of environmental pressures and a burgeoning literature on environmental
security. Since the early 1990:, it has become common for scholars to proffer dire predictions
about impending "water wars" or "resource wars" mid to call for placing environmental issues
directly on the national security agenda (Kaplan 1994: Klare 2001: Mathews 1939: Myers 1993;
Rcrtner 1996). In one of more famous articles of the 19905. Robert Kaplan (1994. 58) states. "It
is time to understand the Environment for what it is: the national-security issue of
the early twenty-first century." Traveling through West Africa, Kaplan paints a picture of
demographic, environmental, and societal stress, which he argues is symbolic of the future of
the world, particularly the developing world where "the question is not whether there will be war
(there will be a lot of it), but what kind of war" (Kaplan 1994. 73). Norman Myers (1994. 12), a
founder of the World Watch Institute, expresses a similar sentiment as he states: "If the oil wars
have begun, the water wars are on the horizon, to be followed by resource wars over key
environmental supports for economics around the world." Ecological arguments such as these
are often bolstered by statements attributed to politicians such as inflammatory statements by
Turkish officials about their ability to control Iraq and Syria via Turkeys upstream position on
the Euphrates (Matthew I999. 166). Even scholars who make less sweeping claims argue that
human-induced environmental pressures are a gnawing source of tension and
conflict. Thomas Homer-Dixon (I999, 2), head of the University of Toronto's environmental
security project, concludes that in "the coming decades the world will probably see a steady
increase in the incidence of violent conflict that is caused, at least in part, by environmental
scarcity."

Resource wars are hype flawed methodology overlooks other issues that make
resources a drop in the bucket
Many scholars are skeptical about the empirical validity of the purported link between
environmental pressures and conflict. These skeptics attack the environmentalists' assertions
along a number of fronts, but the brunt of the critique is aimed at the evidence used by the
environmentalists. Gleditsch (200l), for instance, disparages the environmentalists for "using
the future as evidence" and points out that environmentalist literature is replete with
dire predictions that never came to pass. Gledistch notes that Paul Ehrlichs highly
influential 1968 work, The Population Bomb, predicted hundreds of millions would starve to
death in the immediate future. Others have pointed out that the evidence of
environmentalists is largely anecdotal and that their methodology is suspect. Mare
Levy (I995) declares that the work of Homer-Dixon and the Toronto Group offers more
anecdotes, but not more understanding." ln pan, this inability to move beyond anecdote is a
function of methodology. As Levy and others point out. by choosing case studies in which there
is both a large degree of environmental degradation and a high level of conflict, scholars such as
Homer-Dixon are not choosing their cases randomly and are biasing their results. A more
scientific strategy, argues Levy, would be to choose countries in which there were similar levels
of degradation and varying levels of conflict.' An additional shortcoming of the environmental
literature is its omission in explaining precisely how environmental variables interact with other
social, political, and economic variables commonly related to conflict. Few environmentalists
claim that depletion of renewable resources alone causes conflict. Rather, they tend to argue
along the lines of Peter Gleick ( l99l . 9) who states. "Environmental problems cannot be
isolated from underlying social, economic, and political causes." However. Levy
(1995) argues that the environmentalists case studies reveal so many intervening variables that
it is difficult to see the independent contribution of the environmental variables, while Gleditsch
argues the numerous intervening variables make for untestable models. At the same time,
Gleditsch also accuses the environmental literature of overlooking important variables, such as
regime type. Finally. Goldstone (2001) points out the impact of environmental variables,
while perhaps statistically significant, is minor when compared to other factors.

Incomplete data skews studies on resource conflicts
Complete data on the environment is difficult to obtain. The fact that data on environmental
variables is missing for many years makes it harder to test the assertion that increases in
scarcity, or growing degradation, is a cause of conflict. Of course, pooling countries together
gives greater variance in the environmental variables, but it would still be better if we had a
more accurate view of changes in the condition of the environment in individual countries over
time. In addition, the missing data tends to be from developing countries, which means
that a greater proportion of the data used in the models is from developed countries. Again, this
means that one should be cautious in inferring too much from the models presented above.
However, the data for the developing world has improved steadily throughout the 1990s, which
should allow for enhanced tests of the hypotheses of the environmental security literature. This
may become possible now that the new Correlates of War data has been released. A final reason
for caution is the roughness of the measures of environmental variables. The environmental
scarcity scone presented here is simply a first attempt to model environmental scarcity as a
single phenomenon. Almost certainly, future efforts can generate a more nuanced method of
grading and ranking countries in terms of overall environmental scarcity. Finally, as indicated in
the previous discussion, it may be that some environmental variables are only important in tire
dyadic context." Just as regime type did not appear significant in this study but typically does so
when the dyad is the unit of analysis, environmental variables may only be important in terms of
dyads. Some of the interaction terms tested here attempted to capture this relationship, but at
the moment there is insufficient data to build a complete dyadic model.

Diversionary Theory

War stimulates nationalism and generates a rally-around-the-flag effect
Kaysen 90 Economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, member of
MIT's program in Defense and Arms Control Studies, and co-chair of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences' Committee on International Security Studies (Carl, Is War Obsolete?,
International Security, Spring 1990, Vol. 14, No. 4) //BZ
Wars still mobilize national sentiments, and create a heightened emotional state
with an intensified sense of community and sharing. Even the threat of war or the
display of force brings out such feelings. The nationalization and integration of modern societies
sketched above reinforces and amplifies these sentiments, and their instant dissemination and
multiple reflection in the media does so even more.26 A short, small war, ending in
victory at little cost in blood or treasure, by mobilizing just these sentiments, can stdl produce
political gains for the leaders who initiate it. The recent FalklandsMalvinas War produced a substantial gain for
Prime Minister Thatcher, and the United States intervention in Grenada-hardly a war-a similar one for President Reagan. But
such wars may be hard to choose successfully.

State failure makes diversionary wars highly likely
Oakes 6 B.A. in Political Science from Davidson and Ph.D. in Political Science from Ohio State
University (Amy, Diversionary War and Argentina's Invasion of the Falkland Islands, Security
Studies, July-September 2006, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.431-463,
http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410601028354)//BZ
Domestic unrest is necessary for a diversionary conict.4 Such unrest can represent a
fundamental challenge to the continued legitimacy, capacity, and even the existence of a state, as
European communist leaders discovered at the end of the 1980s. In the face of such a threat,
leaders can instigate an international conict out of a desire to (1) distract the
attention of the public from social, political, or economic issues; (2) rally the populace
behind the government by whipping up nationalist sentiment; (3) shift blame for domestic
political, economic, or social problems to an external scapegoat; or (4) demonstrate the
governments competence in foreign policy after a series of domestic public policy failures.5
Diversionary conicts, therefore, are dened by the nature of the leaders motivation to use
force, not by whether they do in fact successfully divert public attention from domestic problems
or increase popular support for the imperiled government. In fact, like the debtor who heads to
the casino, diversionary conicts often serve only to make the governments problems worse.
Although diversionary wars often fail, in the right circumstances, they can represent a
reasonable policy response. The logic of diversionary conflict is straightforward: when the
domestic situation becomes unstable, leaders have less to lose from choosing a
risky military policy. In such a situation, doing nothing looks certain to produce losses for
the regime, while gambling through war at least offers the hope of turning things around.
Leaders know that defeat in war will probably signal the end of the regime, but the disgruntled
crowds outside the presidential palace look likely to signal the end of the regime also. As Arno
Maver contends, beleaguered governments are particularly inclined to advocate external war
for the purpose of domestic crisis management even if the chances for victory are doubtful [and]
in spite of the high risks involved.

Resource scarcity and economic stress makes war the only possible scapegoat
It is right to be skeptical about the reasoning behind the launch of diversionary conicts but if
most of the options on the policy menu are unavailable then it might be perfectly
rational. For this reason, the risky gamble of diversionary war is more likely to be undertaken
by impoverished governments that are running out of solutions to their mounting domestic
problems. While leaders may prefer simply quashing their opposition to diverting attention,
states with access to few resources often do not possess the capability to engage in repressive
internal policing.21 Similarly, while leaders may prefer trying to resolve internal troubles by
enacting reforms to the smoke and mirrors of foreign adventure, low extractive capacity states
may be unable to pay for sufficient political and especially economic changes to
satisfy domestic opponents. Thus, through a process of policy elimination, governments
with low extractive capacity are more likely to be tempted to initiate a diversionary conict.

Diversionary theory likely AND trumps interdependence WWII proves
Rosecrance is reluctant to acknowledge realist concerns, perhaps because to do so would imply
that dependent states might be more willing to go to war, as realists maintain, while Rosecrance
is arguing that they are less willing to do. This points to a critical distinction between liberalism
and realism that illuminates the liberal understanding of why wars ultimately occur. For
liberals, interdependence does not have a downside that might push states into war, as realists
contend. Rather, interdependence is seen to operate as a restraint on aggressive
tendencies arising from the domestic or individual levels. If interdependence becomes low,
this restraint is taken away, allowing the aggressive tendencies to dominate. To borrow a
metaphor from Plato: for liberals, interdependence operates like the reins on the dark horse of
inner passions; it provides a material incentive to stay at peace, even when there are internal
predispositions towards aggression. Remove the reins, however, and these passions are
free to roam as they will." This point becomes clearer as one examines Rosecrance's
explanations for the two World Wars. World War 11, for Rosecrance, was ultimately
domestically driven. The main aggressors saw war as a means to cope with the upheavals
flowing from "social discontent and chaos" and the "danger of left-wing revolutions"; given these
upheavals, it is "not surprising that the territorial and military-political system [i.e.,
warl emerged as an acceptable alternative to more than one state." Connecting the
Second World War to causes arising from the unit level in the First World War, he continues: "If
Germany, Italy, and Japan did not fulfill their territorial ambitions at the end of World War I,
they might develop even more nationalistic and solidaristic regimes and try again."" With trade
and therefore interdependence at low levels in the 1930s, "economics offered no alternative
possibility"; it failed to provide what he later refers to as a "mitigat[ingI" or "restraining"
influence on unit-level motives for war?'

Accidents/Miscalc

Accidental launch is highly likely malfunctions, accidents, deteriorating systems
Helfand et. al 98 Co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War and a past president of the organization's U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility
(Ira, Accidental Nuclear War A PostCold War Assessment, The New England Journal of
Medicine, 1998, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199804303381824#t=article)
//BZ
Although many people believe that the threat of a nuclear attack largely disappeared with the end
of the Cold War, there is considerable evidence to the contrary.10 The United States and Russia
no longer confront the daily danger of a deliberate, massive nuclear attack, but both nations continue to operate nuclear
forces as though this danger still existed. Each side routinely maintains thousands of
nuclear warheads on high alert. Furthermore, to compensate for its weakened conventional armed forces,
Russia has abandoned its no first use policy.11 Even though both countries declared in 1994 that they would not
aim strategic missiles at each other, not even one second has been added to the time required to launch a nuclear attack: providing
actual targeting (or retargeting) instructions is simply a component of normal launch procedures.12-14 The default targets of
U.S. land-based missiles are now the oceans, but Russian missiles launched without specific targeting commands
automatically revert to previously programmed military targets.13 There have been numerous broken arrows (major
nuclear-weapons accidents) in the past, including at least five instances of U.S. missiles that are
capable of carrying nuclear devices flying over or crashing in or near the territories of other
nations.15,16 From 1975 to 1990, 66,000 military personnel involved in the operational aspects of U.S. nuclear forces were
removed from their positions. Of these 66,000, 41 percent were removed because of alcohol or other drug abuse and 20 percent
because of psychiatric problems.17,18 General George Lee Butler, who as commander of the U.S. Strategic Command from 1991 to
1994 was responsible for all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, recently reported that he had investigated a dismaying array of accidents
and incidents involving strategic weapons and forces.19 Any nuclear arsenal is susceptible to
accidental, inadvertent, or unauthorized use.20,21 This is true both in countries declared
to possess nuclear weapons (the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and China) and in other
countries widely believed to possess nuclear weapons (Israel, India, and Pakistan). The combination of the
massive size of the Russian nuclear arsenal (almost 6000 strategic warheads) and growing problems in Russian control systems
makes Russia the focus of greatest current concern. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia's nuclear
command system has steadily deteriorated. Aging nuclear communications and
computer networks are malfunctioning more frequently, and deficient early-warning satellites
and ground radar are more prone to reporting false alarms.10,22-24 The saga of the Mir space station bears
witness to the problems of aging Russian technical systems. In addition, budget cuts have reduced the training of nuclear
commanders and thus their proficiency in operating nuclear weapons safely. Elite nuclear units suffer pay arrears
and housing and food shortages, which contribute to low morale and disaffection. New offices have
recently been established at Strategic Rocket Forces bases to address the problem of suicide25 (and unpublished data). Safeguards
against a nuclear attack will be further degraded if the Russian government implements its current plan to distribute both the unlock
codes and conditional launch authority down the chain of command. Indeed, a recent report by the Central Intelligence Agency,
which was leaked to the press, warned that some Russian submarine crews may already be capable of authorizing a launch.26 As
then Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov warned last year, No one today can guarantee the reliability of our control systems. . .
. Russia might soon reach the threshold beyond which its rockets and nuclear systems cannot be controlled.24 A particular danger
stems from the reliance by both Russia and the United States on the strategy of launch on warning the launching of strategic
missiles after a missile attack by the enemy has been detected but before the missiles actually arrive. Each country's
procedures allow a total response time of only 15 minutes: a few minutes for detecting an enemy
attack, another several minutes for top-level decision making, and a couple of minutes to disseminate
the authorization to launch a response.27,28 Possible scenarios of an accidental or otherwise unauthorized nuclear
attack range from the launch of a single missile due to a technical malfunction to the launch of a massive salvo due to a false
warning. A strictly mechanical or electrical event as the cause of an accidental launch, such as a stray spark during missile
maintenance, ranks low on the scale of plausibility.29 Analysts also worry about whether computer defects in the year 2000 may
compromise the control of strategic missiles in Russia, but the extent of this danger is not known. Several authorities
consider a launch based on a false warning to be the most plausible scenario of an accidental
attack.20,29 This danger is not merely theoretical. Serious false alarms occurred in the U.S.
system in 1979 and 1980, when human error and computer-chip failures resulted in indications
of a massive Soviet missile strike.10,30 On January 25, 1995, a warning related to a U.S. scientific
rocket launched from Norway led to the activation, for the first time in the nuclear era, of the nuclear
suitcases carried by the top Russian leaders and initiated an emergency nuclear-decision-
making conference involving the leaders and their top nuclear advisors. It took about eight minutes to conclude that the
launch was not part of a surprise nuclear strike by Western submarines less than four minutes before the deadline for ordering a
nuclear response under standard Russian launch-on-warning protocols.10,24,27 A missile launch activated by
false warning is thus possible in both U.S. and Russian arsenals. For the reasons noted above,
an accidental Russian launch is currently considered the greater risk.

AT: Treaties/International law

Nuclear proliferation and failures of international treaties destroy effectiveness
Gorbachev 7 Leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 (Mikhail, The Nuclear Threat,
The Wall Street Journal, 1/31/07,
http://www.nuclearsecurityproject.org/uploads/File/TheNuclearThreat-Gorbachev-WSJ-
013107.pdf)//BZ
As someone who signed the first treaties on real reductions in nuclear weapons, I feel it is my
duty to support their call for urgent action. The road to this goal began in November 1985 when
Ronald Reagan and I met in Geneva. We declared that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must
never be fought." This was said at a time when many people in the military and among the
political establishment regarded a war involving weapons of mass destruction as conceivable
and even acceptable, and were developing various scenarios of nuclear escalation. It took
political will to transcend the old thinking and attain a new vision. For if a nuclear war is
inconceivable, then military doctrines, armed forces development plans and negotiating
positions at arms-control talks must change accordingly. This began to happen, particularly
after Reagan and I agreed in Reykjavik in October 1986 on the need ultimately to eliminate
nuclear weapons. Concurrently, major positive changes were occurring in world affairs: A
number of international conflicts were defused and democratic processes in many parts of the
world gained momentum, leading to the end of the Cold War. As U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations
got off the ground, a breakthrough was achieved -- the treaty on the elimination of medium- and
shorter-range missiles, followed by agreement on 50% reduction in strategic offensive weapons.
If the negotiations had continued in the same vein and at the same pace, the world would have
been rid of the greater part of the arsenals of deadly weapons. But this did not happen, and
hopes for a new, more democratic world order were not fulfilled. In fact, we have seen a failure
of political leadership, which proved incapable of seizing the opportunities opened by the end of
the Cold War. This glaring failure has allowed nuclear weapons and their
proliferation to pose a continuing, growing threat to mankind. The ABM Treaty has
been abrogated; the requirements for effective verification and irreversibility of nuclear-arms
reductions have been weakened; the treaty on comprehensive cessation of nuclear-weapons
tests has not been ratified by all nuclear powers. The goal of the eventual elimination of nuclear
weapons has been essentially forgotten. What is more, the military doctrines of major powers,
first the U.S. and then, to some extent, Russia, have re-emphasized nuclear weapons as an
acceptable means of war fighting, to be used in a first or even in a "pre-emptive" strike. All
this is a blatant violation of the nuclear powers commitments under the Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Its Article V is clear and unambiguous: Nations that are capable of making nuclear
weapons shall forgo that possibility in exchange for the promise by the members of the nuclear
club to reduce and eventually abolish their nuclear arsenals. If this reciprocity is not observed,
then the entire structure of the treaty will collapse. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is already
under considerable stress. The emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear-weapon states, the
North Korean nuclear program and the issue of Iran are just the harbingers of even more
dangerous problems that we will have to face unless we overcome the present situation. A new
threat, nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, is a challenge to our ability to work
together internationally and to our technological ingenuity. But we should not delude ourselves:
In the final analysis, this problem can only be solved through the abolition of nuclear weapons.
So long as they continue to exist, the danger will be with us, like the famous "rifle on the wall"
that will fire sooner or later. Last November the Forum of Nobel Peace Laureates, meeting in
Rome, issued a special statement on this issue. The late Nobel laureate and world-renowned
scientist, Joseph Rotblat, initiated a global awareness campaign on the nuclear danger, in which
I participated. Ted Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative provides important support for specific
measures to reduce weapons of mass destruction. With all of them we are united by a common
understanding of the need to save the Non-Proliferation Treaty and of the primary responsibility
of the members of the nuclear club. We must put the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons back
on the agenda, not in a distant future but as soon as possible. It links the moral imperative -- the
rejection of such weapons from an ethical standpoint -- with the imperative of assuring security.
It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact,
with every passing year they make our security more precarious. The irony -- and a reproach to
the current generation of world leaders -- is that two decades after the end of the Cold War the
world is still burdened with vast arsenals of nuclear weapons of which even a
fraction would be enough to destroy civilization.

International law cant solve conflict no need to comply, no special authority,
and power gaps
Goldsmith and Posner 5 Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Law Professor at
University of Chicago Law School (Jack and Eric, The Limits of International Law, American
Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, April 2005,
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/sugimoto/law.pdf)//BZ
The Limits of International Law intends to fill that gap. The book begins with the premise that
all states, nearly all the time, make foreign policy decisions, including the decisions whether to
enter treaties and comply with international law, based on an assessment of their national
interest. Using a simple game-theoretical framework, Goldsmith and Posner argue that
international law is intrinsically weak and unstable, because states will comply with
international law only when they fear that noncompliance will result in retaliation
or other reputational injuries. This framework helps us understand the errors of the
international law advocates and their critics. On the one hand, large multilateral treaties that
treat all states as equal are unattractive to powerful states, which either refuse to enter the
treaties, enter them subject to numerous reservations that undermine the treaties obligations,
or refuse to comply with them. The problem with these treaties is that they treat states as
equals when in fact they are not, and they implicitly rely on collective sanctions when
states prefer to free ride. Thus, many human rights treaties are generally not enforced, and so
they have little effect on states behavior. And the international trade system is mainly a
framework in which bilateral enforcement occurs, so powerful states may cooperate with other
powerful states but not with weaker states, whose remedies for trade violations are valueless.
International law has no life of its own, has no special normative authority; it is just
the working out of relations among states, as they deal with relatively discrete problems of
international cooperation.

AT: Interdependence

Interdependence doesnt solve non-military conflicts and short-term trade causes
war
However, "theoretically, liberalism does not specify what types of conflict are most likely to decrease in
the presence of high levels of interdependence."'6 Gartzke and Dong-Joon Jo find that while liberal
dyads are less likely to engage in militarized conflict, they have more nonmilitarized
conflicts.'7 Mark J. Gasiorowski finds that short-term capital flows increase conflict while trade
reduces conflict.'8 Gasiorowski and Mary Ann Tetreault emphasize that the quantitative literature measures not
interdependence but interconnectedness.'9 Trade flows alone may not be an optimal measure of
interdependence. Other recent work directly challenges the validity of research on the trade-conflict nexus. Using a
measure of interdependence based on the salience of trade, Katherine protect their interests, these states are more easily
constrained from balancing against revisionist states with which they share economic relations. If
confrontations arise, revisionist states may threaten to disrupt economic relations, increasing
opportunity costs for status quo states.

Interdependence cant prevent conflicts over strategic state interests and increases
the risk that potential conflicts are realized
Maoz 9 Professor at UC Davis and former Head/Professor of Graduate Shool of Government
and Policy at Tel Aviv University (Zeev, The Effects of Strategic and Economic Interdependence
on International Conflict across Levels of Analysis, American Journal of Political Science,
January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 223-240, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25193877 ) //BZ
Alliances represent arguably the single most important expression of interdependence in
political realism. Realists view alliances as a necessary evil, a means of safeguarding one's security that
comes at a price of reduced autonomy (Mearsheimer 1994/5,13; Morrow 1991; Walt 1987). Machiavelli argues that "a
prince must beware never to associate himself with someone more powerful than himself so as to attack [offend] others, except when
necessity presses ... For when you win, you are left his prisoner, and princes should avoid as much as they can being at the discretion
of others" ([1541] 1985, 90; italics added). For Rousseau, strategic interdependence implies that even "the most frail man
has more force for his own preservation than the most robust State has for its" ([1754] 2005, 68).
Interdependence is the source of security dilemmas (Hoffmann 1965, 62-63; Knutsen 1994, 250-53),
and thus a key cause of conflict. World peace can exist only under "the ideal world of small,
self-sufficient, self-centered states governed by the general will" (Hoff mann 1965, 80), that is, only in a
world composed of self-contained units avoiding contact with each other. Neorealists (e.g., Mearsheimer
2001; Waltz 1979) concur. In an anarchic world where contact is unavoidable, the greater the level
of strategic interdependence, the more likely is the potential of conflict to be
converted into an actual reality of conflict. What does this logic imply for the behavior of individual states?
Strategic interdependence of a state is typically a function of its alliance commitments. Alliances
increase security through the pooling of resources. But they render members' choices contingent
on their allies' choices or the actions of the allies' enemies (Maoz 2000, 113; Morrow 2000, 65; Snyder 1997).
Two seemingly contradictory mechanisms suggest that strategic interdependence has a positive
effect on war (Christensen and Snyder 1990). Buck-passing failure of states to deter an aggressor in the hope that their alliance
members would do so tends to encourage aggression. Chain ganging induces escalation because states are drawn into conflict by
their allies. Empirical studies support this argument (Colaresi and Thompson 2005; Siverson and King 1979).
Realists argue that strategic interdependence increases the likelihood of conflict at both the monadic and systemic levels of analysis.
Yet they also suggest that strategic interdependence reduces the likelihood of dyadic conflict. States form alliances because they have
common enemies (Farber and Gowa 1995, 1997; Maoz et al. 2006, 2007; Mearsheimer 1994/5, 13). This reduces pressure for conflict
between allies. Empirical findings on this proposition are mixed.5 Realists dismiss liberal notions about the trade-peace linkages.
As long as strategic interests demand, states would clash with each other even at
the price of disrupting trade. England and France traded with Germany, yet this did not
prevent them from fighting two world wars. Nor did Japanese trade dependence on the United
States deter it from attacking it.6

Strategic dependence is highly polarizing and causes war with 3
rd
parties
on International Conflict across Levels of Analysis, American Journal of Political Science,
January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 223-240, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25193877 )//BZ
The realist paradigm posits a complex cross level relationship between interdependence and
conflict. Strategic interdependence is expected to reduce the likelihood of dyadic conflict, yet it challenges
third parties, thereby raising the likelihood of conflict between dyad members and third
parties (Maoz 2000). Increased strategic interdependence in the system is associated
with high polarization, and thus with interbloc conflict. Economic interdependence has little
effect on international conflict across levels of analysis (Barbieri 2002, 37-38). The liberal paradigm expects both
strategic and economic interdependence to reduce the frequency of monadic, dyadic, and systemic conflict. Thus, integrated
interdependence a combination of strategic and economic ties is also expected to dampen down conflict. Realists, on the other hand,
do not expect such integrative interdependence to have a significant effect on conflict behavior. This discussion suggests that the
relationship between interdependence and conflict is more nuanced than we have been led to
believe.

Markets cant solve war expectations of reduced trade makes war viable
Separating levels of interdependence from expectations of future trade indicates that states
may be pushed into war even if current trade levels are high, if leaders have good
reason to suspect that others will cut them off in the future. In such a situation, the expected
value of trade will likely be negative, and hence the value of continued peace is also
negative, making war an attractive alternative. This insight helps resolve the liberal problem
with World War I: despite high trade levels in 1913-14, declining expectations for future trade
pushed German leaders to attack, to ensure long-term access to markets and raw materials.
Even when current trade is low or non-existent, positive expectations for future trade will
produce a positive expected value for trade, and therefore an incentive for continued peace. This
helps explain the two main periods of dktente between the Cold War superpowers, from 1971 to
1973 and in the late 1980s: positive signs from U.S. leaders that trade would soon be
significantly increased coaxed the Soviets into a more cooperative relationship, reducing the
probability of war. But in situations of low trade where there is no prospect that high trade levels
will be restored in the future, highly dependent states may be pushed into conflict. This
was the German and Japanese dilemma before World War II.

High costs dont deter war irrationality and expansionism are historical
exceptions
The core liberal position is straightforward. Trade provides valuable benefits, or gains from
trade, to any particular state. A dependent state should therefore seek to avoid war, since
peaceful trading gives it all the benefits of close ties without any of the costs and risks of war.
Trade pays more than war, so dependent states should prefer to trade not invade. This argument
is often supported by the auxiliary proposition that modern technology greatly increases the
costs and risks of aggression, making the trading option even more rational. The argument was
first made popular in the 1850s by Richard Cobden, who asserted that free trade unites states,
making each equally anxious for the prosperity and happiness of both.3 This view was restated
in The Great Illusion by Norman Angell just prior to World War I and again in 1933. Angell saw
states having to choose between new ways of thinking, namely peaceful trade, and the old
method of power politics. Even if war was once profitable, modernization now makes it
impossible to enrich oneself through force; indeed, by destroying trading bonds, war is
commercially suicidal.~ Why do wars nevertheless occur? While the start of World War I
just after The Great Illusions initial publication might seem to refute his thesis, Angell in the
1933 edition argued that the debacle simply confirmed the unprofitability of modern wars. He
thus upheld the common liberal view that wars, especially major wars, result from the
misperceptions of leaders caught up in the outmoded belief that war still pays. Accordingly, his
is not a plea for the impossibility of war . . . but for its futility, since our ignorance on this
matter makes war not only possible, but extremely likely.5 In short, if leaders fail
to see how unprofitable war is compared to the benefits of trade, they may still
erroneously choose the former. Richard Rosecrance provides the most extensive update of
the Cobden- Angel1 thesis to the nuclear era. States must choose between being trading states,
concerned with promoting wealth through commerce, and territorial states, obsessed
with military expansion.

Interdependence doesnt prevent war and attempts to break off dependence causes
conflict
Realists turn the liberal argument on its head, arguing that economic interdependence not
only fails to promote peace, but in fact heightens the likelihood of war.8 States
concerned about security will dislike dependence, since it means that crucial imported goods
could be cut off during a crisis. This problem is particularly acute for imports like oil and raw
materials; while they may be only a small percentage of the total import bill, without them most
modern economies would collapse. Consequently, states dependent on others for vital goods
have an increased incentive to go to war to assure themselves of continued access of supply.
Neorealist Kenneth Waltz puts the argument as follows: actors within a domestic polity have
little reason to fear the dependence that goes with specialization. The anarchic structure of
international politics, however, makes states worry about their vulnerability, thus compelling
them "to control what they depend on or to lessen the extent of their dependency." For Waltz, it
is this "simple thought" that explains, among other things, "their imperial thrusts to widen the
scope of their control."' For John Mearsheimer, nations that "depend on others for critical
economic supplies will fear cutoff or blackmail in time of crisis or war." Consequently, "they may
try to extend political control to the source of supply, giving rise to conflict with
the source or with its other customers." Interdependence, therefore, "will
probably lead to greater security competition.'"' This modern realist understanding of
economic interdependence and war finds its roots in mercantilist writings dating from the
seventeenth century. Mercantilists saw states as locked in a competition for relative power and
for the wealth that underpins that power. For mercantilists, imperial expansion- the acquisition
of colonies-is driven by the states need to secure greater control over sources of supply and
markets for its goods, and to build relative power in the process. By allowing the metropolis and
the colonies to specialize in production and trade of complementary products (particularly
manufactured goods for raw materials), while ensuring political control over the process,
colonies opened up the possibility of providing a system of supply within a self-contained
empire.12 In this, we see the underpinning for the neorealist view that interdependence leads
to war. Mercantilist imperialism represents a reaction to a states dependence; states reduce
their fears of external specialization by increasing internal specialization within a now larger
political realm. The imperial state as it expands thus acquires more and more of the
characteristics of Waltzs domestic polity, with its hierarchy of specialized functions secure from
the unpredictable policies of others. In sum, realists seek to emphasize one main point: political
concerns driven by anarchy must be injected into the liberal calculus. Since states must be
primarily concerned with security and therefore with control over resources and markets, one
must discount the liberal optimism that great trading partners will always continue to be great
trading partners simply because both states benefit absolutely. Accordingly, a state vulnerable to
anothers policies because of dependence will tend to use force to overcome that vulnerability.

Trade cant solve conflict opens up new outlets for conflict and military concerns
outweigh
Pevehouse 4 Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin (Jon,
Interdependence Theory and the Measurement of International Conflict, The Journal of
Politics, February 2004, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp.247-266, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3449781 )//BZ
Rather, increasing trade can serve as a potent source of stress and conflict between
states. Hirschman ([1945] 1980) has argued that the gains from trade may not be proportional
across all states and that this disparity in relative gains can be a source of leverage of one state
over another. If one partner depends on a trading relationship much more heavily than another
partner, the latter state faces fewer costs associated with severing the relationship (see also
Gilpin 1977). Under these circumstances, trade may not be a deterrent to conflict, but rather a
source of tension.
Furthermore, as commerce rises, so do the range of economic issues over which disputes can
emerge. Waltz (1970, 205), for example, argues that close interdependence means closeness of
contact and raises the prospect of at least "occasional conflict." For Waltz, this is the foremost
implication of increasing trade relations, noting that "the [liberal] myth of interdependence...,
asserts a false belief about the conditions that may promote peace" (1970, 205). As such,
heightened trade could actually stimulate belligerence. In the words of Stein, "Just as
actors who do not interact cannot cooperate, so they cannot fight" (1993, 252). These logics
provide another causal pathway to reach Hypothesis 3. H3: Higher levels of trade dependence
between states will lead to a greater probability of conflicts between those states. Finally, some
realists hold out the argument that trade levels have little to do with political-military conflict.
For these scholars, "there is a very compelling case for factors other than economic ones being
prime movers in the decline in the use of force" (Buzan 1984, 607). Issues such as the balance
of military forces, nuclear deterrence, the distribution of power, even advances in
military technology far outweigh the economic arguments surrounding the use of
force (Gilpin 1987).

Modern interdependence isnt a silver bullet for conflicts conclusive of both
perspectives
Although the results presented here are certainly not the final answer to the question of trade's
influence on political relations, the evidence does suggest that a complex relationship exists
between these two concepts. These complexities are suggested by the finding that trade may
both increase the probability of conflict, yet restrain the frequency of that conflict. This
observation is consistent with both realist and liberal theories concerning the political effects of
interdependence. Unfortunately, each side of this debate has centered on only part of the
empirical story. The evidence garnered here also suggests that trade may not have a strong
influence on the prospects for cooperative political relations-an argument championed by some
commercial liberals. All of these findings were made possible by reconsidering the nature of the
competing claims of interdependence theory as well as reconsidering the measurement of the
dependent variable of international conflict. Moving away from the MIDS data allows one to
more accurately test some observable implications of interdependence theory. Obviously, the
move away from the MIDS data is certainly not without drawbacks. Both events data sets are far
more limited in their temporal coverage than the MIDS, and some have criticized the overall
quality of the events data. Nonetheless, events data do appear to be useful in testing the impact
of trade on political relations. From a policy perspective, these findings suggest that while
increasing global trade can be a mechanism for lessening conflict, this is only part of the picture.
Trade can create hostilities between states and while these tensions may not flower into
widespread and violent military conflict, they can be a source of concern. These hostilities,
however, should be viewed in their proper context--on the whole, higher trade dependence does
lower conflict. It is not a panacea for the vagaries of nor is it a blight on interstate
relations.

Global integration generates greater justification for war
Mandlebaum 98 Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University and director of the Project on East-
West Relations for the Council on Foreign Relations (Michael, Is Major War Obsolete?,
Survival, Winter 1998-99, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 20-38)//BZ
The unusually brutal way in which the Russian Anny waged that war stemmed from its aversion
to fighting it. The armed forces levelled the cities of Chechnya, especially its capital, Grozny,
with artillery barrages and aerial bombardment, killing thousands of civilians, many of them
ethnic Russians. They employed those tactics because, after an initial attack was repulsed,
Russian troops were not willing to put their own lives in jeopardy by entering the cities in order
to capture and hold them. Urban warfare is particularly dangerous for soldiers and civilians. But
Russian troops had established themselves as its masters during the Second World War. They
had fought bravely and taken many casualties in capturing cities from Stalingrad to Berlin. Forty
years later, their successors were unwilling to follow suit, even on a far smaller scale, on their
own territory." When the world is integrated, powerful countries can justify fighting
weak adversaries, or waging war far from their borders, or both, on the grounds
of self-defence. When the world is disaggregated, this rationale loses its force. One of the
most vivid examples of the workings of an integrated international system was the scramble for
Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, when the European powers rushed to stake out
positions and control territory simply to pre-empt their rivals. The opposite dynamic was
recently on display in the Balkans. The collapse of authority in Europe's poorest and most
backward country in 1997 set off a scramble from Albania. The countries of Western Europe
maneuvered to avoid taking any responsibility for its fate. The Italians, handicapped by
geographic proximity, were the losers. In fact, the post-Cold War disconnection from the
international system's powerful centers is one of the causes of the rampant disorder on its
periphery. In the days of geopolitical integration, the great powers often aggravated,
but also frequently stifled or contained, local conflicts. So it was in the Balkans at the end of
the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, where intervention by outsiders
resulting in international conferences to address the causes of conflict there brought local wars
at least to a temporary end three times before 1914. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet
Union would not have allowed Yugoslavia to disintegrate for fear of being dragged into the
resulting turmoil against each other. The end of the Cold War made Europe safe for war in the
Balkans.

AT: Democracy

Democracy doesnt prevent war popular support and military policies minimize
obstructions
Valentino et. al 10 Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College (Benjamin,
Bear Any Burden? How Democracies Minimize the Costs of War, The Journal of Politics, April
2010, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp.528-544, www.jstor.org/stable/40784674) //BZ
Arough consensus has emerged in the literature on the "democratic peace" that, contrary to the
expectations of early theorists like Immanuel Kant, democracies are not generally more pacific
than nondemocracies. As modern scholars have recognized, the fact that elected leaders are more
accountable to the citizens who must bear the costs of wars does not imply that these
leaders will avoid wars in general - only that they will oppose highly unpopular wars that
threaten their tenure in office. Recognizing this, recent studies of democratic war involvement have
focused on war outcomes (defined in terms of victory and defeat) as a central concern of democratic leaders in times of
war. We argue, however, that democracies should be highly attentive to the costs of war as well as its
outcome; they do not seek victory at any price. Moreover, because victory is sometimes won only through a
heavy price in blood and treasure, a war's outcome is not a reliable proxy for its costs. Thus, more
than two centuries after it was articulated, one of the key implications of Kant's theory - that democracies should strive to minimize
the costs borne by their citizens - has not been adequately tested. With this in mind, in this article we develop a refined theory of
democratic war behavior and utilize a newly constructed dataset on war fatalities to conduct the most rigorous test of this theory to
date. We find that highly democratic states suffer fewer military and civilian casualties in their wars than do other states. More
importantly, however, we also shed new light on precisely how democracies reduce the costs of the wars they fight, a critical
theoretical question largely ignored by the existing literature on the democratic peace. We argue that democracies limit
their losses by adopting four key foreign and military policies that help them minimize both mili-
tary and civilian fatalities - mobilizing superior military forces in times of war, utilizing casualty-
reducing military strategies on the battlefield, fighting battles on distant territories and fighting
with powerful coalitions of states.

Democracies still go to war if they perceive it as being popular or necessary
We believe that the debate about regime type and war involvement has frequently misconstrued the
logical relationship between the sensitivity of democracies to war losses and the frequency of
war. If democratic leaders are highly sensitive to costs, there is no reason to expect them to
engage in fewer wars, per se. Rather we should only expect democracies to be less likely to
engage in highly costly wars. The historical record provides ample evidence that wars vary widely in the costs they
inflict on combatants. The United States, for example, has waged seven major interstate wars since 1900,
making it one of the most frequent participants in major wars over the last century. America's
combined military and civilian losses in these seven conflicts, however, totaled approximately 620,000 dead, roughly the same num-
ber that Iran suffered in its war with Iraq (between 450,000 and 730,000), the only interstate war Iran fought in this entire period
(Clodfelter 2002; Cordes- man and Wagner 1990, 3). Unfortunately, the lack of reliable data on fatalities in wars,
especially for civilian populations, has made a direct test of the proposition that democracies are better
than nondemocracies at limiting their wartime costs extremely difficult.1 Since the Correlates of War
dataset does not include a separate measure of civilian fatalities in interstate wars, it often seriously understates the true costs of
war.2 Using our estimates, interstate wars in the twentieth century accounted for more civilian deaths (approximately 45 million)
than military (approximately 37 million). The inability to account for civilian deaths is an especially significant limitation for studies
of sensitivity to war costs since it seems likely that many leaders - and perhaps democratic leaders in particular - should care more
deeply about civilian loss of life in war than they do about military deaths. Citizens may be more willing to accept
military deaths since soldiers are generally considered legit- imate targets in war and have
frequently volunteered to put their lives at risk. A number of recent studies on democratic war involvement have
recognized that the accountability of democratic elites leads only to the expectation that
democracies will avoid unpopular wars, not necessarily all wars. To test this proposition,
most scholars have focused on war outcomes as the principle pre- occupation of democratic elites concerned with maintaining
office in times of war (Bueno De Mesquita et al. 2003; Lake 1992; Reiter and Stam 2002). These theories, and the empirical findings
that scholars have marshaled to support them, point to important differences between the military performance of democracies and
nondemocracies. But studies focusing on war outcomes do not fully capture the effect of democratic institutions on war behavior.
We argue that democratic leaders must be concerned with their countries' military and civilian fatalities as well as whether they
ultimately win or lose (Filson and Werner 2007). Compared to leaders of other states, democratic leaders should face
greater pressures to reduce their losses regardless of the war's outcome. Indeed, Scott Bennett and Allan
Stam (1998) find that democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to settle for draws or losses in longer wars, presumably in
an effort to cut their own losses (although Bennett and Stam do not measure these losses directly).

AT: Ideology

War is still likely lagging cultures and military glamorization
If wars among modern nations truly serve no possible rational purpose, why is there not wide,
even universal, recognition of this proposition, especially by the political leadership of these
nations? What leads them to persist in supporting large military forces, and building their relations to other nations around
military alliances and the threat, if not actual use, of force? These questions can be answered at both a general and
a quite specific level. The general answer is that cultures change much more slowly than
technologies and institutions. As Keynes said, most living politicians are slaves of some dead
scribbler. Despite Mueller's assertion, war has not yet become "subrationally unthinkable,"
even though conscious attitudes toward war have indeed changed. For most
governmental and political elites in modern states, the old ideas of military power and "defense"
as the core of national sovereignty still carry great weight. Accordingly, providing the capability for war,
and being in some sense prepared to use it, still command a large share of the resources and
energies of governments. This has been true over a wide range of the political spectrum, wide enough to cover most of the
actual and potentially eligible ruling groups. Disarmers and pacifists in opposition have changed their views
when they led or joined governments. Those who have maintained these views have remained
outsiders and critics, because most of the publics share their governors' views of these questions. On
a more concrete level, the powerful grip of ideology on governments and publics on both sides of the great postwar East-West divide
has diverted attention from the changes sketched in the preceding pages. The West has combined abhorrence of
communism as a mode of social organization with belief in its inherent expansionism and its
goal of conquest. These beliefs, and a reading of the lessons of the 1930s that focused on the failure of will in France,
Great Britain, and the United States, have justified the place of military power and the threat of
war in the center of our international picture. On the other side of the divide, ideological
commitment to the idea that capitalists must and will resist the inevitable triumph of
communism, and the fear of capitalist encirclement, together with a reading of history since 1917 that justifies
that fear, have produced a complementary world picture. It is just the revolutionary change in military
technology, especially in the last twenty-five years, that has loosened the grip of ideology on both sides of the
divide. The self-confessed failure of communist ideology as a blueprint for successful social organization is helping to complete the
process, and opening the way to new thinking in the West as well as the East. Assuming that the foregoing analysis is
correct, and assuming further that it can be made widely persuasive (which may be two independent assumptions), does not
imply that the world is on the threshold of universal and perpetual peace. Fully modern industrial
nations are still in the minority in the world in both number and population. Civil wars, and forms of violent international
conflict falling short of war, are widespread and will continue to be so in the foreseeable
future. Nonetheless, this analysis reinforces Muellers to offer a real basis for hope. The international system that
relies on the national use of military force as the ultimate guarantor of security, and the threat of
its use as the basis of order, is not the only possible one. To seek a different system with a more secure and a
more humane basis for order is no longer the pursuit of an illusion, but a necessary effort toward a necessary goal. The
industrialized nations, which are also the most heavily and dangerously armed, must lead the way to this
transformation by their own example of changed behavior. That may not be enough to persuade the others,
but it is certainly the indispensable first step.

Leaders are irrational war can generate personal benefit that doesnt affect the
population
Chiozza and Goemans 4 Assistant Professor Vanderbilt University and Associate Professor at
University of Rochester (Giacomo and Hein, International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders:
Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?, American Journal of Political Science, July 2004, Vol. 48.
No. 3, pp. 604-619,
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/pdfplus/1519919.pdf?&acceptTC=true&jpdCo
nfirm=true)
In an important article, Fearon (1995) sought to provide answers for what he called the
fundamental puzzle of war: the occurrence of war in spite of its costliness. Central to his
argument is the claim that" [a]s long as both sides suffer some costs for fighting, then war is
always inefficient ex post" for rational unitary-actors (383). War is inefficient ex post because
the pie to be divided between the opponents will be smaller after the war than it was before the
war. He proposed three mechanisms to explain why, when war is negative-sum, rational
unitary-actors may be un-able to reach agreements that avoid war. Specifically: (1) private
information and incentives to misrepresent one's capabilities, resolve, or anticipated costs of
war, (2) commitment problems, and (3) issue indivisibilities. Nevertheless, Fearon explicitly
acknowledged that his focus on "rational unitary-actor explanations" addressed only one of
three types of arguments that could explain the occurrence of costly wars. The first of these two
alternative types of arguments claims that leaders are sometimes, or even always,
irrational. Such arguments currently are poor candidates for systematic examination. The
second alternative, however, is not. As Fearon noted, "war may be rational for... leaders if
they will enjoy various benefits of war without suffering costs imposed on the
population." It deserves emphasis to note that he continued "I believe that 'second-image'
mechanisms of this sort are very important empirically..." (379, fn. 1). If leaders enjoy "various
benefits of war" which more than offset their costs, then war is obviously no longer ex post
inefficient for the opposing leaders, and Fearon's three mechanisms are no longer sufficient to
explain war. In- stead, new mechanisms could come to the fore, perhaps explaining why, when,
and which leaders enjoy "various benefits of war" that more than offset its costs.

War is irrational and emotional interdependence and institutions are the effect
to peace, not the cause and cant prevent war
Miller 12 Students Editor at E-International and Relations Research Assistant at Pacific
Resolutions (Sarah, The Transformation of War, E-International Relations Students, 8/16/12,
http://www.e-ir.info/2012/08/16/the-transformation-of-war/)//BZ
While these arguments make sense for why war should cease to exist as a policy instrument of
states, they fail to make a convincing case for a number of reasons. First, they are mostly not
new arguments: 5 years prior to WWI Norman Angell made the case for why war does not
make economic sense, and various technologies were said to spell the end of war when they
were invented, such as dynamite, the submarine, artillery, the machine gun, and poison gas
(Ray, 1989). Furthermore, it can be argued that economic interdependence and
institutional cooperation are a consequence, rather than a cause, of mutual trust and a
desire for peace (Mueller, 2004). Most importantly, conditions that make war irrational
as a policy instrument are not enough to deter war. War is not only a policy instrument,
or politics by other means (Clausewitz, 1976); it is also an emotional and not fully rational
practice. An analysis of the place of war in human society must go beyond looking at it in
rational terms as an instrument to achieve political or economic ends, which overlooks the fact
that war is not, fundamentally, a rational activity. It would not have survived this long if
it had only instrumental value, because it relies on people being willing to sacrifice their own
lives (Coker, 2008) to be able to demand this of people it must appeal strongly to their
emotions. Coker argues that war exists not only on an instrumental level, to which the above
arguments apply, but also on existential and metaphysical levels (2008) war is imbued with
the meaning of sacrifice. Van Creveld sees war as an activity that offers men complete freedom,
and an ultimate test of their worth (1991), while Freud sees it as the expression of a dark part of
the human psyche, which wants to kill and destroy (in Ehrenreich, 1997), and Ehrenreich likens
the feelings invoked by war to those of religion, saying it fulfils deep psychological needs
(Ehrenreich, 1997).

Revolts increase the risk of conflict
Colgan 13 Assistant professor of international relations at the School of International Service of
American University Jeff, Domestic Revolutionary Leaders and International Conflict, World
Politics, October 2013, Vol. 65, No. 4)//BZ
Revolutionary leaders are highly conflict prone, principally because they act aggressively to
instigate militarized interstate disputes. This phenomenon is observed statistically even when
country fixed-effects are used to control for unobserved time-invariant properties of the states,
and even when the analysis distinguishes between the effect of leader attributes and post-
revolutionary regime structures. Moreover, the magnitude of these effects is large: for instance,
a state led by a revolutionary leader is almost three times as likely to instigate a mid
as is a state with a nonrevolutionary leader. The large magnitude of the impact underscores the
importance of including revolutionary leaders in research on international conflict, especially in
quantitative analyses, and this article illustrates how that can be done relatively easily using a
new data set. New light is also shed on some long-standing theoretical debates about the impact
of revolutionary governments. For instance, scholars have debated whether revolutionary states
are conflict prone primarily because they are aggressive or because they are attacked by
neighboring states. This article [End Page 686] offers evidence that revolutionary states are
more aggressive than has been emphasized previously. Opportunities for further research exist
across the subfields of political science into the causes and consequences of domestic
revolutions. For scholars of international relations, one pressing question is how revolutions
affect other pertinent variables affecting international conflict, such as incomplete
democratization, the size of the selectorate, the duration of conflict, or authoritarian regime
types.88 It is possible that some existing analyses suffer from omitted variable bias by
not considering the impact of revolutionary leaders. A second question is how different
types of postrevolutionary governments (for example, juntas versus personalist dictatorships)
affect the states propensity to engage in conflict.89 For students of American foreign policy,
these findings invite further inquiry into how the US government can best react to foreign
revolutions and mitigate their impact on international peace and security.90 For comparativists,
this article reinforces the demand for insight into the causes of revolutions and the character of
different types of revolutions. Additional research might investigate how the impact of
revolutions on international conflict varies by the type of revolution or its goals. In sum, the
significant international impact of revolutionary leaders has been understudied for far too long.

Belief that the modern age spells an end for war follows a historical trend of failed
predictions trade, institutions, and ideology fail
Kagan 99 Professor of Classics & History at Yale University (Donald, History is Full of
Surprises, Survival, Summer 1999, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 139-152)//BZ
I agree that the present moment in history provides a better chance than ever for achieving a
long period of peace, that the deterrent offered by nuclear weapons works towards that end, and
that the growth of trade, democracy and economic interdependence assists that prospect. I do
not, however, believe that war is obsolete - not yet, anyway. Nor do I believe that the present
situation is unique in history any more than any moment is. As always, the chances for peace in
the future depend on the decisions and the actions taken by people and these, as always,
provide no guarantee against war - even 'major' war as Michael Mandelbaum has defined
it. This is not the first time in history that people have thought that they had arrived at such a
moment, such an extraordinary turning point. In 29BC, when Augustus closed the doors of the
Temple of Janus in Rome for only the third time in the 500 years of Rome's history, as a
demonstration, a propaganda move, but also as a statement of a real expectation that new
conditions had arrived that made peace appear to be a lasting peace. He turned out to be wrong.
A more interesting year, perhaps, is 1792: a wonderful year for people to be stunningly
optimistic about the prospects for the future. William Pitt the Younger, then Prime Minister of
England, predicted that there were going to be at least 15 years of peace; never had the horizon
looked clearer. And in the same year, two intellectuals of different sorts, Joseph Priestley and
Tom Paine, had expectations of the same kind. In fact, they were less limited and more like the
optimistic views that Michael Mandelbaum puts forward in his article. They based their
future on a major change of conditions in the world. Priestley said:1 The present
commercial treaties between England and France and between other nations, formerly hostile to
each other, seem to show that mankind begin to be sensible to the folly of war and promise a
new and important era in the state of the world in general at least in Europe. Paine said: 'If
commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would extirpate the
system of war'. And of course, to this view were added the views of Kant and Montesquieu, who
thought that the establishment of the political institution of the republic was going to have the
same pacifying effect. Monarchies were really what war was about. Now that they were gone,
there would be no more war. As Paine put it? The instant the form or' government was changed
in France. The republican principles of peace and domestic prosperity and economy arose with
the new government, and the same consequences would follow in the case of other nations Of
course, within a year, France and England were at war, and 20 years or so of terrible, dreadful
conflict followed. In 1848, John Stuart Mill also sang the praises of commerce? Commerce,
which is rapidly rendering war obsolete. by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests
which act in natural opposition to it ...The great extent and rapid increase of international trade
... [is] the principal guarantee of the peace on' the world. And then, of course, at the end of the
nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century, two people of note wrote important
statements of this thesis. One had a great impact; the other was not much noticed but was
perhaps the more perceptive. The former was Norman Ange11's famous work, The Great
Illusion. Basically, his message was that war had become so devastating from an economic point
of view that nobody would ever fight. The only problem in Angell's view was to teach people
enough to know war was a disaster. Ivan Bloch was the other one, who said that war was so
horrible in his day because the incredible means that had become available for fighting meant
that no society could survive very long if they ever started such a war. The horror and danger of
future war, he felt, would deter these conflicts. Well, of course, within a few years came the First
World War. Now having said all this, even if all these men were wrong, this does not mean that
Michael Mandelbaum cannot be right. But it should inspire some degree of modesty and
caution. In fact Mandelbaum is very cautious in the language that he uses. Major war is not
necessarily finished, he concedes. It's not dead, it's obsolete. This is a charming term that seems
to say more than it does, because that allows Mandelbaum to draw back from the more total
claims later on. A major war is unlikely but not unthinkable, which is to say he thinks it can
happen. It is obsolete, he writes, in the sense that it is no longer fashionable. To pick up the
metaphor is to see some of its limitations as well as its charm. Is war really a matter of
fashion? And even if it is, don't we have to face the fact that there are some people who choose
to be unfashionable, and then there are other people who have never heard of fashion in the first
place? China and Russia are two cases to which the writer points. He identifies the Taiwan
Straits and the Russo-Ukrainian border as places where wars may well break out, should they
erupt anywhere. They are the 'potential Sarajevos of the twenty -first century'. He is right. And,
of course, it is this concession, however genuinely and generously and modestly expressed, that
gives away the game. Since there are at least two places where major wars between great powers
might well break out even today - and two are quite enough- it seems to me that his entire thesis
is undermined. But I would go further and would want to say even that very important
concession is not sufficient, because the one great truth of history is that there is always
one other possibility besides all the ones that you imagine, no matter how clever you
are. What usually happens in history is in the category called 'none of the above'. If
one examines the predictions made in the area of international relations over the centuries,
most of the time, most of the people get it wrong - even the most learned, experienced and
intelligent people. Without going into a long dissertation on chaos theory, it suffices that it has
generally happened that wars break out in places where they were never imagined and often for
reasons that were not to be anticipated.

AT: Deterrence

Deterrence fails shifts in primacy makes nuclear war feasible
Lieber and Press 6 Assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Notre Dame and International Affairs Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations,
and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania (Keir and Daryl,
The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy, International Security, Spring
2006, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 7-44,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)//BZ
For nearly half a century, the worlds most powerful nuclear-armed countries have been locked
in a military stalemate known as mutually assured destruction (MAD). By the early 1960s, the
United States and the Soviet Union possessed such large, well-dispersed nuclear arsenals that
neither state could entirely destroy the others nuclear forces in a first strike. Whether the
scenario was a preemptive strike during a crisis, or a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack, the
victim would always be able to retaliate and destroy the aggressor. Nuclear war was therefore
tantamount to mutual suicide. Many scholars believe that the nuclear stalemate helped prevent
conflict between the superpowers during the Cold War, and that it remains a powerful force for
great power peace today. The age of MAD, however, is waning. Today the United States
stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis--vis its plausible great power adversaries.
For the first time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear
arsenals of Russia or China with a nuclear first strike. A preemptive strike on an
alerted Russian arsenal would still likely fail, but a surprise attack at peacetime alert levels
would have a reasonable chance of success. Furthermore, the Chinese nuclear force is so
vulnerable that it could be destroyed even if it were alerted during a crisis. To the extent that
great power peace stems from the pacifying effects of nuclear weapons, it currently rests on a
shaky transition. This article makes three empirical claims. First, the strategic nuclear
balance has shifted dramatically since the end of the Cold War, and the United States now
stands on the cusp of nuclear primacy.2 Second, the shift in the balance of power has two
primary sources: the decline of the Russian nuclear arsenal and the steady growth in
U.S. nuclear capabilities. Third, the trajectory of nuclear developments suggests that the
nuclear balance will shift further in favor of the United States in the coming years. Russia and
China will face tremendous incentives to reestablish mutual assured destruction, but doing so
will require substantial sums of money and years of sustained effort. If these states want to
reestablish a robust strategic deterrent, they will have to overcome current U.S. capabilities,
planned improvements to the U.S. arsenal, and future developments being considered by the
United States.

Deterrence fails irrational leaders dont comply and retaliation assures
escalation
Othman et al. 13 Laboratory of Citizenship & Leadership, Institute for Social Science Studies
at University Putra Malaysia (Jamilah, International Actors for Armed Conflict Prevention: A
Conceptual Exploration, Asian Social Science, 8/21/13, Vol. 9, No. 15,
http://dx.doi.org/ass.v9n15p199 )//BZ
Deterrence involves changing the intentions of an opponent. There is a tendency to assume that
an opponent thinks in the same way as you and will behave responsibly when confronted with a
damaging threat of retaliation. But responsibility implies that the opponent possesses at least
some of your fundamental human values. In the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev ultimately
proved to share Kennedy's judgment of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear exchange,
but, according to the Soviet leader, both Castro and Mao Zedong would have launched a
nuclear attack on the USA regardless of the terrible retaliation that would have
followed for their countries." Mao referred to nuclear weapons as 'paper tigers' and seemed
to believe that China's enormous population meant that it would always triumph after a nuclear
war with a smaller country. Totalitarian dictators do not adhere to the doctrine of 'just
war' that sees war as a last resort to achieve a morally defensible goal, where the
level of harm is limited as far as possible in the pursuit of victory, and, above all, the deliberate
killing of non-combatants is avoided. Yet if nuclear deterrence fails, even the leader of a
democracy might well find the principles of the just war too restrictive. A former head of the US
National Security Agency, General William Odom, characterized the choice facing a US
president under or after a nuclear attack as 'releasing 70-80 per cent of our nuclear
megatonnage in one orgasmic whump, or just sitting there and saying: "Don't do anything, and
we will just take the incoming blow."

Yes Extinction

Extreme nuclear existential threat food insecurity and US-Russian war
exacerbates conflict
Germanos, 13 (Andrea, staff writer at Common Dreams, Nuclear War Could Mean 'Extinction
of the Human Race, Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/12/10-
2, 10-2-13)
A war using even a small percentage of the world's nuclear weapons threatens the lives of two
billion people, a new report warns. "A nuclear war using only a fraction of existing arsenals would produce
massive casualties on a global scalefar more than we had previously believed," said Dr. Ira Helfand. (Photo:
jonathan mcintosh/cc/flickr) The findings in the report issued by International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) are based on studies by climate
scientists that show how nuclear war would alter the climate and agriculture, thereby threatening one quarter of the world's population with famine. Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk? offers an updated
edition to the groups' April of 2012 report, which the groups say "may have seriously underestimated the consequences of a limited nuclear war." "A nuclear war using only a fraction of existing arsenals would
produce massive casualties on a global scalefar more than we had previously believed," Dr. Ira Helfand, the reports author and IPPNW co-president, said in a statement. As their previous report showed, years
after even a limited nuclear war, production of corn in the U.S. and China's middle season rice production would severely decline, and fears over dwindling food supplies would lead to hoarding and increases in
food prices, creating further food insecurity for those already reliant on food imports. The updated report adds that Chinese winter wheat production would plummet if such a war broke out. Based on information
from new studies combining reductions in wheat, corn and rice, this new edition doubles the number of people they expect to be threatened by nuclear-war induced famine to over two billion. "The prospect of a
decade of widespread hunger and intense social and economic instability in the worlds largest country has immense implications for the entire global community, as does the possibility that the huge declines in
Chinese wheat production will be matched by similar declines in other wheat producing countries," Helfand stated. The crops would be impacted, the report explains, citing
previous studies, because of the black carbon particles that would be released, causing widespread
changes like cooling temperatures, decreased precipitation and decline in solar radiation. In this
scenario of famine, epidemics of infectious diseases would be likely, the report states, and could lead to
armed conflict. From the report: Within nations where famine is widespread, there would almost certainly
be food riots, and competition for limited food resources might well exacerbate ethnic and
regional animosities. Among nations, armed conflict would be a very real possibility as states dependent
on imports attempted to maintain access to food supplies. While a limited nuclear war would bring dire circumstances, the
impacts if the world's biggest nuclear arms holders were involved would be even worse. "With a
large war between the United States and Russia, we are talking about the possible not certain, but
possibleextinction of the human race," Helfand told Agence-France Presse. In order to eliminate this threat, we must
eliminate nuclear weapons," Helfand stated. (Photo: MAPWcommunications/cc/flickr)"In this kind of war, biologically there are going to be
people surviving somewhere on the planet but the chaos that would result from this will dwarf
anything we've ever seen," Helfand told the news agency. As Helfand writes, the data cited in the report "raises a giant red flag about the threat to humanity posed." Yet, as Dr. Peter
Wilk, former national executive director of PSR writes in an op-ed today, the "threat is of our own creation." As a joint statement by 124 states delivered to the United Nations
General Assembly in October stated: "It is in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are
never used again, under any circumstances." "Countries around the worldthose who are
nuclear-armed and those who are notmust work together to eliminate the threat and
consequences of nuclear war," Helfand said. In order to eliminate this threat, we must eliminate nuclear weapons.

Yes extinction global cooling, famine, and disease
Choi, 11 (Charles Q,
Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for
years, according to U.S. government computer models. Widespread famine and disease would
likely follow, experts speculate. During the Cold War a nuclear exchange between superpowerssuch as the one
feared for years between the United States and the former Soviet Unionwas predicted to cause a "nuclear winter."
In that scenario hundreds of nuclear explosions spark huge fires, whose smoke, dust, and ash blot
out the sun for weeks amid a backdrop of dangerous radiation levels. Much of humanity
eventually dies of starvation and disease. Today, with the United States the only standing superpower, nuclear
winter is little more than a nightmare. But nuclear war remains a very real threatfor instance,
between developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan. To see what climate effects such a
regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-
level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNTjust 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal. (See a
National Geographic magazine feature on weapons of mass destruction.) The researchers predicted the resulting
fires would kick up roughly five million metric tons of black carbon into the upper part of the
troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere. In NASA climate models, this carbon then
absorbed solar heat and, like a hot-air balloon, quickly lofted even higher, where the soot would
take much longer to clear from the sky. Reversing Global Warming? The global cooling caused by these high
carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be
regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a
press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Earth is
currently in a long-term warming trend. After a regional nuclear war, though, average global temperatures
would drop by 2.25 degrees F (1.25 degrees C) for two to three years afterward, the models
suggest. At the extreme, the tropics, Europe, Asia, and Alaska would cool by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F (3 to 4
degrees C), according to the models. Parts of the Arctic and Antarctic would actually warm a bit, due to
shifted wind and ocean-circulation patterns, the researchers said. After ten years, average global
temperatures would still be 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) lower than before the nuclear war, the
models predict. (Pictures: "Red Hot" Nuclear-Waste Train Glows in Infrared.) Years Without Summer For a time Earth would likely
be a colder, hungrier planet. "Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in
areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts," said Oman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Examples similar to the crop failures and famines experienced following
the Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 could be widespread and last several years," he added. That
Indonesian volcano ushered in "the year without summer," a time of famines and unrest. (See pictures of the Mount Tambora
eruption.) All these changes would also alter circulation patterns in the tropical atmosphere, reducing
precipitation by 10 percent globally for one to four years, the scientists said. Even after seven years, global
average precipitation would be 5 percent lower than it was before the conflict, according to the model. In addition, researcher
Michael Mills, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, found large decreases in the protective
ozone layer, leading to much more ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth's surface and harming
the environment and people. "The main message from our work," NASA's Oman said, "would be that even a
regional nuclear conflict would have global consequences."

Nuclear war causes catastrophic climate change even if the initial attack isnt
terminal, laundry list of indirect impacts ensure extinction
Robock et al. 7 Professor of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University (Alan, Nuclear
winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic
consequences, Journal of Geophysical Research, July 2007, Vol. 112,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006JD008235/pdf)//BZ
[36] The major policy implication of nuclear winter was that a full-scale nuclear attack would
produce climatic effects which would so disrupt the food supply that it would be suicide
for the attacking country [Robock, 1989] and would also impact noncombatant countries.
The subsequent end of the arms race and reduction of superpower tensions can be traced back
to the world being forced to confront both the direct and indirect consequences of the use of
nuclear weapons by the public policy debate in response to nuclear winter theory, but the
relative impact of nuclear winter theory as compared to other factors has not been studied, as far
as we know. However, the arms race ended several years before the Soviet Union collapsed.
While significant reductions of American and Russian nuclear arsenals followed, our results
show that each country still retains enough weapons to produce a large, long-
lasting, unprecedented global climate change. [37] Star Wars (Strategic Defense
Initiative, now the Missile Defense Agency) is not the answer, since it still does not work after 20
years of trying. Even if it worked according to specifications, it would let in too many weapons,
such as on cruise missiles. Indirect effects of nuclear winter are greater that direct
effects. There would be many innocent victims in noncombatant nations. [38] The United
States and Russia are signatories to the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which commits
both to a reduction to 1700 2200 deployed nuclear weapons by the end of 2012. This
continuing reduction of nuclear weapons by both parties is to be commended, but only
nuclear disarmament will completely remove the possibility of a nuclear
environmental catastrophe. In the meantime, it is instructive to ask why Britain, France,
and China have chosen nuclear arsenals of only a couple hundred nuclear weapons (Table 2).
The threat of how many nuclear weapons dropping on your major cities would be necessary to
deter an attack on another nuclear power? More than one? An immediate reduction of the
Russian and American nuclear arsenals to the same size as those of Britain, France, and China
would set an example for the world, maintain the nuclear deterrence of each, and dramatically
lower the chances of nuclear winter. [39] The results in this paper need to be tested with other
climate models, and the detailed consequences on agriculture, water supply, global trade,
communications, travel, air pollution, and many more potential human impacts need further
study. Each of these potential hazards deserves careful scientific analysis by governments
around the world.

Models prove nuclear war destroys the environment smoke kills crop and starts
an ice age
Robock and Toon 12 Professor of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, and
Professor/Founding chair in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the
University of Colorado (Alan and Brian, Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of
nuclear war, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2012, Vol. 68, pp. 66-74,
http://thewe.biz/thewe_/_/pdf/climate-impact-of-nuclear-war.pdf)//BZ
Modern climate models not only show that the nuclear winter theory is correct, but also that the
effects would last for more than a decade (Robock et al., 2007a, 2007b) because of an
unexpected phenomenon: Smoke would rise to very high altitudes near 40 kilometers (25
miles) where it would be protected from rain and would take more than a decade
to clear completely. As a consequence, the smokes climate impacts would be more extreme
than once thought. For example, the new models show that a full-scale nuclear conflict, in which
150 million tons of smoke are lofted into the upper atmosphere, would drastically reduce
precipitation by 45 percent on a global average while temperatures would fall for several years
by 7 to 8 degrees Celsius on average and would remain depressed by 4 degrees Celsius after a
decade (Robock et al. 2007). Humans have not experienced temperatures this low
since the last ice age (Figure 2). In important grain-growing regions of the northern
mid-latitudes, precipitation would decline by up to 90 percent, and temperatures
would fall below freezing and remain there for one or more years. The number of
weapons needed to initiate these climate changes falls within the range of arsenals planned for
the coming decade (Toon et al., 2008).

Even the smallest nuclear conflict drastically alters the climate and kills billions
Robock and Toon 12 Professor of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, and
Professor/Founding chair in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the
University of Colorado (Alan and Brian, Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of
nuclear war, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2012, Vol. 68, pp. 66-74,
http://thewe.biz/thewe_/_/pdf/climate-impact-of-nuclear-war.pdf)//BZ
The United States and Russia are not the only countries capable of wreaking worldwide climate
havoc. All of the nuclear states except North Korea, with its relatively small arsenal if
involved in a nuclear war, have the destructive power needed to alter the global
environment (Robock et al., 2007b). It is not correct to assume that the effects of a
regional war would be contained within a limited zone. For example, consider a
nuclear war in South Asia involving the use of I00 Hiroshima-size weapons. In these
simulations, more than five million tons of smoke is lofted to high altitude, where it absorbs
sunlight before the light can reach the lower atmosphere (Toon et al.. 2oo7b). As a result, surface
temperatures fall and precipitation declines (Robock et al... 2007b). The calculated results show
a 10 percent global drop in precipitation, with the largest losses in the low latitudes due to
failure of the monsoons. Our climate model also shows global average temperatures colder than
any experienced on Earth in the past 1,ooo years and growing seasons shortened by two to three
weeks in the main mid- latitude agricultural areas of both hemi- spheres. These effects persist
for several years, which would threaten a significant fraction of the world's food supply, perhaps
jeopardizing a billion people who are now only marginally fed as it is (Helfand. 2o12). New
simulations of the effects of these climate changes on crop production predict reductions of
soybean and corn production in the US Midwest, and of rice production in China, of 20 percent
for several years and I0 percent even after a decade (Ozdogan et al.. 2012: Xia and Robock,
2012).

Pre-emptive strikes fail Russias arsenal is too dispersed
2006, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 7-44,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4)//BZ
The highest priority targets in a U.S. nuclear attack on Russia would be the long-range weapons
that Russia could use to retaliate. Other targets would be hit as well: for example, nuclear
storage sites, short-range nuclear forces, conventional military forces, and command and
control sites.
24
Russias strategic nuclear forces can be divided into four categories. The first
comprises 258 ICBMs deployed in silos that have been hardened enough that each must be
targeted individually.25 The second leg is Russias 291 mobile long-range missiles. If alerted,
these missiles would disperse across large patrol areas, making them difficult to
destroy. Normally, however, they are kept in shelters inside forty garrisons.26 The third leg
comprises 78 long-range bombers that are normally deployed at two air force bases. Seven
other airfields are used for training and exercises, so they too are primary targets. In addition,
fifty-four other airfields have a connection to Russias bomber force and are included on the
target list.27 The last leg is Russias submarine force. Russia has 12 SSBNs, although only 9
are currently in service; and it has dramatically reduced the frequency of routine patrols. In fact,
Russia usually has no SSBNs at sea, relying instead on a dock-alert system in which a submarine
n port is on alert.28 Russias SSBNs are deployed at three main bases; several dozen other naval
facilities are occasionally visited by submarines, however, and would also have to be attacked.29
Finally, we target 127 nuclear weapons storage, production, assembly, and
disassembly sites.30 Table 1 summarizes the current Russian strategic force and estimates
the number of aimpoints that would have to be targeted to destroy each leg of that force.

No War

Ideology

War is obsolete - trends show great powers cut down military spending
Sangha, 11 (Karina, Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of Waterloo and
received her BA in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Victoria, The
Obsolescence of Major War: An Examination of Contemporary War Trends, 2011, gf)
Since the end of the Second World War, direct conflict among the great powers has been
seemingly non-existent, marking the longest absence of major war since the days of the Roman
Empire.8 Given the scale and frequency of major war in previous centuries, this absence may be the single most
important discontinuity that the history of warfare has ever seen.9 Though not without tension, great
power relations are now generally characterized by a sense of peace, with states carrying out
aggressions through diplomatic or economic, rather than military, means. Indeed, as the threat of major
war has declined, most great powers have chosen to invest fewer resources in developing a strong
military, undergoing a notable downsizing in both the size of their armed forces and the quantity
of weapons at their disposal since 1945.10 While most great powers had possessed forces numbering several million
men throughout much of the twentieth century, as of the late 1990s, the only states maintaining forces exceeding a
million and a half were India and China, and at that time, China had announced it would be
cutting half a million of its troops.11 In addition to directly cutting their forces, most states have also
eliminated conscription, a once useful system that provided a great deal of cannon fodder for the
institution of major war.12 Air forces, naval forces, and nuclear weapons stores have also
witnessed similar reductions worldwide.13 Indicative of the current sense of great power peace, these
reductions would also seem to imply that none of the great powers anticipates a major war to
break out any time in the near future, supporting the idea that major war is becoming obsolete.

War is unthinkable rationality and capitalist peace theory are too integrated
The forty-five years that have now passed since the end of World War II without interstate war in
Europe is the longest such period in its post-medieval history.' Many scholars and
commentators have attributed the present "long peace" among the major powers
to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons. When President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev agreed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought, they were
only reiterating what has become an almost universally accepted piety in current public and
scholarly discussion of international relations.2 John Mueller's Retreat from Doomsday3 advances a much stronger
thesis: major war was already becoming obsolete by the time of the First World War; World War I1 repeated
and reinforced that lesson. The development of nuclear weapons was accordingly irrelevant to
the process; it was, so to speak, the flourish under the finis at the end of the story. Muellers central
argument is that war-among western, modernized nation-has become subrationally unthinkable. An idea becomes
impossible not when it becomes reprehensible or has been renounced, but when it fails to
percolate into ones consciousness as a conceivable option. Thus, two somewhat paradoxical
conclusions about the avoidance of war can be drawn. On the one hand, peace is likely to be firm
when wars repulsiveness and futility are fully evident-as when its horrors are
dramatically and inevitably catastrophic. On the other hand, peace is most secure when it
gravitates away from conscious rationality to become a subrational, unexamined
mental habit. At first, war becomes rationally unthinkable- rejected because its calculated to be
ineffective and/or undesirable. Then it becomes subrationally unthinkable-rejected not because its a
bad idea but because it remains subconscious and never comes off as a coherent
possibility. Peace in other words, can prove to be habit forming, addictive. (p. 240.) The obsolescence of war, argues
Mueller, is thus the result of a change in mental habits through socio-cultural evolution, not a
change in the terms of a calculation: unthinkable, not unprofitable. When the whole postwar European
security system is rapidly changing, Muellers claims merit careful consideration. The burden of this essay is that Mueller is right in
his result, but that his argument fails to sustain his conclusion. Mueller hardly explains the cultural change that has made wars
unthinkable, and fails to explore the interconnections among cultural, political, and economic changes in the evaluation of interstate
war. It is because wars of the kind under consideration have become unprofitable, both
economically and politically, that they have become unthinkable. Finally, he is too cavalier in
his dismissal of the significance of nuclear weapons.

Ideological repulsion not only prevents but transforms war modern conflict aims
to reduce casualties and prevent large scale conflict
Although war may create a strong sense of emotional and spiritual satisfaction, it also creates
repulsion in those who fight and in wider society. The euphoria at the beginning of WWI turned
into repulsion with the war and war in general; the nationalism and intolerance of dissent in the
US in the early days of the 2003 Iraq War gave way to widespread disgust with the war and
questioning of American motives. The myth of war sooner or later gives way to the
sensory reality of war, and when it does, the public no longer celebrates but rather
condemns the violence (Hedges, 2002). Furthermore, in the past century there does seem to
have been a transformation in how people think of war. War in general is no longer glorified as
an honourable practice, but is instead criminalized, with those who initiate it seen as rogue
actors (Mandelbaum, 1998). Ray attributes this change to modern ideas about the value of the
individual human life, which are expressed not only in changing attitudes toward war, but also
in changes toward capital punishment and human sacrifice (Ray, 1989), and perhaps the rise
of the global human rights regime. A parallel could be made with slavery: a shift in
attitudes about the morality of slavery was instrumental in its demise as an accepted practice
(Ray, 1989), and while slavery still exists today, it is a criminal enterprise that is rejected by
public opinion and by law. There is an important difference between institutionalized legal
slavery and criminalized slavery, and similarly there is a difference between these two types of
war. The outcome of this modern moral shift toward war, given the fact that war continues to
exert an emotional pull on people and societies, is arguably neither the disappearance of war,
nor the continuation of business as usual, but rather the transformation of war. War, a
protean activity (Keegan, 1998), has transformed in order to remain acceptable to modern
attitudes. In response to the almost universal repulsion with long and bloody wars, the
destructiveness of war has been limited through technologies and tactics (Coker, 2008). So, for
example, there has been increasing development and use of precision weaponry to minimize
civilian casualties, as well as unmanned technology such as drones to lessen, and one day
perhaps eliminate, military casualties on our own side. Warfare has become increasingly
constrained by laws prohibiting the use of certain weapons. Similarly, war is justified through
rhetoric of self-defence or humanitarianism, not in terms of the national interest or honour and
glory for the nation. The requirement, by domestic opinion and international law, that wars be
just in their means and in the reasons for waging them, is a serious constraint on
the ability and willingness of states to go to war for classical national interests.
World wars ingrained values of negotiation and futility in war nuclear weapons
dont make a difference
After a brief discussion of the century-long peace between the United States and Canada, and an
even briefer reference to the rise of the liberal state and the absence of war among liberal democracies,
Mueller directly addresses his main theme, the changing social evaluation of war.4 Before World War I, he argues, only a
small minority spoke against war. Quakers opposed war as immoral, as they did slavery, religious
intolerance, and many other then-widespread and socially-approved practices embodying mans inhumanity to man. Non-
religious humanists shared these views. So did those who saw war as inimical to commerce and economically ruinous,
from Montesquieu, Kant, Buckle, and Adam Smith in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Norman Angel1 in the twentieth.
The majority view, however (or at least the majority of those who recorded their views), approved of war. War was an
admirable stage for the display of heroism and virility for the individual and glory for the nation
at one end of the spectrum of ideas, and a psychologically inevitable product of aggressiveness
rooted in human nature and a necessary element of human progress in social Darwinian terms at the other.
The First World War changed these ideas. The magnitude of the slaughter, the costs to
both victors and vanquished, the horribly inhuman and degrading circumstances of
combat itself led to a bone-deep revulsion, a colossal confirmation [of] the
repulsiveness, immorality and futility of war.5 According to Mueller, there were three possible
lessons to be drawn from the experience of World War I: collective security had somehow to be
substituted for individual self-help; military preparations, including newer and more formidable weapons,
had to be maintained at a level that would deter war; conflicts had to be negotiated out
rather than fought out. Most of the world drew the third lesson. Unfortunately, Mussolini,
Hitler, and the leaders of Japan were socially and culturally outsiders who had not shared the
lessons of the First World War. They continued to believe in both the nobility and necessity of war. Mussolini was a
foolish romantic pushing an unwilling Italian people into military adventures. The Japanese leadership was an
ideological remnant of pre-World War I times, with a romantic view of war and a belief in the positive political and
social role of the military in their own great task of modernization. Hitler, with his racist ideology, resentment against
Versailles and quest for Lebensraum, was an entrepreneurial genius of both politics and war. None of them
wanted genuinely to negotiate conflicts: the attempts of the other European states to do so, and the United States to
avoid them- in short, "appeasement"-led to the Second World War. For Mueller, Hitler's leadership in Germany was a
necessary condition for the outbreak of war; he is silent on whether it was also sufficient. The
Second World War repeated and reinforced the lessons of the first and this time they were better
learned. Among the developed nations there were now no dropouts who had failed
to attend class. The atomic bomb played no significant part in these lessons. The war taught that
U.S. productive power was itself a great deterrent; Detroit was as important as the atom bomb (pp. 82-84).
Further, the actual use of the bomb against Japan was significant only because half of its
leadership was already prepared to surrender (pp. 87-88). Finally, the absence of civil war against the occupying
Nazis and their puppet governments (beyond the relatively small scale guerrilla resistance in occupied Europe) showed that the
population had lost its stomach for war (pp. 91-92). Roughly half of Mueller's book, chapters 5-9, depicts the major events of the
period of the long peace since World War 11. Mueller sees the success of containment as reflecting the
satisfaction of the victors with and acceptance by the losers of the postwar situation; nuclear
weapons are essentially irrelevant. The Korean War was a stabilizing event; it demonstrated the inutility of
limited war. Khrushchev's policy of bluster and crisis-creation similarly failed, as did his efforts at seduction of the non-communist
world by the examples of Soviet success in competitive economic growth-"we will bury you"-and the space race. The failure of U.S.
intervention in Vietnam's civil war was followed by China's abandonment of the Cold War, and in turn by Soviet recognition of its
"overreach" in the Third World and the demise of the cold war.

Public discontent makes war unlikely even in non-democracies
So far, the discussion of how the coming of industrialization has changed the calculus of war has focused on its economic elements.
But the political calculus is at least as important, if not more so. It is presidents, prime ministers, and party
secretaries who play central roles in making decisions about war and peace, not finance ministers,
budget directors, and central bankers. Here, too, the last century-and-a-half has brought a profound transformation.
Governments have become popular and populist even when not democratic; the welfare of the
general population, conceived in a broad sense, is their chief business, and it is to achieving this that they bend their
efforts. Of course, this is true u fortiori in democratic societies, in which the question, are you better off now than you were
however many years ago? is always a useful electoral cry for one or another of the political corn petit or^.^^ But even
authoritarian and repressive governments in modern societies need the consent,
however tacit and grudging, of the mass of the governed. Economic well-being and social peace are
the chief elements on which this consent rests. Making war can rarely contribute positively to
these goals. In the short run, the mass of the public bears heavy costs. The public, not a small army of
professionals, pays the price in blood, whether as soldiers or as city dwellers subject to attack from the air. They
suffer the immediate hardships consequent on wartime economic mobilization. If the arguments
above are correct, it is most unlikely that there is compensation in the long run
sufficient to outweigh the costs, even to families that have not suffered death or injury. Welfare-oriented
societies typically produce leaders who are attuned to and reflect their societies' goals. They compete
for their positions by appealing to the public as improvers of public welfare, whether by positive action, or by promising to unleash
the natural forces of progress. Peace, not war, is seen as the natural state of affairs by leaders
as well as the public. Further, the dominance of the nation-state as a focus of popular sentiment
has delegitimated wars of conquest; they are not only unlikely to be profitable, they are viewed as wrong. Gellner quotes
Lord Acton: "Thus began a time when the text simply was, that nations would not be governed by
foreigners. Power legitimately attained, and exercised with moderation, was declared invalid. "24
Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine exemplified just such an illegitimate change of rule. Current examples are even clearer.
The Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the Soviet-installed regimes in Eastern Europe have all been characterized by
an extremely high level of persisting political hostility between their populations and the dominant power.

War is obsolete no longer useful and ideologically extinct
Is major war now obsolete? Surely no question is more important. The threat and the fact of
organized violence on the largest possible scale have dominated the twentieth century. There
has hardly been a moment between 1914 and 1998 when major war - or the anticipation of it or
planning for it - was not a powerfully influential fact of international life. There was scarcely
apolitical development of any consequence that was unaffected by major war, actual or
prospective. This question has an answer. The answer is yes': major war is obsolete, if this
statement's two adjectives are properly defined. It is major war, not war in general - collective
killing for some purpose - that is obsolete, as the contents of any daily newspaper make clear.
War has not been abolished. What is increasingly unlikely is a war fought by the most
powerful members of the international system, drawing on all of their resources and
using every weapon at their command, over a period of years, leading to an outcome with
revolutionary geopolitical consequences including the birth and death of regimes, the redrawing
of borders and the reordering of the hierarchy of sovereign states. There have been four such
wars in the last two centuries: the wars of the French Revolution (1792-1815); the First World
War (l9l4-l8)', the Second World War (1939-45); and the Cold War (late 1940s- early 1990s). It
is the numerically small but historically monumental class of wars to which these four conflicts
all belong that is obsolete. Major war is not impossible. None of the countries that would take
part in another major conflict has renounced War entirely; indeed, all are prepared to fight. A
major war is unlikely but not unthinkable. There are still people charged with the responsibility
for waging such a conflict and they continue to think about it. But it is obsolete in the sense that
it is no longer in fashion. It is obsolete in the sense that it no longer serves the purpose for
which it was designed. It has gone out of fashion not through any decree or ruling, but rather
as the result of trends and developments that are not under the control of any agency or
authority. To obsolesce is intransitive verb. Obsolescence is not imposed or created by anyone or
anything; it happens. In the case of major war, the signs that obsolescence is happening are
abundant. The trend began while the most recent major War was still under way. The Cold War
lacked a central feature of its three predecessors: direct battles between and among the
belligerent powers. Since it ended, the trend toward obsolescence has gathered momentum.
Major war is talked and written about less than before. Articles, essays, books, lectures and
symposia are more likely to study the global economy than global warfare. Crises in Europe and
Asia are economic rather than military in nature. The shift has apparently also made an
impression on the vast majority of the worlds inhabitants who do not read articles or attend
conferences on international affairs. In the summer of 1998, as in other summers, the US film
industry sought to appeal to what is evidently a broad interest in and presumably fear of, the
Earth's destruction. Hollywood, whose economic viability depends on accurately gauging the
global Zeitgeist offered two motion pictures with a contemporary version of the apocalypse as
their theme. In the films Deep Impact and Armageddon, however, the threat of total destruction
came not, as in previous examples of the genre, from major war waged with weapons of mass
destruction (WIVID). Rather, it came from the random workings of the cosmos, in the forms,
respectively, of an asteroid and a meteor rushing towards Earth that must be destroyed or
deflected by heroic measures if life as we know it is to continue. Major war is apparently no
longer plausible enough to serve as the premise of a major motion picture, which is one sure
sign of obsolescence at work. Yet another sign is the appearance of a term to describe the trends
that contribute to it: debellicisation.' Unlike the word that is perhaps closest to being a synonym
warlessness - its Latin root gives debellicisation a solid, scientific aura, like a newly
discovered species of plant or element of the periodic table. And while warlessness implies an
achieved condition, debellicisation suggests an ongoing process.

No war with major powers too focused economically even if tensions rise
The world's largest country by population and its largest country by area differ in important
ways. Two years before the new millennium, China's economy, power and international status
are growing while Russia's are shrinking. Russia is a democracy, albeit a shaky one. Chinese
politics are not, and never have been, conducted according to democratic principles. Russia is
part of the European system of common security. In East Asia there is no such system - there are
no treaties regulating armaments of which China can be a part. But Russia and China are similar
in one crucial way: the continuing obsolescence of major war depends most heavily
on them. This is not because either is the most powerful member of the international system, a
distinction that will surely belong to the US until well into the twenty-first century. It is not
because the government of either country is the most bellicose on the planet, a title Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein seems likely to retain as long as he remains in power. Rather, of the
countries that could start a major war, Russia and China are the two most likely to do so. 9' They
are large enough and powerful enough, actually or potentially, economically and militarily, to
qualify as potential great powers. Their attitudes towards international politics and armed
conflict are closer to those of the great powers at the end of the nineteenth century than to the
views prevailing in the debellicised late twentieth-century democracies. Neither country is fully
or irreversibly democratic; China is not democratic at all. Neither is used to conciliation within
its own borders, let alone in dealings with other countries. National prestige is of prime
importance to both; the memory of lost status and past humiliations - for Russia, in the very
recent past - rankles in sections of both countries' political classes. For both governments,
spheres of influence are not entirely obsolete: Russia claims one on the territory of the former
Soviet Union; China asserts a proprietary interest in the South China Sea. For all these reasons,
in neither Russia nor China has the traditional interest in military balances been entirely
eclipsed by the prevailing Western concern with trade balances. Still, at the end of the twentieth
century neither country appears to be girding for a major war. Both are focused inward,
preoccupied with economic rather than military matters. Neither fully endorses the
policies and practices of the US, but the differences are sources of irritation rather than
confrontation. Russia and China persist, for example, in purveying armaments and technology
suitable for making WMD to countries that the US insists should not have them; but this is the
occasion for diplomatic friction instead of war. Neither Moscow nor Beijing is entirely
satisfied with all of the political, military and economic arrangements of the post-Cold War
world, especially Washingtons central role in devising and managing them. But neither
government is committed, as were their orthodox communist predecessors, to the violent
overthrow of those arrangements.

Changes in aspect of society have made major wars redundant and undesirable
Political, social and technological trends that began or have accelerated in the twentieth century
have made major war obsolete by raising its costs while reducing the incentives for
waging it. Major war is obsolete in the way that styles of dress are obsolete: it is something that
is out of fashion and, while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is
obsolete in the way that slavery, dueling or foot-binding are obsolete: it is a social practice that
was once considered normal, useful- even desirable - but that now seems odious.3 It is obsolete
in the way that the central planning of economic activity is obsolete: it is a practice once
regarded as a plausible, indeed a superior way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that
changing conditions have made ineffective at best, counter-productive at worst. It is possible
that not only major war - protracted struggles among great powers with revolutionary
consequences for international politics - but even modern war - the use of mechanized weapons
in formal battles between the professional armed forces of sovereign states - is dying out. The
toll that modern weapons extract and the diminishi.ng benefits their use seems likely to bring,
which are potent factors in the foreign policies of the great powers, must weigh on the
calculations of the lesser ones as well" True, Washington is even now preparing to fight two
modern wars. The precedents for the two 'major regional contingencies' that form the basis for
post-Cold War US military planning are wars the US fought in Korea in the early 1950s and in
the Persian Gulf in 1991. Not coincidentally, the regimes against which the US went to war on
those occasions remain in power in both places. But neither North Korea's Kim Il Sung nor
Iraq's Saddam Hussein believed, when they launched the attack that began each war, that it
would lead to a military confrontation with the US, and it is unlikely that either regime is eager
to repeat the experience. Warlessness may still be unknown on the Korean Peninsula and in the
Middle East, but there is no reason to doubt that deterrence has put down roots in both places.
Of the varieties of war, it is not the Second World War model that is growing in popularity. It is,
rather, 'unconventional' conflict s, waged by irregular forces that attack civilian not military
targets. Guerrillas, terrorists, members of private militias - even malevolent computer hackers -
seem to be displacing the form ally trained, well-equipped, publicly funded soldier who waged
the twentieth century's wars. The practice of war, once the prerogative of the strong of
the international system, is instead increasingly the tactic of the weak.

Even if ideology is still present, modern attitudes and diplomacy make conflict
improbable
Mandelbaum 99 Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of
West Relations for the Council on Foreign Relations (Michael, Learning to be Warless,
Survival, Summer 1999, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 139-152)//BZ
War is a venerable human activity, dating back millennia; and even if the category of war for
which obsolescence is claimed includes only the four great conflicts of the modern era, that still
makes it more than two centuries old. Nor have human aggressiveness and political differences,
the combustible mixture from which all wars arise, disappeared. Thus the burden of proof - or
rather the burden of argument, since the assertion is not subject to absolute proof - rests on
those of us who suggest what must be the case if major war is truly obsolete, namely that
something fi.1ndamental has changed in international politics. The comments here are intended
to elaborate that argument, made originally in the Winter 1998-99 issue of Survival, as well as to
respond, in part, to my colleagues' points. They fall into four categories: the definition of
obsolescence; its ingredients; its significance; and the implications of my argument for national
foreign policies. What, precisely, does it mean to say that major war is 'obsolete'? On the
spectrum of probability, obsolete falls somewhere between impossible and unlikely. Major war
had already become unlikely during the Cold War because of the existence of nuclear weapons,
which had (and have) the power to make war between and among the major powers
catastrophically expensive. What is new is a combination of cultural attitudes and
diplomatic arrangements that make major war, in Europe at least, even less likely
than it was during the last decades of the East-West rivalry, when deterrence through the threat
of mutual annihilation was in force. Then the major powers were afraid of war because the costs
might be too high. Now, in addition, they are uninterested in war because the benefits of
winning are judged so modest. What I have called in my 1996 book The Dawn of Peace in
Europe, the continent's 'common security order' has two parts. The first, visible part, and the
crown jewel of late Cold War and post-Cold War diplomacy, is a landmark series of treaties
limiting armaments. These treaties reduce the insecurity endemic to a world divided into
independent sovereign states. The mere fact of sovereignty, or, as it is called in the literature of
international relations, the 'anarchy' of the international system, is a potential cause of war
because it means that every country must guard against the possibility that it might be
attacked; there is no global authority to prevent this. These treaties provide for
transparency, so that every country can know exactly what armaments every other one has, and
what they are doing with their arms. The treaties also reconfigure nuclear and non-nuclear
weapons in Europe to make them suitable for defence but not attack. The net effect is to
engender a higher degree of confidence than modem Europe has ever had that there will be no
major war there. Underpinning the treaties is a complex of attitudes, widely held and deeply
rooted in the industrial democracies, although less prominent elsewhere, that I have called
'warlessness'. Warlessness is what motivates Europeans and North Americans to limit their
weapons voluntarily in ways that build confidence among potential adversaries that they
harbour no aggressive designs. It is the conviction that war is both abnormal and undesirable,
and that it is usually illegitimate to fight for the goals on behalf of which wars have been waged
in the past: wealth, territory, glory.

Generic Interdependence

Interdependence generates non-violent solutions to disputes
For interdependence to promote peace, economic processes must either remove incentives for
states to engage in conflict or reduce the uncertainty states face when bargaining in the shadow of
costly contests. Since removing incentives to act aggressively only increases incentives for opponents, the former explanation must
typically occur in special "boundary" conditions (discussed later). We argue that interdependence makes it
easier to substitute nonviolent contests for militarized disputes in signaling
resolve. States that possess a range of methods of conflict resolution have less need to resort to
the most destructive (and costly) techniques. Liberal dyads can damage mutually valuable linkages to communicate
credibly. States without linkages must choose between a very limited set of options,
including-more often-war. The conflict model with uncertainty shows why this is so. Recall that A's best response is
an offer that an opponent weakly prefers to fighting. If the opponent (B) has private information about its war costs (c), then A's
optimal offer derives from a rational guess (the distribution of reservation prices for different types of player B). A calculates its offer
as the best demand it can make to each opponent weighted by the odds that a given opponent "type" is the actual adversary. Players
B whose war costs are high accept, whereas those with low costs fight. Conventional descriptions of interdependence see war as less
likely because states face additional opportunity costs for fighting. The problem with such an account is that it ignores incentives to
capitalize on an opponent's reticence to fight. If an opponent (B) is reluctant, then state A can make larger demands without risking
war. Assume that interdependent dyads are those that derive some benefit from economic linkages (h, say h = $10). If A and B avoid
a fight, then each receives the settlement plus the benefit ($100 - d + $10 and d + $10, respectively). B's war costs are again between
$0 and $40. Conventional explanations for interdependence identify the fact that B receives (d + $10) instead of (d) for accepting A's
demand as leading to peace. If demands are the same, then not fighting is more beneficial in interdependent dyads, and B should
more often prefer A's demand to fighting. Yet unless we assume that A is ignorant of its own interdependence with B (not very
plausible), A's demand must be different. A's best offer is one that B just prefers to a fight. Since benefits increase under
interdependence, A simply demands commensurately more. In the previous example, A offers $30 (A receives $100 - d = $70). If
interdependent, A proposes that B accept $20 plus the benefit ($10). The same range of states B that accepted $30 previously
(since $30 - $50 - c if c > $20) now accepts $20 (since $20 + $10 [the benefit] - $50 - c if c - $20). State A again makes an offer that
a given opponent just prefers to fighting, weighted by the odds that B is the given opponent. Interdependence is simply subsumed in
bargaining. Since they fail to reduce uncertainty, opportunity costs generally do not alter the prospects of engaging in costly
contests.48 Economic interdependence can motivate peace in two ways. First, conflict may occasionally be so
expensive relative to the expected value of fighting that states prefer any offer rather than
enduring a contest. Suppose B's war costs range from $50 to $90. B's expected value for war thus ranges from $0 to -$40.
Because B stands to lose more from fighting than its value for the stakes, B prefers to concede. We refer to this as a boundary
solution because it is possible only by assuming that stakes in the contest are bounded. Bounded stakes are reasonable, especially
when issues are of tertiary importance or when costs are extreme (as in nuclear war). Interdependent dyads may avoid
costly contests if economic linkages decrease the expected value of competition to the point
where one party prefers conceding to competing. Yet economic benefits seldom equate in
consequence to nuclear war. Issues over which states may consider major contests are unlikely to meet boundary
conditions for interdependence. Instead, boundary solutions are relevant when liberal states experience relatively minor conflict.
Finally, competition can continue even given boundary conditions. Liberal dyads deterred from war can still compete by
manipulating the risk of contests.49 Second, instead of deterring conflict, interdependence can convey credible sig-
nals, obviating the need for costly military contests. Actors' behaviors potentially inform observers
about the value of strategic variables, dissipating private information. Interdependent states that endure
opportunity costs in pursuit of political objectives differentiate themselves from other, less
resolved, competitors. To the degree that nonviolent conflict allows observers to identify opponents,
costly signaling also allows efficient ex ante bargaining. States seek to obtain settlements while competing for preferable terms.
War is less often necessary when states possess nonviolent methods that credibly
inform.

No incentive for war economic interdependence and democracy
Gartzke, 07 (Eric, Professor Erik Gartzke from University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA,
Columbia University, The Capitalist Peace,
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~egartzke/publications/gartzke_ajps_07-1.pdf, 2007, gf)
The discovery that democracies seldom fight each other has led, quite reasonably, to the
conclusion that democracy causes peace, at least within the community of liberal polities.
Explanations abound, but a consensus account of the dyadic democratic peace has been surprisingly slow to materialize. I offer a
theory of liberal peace based on capitalism and common interstate interests. Economic
development, capital market integration, and the compatibility of foreign policy preferences
supplant the effect of democracy in standard statistical tests of the democratic peace. In fact, after
controlling for regional heterogeneity, any one of these three variables is sufficient to account for
effects previously attributed to regime type in standard samples of wars, militarized interstate
disputes (MIDs), and fatal disputes. 1 If war is a product of incompatible interests and failed or abortive bargaining,
peace ensues when states lack differences worthy of costly conflict, or when circumstances favor successful diplomacy. Realists and
others argue that state interests are inherently incompatible, but this need be so only if state interests are narrowly defined or when
conquest promises tangible benefits. Peace can result from at least three attributes of mature capitalist economies. 1 Additional tests
of key variables, model specifications, and possible confounding factors appear in the appendix. A Stata do file replicating all
aspects of the analysis is available from the author. First, the historic impetus to territorial expansion is
tempered by the rising importance of intellectual and financial capital, factors that are more
expediently enticed than conquered. Land does little to increase the worth of the advanced
economies while resource competition is more cheaply pursued through markets than by means
of military occupation. At the same time, development actually increases the ability of states to
project power when incompatible policy objectives exist. Development affects who states fight (and
what they fight over) more than the overall frequency of warfare. Second, substantial overlap in the foreign
policy goals of developed nations in the postWorld War II period further limits the scope and
scale of conflict. Lacking territorial tensions, consensus about how to order the international
system has allowed liberal states to cooperate and to accommodate minor differences. Whether this
affinity among liberal states will persist in the next century is a question open to debate. Finally, the rise of global capital
markets creates a new mechanism for competition and communication for states that might
otherwise be forced to fight. Separately, these processes influence patterns of warfare in the
modern world. Together, they explain the absence of war among states in the developed world
and account for the dyadic observation of the democratic peace. American Journal of Political Science, Vol.
51, No. 1, January 2007, Pp. 166191. The notion of a capitalist peace is hardly new. Montesquieu, Paine, Bastiat, Mill, Cobden,
Angell, and others saw in market forces the power to end war. Unfortunately, war continued, leading many to view as
overly optimistic classical conceptions of liberal peace. This study an be seen as part of an effort to reexamine capitalist peace theory,
revising arguments in line with contemporary insights much as Kantian claims were reworked in response to evolving evidence of a
democratic peace. Existing empirical research on the democratic peace, while addressing many possible alternatives, provides an
incomplete and uneven treatment of liberal economic processes. Most democratic peace research examines trade
in goods and services but ignores capital markets and offers only a cursory assessment of
economic development (Maoz and Russett 1992). Several studies explore the impact of interests, though these have largely
been dismissed by democratic peace advocates (Oneal and Russett 1999a; Russett and Oneal 2001). These omissions or oversights
help to determine the democratic peace result and thus shape subsequent research, thinking, and policy on the subject of liberal
peace. This study offers evidence that liberal economic processes do in fact lead to peace, even accounting for the well-documented
role of liberal politics. Democracy cohabitates with peace. It does not, by itself, lead nations to be less
conflict prone, not even toward other democracies. The argument and evidence provided here are bound to draw
criticism. Skepticism in the face of controversial claims is natural, reasonable, even essential for the cumulation of knowledge. The
democratic peace observation is supported by an exceptionally large and sophisticated body of research. 2 At the same time,
excessive deference to previous conclusions privileges conventional wisdom. 3 A willingness to doubt that which we have come to
believe is a hallmark of scientific inquiry. Indeed, the weight of existing evidence does not directly contradict this study as previous
research has typically failed to address the 2 Empirical regularity cannot be the only reason for broad
interest in the democratic peace. As Cederman (2003) points out, the relationship between the frequency
and intensity of wars is also lawlike (literally a power rule). This relationship has generated little interest and
received almost no attention since its discovery by Richardson (1960). 3 Accumulation is not cumulation. Replication offers a limited
form of robustness. As one author puts it, Is it surprising that repeatedly testing the same primary independent and dependent
variables generally produces the same results? (Van Belle 2006, 14). Jervis (1976) offers an entertaining parable based on the
writings of A. A. Milne. While out hunting woozles, Piglet and Winnie-the-Pooh mistake their own tracks in the snow for those of
their elusive prey. As the two frightened characters circle back on their own trail, the evidence of woozles mounts....claims of
classical liberal political economists like Montesquieu, Richard Cobden, and Norman Angell. As with previous research, this study
finds support for a liberal peace, though the key causal variables, and some major policy implications, are considerably changed.

Modern trade eliminates incentives for war no gains, high costs, communication
Liberal theorists also make a number of claims concerning the prevention of international
conflict, each of which draws upon a different causal logic. First, one set of claims asserts that
economic trade replaces conquest as a means of
exchange, thus lowering expected levels of conflict. What would formally be gained through war
can now be traded. Rosecrance's (1986) concept of the "trading state" is an example of this
theory and illustrates how trade and exchange may decrease the incentives to engage in conflict.
This variant of liberalism holds that higher levels of trade can remove the economic-based
incentives for conflict, leading to a more peaceful international environment.' A second and
more common logic posits that open commerce dampens political conflict by promoting
economic dependence. This argument, which Stein refers to as "binding commercial liberalism"
(1993, 353), has been stressed in most recent studies of international conflict (Oneal and Russett
1997, 1999a). Open trade encourages specialization in the production of goods and services,
rendering private traders and consumers dependent on foreign markets. These actors have an
incentive to avoid wars with key trading partners, since disruptions in commercial
relations would be costly. Governments, which have reason to respond to demands made by key
constituents and to enhance a country's economic performance, face similar incentives. A third
and more recent strain of interdependence theory has grown out of the rationalist causes of war
literature (see Fearon 1995) and offers a similar prediction about trade and conflict. This
argument, laid out by Morrow (1999) as well as Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer (2001) begins with the
idea that trade levels among states are not private information. Thus, by itself, trade cannot
cause binding since either side knows the other's constraints when entering a
costly bargaining contest. What trade does give a state, however, is a broader pallet from
which to select signals, so pairs of states with higher levels of trade are more likely to provide
signals (through state economic polices or through markets) which will avert war. If this "pallet"
argument is true, major conflicts will be deterred since states can use trade as a signaling device
to show resolve.

Even if it generates conflicts, interdependence provides the safest ways to resolve
them
In sum, liberal and realist camps make strong predictions about the impact of trade on conflict
and cooperation. Liberals proffer that through multiple causal processes, trade provides
disincentives to fight, as well as positive inducements to cooperate. For some realists, trade can
provide opportunities and motivation for states to engage in conflict, rendering relations
between states more hostile. Other realists predict no systematic relationship between trade and
conflict, with other political and military factors overwhelming any influence of commerce. One
crucial issue rarely discussed in this literature, however, is the nature of these competing claims.
For instance, there is no logical reason why trade cannot simultaneously increase conflict and
cooperation. Thus, H2 and H3 could both be correct with regard to the trade and conflict
relationship. Liberals and realists may have very well identified two parts of the same picture.
Interdependence may well increase probability that states engage in some hostilities, yet
interdependence may also deter states from entering protracted hostilities or engaging in high-
intensity conflict. The observable implication of this dynamic would be that interdependent
states are more likely to experience some conflict, but the overall frequency of conflict should
remain low. There are at least two dynamics arising from the previous hypotheses that could
give rise to this conditional relationship. First, one logic of H3 states that because states interact
more with higher trade, there are more issues over which states may fight. As the issues between
states expand in scope and complexity with increasing interdependence, the probability for at
least occasional conflict should rise. Yet, the average observer of the modern
international system would not expect commercial disputes, for example, to spill
over into severe armed military conflict. No matter how nasty the "banana wars" get, no
one expects a resort to extended physical violence. Even if interdependence spurs
noneconomic disputes, trade ties will generate pressures to minimize costly
conflicts. As commercial liberals emphasize, private traders and consumers can generate
domestic pressures, creating high costs for state leaders who would allow an intermittent
dispute to escalate to protracted conflict. Indeed, these internal pressures will likely be highest
when some tensions already exist- signaling to private traders and firms that this stream of
income may be in jeopardy. Thus, trade may be the harbinger of the presence of tensions, but it
should also deter their expansion. Second, if the logic of the signaling argument (Gartzke, Li,
and Boehmer 2001) generating H2 is correct, then one should see the peaceful benefits of
international trade after some hostilities exist. In this argument, interdependence helps
convey resolve after tensions arise by giving states more "tools" to communicate.
This resolve is presumably communicated by hostile actions short of all-out war. Thus, trade
interdependence gives a state the ability to signal resolve through hostile actions so that
protracted tensions do not arise. This yields the same observable implication as the previous
logic-increased interdependence will be associated with some interstate conflict, yet stop its
enlargement. Presumably, escalation will bring more intense and more frequent conflict,
increasing the frequency of hostile interactions within a dyad. For crises that do not escalate, the
number of hostile interactions will remain limited.

Realisms false - economic, not military focuses keeps states alive Soviet Union
proves
The institution with which war historically has been connected is the state, which, as the saying
goes, was made by war for the purpose of making war. Sovereign states remain a central
presence in human affairs at the end of the twentieth century. But in the societies that waged the
modern era's major wars, the state has found a different purpose. It has become an
economic institution. To spur production and manage redistribution have become its twin
missions. In all Western countries, social-welfare programmes claim a greater share of the
national treasure than the cost of underwriting the armed forces. In addition to how it spends its
money, the kind of person selected to lead it is a measure of the states purpose. Here, too, the
shift from warfare to welfare is apparent. In Germany and Japan post-1945, the supreme
national leader was selected for economic rather than military expertise. Later, the UK and
France both followed suit: Harold Wilson took up Winston Churchill's post; Giscard d'Estaing
assumed Charles de Gaulle's. With the end of the Cold War, the US has fallen into line. Its
current chief executive is a man with no military experience or expertise who gained and held
the presidency by defeating two opponents who were both Second World War heroes. Bill
C1inton's principal public talent is empathy - no doubt a virtue, but not a martial one. His two
electoral victories are signs of the times, or at least of what the US electorate has taken to be the
tenor of the times in the 19903. Perhaps most tellingly, the test of the legitimacy of
governments, and thus the survival of contemporary regimes, is likely to be
economic rather than military. The Soviet Union was not defeated on the field of
battle. It collapsed from within, in no small part because of economic failures. The regime's
efforts to succeed in the military sphere, its enormous expenditures on weapons and armed
forces, contributed to those economic failures." In the summer of 1998, the Soviet Union's
successor, Boris Yelts'1n's government in Moscow, was threatened by the weakness not of the
Russian military (although it was certainly weak) but of the Russian rouble. Sovereign states are
pushed towards an economic rather than a military emphasis because they are governed by
democratic principles. The first and, for debellicisation, the most relevant of these principles is
popular sovereignty, control of the government by the populace. Most people are more
interested in becoming wealthy than in risking their lives in war. Yet another reason for the
obsolescence of major war at the twentieth century's close, therefore, is the fact that a growing
number of sovereign states are increasingly democratic.

Economic Interdependence

No war no benefits, high costs, and international institutions mitigate risks
Many scholars who argue that the worst of war is behind us, that war is becoming obsolete, or
that major inter-state war is disappearing, base their arguments on wars failure to be a rational
policy instrument in modern times (Kaysen, 1990; Keegan, 1998; Mandelbaum, 1998; Mueller,
1989). They emphasize the higher economic cost of going to war and the diminished
gains from winning one (Kaysen, 1990; Mandelbaum, 1998), because of trade and economic
interdependence, the states new role as a market state, and the declining importance of
territory for a states economy (Kaysen, 1990). They also credit the existence of other, less costly
ways to solve political problems, primarily through international institutions, and stress
the role that international organizations have played in mitigating the insecurities of an
anarchical international system (Mandelbaum, 1998). Some emphasize the role of particularly
destructive modern technologies, especially nuclear weapons, saying that these change the
calculation of risk, and damage wars ability to serve as a policy instrument (Kaysen, 1990;
Waltz, 1981). According to Kaysen, no state will initiate a war unless it expects to gain
politically or economically, and the changes in both these areas in the past 150 years have
altered this calculation, so that war no longer recommends itself as a useful instrument (1990).

Currency interdependence raises absolute costs of war
Monetary interactions may also be a source of interdependence. States may choose to
subordinate monetary sovereignty to a foreign power through a fixed exchange- rate regime, pool
sovereignty in a monetary union, or assert their own sovereignty under a floating exchange-rate regime.29 Interstate
monetary relations can be characterized by intermittent cooperation, competition, and
coercion.30 Attempts by one state to increase its monetary authority (a relative gain) may produce "public
bads" that diminish absolute gains. Hence, monetary interaction may be considered as part of the
general notion of economic interdependence.31 Although they reduce state autonomy in monetary
policymaking, higher levels of monetary dependence raise the incentives to
cooperate.

International markets means war destroys investment delinking caps economic
growth
Capital seeks higher risk-adjusted returns. Risk is contingent on government restrictions, the
degree of domestic capital market integration into world markets, and the overall exposure of the
economy to direct investments. This has three implications for international conflict. First, states in
conflict may place more stringent government restrictions on foreign exchange, payments settlement, capital
repatriation, or even nationalization. Since conflict threatens investments among disputing states, it makes
such investments less desirable and capital becomes relatively scarce. Second, political shocks produce
negative externalities affecting investments. Military conflict increases uncertainty and risk to any capital
investment, all else being equal, and reduces risk-adjusted rates of return. The more globally integrated
a state's capital market, the more likely that capital will flee. Third, states that are
heavily exposed to capital flows are more vulnerable to disruptions. Policy actions that
increase risk for capital are costlier for political leaders and thus demonstrate stronger
resolve. States that are heavily dependent on international capital markets for national economic well being are much more
vulnerable to the will of these markets. States can disengage their economies from the global system. They
can also seek to restrict the movement of capital across their borders. However, attempts to
limit the influence of international markets on domestic economies also limit
growth. States cannot restrict the free movement of capital without raising the cost of
production.

Strategic and economic interdependence reduce conflict increased security,
deterrence, economic costs and risks
on International Conflict across Leyvels of Analysis, American Journal of Political Science,
January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 223-240, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25193877 ) //BZ
The liberal paradigm regards both strategic and economic interdependence as a good thing.
Although Keohane and Nye discuss arms races as an example of "bad interdependence" (1977, 8-9), this is done in passing. Most
liberal theorizing on interdependence and conflict is focused on economic ties. However, liberal
institutionalist ideas allow inferences about the effects of strategic interdependence on conflict
and cooperation. Strategic interdependence is more than a common capability pool. Alliances are institutions that
reduce uncertainty and manage distributional issues (Keohane and Martin 1995). Strategically
interdependent states are unlikely to engage in conflict due to their increased
security and ability to deter aggression (Kegley and Raymond 1982). Finally, as strategic
interdependence in the international system increases, the incentives for conflict decline.7 Liberal
scholars tie economic interdependence to rational positivism and peace. "[T]he international operation of the industrial spirit is as
remarkable as any part of its actions ... Whatever may have been the original effect of the military spirit in extending human
association, it not only had then completely exhausted, but it could never have been comparable to the industrial spirit in admitting
the total assimilation of the human race" (Comte [1854] 2000, 181-82). The effect of economic interdependence on
peace extends from the state to the system. States are reluctant to initiate conflict against
enemies with whom they do not have direct trade ties because the uncertainty and
instability associated with conflict may cause their trading partners to look for
other markets, thus adding an in direct cost to the direct cost of conflict (Crescenzi 2005; Gasiorowski
1986; Gasiorowski and Polacheck 1982; Po lacheck 1980, 1997; Russett and Oneal 2001 ). Global interdependence
increases coordination, cooperation, transparency, and trust, thereby reducing global levels of
conflict.

Interdependence raises mutual costs of war
Democratic peace research was inspired by the Kantian prophesy of a "perpetual peace," but Kant's recipe (often called the "liberal
peace") consists of much broader conditions, including republican government, a league of nations, and common markets.11
Beginning in the 1970s, students of political economy began to evaluate evidence that interdependence
inhibits conflict behavior. Debate continues, but consensus appears to be that interdependence is
associated with peace. Work by Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, James A. Caporaso, Karl W. Deutsch, James M.
Rosenau, and John A. Kroll made conceptual contributions by clarifying definitions of interdependence.'2 However, these studies
lack theoretical precision and fail to delineate key processes. One is left to ponder the origins of interdependence. Exactly how do
multiple channels alter incentives to compete? Also, complex interdependence appears to imply dyadic consequences, but the
argument as posed is almost exclusively systemic. There are many ways to conceive of interdependence. The central logic of
most studies of conflict and interdependence is that states are less likely to fight if there
exist additional opportunity costs associated with military force. "International
commerce, being a transaction between nations, could conceivably also have a direct impact on
the likelihood of peace and war: once again the [economic] interests might overcome the passions,
specifically the passion for conquest."'3 Evidence has mounted that trade interdependence
reduces interstate disputes.14 John R. Oneal and Bruce M. Russett argue that Kant was right-liberalism leads to peace.15
In addition to interdependence, law, civil liberties, executive constraints, and a bargaining culture all reduce disputes.
Interdependence has a greater effect than democracy, growth, or alliances in reducing conflict in
contiguous states.

Capital markets prevent states from engaging in military conflict
In Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu argues that "movable wealth" encourages peace between and within
states. Mobile capital constrains the sovereign domestically. "The richest trader had only
invisible wealth which could be sent everywhere without leaving any trace ... [so that] rulers have
been compelled to govern with greater wisdom than they themselves would have thought."32 Trade is only one
manifestation of the global spread of capitalism.33 Since capital markets dwarf the exchange of goods and
services, firms should weigh the risks of investment much more heavily than trade. Foreign
production facilities are vulnerable to nationalization in a way that trade is not. Further, even the threat of lost revenues makes
investors skittish. Globalization has increased capital mobility and monetary cooperation
even as it redefines the terms on which states compete. State policies aim to preserve political
autonomy, but states are faced with a dilemma when seeking to influence interstate finance. Vittorio Grilli and Gian Maria Milesi-
Ferretti suggest that states impose capital controls for four reasons: limiting volatile short-term capital flows, retaining domestic
savings, sustaining structural reform and stabilization programs, and maintaining the tax base.34 States engage financial repression
for similar reasons.35 However, states may find capital controls less useful when facing integrated capital
markets and pressures to liberalize from powerful interest groups such as multinational
corporations and financial institutions.36 Edward L. Morse points out that when states fail to reduce
their vulnerability and solve the crises that arise through interdependence, they may seek to
externalize problems.37 Interdependence may even transmit economic crises.38 Thus, the literature suggests that
interdependence could increase conflict between states while decreasing the
chances of violent, militarized behavior.

Monetary interdependence solves war empirics prove
By increasing the economic interdependence of members, monetary policy coordination creates a
mechanism that allows credible signals of political resolve through economic acts.
For example, the post-World War II Bretton Woods system was essentially a zone in which members
pegged currencies to the dollar, expecting convertibility of the dollar into gold. On 26 July 1956
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. On 31 October British and French
forces attacked Egypt after negotiations to resolve the crisis failed. Despite vocal opposition from the
United States, Britain and France decided to continue efforts to seize the canal and overthrow the
Nasser regime. On 5 November the U.S. government started to sell pounds. British reserves fell by 15
percent within a month. U.S. Treasury secretary George Humphrey informed Britain that unless it
obeyed the UN resolution and withdrew from Suez, the United States would continue to sell pounds
and block British access to International Monetary Fund (IMF) reserves. On 6 November Britain ordered a
cease-fire, in effect forcing the French to end military operations as well.56 It may be questioned whether the United States
would have intervened militarily to block British and French efforts in Egypt; fortunately, such an effort was not necessary. The
Bretton Woods system made it possible for the United States to demonstrate resolve short of
military force, jeopardizing valuable economic linkages but averting the need for costlier actions. In summary, traditional
studies of economics and international conflict only pay attention to a particular type of market, the goods market, and one channel
of economic linkages, international trade. The influence of economics is underestimated and the causal
mechanisms overly simplified. We argue that linkages between economics and peace are more complex than previously
postulated. Interdependence through capital and trade acts as a costly signal, reducing
uncertainty about relative resolve and lessening the need for militarized disputes. Instead of being
deterred by opportunity costs, interdependent states can use opportunity costs as costly signals
demonstrating resolve.

Economic linkages reduces the likelihood of conflict
Trade and direct investment increase cross-border economic contact and raise a state's stake in
maintaining linkages. Monetary coordination and interdependence demand that states strike
deals. Through such interactions, states create a broad set of mutually beneficial economic
linkages. While these linkages may deter very modest clashes, their main impact is as a
substitute method for resolving conflict. Political shocks that threaten to damage or
destroy economic linkages generate information, reducing uncertainty when leaders bargain.
Threats from interdependent states carry more weight than threats from autarchic states precisely
because markets inform observers as to the veracity of political "cheap talk." Multiple channels of
economic interactions help states to credibly communicate, increasing the
"vocabulary" available to states in attempting to assess relative resolve. A signaling
interpretation of interdependence offers some promise both analyti- cally and in terms of international events. If costly
signaling through economic interdependence reduces states' recourse to military violence, then
increasing economic interdependence (globalization) implies the prospect of a more pacific
global system. The magnitude of the pacific effect of interdependence is difficult to assess, however, since other factors, such as
increasing polarization, may add to the motives for conflict. At the same time, the signaling argument implies that much of the
variance in the propensity for conflict is unknowable.83 Before we can have greater confidence in our results, we need to examine a
larger data sample, including all dyads and longer time spans. Precise measures may be obtained by limiting the sample to U.S.
dyads. Finally, the effects of democracy on conflict appear to require additional assessment. However, our findings provide
evidence (and a rationale) suggesting that liberal economics may be at least as salient to peace as
liberal politics.

Economic exchange reduces conflict community, benefits, and higher costs to
war
Reed 3 Associate Professor of Political Science at Rice University (William, Information and
Economic Interdependence, The Journal of Conflict Resolution: Building a Science of World
Politics, February 2003, Vol. 47,
No. 1, pp.54-71,
nfirm=true&&acceptTC=true)//BZ
Working within the liberal peace research program, John Oneal and Bruce Russett (1997, 1999a,
1999b, 1999c, 2001) have published several papers supporting the contention that trade
promotes peace or at least has a robust pacifying effect on the onset of militarized conflict.
Moreover, Oneal and Russett argue that the pacifying effect of economic interdependence holds
important clues about the observed peace between and among democratic states. Democracy
may reduce the probability of militarized conflict by indirectly increasing the amount of
economic interdependence (Russett and Oneal 2001). In related work, Lisa Martin (2000)
asserts that democratic states may be better equipped to foster economic interdependence
because they are better able to make credible commitments with respect to the terms of trade. In
sum, economic interdependence allows for more efficient bargaining. Similar lines of
inquiry claim that increased contact in the form of economic exchange between states can
decrease the probability of conflict. For example, Deutsch et al. (1957) argue that trade
can lead to the development of a sense of community, and this shared community may make
conflict less likely. Moreover, Polachek, Robst, and Chang (1999) claim that because states
know conflict will distort the benefits from trade, trade deters militarized conflict.
Put simply, the costs of conflict are higher for trading states, and with greater costs, the expected
value for militarized conflict is lower. Thus, ceteris paribus, trading states can expect to gain less
from a militarized clash than would nontrading states and, as a result, are more likely to accept a
bargained outcome short of militarized conflict.

Economic interdependence reduce motives to go to war lack of conquest
Throughout history, one of the primary motivating factors for engaging in war was conquest, the
capturing of another states territory and the resources it contained. As indicated above, conquest was
especially profitable in landholding societies, where land was the main source of economic and political power. It was also a worthy
endeavour in early trading societies where city centers became the hub of economic activity and contained valuable assets that could
be easily captured in war. However, the extent to which conquest is still a profitable endeavour in the
contemporary world, such that the benefits of undertaking this activity exceed the costs, is
questionable, especially for the great powers. Although the opportunity for a one-time looting remains, and is likely
even more advantageous than it was in the past given the available loot, the long-term benefits associated with major war and
conquest seem to be lost.54 Ultimately, it would seem that, when dealing with wars among great
powers, this endeavour is no longer beneficial for a number of reasons, including the growth of
nationalism, the economic interdependence among states, and the increasingly global scale of
production. Beginning with the idea of nationalism, it would seem that as these sentiments have
grown, the benefits associated with conquest have become less of a guarantee. Attacking a
country with even a minor element of nationalist sentiment, which appears to be held in some form by all of
the great powers, is a dangerous endeavour, as one risks ensuing political hostility on the part of the
conquered.55 Not only would the conquering states have to undergo the costs of stifling uprisings, but the energy and
efficiency with which the conquered economy operates would likely be lost, leading to less than
favourable results than the conquering state had hoped to achieve.56 In this sense, rather than undertaking
the risks associated with conquest, it would seem far more prudent to simply increase domestic
production and continue engaging in trade with the rest of the world. Indeed, in todays world,
economic strength does not arise so much from the control of territory and resources as it does
from access to global markets.57 States now operate in a truly global economy, relying on one
another for imported goods and serving as markets for one anothers exports. Although such interstate
trade has been occurring for centuries, the economic interdependence among states that we are witnessing
today is truly unprecedented, with states economic prosperity depending on peaceful trading
relations with other states. Possessing the strongest economies in the world, the great powers are especially
dependent on these relations. In fact, it was their efforts that brought about the World Trade Organization (WTO),
formerly the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to supervise these trading relations and ensure that they proceed in
an orderly manner. In this sense, to engage in war with one another and disrupt these critical
relations would seem equivalent to economic suicide, boding particularly badly for their
populations who rely on international trade for their well-being.58 Thus, the loss of the significant
economic gains that typically accompany global trade would seem to serve as another deterrent
to the pursuit of major war. Closely related to this, it is arguable that the significant decline in the benefits of conquest
among the most highly advanced countries is due to changes in the structure of global production. Proposed by political scientist
Stephen Brooks, this argument asserts that trade is being overtaken by global production as the most important integrating force in
the international economy.59 In fact, much of the trade in todays world is a by-product of the
globalization of production, of the outsourcing of the production of goods and services to
locations around the globe in an attempt to minimize production costs.60 Such globalization is
changing the incentives facing states and contributing to the shifting profitability of major war.
As Brooks suggests, the globalization of production has played a profound role in the transition of
most modern states from economies based on land to ones based on knowledge and human
capital, a fact that has greatly lowered the benefits of conquest.61 In the post-World War II period, the
globalization of production has taken off as communication and transportation technologies
have allowed development, research, and management to take place in one area of the world
while production occurs in another. This trend has allowed the most advanced countries of the world to increasingly
specialize in knowledge-based industries as developing countries undertake the necessary production processes. As these changes
have occurred, the benefits of conquest among great powers have significantly declined. Whereas, in the
past, the economic assets available to the conqueror could be easily seized, whether in the form of land, machines, etc., this is no
longer the case. After all, although they can be captured, human beings and the information they possess are highly mobile and
difficult to definitively acquire. The geographic dispersion of production associated with this globalizing process has also shifted the
profitability calculations surrounding major war.62 As global firms, which are typically based in the great power countries,
have been increasingly outsourcing their production to areas of the developing world, the idea of
conquering a great power country has declined in appeal as such a conquest would likely only
result in obtaining a small portion of the global production chain. Even until quite recently, if a state
invaded a country with a particular production sector, it would possess the entire chain of production and be able to produce all of
the necessary inputs for the particular good. However, to do so now would likely require conquering multiple countries. Although it
may be argued that possessing even a small portion of the production chain is valuable, the point to be made here is that it is less
valuable than it would have been in the past. The argument is not that there are no benefits to be obtained from one great power
conquering another, but that such benefits are significantly declining. The final point of Brooks' analysis that is worthy of note
pertains to the role of foreign direct investment (FDI). Brooks points out that, in addition to the declining profitability of conquest, a
substitute can be found in the form of FDI, which has become increasingly more prevalent since the Second World War. According
to Brooks, FDI allows states to achieve many of the same benefits of conquest without actually undergoing any of the costs.63 In this
sense, although not a perfect substitute, when combined with the decreasing profitability associated with conquest, it is arguable
that FDI has further reduced incentives for engaging in major war. Ultimately, it would seem that, economically speaking, the
benefits to be attained from major war have declined to the point of virtual non-existence. Not
only are the anticipated gains less significant, but major war would also likely disrupt the trade
and foreign investment upon which the economies of these countries depend. In fact, those citizens
whose livelihoods are contingent on these economic relations remaining stable can be expected to lobby against major war and in
favour of great power peace. However, this is only truly possible in a democracy, the spread of which also seems to have contributed
to the obsolescence of major war.

Deterrence

War empirically denied even during heightened tensions scale of destruction
and risk of retaliation is too large to be feasible
Major war in the twentieth century is more costly - that is, more destructive - than previous
wars of any kind. Ten million people died fighting during the First World War and millions more
perished from war-related disease. The death toll for the Second World War was 50m, although
fewer than half of the victims were in uniform? The two world wars were more costly than any in
the past, chiefly because the instruments of war were more deadly and destructive. It is perhaps
true that the twentieth century's great wars did not destroy a larger proportion of the productive
capacities of the societies that waged them, nor kill a higher percentage of these societies'
populations, than previous conflicts.' But the opportunity costs of twentieth-century wars were
higher because the benefits of peace were greater. There was far more productive capacity to
destroy in the twentieth century than ever before. Because life expectancy was higher, moreover,
those killed by war in the last 100 years were deprived of more of life, and life of a higher
material quality, than the victims of previous conflicts. For most of recorded history, famine and
disease posed greater dangers to most people than war. In this century, armed conflict came
into its own as the most fearsome, and feared, cause of unnatural death' In the last
two centuries, the expansion of organized violence ran parallel to - indeed, was part of - the
expansion of economic production. Armed forces themselves became industrial organizations.
They recruited and trained young men to carry out specialized tasks and systematically
harnessed science and technology for the purpose of mass production. What armed forces
produced, on a mass scale, was not automobiles or refrigerators; it was death and destruction.
The ultimate creation of applying science and technology to the art of warfare was, and is,
nuclear weapons. The expansion of destructive force that they embody is extraordinary. The
firepower carried by one submarine equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles could inflict
more damage on any of the Second World War's belligerent powers than all the destruction any
of them suffered during the course of that conflict, which - especially in the cases of Germany,
Japan and the Soviet Union - was vast indeed. The destruction that a large-scale exchange of
nuclear weapons would cause - and it was widely assumed during the Cold War that any use of
them between the US and the Soviet Union would trigger a large-scale exchange - was so great
that it certainly would not meet one of the criteria for a major war.' It would not be conducted
over a period of years; it might last only hours. It is questionable whether such a spasm of mass
destruction, including mass killing, could truly be called a war, defined as an act of organized
violence for a political purpose. To what political end would a nuclear war be a plausible means?
The countries waging it could count on destroying their adversary, but at the cost
of their own destruction. This is not a trade-off likely to commend itself to a minimally
rational person. The enormous, unprecedented, almost unimaginable destruction a nuclear war
could bring had a restraining effect on the two major nuclear powers during the Cold War,
which in tum was and is a principal element of the obsolescence of major war. Washington and
Moscow maneuvered to avoid placing themselves in a position in which nuclear weapons might
be used. The episodes when nuclear use seemed imminent - the crises over Berlin in 1961 and
Cuba in 1962 - were rare, and the experience of living through them enhanced the common
Soviet and American determination that they should not be repeated. The anticipation of
nuclear combat had an effect on governments comparable to the impact on individual soldiers
of the increasingly dangerous and stressful reality of non-nuclear combat in the twentieth
century: extreme aversion. The circumspect behavior during the nuclear crises and the resolute
efforts to avoid them can be seen as a variation of the shellshock that made those who suffered
from it unfit to return to battle. While the cost of major war has risen sharply, what its
ever rising price can purchase now seems increasingly unattractive to potential customers.
Even independently of its costs, the incentives for major War have shrivelled.

Nuclear deterrence solves Mutually Assured Destruction and potential
escalation deters all forms of war
The argument so far has made no mention of the nuclear revolution, and so far is in accord with Muellers contention that major
war between modern nations was on its way to obsolescence before the development of nuclear
weapons. However, this is not to accept that the profound revolution in the technology of war
brought by nuclear and thermonuclear weapons and longrange ballistic missiles does not
matter; quite the contrary. These new technologies of war have amplified the message of this
centurys war experiences by many decibels, and set it firmly in the minds of the wide public as well as those of
political and military leaders. Contemplating what a dozen thermonuclear warheads can do to a
modern society, much less a thousand dozen, leads all concerned to a much more
subtle, careful, and discriminating calculation of what the national interest is, in any
conflict situation, and how it can best be pursued. And all are concerned. The downside risks of
wrong decisions have become so immense and immediate that it is almost
inconceivable that haste and wishfulness will again play the roles in initiating wars
that they have in the past. It is equally difficult to think what interest other than sheer
survival can be placed on the other pan of the balance, and there is simply no rational way
to believe that, in a world of long-range missiles carrying thermonuclear
warheads, the initiation of nuclear war is a way to ensure survival.33 Nor have
nuclear weapons made the world safe for nonnuclear war, if it involves the interests of nuclear-armed nations
on both sides of a conflict, since the risks of escalation must be counted into a balance already
unfavorable to war. Another way to make clear that the nuclear-missile revolution in military technology has had a
profound effect is to imagine, per impossibile, that the revolution had taken place in the world of the eighteenth century. Even the
most calculating of absolute monarchs, completely focused on their dynastic interests, and totally unconcerned with the welfare of
their powerless peasant populations, would nevertheless have had to take a different view of war than they had previously held. The
prospect that they themselves, their families, their capitals, and their hunting lodges as well as their
palaces would all vaporize in the thermonuclear fire would certainly change their assessment of
the relative virtues of war and peace. The question for this imagined world is whether the elites would have had the
time to contemplate the lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or whether their survivors would have had to learn it by bitter
experience.

Realism means wars inevitable only a bipolar nuclear world prevents conflict
At a second and deeper level, Mueller fails to confront the traditional realist and neo-realist argument
that war is an inescapable feature of the anarchic international system in which
independent states seek power and security. After all, this is one of the dominant models of international relations,
if not the dominant one, and Mueller simply does not engage with it. Kenneth Waltz offers a clear statement of the
realist view: conflict is the inevitable result of the structure of the international
system.6 Independent states seeking security in an anarchic system in which war is the ultima
ratio of statecraft will inevitably be in conflict, and conflict will regularly issue in war, as it has
throughout history. However, a bipolar system has better prospects than a multipolar one for
stability and the avoidance of war. With formidable nuclear, arsenals on both sides, the
prospects for avoiding war become better still; indeed, the probability of major war among
states having nuclear weapons approaches zero.7 Waltz thus supports Muellers conclusion, at least
for so long as the world of international politics remains bipolar, but for entirely different reasons. And as bipolarity disintegrates, it
is not clear where Waltzs argument leads: will the stability effect of absolute weapons outweigh the instability of shifting alliances
that multipolarity breeds?8 Though Mueller essentially dismisses the neo-realist case by ignoring it, he does not hesitate to make use
of neo-realist arguments himself. He explains the stability of the post-World War II settlement in essentially
neorealist terms: the war resulted in a stable structure of power (pp. 95-97). Understanding why war has
become obsolescent requires an examination of the political and economic calculus of war. A
necessary and sufficient, or almost sufficient, condition for the disappearance of war is that all
parties concerned calculate a negative cost benefit ratio ex ante.9 No nation will start a war
unless it expects to gain in some way by doing so. Of course the prospective gain may be a virtual
rather than an absolute one: the avoidance of an even greater loss where the alternative course
of action requires submission in one way or another to the will of the adversary. In the starkest and
simplest terms, the key proposition of the more comprehensive explanation is that for most of
human history, societies were so organized that war could be profitable for the victors, in both
economic and political terms. But profound changes in economics and politics in the last
century and a half, following the Industrial Revolution, have changed the terms of the
calculation.

Scope and assurance of nuclear warfare purifies previous notions of conventional
deterrence and prevents conflicts better
Waltz 90 Political scientist at Berkley and one of the most prominent figures in international
relations for founding neorealism and structural realism (Kenneth, Nuclear Myths and Political
Realities, American Political Science Review, September 1990, Vol. 84 No. 3) //BZ
Uneasiness over nuclear weapons and the search for alternative means of security stem in large
measure from widespread failure to understand the nature and requirements of deterrence. Not
unexpectedly, the language of strategic discourse has deteriorated over the decades. This happens whenever
discussion enters the political arena, where words take on meanings and colorations reflecting the preferences of their users. Early
in the nuclear era deterrence carried its dictionary definition, dissuading someone from an
action by frightening that person with the consequences of the action. To deter an adversary
from attacking one need have only a force that can survive a first strike and strike
back hard enough to outweigh any gain the aggressor had hoped to realize.
Deterrence in its pure form entails no ability to defend;a deterrents trategy promises not to fend off an
aggressor but to damage or destroy things the aggressor holds dear. Both defense land deterrence are
strategies that a status quo country may follow, hoping to dissuade a state from attacking. They are different strategies designed to
accomplish a common end in different ways, using different weapons differently weapons differently deployed. Wars can be
prevented, as they can be caused, in various ways. Deterrence antedates nuclear weapons, but in
a conventional world deterrent threats are problematic. Stanley Baldwin warned in the middle
1930s when he was prime minister of England that the bomber would always get through, a
thought that helped to demoralize England. It proved seriously misleading in the war that soon
followed. Bombers have to make their way past fighter planes and through ground fire before
finding their targets and hitting them quite squarely. Nuclear weapons purify deterrent
strategies by removing elements of defense and war-fighting. Nuclear warheads
eliminate the necessity of fighting and remove the possibility of defending,
because only a small number of warheads need to reach their targests. Ironically, as
multiplication of missiles increased the ease with which destructive blows can be delivered, the
distinction between deterrence and defense began to blur. Early in President Kennedy's administration,
Secretary McNamara began to promote a strategy of Flexible Response, which was halfheartedly adopted by NATO in 1967. Flexible
Response calls for the ability to meet threats at all levels from irregular warfare to conventional warfare to nuclear warfare. In the
1970s and 1980s more and more emphasis was placed on the need to fight and defend at all levels in order to "deter."T he melding of
defense, war-fighting, and deterrence overlooks a simple truth about nuclear weapons proclaimed in the book title The Absolute
Weapon (Brodie 1946). Nuclear weapons can carry out their deterrent task no matter what
other countries do. If one nuclear power were able to destroy almost all of another's strategic
warheads with practical certainty or defend against all but a few strategic warheads coming in,
nuclear weapons would not be absolute. But because so much explosive power comes in such small packages, the
invulnerability of a sufficient number of warheads is easy to achieve and the delivery of fairly
large numbers of warheads impossible to thwart, both now and as far into the future as anyone can see. The
absolute quality of nuclear weapons sharply sets a nuclear world off from a
conventional one.

First-strike capabilities deter global conflicts
2006, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 7-44,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)
The debates over nuclear forces during the Cold War suggest that a consensus on the foreign
policy implications of U.S. nuclear primacy will remain elusive. Hawks will welcome the new
era of nuclear primacy, believing that Americas dominance in both conventional and
nuclear weapons will help deter potential adversaries from challenging the United
States or its allies. For example, China may be deterred from attacking Taiwan if Chinese
leaders understand that their small nuclear force is unlikely to prevent the United States from
coming to Taiwan's defense-and if they fear that during a crisis or war the United States may be
tempted to attack their vulnerable arsenal. Hawks will expect Chinese leaders to reconsider the
wisdom of making thinly veiled nuclear threats against the United States.

No opportunity cost to war and conventional weapons deter incentive
Although, initially, these developments did not serve as a deterrent to major war, as time progressed, the physical
costs associated with such total wars became evident, culminating in the catastrophic World
Wars of the twentieth century. These wars, which saw the great powers mobilize their entire
economies to devastate one another, far exceeded those of the past in terms of destructiveness
and scale.42 The loss of life tied to these wars was significant, with ten million people dying fighting during
World War I and another fifty million during World War II, though, in the case of the latter, more than half of those who perished
were civilians.43 Although these numbers do not necessarily indicate that the World Wars killed a
larger proportion of these societies populations than previous conflicts, insofar as life
expectancy and quality of life had improved, the opportunity cost associated with these
casualties was higher.44 Moreover, the costs of these wars were not limited to casualties. Beyond these high death tolls,
those states that saw the wars play out on their home soil witnessed the destruction of a large amount of their infrastructure and
tangible capital stocks.45 The diversion of their economies to the pursuit of war also resulted in most states losing years of domestic
economic growth.46 Overall, the damage wrought by the First and Second World Wars, and the
memory of such, would seem to restrain any great power leader from undertaking aggression.
Although the Second World War witnessed the use of nuclear weapons, it is arguable that conventional weapons would
have been sufficient to deter the great powers from engaging in future wars with one another.
That is, as argued by John Mueller, while certainly devastating, the destruction wrought by conventional
weapons during these wars implies that, even if nuclear weapons had never been created, the
great powers would still be averse to warring with one another.47 As indicated above, it would seem that
many of the great powers had been sufficiently sobered by the atrocities of the First World War and would not have engaged in the
Second if it were not for Hitlers aggressive behaviour. To believe that they would then engage in a Third, even
without the presence of nuclear weapons, thus appears questionable. Ultimately, nuclear weapons
may have increased the destructive potential of major war, but this need not imply that the
destruction before was not sufficient for deterrence to occur. As

Democracy

Democracies wont go to war high national defense, unpopular, and dangerous
to political careers
Kant's essential insight into the relationship between regime type and war was that the greater
political accountability of democratic leaders to the citizens who bear the burdens
of war should compel these leaders to be highly sensitive to war's costs. National
defense, like public roads and clean drinking water, is a classic public good. Democracies tend to
provide public goods to their populations at much higher levels than do nondemocracies
because achieving and maintaining office in a democracy requires leaders to win the support of
large numbers of citizens as part of their winning coalition (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999, 2003). Few things
could be more damaging to a democratic politician's career than the widespread
belief that he had failed to protect his country from attack or needlessly sent large
numbers of citizens to their deaths. Indeed, studies of American public opinion have shown
consistently that the popularity of wars and wartime presidents tend to decline as a function of
battle deaths (e.g., Gartner 2008; Gartner and Segura 1998; Larson 1996; Mueller 1973; but see Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler
2005/2006). Other studies have found that democratic leaders who embroil their countries in
costly or losing wars are more likely to be removed from office (Bueno de Mesquita and
Siverson 1995; Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, and Woller 1992; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; but also see Goermans and Chiozza
2004). The check provided by democratic institutions, therefore, ensures that most democratic leaders will be highly
sensitive to the costs of war. In nondemocracies, on the other hand, leaders owe their position in office to a much smaller,
and usually less-representative winning coalition. Non- democratic leaders have an incentive to sustain the
political support of this group through the provision of private, as opposed to public goods (Bueno
de Mesquita et al. 1999, 2003) even if the population at large has to pay a high price for the provision of
these goods. As a result, in times of war leaders of nondemocracies might favor military policies that
impose high costs on citizens who are not part of the winning political coalition in pursuit of
wartime objectives that will benefit their inner circles. For example, nondemocracies might be more likely to
adopt military strategies and tactics such as attrition or "human wave" attacks that may be costly in lives in an attempt to secure
control over territory and extract rents from its natural resource wealth.

War between democracies is unlikely
Scholarly attention has focused in recent years on the "democratic peace," the observation that
liberal polities rarely fight each other5 though appearing about as likely to engage in
disputes generally.6 Democracies behave differently toward each other than toward
nondemocracies.7 Researchers initially sought to verify the statistical observation, but work increasingly focuses on
augmenting theoretical bases for the democratic peace. A strong strain in the literature argues that domestic political
factors explain the relative absence of military violence among liberal states. States sharing
republican norms may be more willing to bargain, compromise, and fulfill contracts than states
without these norms.8 Alternately, democratic institutions may constrain leaders from
using force against leaders who are likewise constrained.9 Still others contend that in democracies
domestic audiences or opposition groups force the revelation of private information responsible for costly contests, averting war.10

Democracy prevents war institutional stabilizing
Democracies tend not to go to war, at least not with one another. While the association of
democratic political systems with peaceful international conduct may not rise to the level of a
Newtonian law of history, neither can the post- l945 absence of armed conflict between and
among democracies reasonably be classified as completely coincidental, or due entirely to the
exigencies of the periods geopolitics. The correlation is not wholly spurious." Democracy
presents institutional obstacles to war by empowering the part of society that, in
the twentieth century, pays the highest price for conflict: the public. It mandates the
open conduct of public business, making surprise attacks more difficult to launch. It often
establishes a division of power among different bodies, making any decision, including
a decision for war, time- consuming. Standard features of democratic government - elections,
transparency and the separation of powers - make the infernal machine of war difficult to
operate. The democratic version of that machine is noisy, it has many moving parts, and the
parts themselves can rebel against the operators. Democracy has, moreover, a cultural
affinity with peace: the standard procedures of compromise, accommodation and the
peaceful resolution of disputes within the borders of a democracy, when extended to relations
with other sovereign states, reduce the chance of armed conflict. Democratic politics contribute
to warlessness in yet another way. They help to weaken the effects of, although they do not
eliminate, the one cause of war that has survived the twentieth century intact, the cause that
stands, in the eyes of some, as the chief obstacle to universal debellicisation: the structure of
international politics.

Liberal democracies prevent war non-violence and common identities
The spread of liberal democracy, referring to a form of democracy that embraces a market
economy, juridical rights for citizens, and a government based on universal suffrage, is another
factor often deemed to account for the obsolescence of major war, with many scholars noting that
democratic states almost never war against one another.64 This generalization, which is referred to as the democratic peace,
has not yet been refuted by history, and while it could be argued that it is merely a coincidence, democracies having only
existed for a short amount of time, it seems unlikely that this is the case.65 As it stands, almost all of the
great powers of the international system are democratic, with China being the only exception. Thus, if the democratic peace
theory continues to hold with time, this could be another way to account for the obsolescence of
major war. To be sure, there are a number of possible reasons that liberal democracies may be averse to going to war with one
another and why the spread of this political system has contributed to the thesis at hand. For one, as simplistic as it may seem,
there would seem to be a set of common identities and values that pervade these societies which
may make them wary of fighting one another. According to Michael Doyle, liberal democracies typically
subscribe to the basic notion that states have the right to be free from foreign intervention.66
They have a mutual respect for one another as citizens of the world who are all deserving of the
same rights. Liberal democratic societies are also characterized by norms of non-violence and,
domestically, tend to avoid resorting to large-scale violence due to institutional structures for
redress. As a result, it is arguable that two liberal democratic societies embracing this kind of political culture will take a
similar non-violent approach when interacting with one another, choosing to use diplomatic
means to solve disputes.67 Moreover, closely tied to the idea of liberal democracy is the idea of secularism.
Insofar as religious beliefs triggered many wars of the past, the official separation of church and
state would seem to remove a strong motivator for violence from these states existing arsenal.68
ILaw/IOs

International organizations prevent escalation through peaceful outlets for
deliberation and pressure Suez crisis and North Korea prove
Chiba and Fang 14 Lecturer at the Department of Government at the University of Essex, and
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rice University (Daina and Songying, Institutional
Opposition, Regime Accountability, and International Conflict, The Journal of Politics, July
2014, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 798-813)//BZ
Prominent security organizations are created with the explicit purpose of
deterring and punishing aggression. Article 1 of the UN Charter states that the purpose of
the organization is to maintain international peace and security. Furthermore, UN Chapter VI
states that an attack on one country is considered an attack on all. Similar goals and sentiment
are expressed in the charters of regional security organizations, such as the Organization of
African Unity (OAU) and Organization of American States (OAS). Many actors may consider
appealing to the UN or a regional organization to ease the tension when a military
conflict erupts. Not only could the countries involved in the conflict do so themselves, but
other members of an IO, particularly the allies or adversaries of the parties, could also take the
initiative. Moreover, in the case of the UN, the Secretary-General has the mandate to draw the
attention of the Security Council to any matter which in her opinion may threaten international
peace and security. When such an appeal does reach the floor of an IO, deliberation and position
taking are likely to ensue. What could be achieved by such activities, and how could it be
achieved? We argue that the process of institutional deliberation and eventual position taking
can transmit important information to the domestic audiences of a country that initiated a
military crisis. Thompson (2009, 211) argues that the primary role of the UN in international
affairs is to provide politically relevant information, rather than changing countries behavior
directly through sanctions. The same is likely to be true for regional security organizations as
they have even fewer resources and mandate from their member states than the UN. The nature
of the information can vary depending on the identity of the receiver. A domestic public would
want a leader who can bring good policy outcomes. Such outcomes would require that a leader
be competent in choosing a policy that is likely to succeed and be forthcoming about her policy
intentions. In particulsar, leaders can have different policy preferences than their publics; thus it
is important for domestic audiences to discern whether a policy choice reflects a leaders private
interest or the public interest, in addition to their usual concern about a leaders competence.
The information from IOs during a military crisis can help the public assess both its leaders
competence and her policy intentions. First, deliberation and position taking by an IO during a
crisis can reveal international support or opposition of a foreign policy, which may not be
expected by the leaders and the public of the country pursuing the policy. During the Suez Crisis
in 1956, which broke out when President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, Britain
and France took the initiative to call a meeting of the Security Council before they took military
actions against Egypt. They felt that certain ritual motions must be gone through. That is, the
two countries intended to go through the UN to provide a cover for their military actions and
satisfy domestic pressure (Bailey 1990, 126; Kingseed 1995, 76). But the unfolding of the events
surprised them. Although they were able to block an unfavorable resolution at the Security
Council, the issue nevertheless ended up at an emergency session in the General Assembly and
resulted in a resolution that demanded an immediate cease-fire of the Western allies (Bailey
1982b, 579, 612). The resolution put Britain and France in an awkward position in justifying
their policy in front of both domestic and international audiences. Second, the deliberation
that leads to the final decision of an IO can reveal the intensity of international
support or opposition, particularly of those who are the allies of the countries involved. The
allies of a dispute initiator may need to bring an issue to an international body to credibly
convey its opposition to the action to a world audience. British and French leaders were
surprised by the level of intensity with which the United States opposed their use of force
through UN deliberation during the Suez Crisis (Bailey 1982b, 612). The prior efforts by the
United States to try to resolve the crisis peacefully, including two conferences in London, did not
convince them that Eisenhower was serious in his position against military actions by his most
important Western allies. In fact, they thought that once they began fighting, the United States
would have no choice but to support them (Nichols 2011, 284). Instead, the United States
showed its resolve by taking the issue to the UN General Assembly when Britain and France
vetoed a resolution in the Security Council. Eisenhower had to go through the UN to reveal his
intentions and resolve credibly to Britain and France, as well as to other international actors. 2
Nassar confessed that he had previously believed that the British and French would not embark
on a policy that had not been cleared with Eisenhower; after the UN General Assembly
resolution, he expressed his appreciation for the U.S. effort and conceded to a U.S.
representative that he had been wrong (Nichols 2011, 228). More recently, in a similar effort to
demonstrate Chinas resolve to break with its longtime ally on nuclear issues, the Chinese
government joined the United States in sponsoring a UN resolution condemning North Koreas
nuclear test. It is an unusual step taken by China to make its policy position credible to the
North Korean leaders, who reacted with surprise and anger. In both cases, the IO served an
informational role that cannot be replaced by bilateral diplomacy. Such revelation
has implications for the success of a policy and thus informs domestic audiences of their leaders
competence if they can receive the information. While an IO may not have enforcement power
by itself, its decision opens the door for member states to exert diplomatic or
economic pressure to help ensure that the decision be carried out and coordinate
their actions in doing so. After the UN General Assembly resolution during the Suez Crisis,
private-market actors and the U.S. government helped initiate a run on the pound that put
tremendous strain on Britains economy and thus its ability to finance its military actions. When
no such means are available from member states to enforce an IO decision, public debate in the
IO can still serve as a demonstration of disapproval, as a form of pressure, or simply to place on
record what the sponsor regards as normative international behavior (Bailey 1982a, 132). On
the other hand, even if a military action is successful, lacking international support of the
policy would mean that changes brought about by the success are difficult to
sustain, because there are parties that actively seek to undermine them. Third, the deliberation
in an IO and the position taking by IO members can reveal new information concerning the true
policy intentions of a leader, which may not be in line with those of the public. During the UN
deliberation on the crisis, Britain put out a number of versions as to why it took military actions.
At first, it argued that the ultimatum that the two Western allies sent to Egypt and Israel (with
whom they conspired) was to end the initial fighting between Egypt and Israel and to protect the
Suez Canal. After their own military actions began on October 31, 1956, the British
representative to the UN, Pierson Dixon, argued that the military intervention was to prevent
the spread of conflict (Bailey 1982b, 600). Finally, on November 6, when virtually the whole of
the UN was against the Tripartite Aggression, the justification was that the British actions were
self-defense (Bailey 1982b, 612). The retreat in justifications reflected that the then British
Prime minister, Anthony Eden, did not expect that the British public would support his military
actions if they were informed of his true policy intention, which was to take back the control of
the Canal. 3 Prior to the military actions, he kept in the dark even some of the key Cabinet
members he felt would oppose his plan (Kingseed 1995, 84).

International organizations stop conflicts despite regime type and stage of
escalation even if they cant directly stop them, only IOs can coordinate
international efforts to respond
Chiba and Fang 14 Lecturer at the Department of Government at the University of Essex, and
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rice University (Daina and Songying, Institutional
Opposition, Regime Accountability, and International Conflict, The Journal of Politics, July
2014, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 798-813)//BZ
The question of whether IOs hold promise for reducing interstate conflict continues to attract
attention in international relations research, with the answer having enormous policy
implications. Policy makers increasingly turn to IOs to mitigate tensions in the
world at a time when unilateralism is seen to be both ineffective and unpopular.
The existing empirical evidence suggests that IOs play a preventive role in interstate conflict.
What we ask in this study is a complementary question: can IOs have a pacifying effect when a
military crisis is already underway and is poised to escalate? Our analysis suggests that the
answer is positive, conditional on the degree of regime accountability. It is important to note
that either one of the two factors in the causal mechanism alone is not sufficient to bring about
the effect: without an IOs involvement and opposition, a public may not be able to develop a
well-informed opinion on which to anchor their pressure on the government, while an IOs
opposition itself lacks an enforcement mechanism. Territorial disputes provide a hard test for
our theory, and the fact that we find evidence of IOs reversing the course of military crises on
such issues increases our confidence that our theory has broad policy relevance. First, domestic
politics provides a source of enforcement for IOs, and therefore, even if an IO does not have the
means to enforce its decisions directly, taking a stance against the escalation of a crisis may still
be meaningful. Second, because the strength of domestic enforcement varies by regime
accountability, IOs can apply external punishment (e.g., economic sanctions) with different
degrees of severity, in addition to publicizing the offense committed by a government. More
specifically, the international community should generally apply more severe external
punishment to a less accountable regime to change its policy. It is no accident that in recent
history severe sanctions have been imposed on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to change the
course of their nuclear programs; UN opposition alone has had little effect. One could argue that
the interim nuclear deal reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UNSC in
November 2013 was brought about by long-term UN sanctions. These cases suggest that the
enforcement capability of IOs is still essential for the set of countries whose domestic publics
have little means to constrain their leaders. On the other hand, strategies that can generate
domestic pressure, such as persistent public condemnation by an IO, can be more cost
efficient in forcing an accountable regime to back down from an aggressive policy.
For such a strategy to succeed, domestic audiences must have access to media reports of IO
position taking as well as the means to hold their leaders accountable. While these conditions
are often associated with democracies, recent development in digital communications opens up
the possibility that they are also present in an authoritarian regime. With the speed with which
news stories spread on the Internet, for example, an authoritarian regime such as China, where
there are 560 million Internet users, can be under increasing public pressure in all aspects of its
public policy, including foreign policy. The technological advancement not only makes
international news much more accessible to a public, it also reduces the barriers for a large
number of individuals to coordinate their opposition to a governments policy. It is likely, then,
the traditional institutional divide between democracies and nondemocracies becomes less
important an indicator for regime accountability, and the finding of our study is applicable to a
broader range of regime types.

Organizations prevent armed conflict cooperation with regional efforts bolster
timing
Othman et al. 13 Laboratory of Citizenship & Leadership, Institute for Social Science Studies
at University Putra Malaysia (Jamilah, International Actors for Armed Conflict Prevention: A
Conceptual Exploration, Asian Social Science, 8/21/13, Vol. 9, No. 15,
http://dx.doi.org/ass.v9n15p199 )//BZ
The international society is increasingly interested in importance of' armed conflict prevention
in order to avoid or minimize unnecessary damage (Ackermann, 2003). Indeed, many
international agents such as the UN, NGOs, and regional organizations maintain
efforts and play a major role in field armed conflict prevention. However, there have
been several cases that these preventive efforts and actions fail to prevent the outbreak of"
armed conflict or unintentionally yield even negative outcomes. Hence, increasing effectiveness
of' preventive strategy is one of major issues in conflict prevention. As explored in this article,
regional organizations increase the effectiveness of preventative strategy. Although the UN is
strong agent for prevention, regional organizations have more strength in timing of action,
country context-specific, and coordination of multilateral actions and strategies. Of course,
compared with the UN, regional organizations have limitation in capability conducting various
strategies and actions and sufficient resources, it can be simply overcame by requesting help.
Other international preventive agents such as NGOs, educational institutions, and the media are
also important, but have limitation in taking initiative due to lack of political leadership.
Therefore, to enhance the effectiveness of preventive strategy, regional organization should take
initiative, interacting with other international preventive agents and incorporating their actions.
Wedgwood (1996) also emphasized live advantages of regional organizations in conflict
management: rapid action; facilitating to build confidence; avoiding to raising unnecessary
tensions; preventing misperception among conflict parties; and minimizing mistakes such as
condescension or colonialism.

Treaties prevent war mutually assured destruction provides the greatest
deterrent
Two things may be said about the realist outlook. First, its premises are accurate. Anarchy
remains the defining precept of international relations. Political independence is a condition of
conflict and there is much more of it now than there was 100 years ago. Far from creating a
global Leviathan capable of smothering all war-like impulses, the twentieth century has seen a
quadrupling of the number of independent countries since 1945. Second, in the final decade of
this century, a political innovation has appeared that reduces, although it does not eliminate, the
insecurity that anarchy produces. That innovation is a system of regulating armaments in
Europe, a system that generates the antidote to insecurity: confidence." Armaments are both a
cause and a consequence of the insecurity that anarchy creates for all sovereign states. Because
they feel insecure, states equip themselves with weapons that in turn make others feel insecure.
Even with the purest of benign intentions, no country would be willing to do without any means
of self-defence. Total disarmament is thus not possible. But a series of treaties signed at
the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War p eriod regulate both nuclear
and non-nuclear arms in ways designed to engender confidence throughout Europe that no
country harbours aggressive intentions towards any other signatory?'-1 Two features of these
treaties convey reassurance. First, the treaties make military forces more suitable for
defence than for attack. For nuclear weapons, concentrated in the hands of two countries,
the US and Russia, this involves, ironically, ratifying the unchallengeable supremacy of the
offence. When the assured capacity to destroy the other side is mutual, it serves as a
deterrent against attack. The 1995 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty
reconfigures military forces on the continent according to the principle of 'defence dominance'
by mandating numerical equality and reducing the size of the forces - numerical advantage
ordinarily being required for a successful attack - and by limiting the types of weapons on which
an attacking force would rely. The second confidence-inspiring feature of the European arms
agreements is transparency. Every country in Europe knows which armaments the others have
and what each is doing with them. (Limits are set on the scope and frequency of military
exercises lest they be used to camouflage actual attacks.) Satellite photography and on-site
inspections have turned Europe, where armed forces are concerned, into a larger version of a
department store continuously and comprehensively monitored by video cameras to prevent
shoplifting.

Hegemony

Military intervention good prevents escalation of conflicts
Mueller's analysis reveals inadequacies at three different levels. The inadequacies detract least from the author's central argument at
the first level, which characterizes the chapters summarized immediately above. These chapters present a curious and inconsistent
mixture of Mueller's central thesis with a more conventional, neo-realist analysis of events. The fears of the advocates of
containment and the consequent military responses in Korea and Vietnam were, Mueller argues, not
all unreasonable at the time (p. 213); thus U.S. intervention in Vietnam may well have
prevented a third world war, by stimulating a premature Chinese attempt at a coup in
Indonesia. If delayed, the coup attempt might well have succeeded, emboldening Khrushchev
and Mao to further use of force and accordingly creating a panic reaction in the United States
leading to major war.

Hegemony is key to maintaining peace US dominance solves obsolete war
However, having said this, it is important to note that, in and of itself, the extended absence of
major war is a necessary, but not a sufficient, criterion for the obsolescence of major war. In fact,
it is arguable that the current absence is not an indication of the institutions obsolescence, but
simply a temporary period of peace within the broader cycle of major war, a cycle linked to the
rise and fall of world orders.14 On this view, international stability is tied to the presence of a
hegemon that is capable of maintaining order in an anarchic international system due to its
economic and military supremacy.15 When such hegemony is challenged by a rising power, this
theory asserts that major war is likely to break out as power becomes more equally distributed
and the control maintained by the hegemon is lost.16 Thus, just as the hegemonic presence of
Great Britain ushered in a period of peace during the nineteenth century, it would seem that the
prolonged peace we are currently witnessing may be attributable to the dominance of the United
States in the contemporary international system, a dominance that remains open to challenge,
particularly by rising powers like China and India. In this sense, instead of indicating its
obsolescence, the current absence of major war may simply be a temporary manifestation of
American hegemony that will inevitably be challenged and lost in the future, thus continuing the
cycle of major war.17

Indirect competition between great powers is inevitable moving towards non-
militaristic systems
The significance of the current absence of major war cannot be stressed enough. And yet, while
significant, it is important to note that the years following the Second World War have not been
marked by absolute peace, not even for the great powers. Shortly after the conclusion of the
Second World War, the Cold War broke out, a contest between the Soviet Union and the United States that would
define the next few decades of history. Although most of the wars fought during this period took place in
the Global South, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their respective allies often
participated in these battles, providing logistical support or even their own military forces. These
proxy wars, wherein powerful countries utilized civil conflicts in the developing world to carry out their aggressions and extend
their influence, resulted in indirect engagement among great power forces.21 Thus, although the last half
century or so has not witnessed a major war in the proper sense, the great powers have engaged in indirect battles
against one another. In the post-Cold War period, proxy wars are no longer a well exercised
avenue for great power aggressions, and, as indicated above, in recent years, even the United
States and the Soviet Union have undergone notable reductions in the size of their armed forces
and the amount of weaponry at their disposal. Yet, in spite of this, many great powers continue to
prepare for and engage in war. What is noteworthy, however, is that the wars in which great powers are
currently involved seem to fundamentally differ from those of the past. No longer do such wars seem to be
primarily about expanding territory or influence, nor are they fought between great powers. Rather, these wars now seem
to be generally motivated by humanitarian concerns, taking the form of collective operations
sanctioned by multilateral institutions that aim to ensure the stability of developing countries
wrought by violence.22 The North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) efforts in Kosovo in
1999 and, more recently, in Afghanistan would seem indicative of such forms of intervention,
with many great powers working together to protect human rights and promote human security
worldwide. To be sure, such protection is more necessary now than ever before as less conventional
forms of violence, such as terrorism, have begun to flourish.23 Ultimately, although the great powers are still
engaged in war, such aggressions are no longer targeted at one another, nor do they appear to be
aggressions in the proper sense. It would seem that their engagement in battle has undergone an evolution away from
major war to humanitarian interventions, an evolution that can be tied to the shifting perceptions of war among populations in the
developed world.Indeed, beyond analyses as to the frequency of major war, further support for the obsolescence of
this institution can be found in a shift towards a non-militaristic political psychology.24 Evidenced
not only by the reductions in military preparedness worldwide, but also by cultural and political trends, this shift would
seem to be cementing in the developed world, particularly among the great powers whose
behaviour is our primary concern.

AT: Diversionary Theory

Internal pressures dont cause external conflict multiple options means
diversionary wars arent the most probable
Although high levels of domestic unrest seem to heighten embattled rulers compulsion to act
and their propensity to accept policy risks, one cannot rely solely on the magnitude of domestic
unrest to make accurate predictions regarding whether states will initiate a diversionary conflict.
Internal upheaval may be necessary for diversionary war, but it is clearly not sufficient because
internal instability does not invariably result in war. In response to domestic turmoil,
leaders typically want to do something, and they can choose from a number of alternatives.
Why, then, do leaders select one option from their menu of policies rather than another. The
existing literature follows an apparently logical approach in considering the question of
diversionary conict by examining the relationship between domestic factors, such as unrest
and the use of force. If we take a step back, we discover that this traditional approach might be
overly narrow. We need to consider the problem from the decision-makers perspective.
Governments can respond to domestic unrest in a variety of ways, which is to say they have a
menu of options, including (1) co-opting the opposition through reform, (2) repressing
the opposition by adopting restrictive legislation or through internal policing, or (3)
initiating a diversionary conict.7 Thus, instead of the question, does domestic unrest tend to
precipitate international conict? we might ask, under what conditions do leaders choose
diversionary conict from the menu of at least theoretically available policy options? As Gordon
Craig succinctly states, The duty of the historian is to restore to the past the options it once
had.8 Ignoring the reality that governments choose from a range of policies may mask
signicant relationships between internal and external conict.9

Diversionary wars dont work high risk, short-term, alternative policies solve
But this view is probably wrong. There are convincing reasons to expect low extractive capacity
states to initiate conflicts in response to domestic unrest. Waging a war or provoking an
international crisis under any conditions is a risky strategy. Rulers who initiate an
international conflict in the hope of generating social cohesion often seem to foolishly ignore the
lessons of history. Even when these military ventures succeed, the hoped for rally- around-the-
flag effect, when it arises, is generally short-lived." If the war drags on and requires greater than
anticipated sacrifices, the mobilization process will aggravate the social fragmentation it was
waged to ease. The Italian government, for example, entered World War I in part to reduce
internal divisions, but the longer-than-anticipated war inflamed opposition to the state. And this
war Italy won." If a diversionary war ends in defeat, the end of the regime is often at hand. The
use of diversionary force is also a relatively poor strategy for dealing with unrest
because, unlike repression or reform, it fails to tackle the root problem-a
dissatisfied population. Any amelioration in unrest '5 dependent on the continuing
diversion of the public, a situation that could end at any time. The problem with offering
circuses without bread is that the population is still hungry after the performance ends.
Consequently, Arthur Stein warns that "political leaders who count on foreign adventures to
unify their countries and cement their positions should think again.

Diversionary war is net-negative for positions of power and economic
performance is just a drop in the bucket uniquely true for democracies
Chiozza and Goemans 4 Assistant Professor Vanderbilt University and Associate Professor at
University of Rochester (Giacomo and Hein, International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders:
Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?, American Journal of Political Science, July 2004, Vol. 48.
No. 3, pp. 604-619,
nfirm=true)//BZ
The first thing to notice in Table 3 is the magnitude of the impact of domestic political
institution on leaders' survival probabilities. Regardless of the status of the economy, and
regardless of their performance in the international arena, Autocratic leaders enjoy a level of
security in office that is not matched by any other types of leaders. Authoritarian leaders have
about a 73% chance of surviving in office one year or more, about a 55% probability of surviving
at least 3 years, and a 22.5% probability of staying in power at least 10 years. Leaders of Mixed
regimes and of Democracies cannot count on such long horizons: for them, the
chances of staying in power at least one year range from about 7.8% to 15.5%. The probability of
surviving five years or more drops to even smaller percentages. These probabilities are only
marginally affected by economic conditions. Regardless whether the economy expands or
contracts, leaders' chances of remaining in of? fice change by no more than a few percentage
points. Even an impressive economic boom in four consecutive years produces only minor
tenure benefits. But if good economic performance is not substantially re- warded, neither is bad
economic performance harshly punished. Let us consider democratic leaders (parliamentary
and presidential, respectively), that is, leaders who supposedly should be under the constant
threat of domestic adversaries ready to criticize their record. A leader of a parliamentary
(presidential) democracy who can boast of a good economy has about a 10.6% (16.7%) chance of
remaining if office one year or more, a 2.7% (7.2%) chance of surviving three years or more, and
a .7% (3.3%) chance of surviving in office for five years or more. But if the economy is in a
recession, those probabilities drop to 8.9% (14.5%), 1.9% (5.7%), and .4% (2.4%). Thus, a poor
economic performance hardly spells doom even for democratic leaders.
International conflict has a much more pronounced effect. In the scenario we analyze,
a leader is involved in a crisis or a war as challenger for his entire first year in office, and
remains at peace thereafter. This simplified situation allows us to bring to the fore how the
combination of the two dimensions of conflict participation and outcomes affects the political
careers of leaders. First, conflict involvement as a challenger substantially increases the
probability of surviving at least one year in office for all types of leaders. Second, once the
conflict is over, outcomes have their impact. Losing substantially increases the risk of removal
compared to winning or drawing, for all types of leaders and at both levels of conflict intensity.

AT: Resource Wars

No resource wars empirics prove cooperations more likely
Koubi et al. 14 Senior Scientist and Professor at the Center for Comparative and International
Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and professor at the Institute of
Economics at the University of Bern (Valley, Do natural resources matter for interstate and
intrastate armed conflict?, Journal of Peace Research, March 2014, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 227-
243,)//BZ
Much of the existing empirical work on the resource scarcityconflict nexus relies on qualitative
studies of specific countries or regions (e.g. Homer-Dixon, 1994, 1999; Percival & Homer-Dixon,
1998; Bchler et al., 1996; Kahl, 2008; Brown, 2010). This research identifies various cases in
which resource scarcity seems to have contributed to violent conflict, mostly at local or national
levels. However, social, economic, and political conditions, which may also affect conflict
besides resource scarcity, vary considerably between different types of resources as well as areas
of the world. Case studies of specific countries or regions can hardly account for these different
conditions, and it is therefore difficult to generalize their results. Hence, we concentrate on the
recent large-N research in the remainder of this section, and structure the discussion according
to conflict types, that is, interstate vs. intrastate conflict and the kind of resource under study.
First, with regard to interstate conflict, extant quantitative work almost exclusively focuses on
one specific type of renewable resource, namely water. Empirical analyses in this context
suggest that states tend to cooperate rather than fight over shared water resources
(Dinar et al., 2007; Brochmann, 2012) and that institutionalized agreements can reduce
dispute risk (Zawahri & Mitchell, 2011; Tir & Stinnett, 2012). The theoretical underpinning of
much of this research is that joint democracy and/or international water management
institutions facilitate cooperative solutions to water problems even in situations of scarcity.
Furthermore, side-payments, issue linkages, or economic and political ties between countries
also prevent interstate conflict over water. While scholars do not fully rule out conflict over
scarce water resources, they find that if conflict materializes then it occurs in the form of
disputes and political tensions, but not in the form of armed hostilities or even water wars (e.g.
Gledisch & Hegre, 2000; Gleditsch et al., 2006; Hensel, Mitchell & Sowers, 2006; Brochmann &
Hensel, 2009; Dinar, 2009). Second, with regard to intrastate conflict, quantitative studies
examining the effects of resource scarcity have generated a wide range of empirical findings,
which, however, do not allow for a clearcut conclusion. For example, Hauge & Ellingsen (1998)
find that land degradation, freshwater scarcity, and deforestation all have positive and
significant effects on the incidence of armed conflict (see also Raleigh & Urdal, 2007; Gizelis &
Wooden, 2010). Theisen (2008), however, shows more convincingly than Hauge & Ellingsen
(1998) that only very high levels of land degradation increase civil conflict risk, while water
scarcity has no effect at all. In contrast, Hendrix & Glaser (2007) report that land degradation
has no impact, whereas more water per capita actually increases the risk of civil conflict in sub-
Saharan Africa. Urdal (2005, 2008) finds that a combination of land scarcity and high rates of
population growth increases the risk of civil conflict to some extent, and that scarcity of
agriculturally productive land is positively correlated with civil conflict when agricultural wages
decline. stby et al. (2011) do not obtain evidence for an effect of land pressure on violence in
Indonesian provinces. Similarly, Theisen (2012) does not find that land pressure affects civil
conflict in Kenya. Finally, Meier, Bond & Bond (2007) report that increased vegetation rather
than scarcity is positively associated with the incidence of organized raids. In sum, this lack of
robust statistical evidence supporting the scarcity argument led Theisen (2008: 810) to conclude
that scarcity of natural resources has limited explanatory power in terms of civil
violence . We tend to share this assessment and Table I gives an overview of the different
studies discussed in the previous paragraphs. As demonstrated there, quantitative research on
the link between renewable resources and conflict does not provide robust evidence for the
claim that resource scarcity leads to intra- or interstate conflict. Some large-N findings even
strongly contradict common findings of earlier qualitative case studies. Essentially, these results
point to a more complex relationship between resource scarcity and conflict than most resource
scarcity theorists currently envision.

No Extinction

No existential threat any consequence of nuclear war wont cause extinction
prefer predictive evidence
Martin, 82 (Brian, Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Critique of
nuclear extinction, Journal of Peace Research, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82jpr.html#fn7,
1982, gf)//BZ
Global fallout. The main effect of long-term fallout would be to increase the rate of cancer and
genetic defects by a small percentage. Tens of millions might be affected worldwide over a
period of many decades, but this would provide no threat to the survival of the human species.[6]
(b) Ozone. Nuclear war would cause an increase in ultraviolet light from the sun which reaches the
earth's surface, due to reductions in stratospheric ozone caused by its catalytic destruction by
nitrogen oxides produced in nuclear explosions. This would increase the incidence of skin
cancer (which is mostly non-lethal) and possibly alter agricultural productivity, but would be most
unlikely to cause widespread death.[7] (c) Fires. Extensive fires caused directly or indirectly by nuclear explosions
would fill the lower atmosphere in the northern hemisphere with so much particulate matter that the amount of sunlight reaching
the earth's surface could be greatly reduced for a few months. If this occurred during the northern spring or summer, one
consequence would be greatly reduced agricultural production and possible widescale starvation.[8] (d) Climatic changes.
Such changes might be caused, for example, by injection of nitrogen oxides or particulate matter
into the upper atmosphere. The more calamitous possibilities include a heating trend leading to
melting of the polar ice caps, the converse possibility of a new ice age, and the changing of
climatic patterns leading to drought or unstable weather in areas of current high agricultural
productivity.[9] The rate of impact of such climatic change is likely to be sufficiently slow - decades, or
years in some cases - for the avoidance of the death of a substantial portion of the world's
population through climatic change. (e) Agricultural or economic breakdown. A major possible source of
widespread death could be the failure of agricultural or economic recovery in heavily bombed
areas, followed by starvation or social breakdown. Agricultural failure could occur due to
reduced sunlight due to fires or to induced changes in weather. An agricultural or economic
collapse would also increase the likelihood of epidemics. If agricultural or economic breakdown
followed by widespread starvation or epidemics occurred in heavily bombed areas, and no
effective rescue operations were mounted by less damaged neighbouring areas, then it is
conceivable that many tens or even several hundred million more people could die, mainly in
the US, Soviet Union and Europe.[10] (f) Synergistic and unpredicted effects. The interaction of different effects, such
as weakened resistance to disease due to high radiation exposure or to shortages of food, could well increase the death toll
significantly. These consequences would mostly be confined to heavily bombed areas. Finally, there is the possibility of effects
currently dismissed or not predicted leading to many more deaths from nuclear war.[11] To summarise the above points, a major
global nuclear war in which population centres in the US, Soviet Union, Europe and China ware
targeted, with no effective civil defence measures taken, could kill directly perhaps 400 to 450
million people. Induced effects, in particular starvation or epidemics following agricultural
failure or economic breakdown, might add up to several hundred million deaths to the total,
though this is most uncertain. Such an eventuality would be a catastrophe of enormous
proportions, but it is far from extinction. Even in the most extreme case there would remain
alive some 4000 million people, about nine-tenths of the world's population, most of them
unaffected physically by the nuclear war. The following areas would be relatively unscathed,
unless nuclear attacks were made in these regions: South and Central America, Africa, the
Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Oceania and large parts of
China. Even in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere where most of the nuclear weapons would be exploded, areas upwind
of nuclear attacks would remain free of heavy radioactive contamination, such as Portugal, Ireland and British Columbia. Many
people, perhaps especially in the peace movement, believe that global nuclear war will lead to the death of most or all of the world's
population.[12] Yet the available scientific evidence provides no basis for this belief. Furthermore,
there seem to be no convincing scientific arguments that nuclear war could cause human
extinction.[13] In particular, the idea of 'overkill', if taken to imply the capacity to kill everyone
on earth, is highly misleading.[14] In the absence of any positive evidence, statements that nuclear war will
lead to the death of all or most people on earth should be considered exaggerations. In most
cases the exaggeration is unintended, since people holding or stating a belief in nuclear
extinction are quite sincere.[15] Another major point to be made in relation to statements about nuclear war is that almost
exclusive attention has been focussed on the 'worst case' of a major global nuclear war, as indeed has been done in the previous
paragraphs. A major global nuclear war is a possibility, but not the only one. In the case of 'limited' nuclear war, anywhere from
hundreds of people to many tens of millions of people might die.[16] This is a real possibility, but peace movement theory
and practice have developed almost as if this possibility does not exist.

No escalation, pre-emptive strikes even against Russia succeed no risk of
retaliation even if accuracy is poor
2006, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 7-44,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)//BZ
A critical issue for the outcome of a US. attack is the ability of Russia to launch on warning (i.e.,
quickly launch a retaliatory strike before its forces are destroyed). It is unlikely that Russia could
do this. Russian commanders would need 7-13 minutes to carry out the technical steps involved
in identifying a U.S. attack and launching their retaliatory forces. They would have to (I) confirm
the sensor indications that an attack was under way; (2) convey the news to political leaders; (3)
communicate launch authorization and launch codes to the nuclear forces; (4) execute launch
sequences; and (5) allow the missiles to fly a safe distance front the silos. This timeline does not
include the time required by Russian leaders to absorb the news that a nuclear attack is under
way and decide to authorize retaliation. Given that both Russian and US. early warning systems
have had false alarms in the past, even a minimally prudent leader would need to think
hard and ask tough questions before authorizing a catastrophic nuclear response."
Because the technical steps require 7-13 minutes, it is hard to imagine that Russia could detect
an attack, decide to retaliate, and launch missiles in less than 10-15 minutes. The Russian
early warning system would probably not give Russia's leaders the time they need
to retaliate; in fact it is questionable whether it would give them any warning at all. Stealthy B-
2 bombers could likely penetrate Russian air defenses without detection. Furthermore, low-
flying B-S2 bombers could fire stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles from outside Russian
airspace; these missiles-small, radar-absorbing, and flying at very low altitude- would likely
provide no warning before detonation. Finally, Russia's vulnerability is compounded by the poor
state of its early warning system. Russian satellites cannot reliably detect the launch of
SLBMs, - Russia relies on ground- based radar to detect those warheads." But there is a large
east-facing hole in Russia's radar network; Russian leaders might have no warning of an
SLBM attack from the Pacific." Even if Russia plugged the east-facing hole in its radar
network, its leaders would still have less than 10 minutes warning of a US. submarine attack
from the Atlantic, and perhaps no time if the U.S. attack began with hundreds of stealthy cruise
missile and stealth bombers." Table 4 presents the results of the modeled attack on Russian
nuclear forces. The first row of results, the "base case," uses expected values for the accuracy and
reliability of US. weapons and the hardness of Russian targets. In each row, the top number is
the expected number of targets that survive; the bottom numbers reflect the range of targets that
might survive (with a 95 percent confidence interval). The model suggests that the Russian
strategic nuclear force is extremely vulnerable. Using base-case values, zero Russian silo-based
ICBMs, zero mobile missiles, zero bomber bases, and zero Russian SSBNs are expected to
survive. The range of plausible outcomes is even more striking: the likelihood of a single
ICBM silo, mobile missile shelter, runway, or submarine surviving the attack
falls outside the 95 percent confidence interval. The other rows in Table 4 present the
results of sensitivity analysis. The row below the base case indicates expected outcomes if the
accuracy of all U.S. nuclear weapons is 20 percent worse than expected (i.e., CE!' is increased
by Z) percent). The next row shows the impact of reducing the reliability of US. weapons from
80 percent to 70 percent. The final row assumes that Russian ICBM silos are 50 percent harder
than expected. None of these changes significantly reduces the vulnerability of the Russian
nuclear force. Figures I through 3 indicate the number of Russian ICBMs expected to survive if
we simultaneously vary our estimates of US. accuracy and weapon reliability." Figure 1 holds the
performance of us. ICBMs and cruise missiles at expected levels and varies SLBM accuracy and
reliability. The figure reveals that even major deviation from expected SLBM
performance would not change the model results. This is particularly relevant because
of recent controversy over the reliability of one type of US. SLBM warhead (see appendix 2)."
figure 2 shows similar results for cruise missile performance; even low reliability and bad
accuracy would lead to the total destruction of the Russian force. Figure 3 demonstrates how
outcomes differ as the reliability and accuracy of all US. weapon systems vary simultaneously. If
U.S. weapons achieve expected reliability rates of 80 percent, all Russian ICBMs are destroyed
unless the accuracy of the average weapon is 101 percent worse than expected; if reliability is 70
percent across the board, all Russian ICBMs are still destroyed unless U.S. accuracy is 38
percent worse than expected. U.S. and Russian leaders should interpret the results of the model
differently. The findings should not convince U.S. leaders that the United States has a reliable
counter-force option against Russia. Many uncertainties are not captured in our model. For
example, a US. submarine commander might not receive, or might not believe, his launch
orders. Furthermore, this plan would require complex timing to avoid warhead fratricide.'5 But
despite these uncertainties, Russian (and Chinese) military planners should view these results
with grave concern. Nuclear deterrence should not rest on the hope that the enemys weapons
perform far below expectations or that the enemys submarine commanders will not receive or
follow orders. The potential of a U.S. first strike to destroy a large arsenal such as
Russias is a stunning change in the strategic nuclear balance

First-strike capabilities deter global conflicts
2006, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 7-44,
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)
The debates over nuclear forces during the Cold War suggest that a consensus on the foreign
policy implications of U.S. nuclear primacy will remain elusive. Hawks will welcome the new
era of nuclear primacy, believing that Americas dominance in both conventional and
nuclear weapons will help deter potential adversaries from challenging the United
States or its allies. For example, China may be deterred from attacking Taiwan if Chinese
leaders understand that their small nuclear force is unlikely to prevent the United States from
coming to Taiwan's defense-and if they fear that during a crisis or war the United States may be
tempted to attack their vulnerable arsenal. Hawks will expect Chinese leaders to reconsider the
wisdom of making thinly veiled nuclear threats against the United States.

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