Topshelf

1NC Nuke Mod

Next off, Nuclear Modernization
The plan causes it
Kalman et. al. 16 (Brian, Edwin Watson, and South Front, The U.S. Nuclear
Deterrent Triad. Can the U.S. Afford to Modernize it?,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-nuclear-deterrent-triad-can-the-u-s-afford-tomodernize-it/5516253, MARCH 24th 2016) NAR

Although the costs of modernizing and revitalizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent
triad are significant , they are not outside the realm of feasibility, if a
number of wasteful military programs and harmful overseas endeavors are halted in
short order . The JSF and LCS programs were doomed to failure from
the start, and have proven to be bottomless pits of military
industrial complex waste at a grand scale. The U.S. tax payers deserve better. The U.S.
warfighter tasked with defending his/her homeland deserves better. If national defense is truly the
aim of the Department of Defense, as it should be, then a major effort must be made to
modernize and revamp the U.S. nuclear defense capability. This will require the abandonment
of the current wasteful and harmful international defense posture that has U.S. soldiers , sailors and airmen
stationed all over the globe, engaged in a contrived and unwinnable war against international terrorism , the ending of
wasteful defense industry weapons procurement programs, and the adoption of a rational and logical
national defense strategy . Profit, politics and imperial ambition must once again yield to classical liberal
ideals of a republican nation-state living in an open and yet vigilant harmony with the rest of the world. These United States of
America can and must regain their rightful place amongst the nations of the world, inspiring the world with its ideals of liberty,
conspiring against no one and yet maintaining a vigorous and robust defense against any transgressors that aim to harm her.

The impact is prolif, terror, economic collapse and miscalc.

Kinzer 16 - Senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International
Studies at Brown University. (Stephen,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/01/24/beware-obama-nuclear-weaponsplan/IJP9E48w3cjLPlTqMhZdFL/story.html, January 24th 2016) NAR
The nuclear threat seems diffuse and faraway, while the prospect of a deranged fanatic shooting up a cinema is as
vivid as todays news. Perhaps we have been lulled into security by the fact that

no nuclear weapon

has been used since 1945. Voices trying to alert us to the true threat are drowned out in a frenzy
of over-the-top campaign speeches and TV rants about crazed Muslims. The most sobering of these voices belongs
to William Perry, who during the 1970s and 80s directed the development of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles

Obamas plan to
develop and buy 1,000 new missiles with adjustable nuclear capacity,
100 new long-range bombers, and a new fleet of nuclear-armed
submarines. He warns that if the plan becomes real, disputes among
nations will be more likely to erupt in nuclear conflict than during
the Cold War . When Perry was directing Americas last nuclear buildup, he and others argued that it was
and later became secretary of defense. Now Perry is campaigning against

necessary to compensate for NATOs relatively weak conventional power in countries around the Soviet Union. That

Obamas
proposed modernization increases our vulnerability, not our security. The
rationale evaporated when the Cold War ended, but it still shapes our defense policy.

first and most obvious reason is that it will certainly lead other countries to seek equivalent arsenals of their own.

It is especially upsetting to Russia, which already feels under

increasing American threat as a result of our military maneuvers on
its borders and the fact that many of our missiles are positioned in
Germany, Turkey, and other countries near its territory. The Russian
defense minister recently announced that in response to Obamas
plan, Russia will bring five new strategic nuclear missile regiments
into service. China would surely match that escalation. If it does so, India will
follow . Then Pakistan will jump into the race . It is a recipe for disaster. The cruise
missiles Obama wants to build could be used to deliver either conventional or nuclear payloads. If an air defense
controller in another country sees one incoming on radar, he or she would have no way of knowing whether it was
armed to destroy a building or an entire city. Th e

temptation to launch nuclear

retaliation could be irresistible . Proliferation of nuclear weapons
also increases the possibility that one will fall into the hands of
terrorists. Perry has his own nuclear nightmare, born of long and deep experience. In it, a gang secures
enough uranium for a rudimentary bomb, slips it into Washington, and detonates it on Pennsylvania Avenue. And
yet, Perry laments, while this catastrophe would result in a hundred times the casualties of 9/11, it is only dimly

global proliferation, accidental

war, and nuclear terror there is another: national bankruptcy .
Obamas project is ruinously expensive. Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls it spending ourselves into oblivion. He describes our
skyrocketing national debt as the most significant threat to our national security. Now is the
perceived by the public. Besides these grave dangers

time to stop this program. So far, enthusiasm for it is confined to the White House and Pentagon. Once it is
launched, rich procurement contracts will be portioned out to the districts of influential members of Congress. That

Nuclear
weapons are useful for deterrence only. The United States has more
than enough for that purpose. Investing huge sums in a new arsenal will not protect us from
will produce a self-interested constituency and give the project unstoppable momentum.

tomorrows threats. Most depressing, the proposal for this investment comes from a president who campaigned on
a pledge to reduce and seek to eliminate nuclear weapons and who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his apparent

Keeping our country safe requires agile thinking, not reliance

on policies shaped for a bygone age.
sincerity.

2NC Impact
Nuclear modernization massively outweighs increases vulnerability, and motivates
Russia, China, and India to modernize. Causes global proliferation, nuclear
retaliation, miscalc, facilitates the spread of nuclear weapons to non-state actors.
Spending also collapses the global economy.
Modernization ends the nuclear taboo - causes first strike, launch on warning, and
escalation globally.
Reichberg & Christiansen 16 - *Rsrch Professor @ the Peace Institute, Oslo,
**Professor @ Georgetown University (Gregory, Drew, Breaking the Taboo on the use of Nuclear Arms,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/opinion/breaking-the-taboo-on-the-use-of-nuclear-arms.html, January 20 th
2016) NAR
Smaller U.S. Bombs Are Adding Fuel to Nuclear Fear (front page, Jan. 12) reports that the

Pentagon has been testing a

precision nuclear warhead that can be delivered by cruise missile. It points out how critical voices, not
least a former secretary of defense, William J. Perry, have underscored the dangerous logic that lies behind this revitalization: More
precise nuclear warheads of lower yield, or explosive force, will reduce the militarys reluctance to
employ such weapons in battlefield settings. A more usable arsenal will erode the taboo on
nuclear use that has persisted for 70 years . Once a nuclear weapon is deployed, even one of
comparatively low yield, the current firewall against any use of nuclear weapons will be breached. Subsequently the
issue of yield will prove to be a relative one. In the heat of the moment whatever seems needed to get the job done will appear
reasonable. Nuclear weapons use will be normalized , and both military and political leaders will feel
under compulsion to escalate to the use of strategic weapons. These innovations are likely to erode the protections provided by
deterrence among the superpowers, provoke proliferation among nonnuclear weapons states and increase the risk
transfer to nonstate actors. GREGORY M. REICHBERG DREW CHRISTIANSEN Oslo Mr. Reichberg is a research professor at
the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Father Christiansen is a professor at Georgetown University. To the Editor: Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
world has escaped nuclear catastrophe only because leaders on all sides understood that nuclear war could not be won and nuclear weapons must
never be used. Yet weapons designers and military planners have steadily pursued more usable nuclear weapons, driving a now global nuclear
arms race. Even President Obama, who pledged to work for a nuclear-weapons-free world, is presiding over a trillion-dollar nuclear
modernization of ever more seductively precise and thus usable nuclear weapons. The United States has failed to pledge that it would
never be the first to use nuclear weapons. Others

will respond asymmetrically to a pre-emptive United States nuclear

arsenal. Russia may put its nuclear forces on launch-on-warning, with risk for accidental nuclear
war in times of crisis. Nonstate actors will feel ever more justified in seeking nuclear terrorism. In a
century facing climate and political chaos, we must modernize our thinking, not our weapons.

UQ

Wont Modernize 2NC

Link controls the direction of Uniqueness None of their evidence says
Modernization is a done deal, just that there will be fights the plan is a prerequisite in a.) freeing funds, and b.) shifting the tone of the away toward the
perceived necessity of modernization. This means the plan is a PRE-REQUISITE to
Modernization even happening, thats Kinzer and Kalman.
Congress wont allow modernization
a.) Fears of Destabilization
Mehta 1-22 (http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/budget/2016/01/22/stratcomhead-nuclear-budget-csis/79170912/, Aaron, STRATCOM Head Makes Case for Protecting Nuclear
Budget) NAR
However, calls

for cutting some part of the nuclear modernization effort remain loud, with those
questioning the nuclear strategy zeroing in on the Long-Range Stand Off (LRSO) weapon, which would replace the ALCM. William
Perry, the former Clinton-era secretary of defense, has called for the cancellation of the LRSO program due to its
destabilizing nature, leading to a December letter from the Air Force Association to Congress asking that the Hill protect a
program it believes provides a non-proliferation incentive for foreign competitors.

b.) budget hawks

Gould & Clevenger 2-5 (http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policybudget/budget/2016/02/05/nuclear-option-nuclear-modernization-costs-bomber-icbm-submarinelrso/79788670/,Is the Pentagon's Budget About To Be Nuked?) NAR

Congress controls the purse strings, and has not

been shy in recent years about forcing DoD to change its plans. David Culp, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National
Legislation, believes the issue of nuclear modernization is largely unknown on the Hill, with only the relevant defense
Of course, the Pentagon does not have final say in how this all goes down.

committees having picked up on it. However, he notes, the leaders in those committees are beginning to talk openly about the issue. People are all over the map,
Culp said of Congress. You have defense hawks and

budget hawks,

and its not clear which side

has the most political weight .

Asked Jan. 20 by Defense News about the aging nuclear arsenal, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., expressed concern the nuclear
recapitalization was not being adequately funded, saying "We need to have hearings on it." Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the senior member of the Senate Armed

when you're starving the military is that the

things they'll delay more are modernization programs, future funding , and anything that can be
postponed and this has been going on for seven years now," Inhofe said. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the SASC's Strategic Forces Subcommittee,
said the effort was being funded to " the bare minimum a very small part of the federal budget." "Even counting the cost of
Services Committee said he was very concerned. "One of the things that happens

the triad, the submarines and the missiles and the airplanes, we're talking about $8 billion or so," Sessions said. "That's something we can't afford not to maintain.

We've been slipping. We're the only country in the world that isn't advanced in maintaining its nuclear
systems. They're old. We could create a safer, more-reliable system and we absolutely have to do that."

A2: Obama Wants

Obama will amend his stance prefer our predicative evidence.
Weber 16 Mixed quotes with Andy Weber the former assistant secretary of defense for
nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs from 2009 to 2014 (T.J Raphael,
http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-15/why-president-obama-moving-ahead-biggest-modernization-usnuclear-weapons-decades, Why President Obama is moving ahead with the biggest modernization of US
nuclear weapons in decades , January 15th 2016) NAR

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush ordered the US Navy to withdraw all tactical nuclear
weapons from its surface ships and attack submarines. These weapons remained unused, and
Obama formally eliminated them in 2011. So why the reversal now? Weber says the motivation
behind this decision is complex. I think its largely inertia, he says. The current air launch
cruise missile is aging it was developed in the late 70s and 1980s; it flies on a 60-year-old B52 bomber. Were at a point where we either need to let it age out gracefully its set for
retirement in 15 years in 2030 or we can decide not to replace it, and thats what were
recommending. Weber says he is confident that President Obama will amend his stance
and pursue his vision for a world without nuclear weapons once the issue is brought
more closely to his attention. I think he has an opportunity not just to forgo this unneeded
$30 billion replacement program, but also, very importantly and this would be Nobel
worthy to lead the world in an effort to eliminate this particular, very dangerous and
destabilizing class of weapons: All nuclear armed cruise missiles, Weber says. These
weapons are considered so destabilizing, Weber says, because they cannot be recalled once they
are launched. Theyre also destabilizing because they come in two flavors, he says. They
come with a nuclear warhead and with a conventional warhead. The risk of miscalculation, if one
of these is flying towards your country, you have no way to discriminate to know if its
nuclear or if it is not and that could lead to even an accidental nuclear war, which would be
terrible. In 2010, the US and Russia signed New START or the New Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty a 10-year agreement and a successor to the 1991 START accord. The 2010
treaty limits each side to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads, but thanks to a tricky clause,
Weber says there are ways to get around that limit. It doesnt violate the treaty because theres a
loophole in the treaty called the bomber counting rule, he says. So each of our 60-ish bombers
only counts as one warhead, even though they can carry up to 20 of these air launch cruise
missiles each. Weber argues that theres still time to put on the brakes this program has
not yet started, and no American jobs are at stake. Indeed, a group of eight US senators
recently sent a letter to President Obama calling very strongly for him to cancel this program,
he adds.

Links

Link Ext.
Withdrawal allows the U.S. to pursue modernization
1.) Frees Resources they are scarce, overseas presence saps them, thats Kahlman.
The aff allows a priority shift.
Doyle 2-29 - Independent nuclear security specialist. From 1997 to 2014, he was on the
technical staff of the Nonproliferation Division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
(James E., The full price of nuclear deterrence
, January 29th 2016, http://thebulletin.org/full-price-nuclear-deterrence9196) NAR
First, defense

budgets are limited and unlikely to increase above current levels. Tradeoffs therefore need to
be made between spending on nuclear weapons and all of the other military priorities like
ships, planes, tanks, radars, satellites, missile defenses , foreign bases, counterterrorism,
training, and special operations. For example, if we have $200 billion to spend annually on weapons (as opposed to military
salaries, health care, and pensions) and spend $30 billion on nuclear forces when $10 billion can buy effective deterrence, we will waste $20
billion annually that could go to other vital defense missions such as fighting ISIS, strengthening our conventional defenses and those of our
allies, improved training, cyber-security, and research. If those non-nuclear defense investments are needed to protect us from non-nuclear threats
that we are far more likely to face than nuclear attack, short-changing them results in poor national strategy and less security for America. Russia
is the only country in the world that can even remotely threaten our nuclear deterrent. New Start, an agreement reached in 2010 that Russia
continues to abide by, keeps our two nuclear arsenals in rough balance, so neither side gains the ability strike first while avoiding a devastating
response. This is the essence of nuclear deterrence, and it makes such an attack extremely unlikely. A modernized force of 1,550 deployed nuclear
warheads, as permitted by New Start, can be purchased for far less than the $1 trillion 30-year plan envisioned by President Obamas new fiscal
2017 budget. We certainly can spend that huge amount on nuclear forces at the expense of other military capabilities, but we may also gravely
regret it. Second, planning a full like-for-like replacement of our triad of nuclear forces entails several types of existential and political risk. The
most obvious of these is that reliance on nuclear deterrence carries the unavoidable risk of global nuclear catastrophe. Nuclear deterrence can fail,
through poor decisions, escalation during a crisis, a series of mechanical and human errors, or malicious acts that lead to inadvertent use. Nuclear
weapons are machines that can malfunction with devastating consequences. Another risk flows from one simple fact: Nuclear weapons and
nuclear materials that can be made into weapons can never be perfectly secured from theft or misuse. Terrorists such as ISIS and their ilk are
trying to get their hands on a nuke, to blow one up, or to spark a nuclear war between states that would create the atavistic outcome they desire.
The more nuclear weapons there are, the greater the risk that terrorists might succeed. A desire to reduce the risks of nuclear terrorism was one of
the reasons that the latest official statement of US nuclear policy, a 2013 report from the Pentagon on US Nuclear Employment Guidance,
concluded that Americas nuclear deterrence requirements could be met with a force of 1,100 deployed warheads, nearly one-third less than the
1,550 permitted under New Start. The current plan to modernize and upgrade the entire arsenal of 1,550 deployed warheads, delivery vehicles,
and many hundreds of reserve nuclear weapons preserves a greater than necessary risk that terrorists will acquire one. Americas declared
intention to continue upgrading nuclear weapons for 30 years and keep them in service until 2080 or beyond has a political cost, as well. It
undermines another objective of US national security strategy, which is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states. The United
States and other parties to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have accepted the obligation to accomplish the eventual elimination of their
nuclear arsenals. To create the conditions for this to be possible, the United States depends on the cooperation of over 100 nations that have
agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of these states supported the multilateral negotiations with Iran that achieved an agreement to
prevent that country from building nuclear weapons. US leadership and credibility for this nonproliferation agenda is weakened by plans to retain
nuclear weapons as a central element of Americas national security strategy for another 60 to 75 years. America

also faces a

broad range of non-military threats to its security and prosperity in the decades ahead. These include the negative
consequences of environmental degradation and climate change, energy security, increasing resource scarcity, financial crises, human migration,
pandemics, and the challenge of maintaining a highly skilled and educated citizenry in a competitive global economy. Addressing

these
threats requires national investments in addition to outlays for our military forces, and
tradeoffs must be made within the overall federal budget.

2.) Perception Link Concern of Obama modernization is acute, and congressional

debates are highly publicized. Withdrawal signals to foreign nations that the U.S. is
changing their grand strategy that triggers a global arms race, thats Kinzer.

LINK ASPIG
Withdrawal saves money for nuclear modernization
Kalman et. al. 16 (Brian, Edwin Watson, and South Front, The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Triad. Can the
U.S. Afford to Modernize it?, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-nuclear-deterrent-triad-can-the-u-safford-to-modernize-it/5516253, MARCH 24th 2016) NAR

If the United States ruling establishment had truly been devoted to national defense and not
misguided imperial adventures in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa , there
were ample funds available, considerable technical expertise and a surplus of ability within
the defense industry to modernize and improve the U.S. nuclear deterrence triad.
Additionally, if only two misguided and failed military procurement programs are considered,
the Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship respectfully, it becomes readily apparent
that the funds were available. The Misguided Wars of Empire Between 2001 and the current
year, the United States Armed Forces have been engaged in combat operations of varying
degrees in the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. Covert
operations are ongoing in various other nations of the world, as well as the current military
patrols by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea and the broader Pivot to Asia engaged upon
by the Obama administration. When discussing the viability of military expenditures required to
accomplish a modern and robust nuclear deterrent, past and current military operations must be
taken into account. The all-encompassing War on Terror has conservatively cost the citizens
of the U.S. almost $2 trillion dollars since 2001. The Mercatus Center citing the Congressional
Research Service has concluded that the War on Terror cost the U.S. approximately $1.68
trillion between the years of 2001 and 2014. As the graph below shows, most of this cost was
directly attributable to the Department of Defense. A bare fraction of the total went to Veterans
Administration efforts to manage the medical and psychological needs of the veterans of the
conflict(s). A mere tertiary review of the economic costs of the misguided and mismanaged
wars of the United States on global Terrorism, which that same government created, funded
and supported in so many of its varied forms over a period of 37 years mostly in the Middle East
and Central Asia, reveals that the U.S. government squandered the blood and treasure of its
citizenry on a grand scale. The wars of Pax Americana in the words of former Vice
President Dick Cheney, wars of imperial hegemony cloaked in the legitimacy of combating
global terrorists of every stripe, ideology and creed have in very real terms materially
robbed the United States of a very sensible and credible nuclear deterrent defense.

Link Africa
Withdrawal saves money for nuclear modernization
Kalman et. al. 16 (Brian, Edwin Watson, and South Front, The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Triad. Can the
U.S. Afford to Modernize it?, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-nuclear-deterrent-triad-can-the-u-safford-to-modernize-it/5516253, MARCH 24th 2016) NAR

If the United States ruling establishment had truly been devoted to national defense and not
misguided imperial adventures in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, there
were ample funds available, considerable technical expertise and a surplus of ability within
the defense industry to modernize and improve the U.S. nuclear deterrence triad.
Additionally, if only two misguided and failed military procurement programs are considered,
the Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship respectfully, it becomes readily apparent
that the funds were available. The Misguided Wars of Empire Between 2001 and the current
year, the United States Armed Forces have been engaged in combat operations of varying
degrees in the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. Covert
operations are ongoing in various other nations of the world, as well as the current military
patrols by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea and the broader Pivot to Asia engaged upon
by the Obama administration. When discussing the viability of military expenditures required to
accomplish a modern and robust nuclear deterrent, past and current military operations must be
taken into account. The all-encompassing War on Terror has conservatively cost the citizens
of the U.S. almost $2 trillion dollars since 2001. The Mercatus Center citing the Congressional
Research Service has concluded that the War on Terror cost the U.S. approximately $1.68
trillion between the years of 2001 and 2014. As the graph below shows, most of this cost was
directly attributable to the Department of Defense. A bare fraction of the total went to Veterans
Administration efforts to manage the medical and psychological needs of the veterans of the
conflict(s). A mere tertiary review of the economic costs of the misguided and mismanaged
wars of the United States on global Terrorism, which that same government created, funded
and supported in so many of its varied forms over a period of 37 years mostly in the Middle East
and Central Asia, reveals that the U.S. government squandered the blood and treasure of its
citizenry on a grand scale. The wars of Pax Americana in the words of former Vice
President Dick Cheney, wars of imperial hegemony cloaked in the legitimacy of combating
global terrorists of every stripe, ideology and creed have in very real terms materially
robbed the United States of a very sensible and credible nuclear deterrent defense.

Link Asia
Withdrawal saves money for nuclear modernization
Kalman et. al. 16 (Brian, Edwin Watson, and South Front, The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Triad. Can the
U.S. Afford to Modernize it?, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-nuclear-deterrent-triad-can-the-u-safford-to-modernize-it/5516253, MARCH 24th 2016) NAR

If the United States ruling establishment had truly been devoted to national defense and not
misguided imperial adventures in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, there
were ample funds available, considerable technical expertise and a surplus of ability within
the defense industry to modernize and improve the U.S. nuclear deterrence triad.
Additionally, if only two misguided and failed military procurement programs are considered,
the Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship respectfully, it becomes readily apparent
that the funds were available. The Misguided Wars of Empire Between 2001 and the current
year, the United States Armed Forces have been engaged in combat operations of varying
degrees in the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. Covert
operations are ongoing in various other nations of the world, as well as the current military
patrols by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea and the broader Pivot to Asia engaged upon
by the Obama administration. When discussing the viability of military expenditures required to
accomplish a modern and robust nuclear deterrent, past and current military operations must be
taken into account. The all-encompassing War on Terror has conservatively cost the citizens
of the U.S. almost $2 trillion dollars since 2001. The Mercatus Center citing the Congressional
Research Service has concluded that the War on Terror cost the U.S. approximately $1.68
trillion between the years of 2001 and 2014. As the graph below shows, most of this cost was
directly attributable to the Department of Defense. A bare fraction of the total went to Veterans
Administration efforts to manage the medical and psychological needs of the veterans of the
conflict(s). A mere tertiary review of the economic costs of the misguided and mismanaged
wars of the United States on global Terrorism, which that same government created, funded
and supported in so many of its varied forms over a period of 37 years mostly in the Middle East
and Central Asia, reveals that the U.S. government squandered the blood and treasure of its
citizenry on a grand scale. The wars of Pax Americana in the words of former Vice
President Dick Cheney, wars of imperial hegemony cloaked in the legitimacy of combating
global terrorists of every stripe, ideology and creed have in very real terms materially
robbed the United States of a very sensible and credible nuclear deterrent defense.

Link BMD
Plan causes a US strategy shift to modernization.
Futter 11 Senior Lecturer in International Politics @ U of Leicester (Andrew,
Obamas Nuclear Weapons Policy in a Changing World, December,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR009/futter.pdf, CMR)
To an extent, the

plan to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US security while underpinned by the goal
of global zero has only been made possible because new technologies and the changing
requirements of US security have allowed non- nuclear weaponry to perform functions
previously considered the preserve of nuclear weapons. The most notable development in
this regard has been the increased role and importance of b allistic m issile d efence a
programme that Obama appeared to have little enthusiasm for before 2009. In fact, Obama initially appeared destined to reduce the role of missile
defence to ensure that it did not become a spoiler in US-Russian arms control negotiations. The reality is that Obama

has been
striving for a balance whereby missile defence can be used to bolster deterrence against rogue

nuclear threats where nuclear retaliation may not be seen to be sufficient, while at the same time ensure that these missile defence plans do not
undermine nuclear reductions with Russia upon which the entire disarmament agenda must initially be based. As a result, although the missile
defence programme has been recalibrated, it remains almost as important to Obama as it was to Bush (although for different reasons). The
decision to replace the Third Site with the Phased Adaptive Approach in September 2009, rather than cancel missile defence in Europe
entirely, as well as the comprehensive February 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review are examples of the presidents commitment to the
programme. When combined with advances in systems such as Prompt Global Strike, it

is clear that the Obama administration

wishes to place increasing emphasis on non-nuclear weapons to perform roles previously
undertaken by nuclear weapons, and that this should make it easier to reduce US nuclear
weapons further.

-2NR Cards
Yes tradeoff reductions in Nuclear modernization only possible because of U.S.
BMD, prefer our Futter evidence which highlights Obamas global strategy.
Budget opportunity cost.
Pifer 15 Director, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative Senior Fellow, Foreign
Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, Center for 21st Century Security and
Intelligence (Steven, The limits of U.S. missile defense,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/03/30-us-missile-defense-limits-pifer) NAR

Missile defense should be one part of a sensible mix of U.S. military capabilities. The United States
should not allow a country with a few ICBMs a free ride in attacking the homeland. At the same time, missile defense
spending has opportunity costs : every dollar spent on a GMD interceptor is one less for
strategic nuclear modernization or conventional forces.

The tradeoff is empirical.

Pifer 15 Director, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative Senior Fellow, Foreign
Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, Center for 21st Century Security and
Intelligence (Steven, The limits of U.S. missile defense,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/03/30-us-missile-defense-limits-pifer) NAR

When he took office, President Reagan was dismayed to learn that he had no way to defend
America from a Soviet missile attack. The sole U.S. anti-ballistic missile site had been shut
down in 1974, so he had to rely on nuclear deterrence , a concept with which he was fundamentally
uncomfortable. Thus, on March 23, 1983, he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), posing the question:
What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S.
retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic
missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies? SDI spurred research on a variety of
technologies to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and their warheads. Some
effort went into development of ground-launched interceptor missiles with hit-to-kill technology, in which a kinetic kill vehicle would be
launched and fly into an incoming warhead, destroying both.

S trategy concerns trump.

Mount 16 Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Previously, he was a
Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Adam, January 28th
2016, The indelicate balance of nuclear modernization, http://thebulletin.org/indelicate-balance-nuclearmodernization9132) NAR
But is the balance of terror still delicate? If it were, it would be essential for the United States to
precisely calibrate its arsenal to its adversarys capabilities every year. Modernization would be a

perilous period, creating gaps in capabilities that would have to be filled. Strategic
considerations would tend to override political, diplomatic, and fiscal concerns . The fact is,
though, that the nuclear balance is not as delicate as it once was, and we are living in a time of acute
fiscal austerity and manifold military priorities. Risk, moreover, is an inherent part of nuclear

strategy. If Washington cant learn to live with risk, the cost of closing small and

hypothetical gaps in the nuclear arsenal will be paid in harsh currency: by sacrificing
conventional military priorities, the welfare of citizens, and the countrys long-term ability
to compete in a changing world.

--Yes Obama
Yes Obama.
Futter 11 Senior Lecturer in International Politics @ U of Leicester (Andrew,
Obamas Nuclear Weapons Policy in a Changing World, December,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR009/futter.pdf, CMR)
DECREASING THE IMPORTANCE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR US SECURITY As
has been equally keen to
revamp thinking about the role and utility of nuclear weapons in US national security. In fact,
building on several policies begun during the Bush administration, the president has demonstrated a strong tendency to
utilise advanced conventional weaponry such as missile defence and Prompt Global Strike (PGS) programmes for roles
previously performed by nuclear weapons. In doing this, it appears that Obama both hopes to
reduce US reliance upon nuclear weapons in order to aid the international push for disarmament, and at the same
time, reconfigure US national security and nuclear weapons thinking to the changing requirements of the
well as reigniting the quest for global zero internationally, and in order to bolster this agenda, Obama

post-Cold War world. Specifically, this involves a more nuanced conception of nuclear deterrence once based solely on mutually assured
destruction with the Soviet Union towards a posture able to address the different nuclear concerns now facing the US. In this sense, Obama

has striven to find a balance between nuclear and conventional weapons that better reflects
current US security requirements.

Especially true for regional deterrence strategy

Woolf 15 Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy (Amy F, Nonstrategic Nuclear
Weapons, Feb 23, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32572.pdf, CMR)
Using a similar construct, the Obama Administration, in

the 2010 N uclear P osture R eview, also indicated that

the United States would reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. regional deterrence
strategies by increasing its reliance on missile defenses and precision conventional weapons. Unlike the Bush
Administration, however, the Obama Administration did not seek to acquire new nuclear weapons
capabilities or to extend U.S. nuclear deterrence to threats from nations armed with chemical or biological weapons. It stated that it would
not consider the use of nuclear weapons in response to conventional, chemi cal, or biological attack if the attacking nation were in compliance

Instead , in such circumstances, the United States would deter and

respond to attacks with missile defenses and advanced conventional weapons. In addition, the Administration announced that it
with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations.

planned to retire the Navys nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles, which had been part of the U.S. extended deterrent to allies in Asia.
Nevertheless, the Administration pledged to retain and modernize the B-61 warheads, carried by U.S. tactical fighters and bombers; these are also
a part of the U.S. extended deterrent.

--BMD k2 Mod
No turns BMD key to making squo nuclear deterrence successful.
Roberts 13 {Brad, former visiting fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies of the
Ministry of Defense of Japan, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and
Missile Defense Policy in the Obama Administration, Ph.D. in Political Science (Erasmus
University Rotterdam), M.Sc. in International Relations (London School of Economics and
Political Science), B.A. in International Relations (Stanford University), Director designate at the
Center for Global Security Research (Livermore National Laboratory), Extended Deterrence
and Strategic Stability in Northeast Asia, NIDS Visiting Scholar Paper Series, No.1, 8/9,
http://www.nids.go.jp/english/publication/visiting/pdf/01.pdf}
The comprehensive approach to strengthening extended deterrence clearly embeds the
nuclear component of the strategy in a larger policy construct. As one analyst has described
it, the nuclear umbrella has become the pinnacle of a security dome.13 The United States has
set out this comprehensive approach as opposed to relying on nuclear means alone for
three basic reasons. First, the threat of U.S. nuclear use may not always be credible in the
eyes of the individual(s) the United States might seek to deter. Some enemy may convince
itself that there are forms of nuclear attack (or other forms of attack) that fall beneath the
U.S. response threshold. For example, an enemy might believe that nuclear attack primarily
to generate electromagnetic pulse effects on nearby conventional forces might escape a U.S.
nuclear response. This could be a serious miscalculation but, from a deterrence perspective,
this scenario highlights the value of supplemental non-nuclear elements in the deterrence
architecture. Second, whether or not nuclear threats are credible, the non-nuclear
components of this strategy offer valuable deterrence benefits. For example, ballistic missile
defense of the U.S. homeland mitigates de-coupling risks by greatly reducing if not
eliminating risks run by the United States in defending its allies. And ballistic missile
defense within the region protects key assets from an enemys preemptive strikes, enables
offensive operations to begin at a time of our choosing rather than the enemys, and raises the
scale of attack that an attacker must attempt if it wants to overwhelm the defense (severely
limiting the credibility of threats to launch a small number of weapons while holding more in
reserve). These strategic benefits help to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in regional
deterrence architectures even while a core element remains, given the fundamental role of
nuclear weapons in deterring nuclear attack. Third, the United States flatly rejects mutual
vulnerability as the basis of the strategic relationship with states like North Korea and Iran that
violate international obligations, destabilize their regions and threaten their neighbors, and
threaten the United States with nuclear attack. The global security environment would become
deeply unstable if such states were to conclude that they are free under their own nuclear
umbrellas to coerce their neighbors and commit aggression.14

-- A2: BMD Scares Allies (Van 14)

This evidence is from an Undergraduate, which means Solice in 16 is more qualified
since im applying to graduate school.
This evidence just says BMD might create expectations and maybe resentment in
Washington doesnt say the U.S. should withdraw BMD, just that we should
change our attitudes.
BMD is key, thats the link debate
It creates pretense for other confidence building measures which solves.
FRHLING 16 Associate Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, PhD
(ANU), Master of Arts in Strategic Studies (Missouri State University), Diplom in
International Economics (Christian Albrechts University, Germany) (Stephan, 2016 The
Author(s). International Affairs 2016 The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Published by John
Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA
02148, USA., International Affairs 92: 1 (2016) 8195, Managing escalation: missile defence, strategy
and US alliances) NAR

In East Asia, missile defence cooperation between Japan and the United States is in many ways more
advanced, and deeper (because also extending to the co-development and co-production of
interceptors), than it is in NATO. None of the US alliances in Asia, however, have much experience of negotiating the strategic aspects of
escalation in the way that NATO developed during the Cold War. Instead, planning for joint operations for the common defence tended to be
dominated by the United States (in the case of South Korea), consciously parallel and separate rather than integrated (in the case of Japan) or
simply non-existent (in the case of Australia). Both

Japan and South Korea have, however, sought more formal

dialogue with the United States on nuclear and deterrence policies in recent years. Detailed
examination of missile defence by senior officials, reporting back to political leaders, would be a useful way to
address the implications of emerging capabilities , and at the same time to develop
mechanisms for closer alliance cooperation. Indeed, the announcement of a new Alliance
Coordination Mechanism in the April 2015 USJapan defence guidelines takes the US
Japan relationship one step further in this direction.37 Advancing missile defence in US alliances
in this manner will allow the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia to maximize the strategic
benefit from missile defence by building on the political agreements and technical advances
of recent years. There is no way around the fact, however, that addressing the strategic issues of escalation management that arise from
this new capability will require political attention to the operational aspects of joint planning, including against the Great Powers China and
Russia. In the end, neither summit declarations supporting missile defence nor the development of joint battle management architectures are a
substitute for an agreed allied strategy.

And they are wrong its uncertain security environment drives Japan to support
BMD.
Satoh 14 (Yukio, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Japan Institute of International
Affairs, Japans Responsibility Sharing for the U.S. Extended Deterrence, 3/10, Discuss Japan)
the
extended deterrence of the U nited S tates with nuclear deterrence at its core is indispensable for Japans security against the
The National Security Strategy adopted on December 17 last year by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-led coalition government of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo recognized that

It also stressed the countrys preparedness to work closely with the U nited S tates in order to enhance the
credibility of its extended deterrence, including Japans own efforts for ballistic missile defense (BMD)[i]. The National Security Strategy was
threat of nuclear weapons.

the first policy statement of its kind for Japan, which replaced the Basic Policy for National Defense to which Japan had been holding since 1957. The new and fifth National Defense Program
Guidelines (NDPG) adopted at the same time expressed the same recognition with regard to the U.S. extended deterrence and stated that Japan would cooperate with the United States in order
to enhance its credibility[ii]. It must be noted, however, that these two documents were not the first policy announcement affirming Japans departure from ambivalence toward the U.S. extended
deterrence. The previous (fourth) NDPG adopted in December 2010 by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)-led coalition government of Prime Minister Kan Naoto recognized for the first time
ever that the U.S. extended deterrence was essential for Japans security and announced the countrys preparedness to cooperate with the United States for enhancing its credibility. That both the
liberal and conservative governments took the same stance testifies to an emerging domestic consensus in support of a policy for Japan to share some responsibility for making the U.S. extended
deterrence credible, although the announced policy is yet to be implemented. Three Questions Relevant to Credibility Seen from the perspective of recipients of the U.S. extended deterrence,
three questions are particularly relevant to the credibility of U.S. commitment: Whether U.S. force posture and weapon systems would be such that would credibly guarantee Washingtons
declaratory policy; Whether potential adversaries to be deterred would be induced to fear that their attack on U.S. allies might incur U.S. nuclear retaliation; and, Whether the recipients of the
U.S. extended deterrence would be able to convince themselves of U.S. preparedness to retaliate against their aggressors with nuclear weapons if necessary. It is in relation to the third question
that the National Security Strategy of 2013 and the NDPGs of 2010 and 2013 are important, for together they signify an epoch-making change in Japanese stance The first question related to U.S.
force posture and weapon systems could be an important agenda item for consultations between the United States and its allies. It is encouraging in this context that official dialogue on extended
deterrence has begun to take place between Washington and Tokyo, as will be discussed later. On the other hand, the second question related to potential adversaries perceptions regarding U.S.
preparedness would not be credibly assessed in cases relevant to Japanese security: namely, North Korea and China. Given the perceived lack of rational policy judgment in Pyongyang, it is
doubtful if North Korea would understand U.S. declaratory strategy correctly and behave accordingly. And, while it is plausible to assume that the U.S. extended deterrence in relation to China
would become a corollary to the U.S.-China strategic relationship, even defining strategic stability between the two countries is yet to be explored, let alone conceptualizing the way the United
States may deter China in defense of its allies like Japan. Anti-Nuclear Weapons Sentiment For over fifty years since Japan signed the first Security Treaty with the United States in 1951 as the
country recovered independence from the U.S.-led occupation, consecutive Japanese governments have tried to avoid involvement with U.S. nuclear strategy. Behind it was a strong anti-nuclear
sentiment prevailing in a broad spectrum of public opinion, which emanated from the experiences of being the first and hopefully last victim of nuclear explosions. For example, the Basic Policy
for National Defense of 1957 did not mention U.S. nuclear deterrence. In the late 1960s, the Japanese government announced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles of not possessing nuclear
weapons, not producing them and not permitting their entry into the country as the countrys prime national policy, which was later reaffirmed by parliamentary resolutions adopted by both
houses of the Diet. In attaining the reversion of the administrative rights over Okinawa from the United States in 1972, Tokyo successfully gave top priority to persuading Washington to
withdraw nuclear weapons deployed and stored on the island. In defense policy, the first and second National Defense Program Outlines (NDPO), respectively adopted in 1976 and 1995, as well
as the third NDPG of 2004 all reiterated a policy stance to wholly leave the issue of deterring threats of nuclear weapons in the hands of the United States. Both National Defense Program
Outlines and National Defense Program Guidelines are the English translation of the same title of a series of defense policy statements, Boei-Keikaku-Taiko. Concerned more about antinuclear public opinion than the credibility of U.S. commitment, consecutive Japanese governments adopted a posture of being a reluctant recipient of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrence, which
was regarded as a necessary evil particularly during the Cold War. Tokyo could afford to do so, because it believed as then-Foreign Minister Kuranari Tadashi stated at the annual conference of
the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) held in Kyoto in 1986, that the U.S. nuclear deterrence would function effectively in the Asia-Pacific region so far as the American nuclear
forces in total remain balanced against the total Soviet nuclear power in the global context.[iii] Introduction of Nuclear Weapons: A Telling Episode In hindsight, the way in which a long-lasting
controversy concerning port-calls by U.S. nuclear capable vessels had been brought to an end was the most telling episode epitomizing changes in the Japanese attitude toward nuclear deterrence.
The question at issue was a widely held suspicion that the Japanese government was not being truthful when it asserted that U.S. nuclear weapons had never been brought to Japan (except for
Okinawa under U.S. administrative control). To vindicate the assertion, consecutive Japanese governments, mostly those led by the LDP but including those led by non-LDP prime ministers
(after the Cold war), argued that Washington had not requested prior consultations with Tokyo, a process that would be required if the United States wished to introduce nuclear weapons into
Japan. It is now known that Washington confidentially informed Tokyo that the United States did not consider entry into Japanese ports and passage through its territorial waters to be
introduction of nuclear weapons. However, Tokyo was reluctant to squarely address the issue and Washington, too, refrained from making this an open issue, both out of concern that doing so
would add fuel to a strong anti-nuclear sentiment on the part of the Japanese public and thereby undermine public support for the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty itself. The episode is now history. On
the one hand, U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced in 1991 the withdrawal of non-strategic nuclear weapons from U.S. vessels and aircraft. On the other hand, the domestic debate in
Japan was brought to an end in 2009 by an academic research report commissioned by the DPJs Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya. The report confirmed that there were differences between
Tokyo and Washington in their understanding of what was meant by introduction of nuclear weapons and that both sides knew the differences. The most intriguing part of this episode was that
public reaction to the report was calm. It was partly due to the fact that U.S. nuclear capable vessels were no longer carrying nuclear weapons then, according to the presidential order of 1991.
But more significantly, the Japanese, already concerned about the potential threats posed by North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile development, were acutely aware of the importance of the
U.S. extended deterrence. Some, albeit in the minority, even advocated changing the Non-Nuclear Principles from three to two-and-a-half, seemingly meaning to permit U.S. vessels and
aircraft carrying nuclear weapons to transit through Japan and its territorial waters and airspace as necessary. Leaving aside the strategic question of whether transit or even introduction of
nuclear weapons would be necessary in order to enhance the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence, it must be pointed out that such voices represented the increased recognition among the
Japanese public of the importance of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. Changing Security Circumstances Against this backdrop, policy statements of positive support for the U.S. extended
deterrence stressed in the National Security Strategy of 2013 and the NDPG of 2010 and 2013 marked a clear departure from the long-held ambivalence toward U.S. nuclear strategy described
above. Japans policy shift is, however, not attributable to the weakening of public sentiment against nuclear weapons. On the contrary, anti-nuclear sentiment in a broader context, including
negative opinion concerning nuclear power generation, has become stronger in the wake of the accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2010. It is therefore even
more noteworthy that the 2010 NDPG containing a positive approach toward the U.S. extended deterrence (including nuclear deterrent as a vital element[iv]) was adopted nine months after the

Changes in Japanese attitude toward the U.S. extended deterrence are the consequence of worsening
security circumstances on the one hand, and the evolution of U.S. deterrence strategy on the other. The increased potential threat posed
by North Korean nuclear weapons and missile development has changed Japanese security perceptions in favor of
stronger defense and closer alliance cooperation with the U nited S tates. Most symbolically , the test-launch of a
Fukushima accidents.

missile, Taepodong, over Japan in 1998 prompted Japan to strengthen BMD cooperation with the U nited S tates. The subsequent
U.S.-Japan co-development of a next-generation interceptor, SM-3 Block II A, is one of the most advanced among allies BMD
cooperation with the U nited S tates. The continued growth and modernization of Chinese military power and Beijings aggressive policy seemingly aimed at changing the regional
order, even by force, added to Japanese security concern and led Tokyo to further strengthen its own defense efforts, shifting strategic focus from the North to the South-West, and its military
cooperation with the United States. From a short-term perspective, Chinas recent attempts to challenge Japans long-established territorial claim on the islets in the East China Sea, SenkakuShoto (called Diaoyutai in Chinese), are straining bilateral relations. While the issue is a matter to be managed primarily by Tokyo, Washingtons repeated confirmation that the Japan-U.S.
Security Treaty is to cover these islets is reassuring to the Japanese in the context of U.S. commitment to the defense of Japan, including extended deterrence. How to protect Japanese control
over the islets is not immediately an issue to test the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrence. But Washingtons unequivocal commitment has reassuring implications for the way for the
Japanese to perceive the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence. For it is presumed in Tokyo that a seamless linkage exists from Japans own efforts for protection of its territorial control to
alliance cooperation to be provided by the United States, which would include nuclear deterrence if necessary. China also poses long-term strategic challenges to both Japan and the United
States. While both Tokyo and Washington regard China as an important economic partner with potentials to become a political partner in addressing regional problems (such as North Koreas
nuclear weapons and missile development), the two countries see a growing need to hedge against increasing, albeit potential, threats from China. How to balance requirements in the two
dichotomized policy dimensions of engagement and hedging should be an important agenda item for strategic consultations between Tokyo and Washington. Increased Japanese Efforts Required
When avoiding involvement with U.S. deterrence strategy, the Japanese government could refer only to the assurances given by the U.S. government, including the repeated commitment made

the countrys participation in common deterrence

efforts with the U nited S tates would no doubt help enhance the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrence as perceived
by the Japanese, who are increasingly aware of its importance. That is because it would provide the Japanese government
with the means and opportunities to know U.S. deterrence strategy better and try to have its views reflected in the
alliances common deterrence strategy. In turn, this would make the Japanese government position in public relations concerning the credibility of U.S. extended
by the presidents, in order to domestically argue for the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence. By contrast,

deterrence more persuasive than the time when it had distanced itself from U.S. deterrence strategy. In this context, changes in U.S. strategy to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and increase

that of conventional forces in deterrence strategy have helped make it politically easier for Japan, particularly the Self Defense Forces (SDF), to take part in the alliances deterrence efforts
without worrying about possible conflicts with the countrys non-nuclear policy. As noted later, a newly institutionalized dialogue on extended deterrence, which presumably includes discussion
on nuclear deterrence, has incurred little negative reaction either from domestic pundits or public opinion. The prospect for diminishing U.S. defense budgets has also added to causes for Japan to
expand defense cooperation with the United States. Although different in scale from U.S. defense spending, the Japanese government began to increase defense budgets in FY 2013 after
reductions for ten consecutive years. Japan has many resources with which to participate in the common deterrence strategy. They include, among many others, efforts to facilitate U.S. force
presence in the country with financial support most generous among U.S. allies, increased defense cooperation between the two countries forces, and foreign policy cooperation to promote the
shared strategic interests, including use of official development assistance (ODA) for common strategic purposes, as specifically mentioned in The National Security Strategy. Of these resources,

an increased role of the SDF in joint efforts with U.S. forces would be particularly important, because of the
centrality of defense cooperation in the common deterrence strategy and also given the prospect for U.S. defense budget cuts. With this
recognition,

the N ational S ecurity S trategy stressed the preparedness to cooperate with the U nited S tates in broad policy areas,

including joint training, joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities, and joint/shared use of facilities by the two countries forces; operational and policy coordination
including contingencies planning as well as mid and long-term strategy; and security cooperation in broad areas
disaster response.

such as BMD , sea, outer space and cyberspace as well as large-scale

Impacts

Impact Disarm + Russia

Modernization breaks the nuclear taboo, upsets plans for global disarmament, and
collapses U.S. Russia relations.
Wittner 16 - Professor of History emeritus, SUNY Albany (Lawrence,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-wittner/modernizing-the-opportuni_b_9005600.html,
'Modernizing' the Opportunities for Nuclear War , 1-18-2016) NAR A fight now underway over

newly-designed U.S. nuclear weapons highlights how far the Obama administration has
strayed from its commitment to build a nuclear-free world. The fight, as a recent New York
Times article indicates, concerns a variety of nuclear weapons that the U.S. military is currently
in the process of developing or, as the administration likes to say, "modernizing." Last year, the
Pentagon flight-tested a mock version of the most advanced among them, the B61 Model 12.
This redesigned nuclear weapon is the country's first precision-guided atomic bomb, with a
computer brain and maneuverable fins that enable it to more accurately target sites for
destruction. It also has a "dial-a-yield" feature that allows its handlers to adjust the level of
its explosive power. Supporters of this revamped weapon of mass destruction argue that, by
ensuring greater precision in bombing "enemy" targets, reducing the yield of a nuclear blast, and
making a nuclear attack more "thinkable," the B61 Model 12 is actually a more humanitarian and
credible weapon than older, bigger versions. Arguing that this device would reduce risks for
civilians near foreign military targets, James Miller, who developed the nuclear weapons
modernization plan while undersecretary of defense, stated in a recent interview that
"minimizing civilian casualties if deterrence fails is both a more credible and a more ethical
approach." Other specialists were far more critical. The Federation of Atomic Scientists pointed
out that the high accuracy of the weapon and its lower settings for destructiveness might
tempt military commanders to call for its use in a future conflict. General James E.
Cartright, a former head of the U.S. Strategic Command and a retired vice chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, conceded that possessing a smaller nuclear device did make its employment
"more thinkable." But he supported developing the weapon because of its presumed ability to
enhance nuclear deterrence. Using a gun as a metaphor, he stated: "It makes the trigger easier to
pull but makes the need to pull the trigger less likely." Another weapon undergoing U.S.
government "modernization" is the cruise missile. Designed for launching by U.S. bombers, the
weapon--charged William Perry, a former secretary of defense--raised the possibilities of a
"limited nuclear war." Furthermore, because cruise missiles can be produced in nuclear and nonnuclear versions, an enemy under attack, uncertain which was being used, might choose to
retaliate with nuclear weapons. Overall, the Obama administration's nuclear
"modernization" program--including not only redesigned nuclear weapons, but new nuclear
bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs, and production plants--is estimated to
cost as much as $1 trillion over the next thirty years. Andrew C. Weber, a former assistant
secretary of defense and former director of the interagency body that oversees America's nuclear
arsenal, has criticized it as "unaffordable and unneeded." After all, the U.S. government
already has an estimated 7,200 nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons modernization
program is particularly startling when set against President Obama's April 2009 pledge to
build a nuclear weapons-free world. Although this public commitment played a large part

in his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize that year, in succeeding years the administration's
action on this front declined precipitously. It did manage to secure a strategic arms reduction
treaty (New START) with Russia in 2010 and issue a pledge that same year that the U.S.
government would "not develop new nuclear warheads." But, despite promises to bring the
1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification and to secure further nuclear
arms agreements with Russia, nuclear disarmament efforts ground to a halt. Instead, plans for
"nuclear modernization" began. The president's 2016 State of the Union address contained not a
word about nuclear disarmament, much less a nuclear weapons-free world. What happened? Two
formidable obstacles derailed the administration's nuclear disarmament policy. At home,
powerful forces moved decisively to perpetuate the U.S. nuclear weapons program: military
contractors, the weapons labs, top military officers, and, especially, the Republican Party.
Republican support for disarmament treaties was crucial, for a two-thirds vote of the U.S.
Senate was required to ratify them. Thus, when the Republicans abandoned the nuclear arms
control and disarmament approach of past GOP presidents and ferociously attacked the
Obama administration for "weakness" or worse, the administration beat an ignominious
retreat. To attract the backing of Republicans for the New START Treaty, it promised an
upgraded U.S. nuclear weapons program. Russia's lack of interest in further nuclear disarmament
agreements with the United States provided another key obstacle. With 93 percent of the world's
nuclear weapons in the arsenals of these two nations, a significant reduction in nuclear
weapons hinged on Russia's support for it. But, angered by the sharp decline of its power in
world affairs, including NATO's advance to its borders, the Russian government engaged in its
own nuclear buildup and spurned U.S. disarmament proposals. Despite these roadblocks, the
Obama administration could renew the nuclear disarmament process. Developing better
relations with Russia, for example by scrapping NATO's provocative expansion plan, could
smooth the path toward a Russian-American nuclear disarmament agreement. And this, in turn,
would soften the objections of the lesser nuclear powers to reducing their own nuclear arsenals.
If Republican opposition threatened ratification of a disarmament treaty, it could be
bypassed through an informal U.S.-Russian agreement for parallel weapons reductions.
Moreover, even without a bilateral agreement, the U.S. government could simply scrap large
portions of its nuclear arsenal, as well as plans for modernization. Does a country really need
thousands of nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear attack? Britain possesses only 215. And the vast
majority of the world's nations don't possess any. Given the terrible dangers and costs posed by
nuclear weapons, isn't it time to get back on the disarmament track?

A2: Nuke mod k2 Detterence

A consensus of highly qualified scholars agree with us - You should prioritize this
evidence because it is both peer reviewed and is the conclusion of extensive research.
Murdock et. al. 15 Incredibly qualified group of scholars from diverse backgrounds
studying IR and Nuclear Proliferation, Clark is a Senior adviser for the Defense and
National Security Group at CSIS and director of the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI).
(Clark, Samuel J. Brannen is senior manager in A.T. Kearneys Global Business Policy Council, a
strategic advisory service, Thomas Karako is a senior fellow with the International Security Program and
the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)., Angela
Weaver is program coordinator and research assistant for the Defense and National Security Group at
CSIS., Elbridge Colby is the Robert M. Gates Fellow at the Center for a New American Security
(CNAS), where he focuses on strategic, deterrence, nuclear weapons, conventional force, intelligence,
and related issues., Keith B. Payne is professor and head of the Graduate Department of Defense and
Strategic Studies at Missouri State University (Washington Campus)., Thomas Scheber is vice president
of the National Institute for Public Policy. Before joining National Institute in October 2006, he was
director of strike policy and integration in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Barry Blechman
cofounded the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. and was chairman of its board from 1989 to 2007.,
Russell Rumbaugh, at the time this report was prepared, was a senior associate at the Stimson Center,
director of the Centers budgeting for foreign affairs and defense programs, and a widely recognized
expert on the institutions, processes, and budgets of U.S. national security, Project Atom A Competitive
Strategies Approach to Defining U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 20252050,
http://csis.org/files/publication/150601_Murdock_ProjectAtom_Web.pdf) NAR

The nuclear posture presented here is dependent on U.S. conventional military superiority; it is
dependent on the notion that the United States is not a weak state, as is every other state currently, including Russia and China, and so does not
need to rely on weak-state tactics. Though U.S. conventional military superiority, as described here, is likely very robust, with the United States
having the economic strength necessary to maintain that superiority, it is plausible U.S. conventional superiority could erode. For this superiority
to erode, however, an adversary would have to achieve both the quality and the scale the United States enjoys. Isolated examples of quality are
not enough to upset the conventional superiority. Neither is significant scale at dramatically lower quality. The following are potential signals that
an adversary might be achieving both attributes: Defense spending on parat market ratesof the United States for a minimum of five years.

The United States enjoys a significant lead. Some of that lead might be cut by capitalizing on second-mover advantages:
relying on the United States for doing the basic development and just incurring production costs. Successful fielding of asymmetric capabilities
reasonably resistant to countermeasures. This countermeasures resistance requires surviving U.S. adaption;
simply holding U.S. forces at risk would not prevent the United States from risking its resources to achieve critical U.S. policy objectives, as
the U.S. military did when it lost the previously unknown stealth helicopter in order to successfully stage the raid on the bin Laden compound in
Abbottabad. Even in these two cases, the nuclear posture here would not all fall away. These two cases would undermine U.S. conventional
coercive ability. But, as already noted, coercion is already a limited military capability. The most significant change would come if an adversary
could mount a credible threat to attack the United States or an ally and survive a counterattack involving all U.S. resources short of full national
mobilization. Such a change may require rethinking the no first use of nuclear weapons doctrine advocated in this paper, as the United States may
need to rely on nuclear weapons to resist attack. Assurance is a more complicated case. If not just adversaries, but allies began to better arm
themselves, and then the allies defected to adversaries, the conventional balance could swing more dramatically. However, this is an extremely
unlikely case. Even under this far-fetched contingency, the U.S. nuclear posture could remain as described in this paper, with the possible
exception of adding a threat to initiate use of nuclear weapons if a conventional attack was launched on the United States or its allies. Conclusion

Nuclear weapons do not achieve U.S. policy objectives , dominant conventional forces do. The
U.S. interest lies in seeking to minimize the importance accorded to nuclear weapons by
narrowing the roles they are perceived to play . U.S. doctrine, policy, forces, and diplomacy should all be
configured to support this interest. The posture described in this paper achieves just that, in contrast to postures that imagine
uses of nuclear weapons that have never actually been demonstrated. After 70 years of indulging fantasies of what
nuclear weapons can do, it is high time to acknowledge that they do very little and adapt
U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, and forces to those facts.

The United States can move second even if modernization is inevitable, the longer
we delay it the better.
Mount 15Adam, Postdoctoral Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, The Real Danger in Nuclear Modernization, 2/9/15, AD: 3/30/16,
http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/the-real-danger-in-nuclear-modernization/, Shree
Given the stability and sophistication of the U.S. arsenal and the vulnerabilities in Russian
and Chinese systems, current plans for aggressive nuclear modernization may cause more
problems than they solve.
It is vitally in the American interest that nuclear weapons are never again used in war. The likeliest path to nuclear use in
the coming decades is not that an enemy suddenly launches a surprise attack on the
continental United States with superior delivery systems. The greater concern is that a crisis
could lead Russia or China to feel that they had been backed into a corner by U.S.
conventional superiority and that utilizing a nuclear weapon could, in Moscows words, deescalate the crisis. Nuclear forces that could provoke this scenario are destabilizing and
could inadvertently lead to nuclear use. The most important steps the United States can take to ensure that nuclear
weapons are never used again are those that support a condition of mutual nuclear deterrence and not those that seek to overcome it.

The United States is in the enviable position of moving second in this round of modernization.
The U.S. should use its position of technological and diplomatic strength to ensure strategic
stability at the nuclear level, rather than destabilizing the world in a vain search for a
useless supremacy.

A2: Nuke K2 Japan Assurances

Close consultation has allayed Japans fears even in the face of declining raw
nuclear numbers.
Roberts 13 {Brad, former visiting fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies of the
Ministry of Defense of Japan, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and
Missile Defense Policy in the Obama Administration, Ph.D. in Political Science (Erasmus
University Rotterdam), M.Sc. in International Relations (London School of Economics and
Political Science), B.A. in International Relations (Stanford University), Director designate at the
Center for Global Security Research (Livermore National Laboratory), Extended Deterrence
and Strategic Stability in Northeast Asia, NIDS Visiting Scholar Paper Series, No.1, 8/9,
http://www.nids.go.jp/english/publication/visiting/pdf/01.pdf}
In recent years, there has been a good deal of tailoring of U.S. nuclear policies and postures to
account for strategic circumstances in Northeast Asia. Looking to the future, is additional tailoring required?
The tailoring already accomplished covers both declaratory policy and capabilities . On
declaratory policy, the Obama administration carefully considered the views of its allies in
Northeast Asia (and elsewhere) before rejecting the sole purpose formulation and modifying
the negative security assurance. The sole purpose formulation would have reduced the
role of nuclear weapons in U.S. deterrence strategy to the sole purpose of deterring nuclear
attack on the United States or its allies and eliminated the role in deterring attacks on vital
interests with chemical and biological weapons and large-scale conventional campaigns. The
result is a U.S. policy that specifies a continued role for U.S. nuclear weapons in deterring attacks on allies by non-nuclear means that threaten
their vital interests. The

modified negative security assurance also clarifies that states such as

North Korea that leave the NPT and threaten the United States and its allies are objects of
U.S. deterrence planning.44 In follow up to NPR consultations, Japan also updated its own
declaratory policy, clarifying Japans intention to play a role in countering nuclear threats
rather than simply relying on U.S. extended deterrence.45 The bilateral dialogue about
whether to maintain or modify U.S. declaratory policy was complicated in part by a
language translation issue. As Yukio Satoh has noted, discussions about the term first use in Japan are somewhat distorted
because of the Japanese translation of the term. The widely used Japanese term for first usesensei-shiyoliterally means preemptive use
in Japanese, while first use does not always imply preemptive use, particularly in contrast to preemptive first strike. It is understandable that
a notion of preemptive use is repugnant to many, and the Japanese are no exceptionHowever it would be counterproductive for the sake of the
countrys security if the Japanese people would become critical of the U.S. policy of calculated ambiguity about first use, believing that first
use is always preemptive.46 On capabilities, the

Obama administration carefully considered the views of

its allies in Northeast Asia and elsewhere before retiring the nuclear-armed Tomahawk
cruise missile and committing to modernize a globally deployable force of fighter-bombers
equipped with nuclear bombs (called non-strategic weapons because of their association
with delivery systems not defined as strategic by arms control treaties). The functions of
that force are (1) to signal the shared and collective resolve of the United States and its
allies to stand together in the face of nuclear coercion and aggression and (2) to enable the
display and employment of lower-yield nuclear weapons with non-strategic delivery
systems in support of commitments to U.S. allies. In these functions, nuclear-armed fighterbombers were deemed more effective than submarine-delivered weapons by the NPR.
Consultations with Japan (and others) also reinforced the intention of the Obama administration
to craft a Nuclear Posture Review that balances the commitments to non-proliferation and

disarmament with the commitments to strategic stability and extended deterrence. One of
the most important results of these consultations was the personal engagement of the U.S.
President and his clear commitment to preserve the nuclear umbrella even while reducing
the role and number of U.S. nuclear weapons . From his remarks in Tokyo in November 2009: so long as
these (nuclear) weapons remain, the United States will maintain a strong and effective nuclear
deterrent that guarantees the defense of our allies including South Korea and Japan .47 He followed
this with written guidance to the military reaffirming the role of nuclear weapons in extending deterrence
to U.S. Allies and partners and the U.S. commitment to strengthen regional deterrence
architectures and directing the military to ensure a wide range of effective response
options drawing on both a strong strategic deterrent and the capability to forward-deploy
nuclear weapons.48

A2: Tactical-Nuke Cruise-Missles

They are inherently destabilizing and risks nuclear war with Russia.
Wise 15Lindsay, Americas modernized nuclear arms roil diplomatic waters, 12/11/15, AD:
3/30/16, http://media.mcclatchydc.com/static/features/irradiated/Modernizing.html, SHree
U.S. plans to build a precision-guided nuclear bomb already are raising hackles in Russia.
With a new tail-kit to increase accuracy, the B61-12 will be an upgrade of a free-falling gravity bomb first
built in the 1960s. President Barack Obama asked Congress to allocate $643.3 million for the project for fiscal year 2016. The total cost of refurbishing the bombs could
exceed $10 billion. After the U.S. successfully tested a non-nuclear version of the bomb in Nevada this summer, Russias deputy defense
minister, Anatoly Antonov, decried the move as irresponsible and openly provocative. A few
months later, when a German TV station reported in September that the U.S. would deploy the
bomb in Germany, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shot back that such a move could
alter the balance of power in Europe. And without a doubt it would demand that Russia
take necessary countermeasures to restore the strategic balance and parity, Peskov said at
a press conference. Its important what impression potential adversaries get about what the
U.S. is up to, said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the
Federation of American Scientists, a national security group dedicated to preventing nuclear
war. If theyre seeing us increasing the accuracy of our gravity bombs, will they conclude
that were contemplating using nuclear weapons more readily in a conflict than
otherwise? Kristensen said. It can have real significant implications for how nuclear
weapon states perceive each other. Kristensen and other critics believe the B61-12 could violate the 2010
Nuclear Posture Review, a pledge by the Obama administration that life-extension programs to modernize old nuclear weapons
wont result in new military capabilities. What theyre doing is taking an unrefined a dumb bomb and
turning it into a refined smart bomb and claiming that its not a new military capability,
said Jay Coghlan, executive director at Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a nonproliferation
group. It just doesnt square with reality. Coghlan added that the B61-12s improved
accuracy and lower yield could make it easier to justify its use in the future, since smaller,
more precise blasts mean less radioactive fallout. Russia has its own modernization programs,
Coghlan points out. The end result is an arms race. The controversy has attracted attention not only from U.S. rivals, but also from
observers in countries allied with the United States. In Britain, The Guardian newspapers diplomatic editor Julian
Borger, raised concerns similar to Coghlans in a recent article. In non-proliferation terms,
Borger wrote, . . . the only thing worse than a useless bomb is a usable bomb. The great
thing about nuclear weapons was that their use was supposed to be unthinkable and they
were therefore a deterrent to contemplation of a new world war, he added. Once they
become thinkable we are in a different, and much more dangerous, universe. On Oct. 20, the third and
last development flight test of the B61-12 took place in Nevada. In announcing the test, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration stressed that despite the new tail-kit assembly, the B6112 is not GPS guided and will have no additional capabilities. The Pentagon also has stated that the B61-12s capabilities are not new, and that its development simply will extend the life of an
outdated weapon and make it safer. Plus, its production will allow for the retirement of about half of the countrys remaining nuclear gravity bombs, including the B83, the only megaton class
weapon remaining in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The next thermonuclear warhead slated for modernization is the W-80, which would be converted for use in about 1,000 nuclear-capable air-

In an opinion
column published Oct. 15 in The Washington Post, former Secretary of Defense William J.
Perry and Andy Weber, a former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and
biological defense programs, urged Obama to halt the development of the cruise missile. They
also suggested a global ban on such weapons to prevent unintended escalation. The problem is that other states wouldnt have any
way of knowing if a cruise missile that had just been launched had a conventional warhead
launched cruise missiles. The presidents 2016 budget requests $195 million for the project, up from $9.4 million the year before a 1,970 percent increase.

or a nuclear warhead until it detonated, Perry and Weber wrote. Some have argued that a new nuclear-capable air-launched
cruise missile is needed to allow future presidents the flexibility to engage Russia or China in limited nuclear war, they added. That is Cold War thinking,
and it is dangerous. Such tactical use of nuclear weapons would be a grave mistake.