Terrorism DA

File Explanation: The Terror DA is read as a net benefit to the CP while it can
also be read independently. The argument is functionally an impact turn to
arms control good and a defense for proliferation of arms being key to check
back against western imperialist such as the United States and its state
sponsored terrorism. The link argument is to the reduction of arms but also is a
criticism of the West facilitating the distribution of arms in the first place and
the paradigmatic question it raises for how and why the U.S. chooses to engage
with countries it constructs as threats or the distinction between justified and
unjustified uses of violence. This being the root cause to conflict paradigms or
at least the scope of U.S. involvement in how it maps out the conflict and its
reduction/ regulation act.

*Additional Note: Go to the Pro-lif core for 2AC defense to prolif. In a later pot-
hole edition of the file, some additional UQ for the debate will be provided.

Thank you to the following students who helped with putting together this file:
Aymen, Raunak, and David!
NEG
 1NC
Countries want a proliferation of arms now—
Weisgerber 6-1-2019 [Marcus. “Great Power Competition Spurs Arms Purchases By Smaller
Asian Countries.” Defense One, 1 June 2019, www.defenseone.com/business/2019/05/great-
power-competition-spurs-arms-purchases-smaller-powers/157408/.]
Great power competition, the national security buzzword at the center of the latest U.S.
National Defense Strategy, is not just about the chess match between nuclear powers. Look no
further than the Asia-Pacific region, where defense spending is rising, reflecting the desire of the
Philippines and other countries for more sophisticated weapons to ward off Chinese
encroachment. “For years, the Philippines military was sort of the El Salvador of Asia and now, for the
first time in the country’s history, they’re taking delivery of new fighter jets from Korea,” said Richard
Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group consulting firm. Manila’s plan to buy
another dozen South Korean-made FA-50 fighter jets is significant, Aboulafia said, even if they are far less
advanced than fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighters being purchased by Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore. Related:
Shanahan Heads to Asia as White House Beats Drums on Iran Related: Army Secretary Reveals Weapons Wishlist for War with China
& Russia Related:
Naval Task Groups Are Proliferating in the Indo-Pacific Philippines President
Rodrigo Duterte approved spending $5.6 billion over five years to upgrade military equipment.
The Philippines 2019 defense budget is $3.3 billion, according to the International Institute of
Strategic Studies’ latest Military Balance+, a database of the world’s militaries. Manila’s budget
rose 22 percent between 2018 and 2019. (El Salvador’s 2019 military budget is $124 million,
according to IISS.) Much of the spending is a response to China’s development of new advanced
missiles, ships, and warplanes. “Strong economic growth, regional tension, and aging fleets
make for a great market,” Aboulafia said. “There’s great power competition, but with a greater
emphasis on self-reliance.” Shifting relations and new wariness about the reliability of the United States as an ally is driving
defense spending in Australia, Japan, and South Korea, he said. Another unique aspect in the region is the diverse defense and
aerospace industrial bases, such as those of China, Japan, and South Korea. What’s hot Japan and South Korea have been beefing up
Intelligence aircraft are another hot commodity in
missile defenses in response to North Korean missile tests.
this region of expansive oceans and large distances between nations, Aboulafia said. And anti-
submarine warfare has become a priority for Pacific countries. China is expected to add 10 new
submarines to its 60-sub fleet by 2020, according to a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
assessment. South Korea and New Zealand are among the countries buying the Boeing-made P-
8 Poseidon — the Boeing-made anti-submarine plane replacing the U.S. Navy’s P-3s. India and
Australia each have eight P-8s in their respective inventories, according to the IISS Military Balance. In
February, South Korea and New Zealand placed orders for P-8s. Seoul plans to buy six, while
Wellington plans to buy four aircraft. Japan is replacing its P-3s with indigenously built Kawasaki
P-1. Kawasaki has been pitching the plane to Japanese allies at trade shows in the U.S. and
abroad hoping to gain more customers. And the Philippines — one of several nations the
disputes China’s territorial claims of islands in the South China Sea — wants old U.S. Navy P-3
submarine hunting planes. “If they get them, they would be the most capable [aircraft] they ever operated,” Aboulafia
said. Defense budgets across the Asia Pacific are expected to rise from about $480 billion in 2019 to $585 billion by 2024, according
to a Teal Group projection. Weapons
spending is expected to increase from $134 billion to $165 billion
over that same period. For U.S. and European defense companies, India is seen as a potential multi-billion-dollar market.
Right now, counties are jockeying to sell New Delhi more than 100 new fighter jets, a deal
estimated at $15 billion. India is also planning to buy attack submarines, patrol ships and utility
helicopters.

The AFF misdiagnosis the conflict paradigm, it is not the presence of arms that
leads to conflict but the control and seizure of them by the US that gets to
determine and violate countries they deem threats to the international order –
proliferation of power for those nations is key for establishing a deterrent
against U.S. [insert whatever negotiating sov actor if applicable] terrorist
attack.
Shellenberger 18, [Michael. “Who Are We To Deny Weak Nations The Nuclear Weapons They
Need For Self-Defense?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 28 Aug. 2018,
www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/08/06/who-are-we-to-deny-weak-nations-
the-nuclear-weapons-they-need-for-self-defense/#2aa47921522f.]
On January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush denounced Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of
evil.” North Korea was “arming with missiles,” he said. Iran “aggressively pursues these weapons” and the “Iraqi regime
has plotted to develop...nuclear weapons for over a decade.” One year later, the U.S. invaded
and occupied Iraq. The ensuing conflict resulted in the deaths of over 450,000 people — about
four times as many as were killed at Hiroshima — and a five-fold increase in terrorist killings in
the Middle East and Africa. It all came at a cost of $2.4 trillion dollars. Now, 16 years later, U.S. officials insist
that North Korea and Iran need not fear a U.S. invasion. But why would any nation — particularly North
Korea and Iran — believe them? Not only did the U.S. overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after
he gave up his nuclear weapons program, it also helped overthrow Libyan President Muammar
Gaddafi in 2011 after he too had given up the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. North Korean President Kim
Jong-un may, quite understandably, see his own life at stake Hussein: was hanged and Gaddafi was tortured and
killed. Both hawks and doves say North Korea and Iran must not be allowed to have a weapon because both regimes are brutal,
but nuclear weapons make nations more peaceful over time. There were three full-scale wars
before India and Pakistan acquired the bomb and only far more limited conflicts since. And China became
dramatically less bellicose after acquiring the bomb. Why? “History shows that when countries acquire the bomb, they feel
increasingly vulnerable,” notes Waltz, “and become acutely aware that their nuclear weapons make them a potential target in the
eyes of major powers. This awareness discourages nuclear states from bold and aggressive action.” Is it really so difficult to imagine
that a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran might follow the same path toward moderation as China, India, and Pakistan? Nuclear
weapons are revolutionary in that they require the ruling class to have skin in the game. When facing off against nuclear-armed
nations, elites can no longer sacrifice the poor and weak in their own country without risking their lives. Had
Iraq in 2002
been in possession of a nuclear weapon, the U.S. would never have invaded. As such, we should
be glad that North Korea acquired the bomb since it guarantees the U.S. will never invaded.

Arms control is a move to position the US as a savior that create a telos around
imperialism allowing for it to continue under an ethical frame.
Anderson 15 (Prof. Tim Anderson, Professor at the Centre for Research on Globalization,
"The Deep Racism of Western Imperial Intervention," [Global Research], 6-29-2015, accessed: 6-
22-2019, https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-deep-racism-of-western-imperial-
intervention/5458977)//DCai

Denying the very existence and integrity of other peoples requires ideologies of systematic
exclusion and dehumanisation. That denial is implicit in every coup, proxy war or invasion, under
whatever pretext, carried out either for ‘regime change’ or to divide and weaken those peoples
not well embedded in the imperial orbit. The new pretexts often have to do with the ‘protector’
role of the empire, including protection against great crimes and genocide. Yet history tells us that it is
almost always imperial interventions that generate those same great crimes. Rafael-Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who invented
the term ‘genocide’ spoke of it as a ‘recurring pattern of history’ by which empires displaced and wiped out entire peoples. The
deep racism of imperial intervention and war renders as illegitimate, non-existent and
worthless entire peoples and their cultures, values and social organisation, including nation-
states and alliances. The aim is to create a cultural void into which the imperial powers can step
as protectors and saviours, hiding their own strategic and material interests. At best the subordinated
peoples are seen as victims, refugees or individuals to be assimilated, never as independent peoples with their own voice and their
own forms of social organisation. This is not simply a matter of capitalist logic. Marxists, following Lenin, placed too much emphasis
on the financial determinants of contemporary imperialism, saying it was based on the need of financial monopolies to export
capital. Yet the USA, leader of today’s imperial cabal, is a massive importer of capital. Contemporary imperialism maintains many
features of the more ancient systems of domination, including the ‘civilising missions’ set up to subdue and divide the various
‘barbarian’ cultures. Western Intervention and The Colonial Mindset After more than a century of such interventions, Latin
Americans found some protection from intervention through a series of regional agreements – the ALBA, UNASUR and CELAC – all
led to fruition by the late Hugo Chavez. Now they mostly resolve their own conflicts. However the big powers remain deeply
engaged in a series of wars of reconquest in the Middle East, dressed up in ‘new-speak’ designed for the post-colonial era. When
puppet regimes fail, as they must, the big powers settle for divide and rule. That is what the
British, borrowing from the Romans, did with Palestine, Ireland and India; that is what the
imperial cabal is attempting with Palestine, Syria and Iraq. Since Baghdad has once again proven itself an
unreliable client state, and as Damascus will not surrender, the imperial ‘Plan B’ is to lay the groundwork for the ‘balkanisation’ of
both countries though separate deals with the Kurds, Sunni groups, the Iraqi Shia, the Syrian Druze and the Alawis. Ethnic cleansing
of Arab Christians by the empire’s proxy armies is consistent with this plan. Fragmentation of the region into sectarian statelets
might also help soften the illegitimacy of the Zionist regime. Yet, as always, there is imperial logic and there is
resistance. The Kurds may collaborate with this partition, but the Druze and the Shia will not. Baghdad is slowly building good
relations with its neighbours Iran and Syria. And pluralist Syria still exists, with a coherent national army. Imperial power
maintains its focus on the exclusion of perceived rival powers, fearing the influence of Russia
and China, and of a re-configured Europe. Yet the greatest threat to the ‘New Middle East’ is that the peoples of the
region, sooner or later, will come together in an anti-imperial alliance. None of these schemes have anything to do with international
law. Imperialism always practices double standards. Indeed, most of the core imperial
collaborators practice their own versions of ‘exceptionalism’. International rules are said to not
apply to these ‘special’ nations. That is why imperialism requires and generates deep racism.
‘Civilising missions’ continue, rebadged as campaigns to rescue peoples from their own ‘brutal dictators’, from Venezuela to
Ecuador, from Libya to Syria. Ordinary people in western cultures adopt those slogans, imagining that
they too can be the saviours of other peoples from their barbarian systems. Even where western
peoples do not support invasions or proxy wars, they often pretend to support the victims of
conflicts caused by their own governments, while attacking the peoples, states and alliances
which resist those wars. In the case of Palestine, Syria and Iraq, western liberals often see
themselves as rescuing individuals and groups, without opposing the ethnic cleansing, partition
and destruction of entire nations, practised by their own governments. Westerners can celebrate the
dissident Jews and conscience-struck imperial soldiers of these new wars, but not the Palestinian militia, the Lebanese Resistance
and the Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, facing the proxy Islamist armies sent in by NATO and the oil-rich Gulf despots. They criticise
Washington, London, Paris, Tel Aviv, but do not cross the invisible lines that prohibit support for The Resistance. They shed tears for
the refugees and displaced peoples. There is a place for this within the new civilising missions. I have stressed the racist side of
imperialism here because, as with petty apartheid in South Africa, there
is the risk that opposition to petty racism
may be seen as absolving the peoples of imperial cultures from their responsibilities to confront
and oppose their own countries’ deep racism, most profoundly generated by imperial war and
intervention. Colonisers cannot lead de-colonisation, and those from imperial cultures cannot
lead the resistance to imperial intervention. But they can go beyond petty criticism to reject
this deep racism by recognising and supporting the Resistance.

U.S. arms control is a tactic of coercion to force weaker countries to comply to

imperialistic demands.
Walt 12 (Stephen M. Walt, the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at
Harvard University,” [Foreign Policy], March 29th 2012, accessed: 6/22/19,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/29/whatever-happened-to-arms-control/)//DCai
There’s been a lot of needless hoopla over Obama’s "open mic" comment at the Nuclear Security Summit, including an almost
certainly ghost-written piece by Mitt Romney here at FP. Obama
was overheard telling Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev that he "would have more flexibility" to negotiate a deal on missile defense after the
election, which is both correct and hardly a state secret. The flap illustrates the main point I was trying to make
a few days ago, when I wrote about how the absurdly long U.S. election cycle was a major impediment to a more effective foreign
policy. (It may also be an impediment to Romney’s chances, because the longer the campaign goes on, the more opportunities he
has for foot-in-mouth moments that expose his ignorance about foreign policy, including his silly comment about Russia being our
major geopolitical rival). In any case, the incident got me thinking about how much the arms control agenda has changed since the
heyday of the Cold War. Back
then, there was a serious constituency in the United States pushing
nuclear arms control, which saw it as key to reducing the risk of nuclear war, managing the U.S.-
Soviet relationship, and dampening the danger of international conflict more generally. Arms
control was intended to save some money, preserve each side’s second-strike deterrent
capabilities, and help stabilize the political relationship between Moscow and Washington. It was
thus a key ingredient in the basic agenda of détente, which sought to keep U.S.-Soviet competition within bounds. (One can argue
about how effective it was, but it is worth noting that nuclear war didn’t occur, and the U.S. and its allies triumphed over the Soviet
Union without fighting a war with them.) Accordingly, the main
items on the arms control agenda involved
direct negotiations with our Soviet adversaries (the SALT and START treaties, the INF treaty on intermediate
nuclear forces in Europe, etc.). These efforts involved tough and protracted negotiations between more-or-less equals (even though
the U.S. and its allies were a lot stronger than the Soviet Union and its various clients), and there was no possibility of either side
issuing ultimatums or imposing a one-sided deal on the other. The other main arms control item was the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), and this arrangement resulted from tacit collusion between the two superpowers to preserve their own nuclear superiority.
After all, the basic NPT deal allowed nuclear powers keep their own arsenals (in exchange for pledges to share nuclear technology
and make some sort of long-term effort disarmament), while putting in place a regime that made it much harder for other states to
join the nuclear club. But what about now? Since the end of the Cold War, the "arms control" agenda has
become decidedly one-sided. Yes, there’s been a not-very-significant "New Start" treaty with Russia, which didn’t alter
the basic strategic relationship at all and which hardly anybody (including Governor Romney) has paid much attention to. The real
action in arms control has been a series of U.S.-led efforts to get states to give up their existing
arsenals or abandon existing nuclear programs. In the 1990s, we put tremendous pressure on
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to give up the arsenals they inherited from the former Soviet
Union, and we eventually succeeded. Then the United States nearly launched a preventive war
against North Korea in 1994, and did various deals (e.g., the "Agreed Framework") to try to head off their
development of nuclear weapons. We invaded Iraq in 2003 to stop Saddam’s "Weapons of Mass
Destruction" programs (which turned out to be fictitious — our bad), and have been ratcheting
up economic sanctions and waging a covert war against Iran to try to keep Tehran from getting
too close to the nuclear weapons threshold. And we keep saying "all options are on the table," which is a threat to
use force. In short, instead of "arms control" being the product of mutual negotiation, as it was in the Cold
War, it now consists of the United States making demands and ramping up pressure to get
weak states to comply. Instead of being primarily a diplomatic process aimed at eliciting
mutually beneficial cooperation (which might also help ameliorate mutual suspicions with current adversaries), arms
control has become a coercive process designed to produce capitulation. This approach may have worked
in a few cases (e.g., Libya, although even there the Bush administration made certain concessions to secure a final deal), but its
overall track record is paltry. After all, North Korea eventually went ahead and tested a nuclear device, and escalating
pressure on Iran has yet to convince its leaders to abandon their enrichment program. And as I’ve noted before, using military
force would not eliminate Iran’s ability to develop weapons if it wishes, and could easily
convince them that they had not choice but to go ahead and weaponize. Because material power is still
the central currency in world politics, this tendency doesn’t surprise me all that much. When the United States has to
deal with near-equals, it understands that bargaining is necessary and that a successful outcome
requires patience and compromise. But today, we think we can impose our will on almost anybody, so any sort of
compromise is regarded as some sort of craven appeasement. But even a country as powerful as the United
States cannot simply dictate to others — as we should have learned by now from our
experiences with Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few others — and a disdain for genuine diplomacy (as
opposed to merely issuing ultimatums and imposing sanctions) is getting in the way of potential deals that could
reduce the risk of proliferation, dampen the danger of war, and enable U.S. leaders to turn their
attention to other priorities. Being the world’s #1 power confers many advantages, but it can also be a potent source of
blind and counterproductive arrogance.

The impact is a fabulation of whitewashing that frames the Other as the enemy
needed of extermination as a justification for American acts of white
supremacy and terror.
Pugliese 13 [Pugliese, Joseph] "State Violence and the Execution of Law Biopolitical
caesurae of torture, black sites, drones” GlassHouse Book, 2013]//Raunak Dua

relational geographies’ can be productively amplified by conjoining it with the concept of

Paglen’s concept of ‘

‘relational temporalities,’ that is, diachronic rela- tions that establish critical connections across historical time and
diverse geogra- phies. Relational temporalities draw lines of connection between seemingly disparate
temporal events: for example, the US state’s genocidal history against Native Americans and the killing
of civilians in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. In her tracking of the violent history of
attempted genocide against Native Americans, Andrea Smith writes: ‘the US is built on a foundation of
geno- cide, slavery, and racism.’66 Situated in this context, what becomes apparent in the scripting of
the 9/11 attacks as the worst acts of terrorism perpetrated on US soil is the effective erasure of
this foundational history of state-sponsored terrorism against Native Americans. This historicidal
act of whitewashing effectively clears the ground for contemporary acts of violence against the
United States to be chronologically positioned as the ‘first’ or hierarchically ranked as the ‘worst’
in the nation’s history. The colonial nation-state deploys, in the process, a type of Nietzschean ‘active forgetting’
that ensures the obliteration of prior histories of massacre and terror such as the catastrophic
Trail of Tears that resulted from the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This Act enabled the forced
removal of a number of Native American nations and their relocation to Oklahoma; in the
process, at least four thousand Native Americans died. The Trail of Tears has been described as
‘the largest instance of ethnic cleansing in American history.’67 This example of state terror is what
must be occluded in order to preserve the ‘innocence’ of the nation so that it can subsequently
claim, post 9/11, to have lost the very thing it had betrayed long ago. Jimmie Durham remarks on the repetition of this
national ruse: ‘The US, because of its actual guilt . . . has had a nostalgia for itself since its beginnings.

Even now one may read editorials almost daily about America’s “loss of innocence” at some
point or other, and about some time in the past when America was truly good. That self-
righteousness and insistence upon innocence began, as the US began, with invasion and
murder.’68 Such acts of white historicide are constituted by a double logic of taken-for- grantedness
and obsessive repetition. Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton, in their forensic analysis of the operations of white supremacy,
articulate the seemingly contradictory dimensions of this double logic: It is the same passive
apparatus of whiteness that in its mainstream guise actively forgets that it owes its existence to
the killing and terrorising of those it racialises for that purpose, expelling them from the human fold in
the same gesture of forgetting. It is the passivity of bad faith that tacitly accepts as ‘what goes
without saying’ the postulates of white supremacy. And it must do so passionately since ‘what
goes without saying’ is empty and can be held as a ‘truth’ only through an obsessiveness. The
truth is that the truth is on the surface, flat and repetitive, just as the law is made by the
uniform.69 The it ‘goes without saying’ is the moment in which the very ideology of white
supremacy is so naturalized as to become invisible: it is the given order of the world. Yet, in order to maintain
this position of supremacy, a logic of tireless iteration must be deployed in order to secure the
very everyday banality, and thus transparency, of white supremacy’s daily acts of violence. For
those in a position to exercise these daily rounds of state violence, their performative acts are
banal because of their very quotidian repetition; yet, because their racialized targets continue to
exercise, in turn, acts of resistance and outright contestation, these daily acts of state violence
must be obsessively reiterated. Underpinning such acts of white supremacist violence and
historicidal erasures is the official – govern- ment, media and academic – positioning of Native
Americans as a ‘permanent “present absence” ’ that, in Smith’s words, ‘reinforces at every turn the
conviction that Native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of Native lands is
justified.’70 Precisely what gets erased in the process are the contemporary Indian wars that are
being fought across the body of the US nation. These are wars that fail to register as ‘wars’
because the triumphant non-indigenous polity controls the ensemble of institutions – legal, military,
media and so on – that fundamentally determines what will count as a ‘war’ in the context of the nation. In her work, Smith establishes

critical points of connection between the war on terror being waged in Afghanistan or Pakistan
and the issue of Indigenous sover- eignty within the context of the US nation: ‘it is important to understand
that the war against “terror” is really an attack against Native sovereignty, and that consol- idating US

empire abroad is predicated on consolidating US empire within US borders. For example, the Bush
administration continues to use the war on terror as an excuse to support anti-immigration policies
and the militarization of the US/Mexico border.’71 The exercise of the war on terror becomes, in
other words, another way of entrenching and legitimating the usurpation of Native American
sovereignty in the name of the colonial nation-state. The militarization of the US’s borders has
seen the Department of Homeland Security oversee the domestic transposition of military technologies such as drones –
that have been used to fight the war on terror in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa – to the borders of both

Mexico and Canada. Ted Poe, Congressman, 2nd District of Texas, has introduced legislation that
‘mandates the Secretary of Defense transfer 10% of eligible returning equipment from Iraq to
state and local law enforcement agencies for border security purposes.’72 Operative here is what Roberto
Lovato has termed ‘ICE’s [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Al Qaeda-ization of immigrants and immigration policy:

building a domestic security apparatus, one made possible by multi-billion contracts to military-
industrial companies like Boeing, General Electric, and Halliburton.’73 The massive scale of this
militariza- tion of US borders becomes evident in the context of a recent US government report
on border security that states that ‘The Department of Homeland security (DHS) has the largest
enforcement air force in the world . . . As of September 2011, OAM [Office of Air and Marine]
had approximately 267 aircraft, 301 marine vessels, and 1,843 personnel in 70 locations
primarily on the southwest, northern and southeast borders.’74 The deployment of such
militarized border technologies creates a virtual fence that effectively amplifies the securitizing
effects of the concrete and steel fence that is already in place in many sections of the US–
Mexico border. Understood in Smith’s terms, the militarization of the US border and the repulsion of
attendant ‘aliens’ constitute a re-assertion of colonial sovereignty. The connection between two seemingly
disconnected categories – the US state’s conduct of contemporary wars and Native American sovereignty over country – comes into sharp focus in Winona LaDuke’s

The modern US military

delineation of the violent relational geographies and temporalities that continue to inscribe the operations of the colonial state:

has taken our lands for bombing exercises and mili- tary bases, and for the experimentation and
storage of the deadliest chemical agents and toxins known to mankind . . . The military has named our commu-
nities after forts that once held our people captive and used our tribal names to link military equipment with fierce warrior imagery, such as the Blackhawk, Kiowa and

Apache helicopters. As the Seventh Cavalry invaded Iraq in 2003 in the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign that opened the war, one could not help note that this was the name
75
the colonial state continues to
of the cavalry division that had murdered 300 men, women and children at Wounded Knee. As LaDuke notes,

exercise its power of conquest and domination through the exercise of both physical –
expropriation of Native American land – and symbolic – expropriation and misuse of Native
American names – violence. The war on terror has seen the names of Native American tribes and
leaders violently inscribed in atrocities such as the killing of fourteen civilians (who tried twice to
surrender as they were being pursued) in Iraq by two Apache helicopters known in US military
jargon as Crazy Horse elements – Crazy Horse was the Oglala Lakota warrior who led his people
against the colonial invasion of their lands.76 The iterative logic of the colonial nomenclature of
occupation and conquest, that has its roots in the wars against Native Americans, is evidenced
by the naming of the US colonial war in the Philippines as ‘Injun warfare,’ and the declaration
that the islands would not be secure ‘until the niggers are killed off like the Indians’;77 and the
naming by the US military of Vietnam, at the time of the Vietnam War, as ‘Indian Country,’
and Vietnamese as ‘Indians.’78 More recently, Iraq was termed by the US military as the ‘Wild
West’ and the fortress in Shkin, Afghanistan, as the ‘Alamo.’79 Perhaps the most flagrant
example of this symbolic violence is the code-naming of Osama bin Laden as ‘Geronimo’: The
president and his advisers watched Leon E. Panetta, the CIA director, on a video screen,
narrating from his agency’s headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in
faraway Pakistan. ‘They’ve reached the target,’ he said.
 Minutes passed.
 ‘We have a visual
on Geronimo,’ he said.
 A few minutes later: ‘Geronimo EKIA.’
 Enemy Killed in Action. There
was silence in the Situation Room. Finally, the president spoke up. ‘We got him.’80 Another
report quotes the following: a ‘Seal then shot bin Laden in the chest and again in the head with
his M4 rifle, and said over his radio: “For God and country – Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo” –
the code word for a hit on bin Laden.’81 In this pivotal moment of the war on terror, the Indian
wars are contemporized and re-situated at the symbolic heart of this war. The visual of bin
Laden is encoded as Geronimo, iconic leader of the Chiricahua Apache in the anti-colonial
Apache Wars. Through this loaded act of superimposition, the Native American warrior is criminalized,
conceptually recoded as a terrorist, and the Native American wars against colonial invasion of their

lands are scripted as the wars of domestic terror- ists. Geronimo, as enemy killed in action, is
symbolically executed by the US state in the guise of a contemporary terrorist. This is the moment in which
the US state reappropriates and secures its imperial sovereignty – precisely through a double death; a
twin execution that topologically locates its absolute outside (Arab/ Muslim terrorist) as already
inside (Native American insurgent). Geronimo, through this discursive resignification and double
death, is transmuted into the trophy of a triumphant imperial power that cannot vanquish too
many times its anti-colonial insurgents: even when they are long dead, as in Geronimo’s case,
they must be killed again. In a profound meditation on the ongoing cultural valency of Geronimo
in US culture, Durham writes: ‘In the American myth, Apaches are a symbol of inscrutable
cruelty. Is Geronimo’s name invoked because he evokes American fear – a fear that has been
“conquered”? If so, then the fear- some “object” has obviously not been conquered at all.’82
Geronimo, in this latest neo-imperial reincarnation, is the revenant that cannot be killed: as
ghost of a dense, unresolved history of colonial violence, he continues to reanimate the colo-
nist’s symbolic imaginary and to haunt its very claims to legitimacy. Activated in this heavily
mediated moment of state assassination is a palimpsest of repetitions, slippages and collisions
of signs, histories and subjects. The historically anachro- nistic enunciation – ‘we have a visual
on Geronimo’ – violently sutures two hetero- geneous faces in the process of collapsing two
radically different geopolitical histories. This same enunciation, as a moment of obsessive
repetition, discloses the state’s tendency to homogenize its various others as interchangeably
Other. It also exposes, however, the undiminished contestatory power that Geronimo still
magnetizes so that he must be ‘killed’ once again in order to silence questions about the
sovereign legitimacy of the colonial nation-state.
2NC
 T/ Diseases
The US are bioterrorists who deploy diseases against racialized bodies.
Pugliese 13 [Pugliese, Joseph] "State Violence and the Execution of Law Biopolitical
caesurae of torture, black sites, drones” GlassHouse Book, 2013]//Raunak Dua
Regardless of the discreditation of such scientific disciplines as eugenics, the practice of using
racially targeted population groups for medical experimentation continued well into the
twentieth century. The infamous Tuskegee Experiments saw African Americans infected with
syphilis, with white doctors denying their sick subjects treatment in order to study the often
fatal effects of the disease.34 The Tuskegee Experiments stand as a landmark case of white
bioterrorism against black bodies. This particular domestic program of medical experimentation
conducted on people of color has been shown to have an international dimension: US
researchers, led by the same doctor who conducted the Tuskegee Experiments, deliberately
infected ‘female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhoea and syphilis and
encouraged them to have unprotected sex with soldiers and prison inmates. The subjects were
not told what the purpose of the research was nor warned of its potentially fatal
consequences.’35 The US government, under the aegis of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA scientifico-
medical experimentation program, inflicted various diseases such as yellow fever and dengue
fever on its African American citizens and ‘mounted biological-warfare tests on oat crops in the
(predominantly black) Virgin Islands.’36 Situated in both domestic and international contexts,
medical experimentation on subjects designated by the US government as biopolitically
expendable has worked as a crucial element in the conduct of state-sanctioned campaigns of
bioterrorism and biowarfare.
 Conditions Link
The aff’s conditioning of arms sales is an imperialistic ploy to reduce the Other
to a non-human that is a compliant and docile subject that can’t challenge
imperialism but also that can become a receptical for violence.
Pugliese 13 [Pugliese, Joseph] "State Violence and the Execution of Law Biopolitical
caesurae of torture, black sites, drones” GlassHouse Book, 2013]//Raunak Dua
In reading this report, I was struck by the seeming incongruity of listing civic health initiatives such as youth smoking and automobile safety with potential bioterrorist threats –

the complex biopolitical

all, furthermore, situated within the larger biopolitical frame of the childhood ‘obesity epidemic.’ In this chapter, I proceed to examine

relations that suture national issues of obesity prevention to larger transnational frames of state terror,
imprisonment and torture. Specifically, I examine the role of medical personnel in the conduct of torture in places such as Guantánamo and draw
attention to the history of US medical science in advancing practices of state violence. In the course of my research, the above quotation worked as a type of incitement; a

the term ‘bioterrorist’ appears as a

provocation to attempt to make sense of what, on the surface, seems like a non-sequitur in the sequence:

type of category error that seemingly violates the coherence of the lexical set concerned with
civic health issues. In order to address this provocation, I will embark on a dilatory itinerary that works to trace a gene- alogy of historical relations that continues
to inform a series of dispersed texts, locations and agents. My particular concern is to illuminate the complicit role of medical personnel in the administration and nuanced
supervision of regimes of torture at Guantánamo.2 I conclude, as an end-point to this dilatory journey, by materializing the points of connection that biopolitically inscribe
national concerns about obesity and terrorists. US bioterrorism and medical experimentation at Guantánamo: the CIA’s experimental laboratory As I outlined in my Introduction,

the Bybee Torture Memo effectively sanctioned a series of torture practices governed by carefully
managed intensities and punctu- ated by levels of pain that could be inflicted as long they did
not the push the victim over a fatal threshold. As I discuss below, assisting the torturer in keeping their
victim from crossing the fatal threshold was an arsenal of medical personnel that effectively monitored the health of the victim in order to
ensure that they could be kept alive for interminable torture sessions. Through its radical redefinition of torture, the
Bybee Memo established the possibility for the CIA detainee prisons to become laboratories of
torture shad- owed by the tenuous limits between life and death. I term these CIA prisons labo-
ratories of torture as the torturers proceeded to test a number of torture techniques on their
captives. Guantánamo was, in fact, referred to by officials who worked there as a ‘battle lab’ because the torture that was conducted there encompassed a range of
experimental practices: ‘MG Dunleavy and later MG Miller referred to GTMO as a “Battle Lab” meaning that interrogations and other procedures there were to some degree

experimental, and their lessons would benefit DoD [Department of Defense] in other places.’3 Abu Zubaydah, whose case I discuss below, draws attention to the
experimental practices of torture he endured: ‘I was told during this period that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, so

no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later
on other people.’4 The experimental torture practices that Zubaydah was forced to endure were set in train under the direction of ‘The apparent leader of the CIA
team . . . a former military psychologist named James Mitchell, whom the intelligence agency had hired on contract.’ Jane Mayer writes: ‘Mitchell announced

that the suspect had to be treated “like a dog in a cage,”informed sources said. “He said it was like an
experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he’s so diminished, he
can’t resist.” ’5 The biopolitics of speciesism at once enables the transmutation of human into animal
and the attendant licence to ‘diminish’ Zubaydah through a range of experimental torture practices
designed to produce a completely compliant and docile subject.
 HR Link
Their argument creates a levianistic dialectic that distinguishes between the
civilized and failed governments. These distinctions serve as disciplinary tactics:
the west believes that regardless of how bad things are, they’re progressing in
relation to the anti-civilized east. Turns case: this politic of western modernity
is the exact structure that justifies intervention. US values become the
benchmark for whether or not the regime needs change.
Ventura 16 (Lorella Ventura (2016): The “Arab Spring” and Orientalist Stereotypes: The Role
of Orientalism in the Narration of the Revolts in the Arab World, Interventions, DOI:
10.1080/1369801X.2016.1231587)//Raunak Dua [[Bracketed for Gendered Language]]

The images bound to “Oriental despotism” as defined by

In spite of the criticisms, after approximately three centuries the picture is not very different.

Montesquieu in the eighteenth century remain vivid: an arbitrary power, focused on the will and
the benefit of the [[monarch]] who does not care for [[their]] country prince, his , which becomes a desert. In some cases, the reference to this

image is even explicit. Goldstone (2011), for example, states that the revolutions of 2011 are to be distinguished from those that took place in Europe in 1848 and 1989 because they are fighting “‘sultanistic’ dictatorship” (329). This definition is very interesting and
meaningful. “Sultanistic” regimes “arise when a national leader expands his personal power at the expense of formal institutions. Sultanistic dictators appeal to no ideology and have no purpose other than maintaining their personal authority” (330–1). To do this
they need to concentrate great wealth in their hands to “buy the loyalty of supporters and punish opponents” (331). One may ask why it is necessary to refer to the image of the sultan to describe dictators and in particular the rulers of Arab countries – the sultans of
the past do not correspond to this abstract image or to the description of Arab rulers in recent times. If it is not historical information, what does the idea of “sultan” add to the description? It can be supposed that it adds a connection to the stereotype of “Oriental

it is sufficient to stress some aspects

despotism”, which had been criticized centuries ago for lacking historical reliability. However, it is not necessary to refer explicitly to sultans to suggest this link, as

of the description of the actual “despots”, such as the identification of the state with the
interests of one person and the pauperization of the people. The stress on such features,
irrespective of whether they correspond to reality, yields the impression of a population of
slaves subjected to the arbitrary will of the ruler, who keeps the country in profound economic
stagnation and moral decadence. Thus, the reference to the picture of “Oriental despotism”
entails, besides fear and cruelty – which are the characteristics of tyrannical governments and
dictatorships in general – a further implicit characteristic, namely backwardness. This seems to
be the key concept. In fact, an important aspect of the idea of Oriental despotism is the link to
the “old”, anachronistic feudal world and power, as opposed to the “modern” one. Irrespective
of whether Arab countries include aspects of “modern” states, according to the western
representation, they appear fixed in the “sultanistic” past. – inside this picture – they It is for this reason that

appear static fights against those governments have automatically

. These considerations can help to explain why the protests or

attracted the approval and support of western public opinion. This normally would need to be
justified because not all changes are in general good and democratic and – assuming that one is in favour of western military intervention in

The fact that this support was given without

general – not all opposition to governments (albeit bad governments) deserves to be backed by military intervention or the supply of weapons.

asking too many questions and that this has not provoked negative reactions in western public
opinion can be considered a manifestation of a shared and spread “mythological” way of
thinking, according to which the fight against governments presented as “despotic” in an
“Oriental” way is considered “right”, regardless. Conversely, in this frame, even the most
authoritarian government can be pictured as not despotic by showing that it is not static.
Goldstone’s argument aiming to exclude Arab monarchies from the group of “sultanistic” states
and even those states that “could quickly crumble in the face of broad-based protests” can be
interpreted as an example of this A jump into “modernity” approach because it is based on the fact that “their political structures are flexible” (338).

Orientalist discourse is focused both on the idea of a monolithic and static Orient, and –
opposed to it – on the idea of a developing and active West, such that the very self-definition of
the West as “modern” comes from the contrast to the “Orient” – and needs it. In the Orientalist
discourse, western “modernity” represents progress par excellence and is supposed to be the
goal of history for those areas of the world that have yet to reach it. In this pattern, the Arab revolts appeared to have been understood by the

The fight against the despotic and “old” power

western public as not only attempts to modernize but also as a kind of “jump” into the western coordinates and system of values.

appears automatically libertarian (if not necessarily democratic), “modern” and progressive
because it brings movement where there was supposed to be only immobility. Thus, it appears
very close to what is considered typically “western”. The idea that, after the uprisings, the immobility of the past can finally be left behind can be discovered, for example, in

Hillary Clinton’s remarks at the gala dinner celebrating the US– Islamic World Forum (2011), in which she poses the question of “whether the people of the region [will] make the most of this historic moment or fall back into stagnation” (479). This is to be
determined by their embracing the “spirit of reform” and their capability to answer to “the region’s most pressing challenges – to diversify their economies, open their political systems, crackdown on corruption, [and] respect the rights of all of their citizens,
including women and minorities” (479). The United States “will be there as a partner, working for progress” (479).

Human Rights discourse is a guise of liberal imperialism that justifies the

eradication of other forms of life that does not conform to western ideals.
Djolic 17 (Petar Djolic, “Humanitarian Interventions: The Doctrine of Imperialism,” [Global
Research], July 3rd of 2017, accessed: 6/23/19, https://www.globalresearch.ca/humanitarian-
interventions-the-doctrine-of-imperialism/5597399)//DCai
Hell is full of good wishes and desires” – Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Defining the concept of humanitarian intervention is problematic
and, therefore, implementation of its conceptualisation is contentious. On the one hand, humanitarian intervention is commonly
acknowledged to be an action of ‘last resort’ taken by a state or a group of states to alleviate or end gross violations of human rights
on behalf of the citizens or ethnic minorities of the target state, through the use of military force. On the other hand,
humanitarian intervention is perceived to be one of the most subtle and hidden forms of power
in contemporary geopolitical systems. That is to say, the ideological structures that provide and underpin legitimacy
for the more overt exercise of political and economic powers are manifested through the rhetoric of humanitarian interventionism.
Consequently, a phenomenon of humanitarian intervention has been one of the most contentious topics in international law,
political science, and moral philosophy. Nonetheless, by reviewing the evolution of the concept, it can be concluded that the
motives for humanitarian intervention are morally and legally intolerable, acting as a force of
liberal imperialism. Furthermore, history illustrates that humanitarian intervention is a part of a wider process employed by
power states as a strategy to expend their political and economic influence. “International history is rife with interventions justified
by high-sounding principles” (Doyle, 2006: 5). From the very beginnings of the world system as it is recognized today, some 500
years ago, ideologies that justify Western power on the grounds that it is based on natural law and
universal values were developed and espoused by Euro-American leaders. As such, the power
wielded by their actions is presented as a benevolent vehicle through which the common good
is spread. According to Wallerstein (2006), the humanitarian intervention debate can be traced back to
the origins of European colonization. However, as Chomsky emphasizes, “if we had records we might find that
Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun professed humanitarian motives” (1999: 76). Although contemporary humanitarian interventions
are carried out in the name of democracy and more specifically human rights, a historical survey of this phenomenon reveals a clear
evolution of such notions over time. As noted by Wallerstein “the intervenors, when challenged, always resort to
a moral justification — natural law and Christianity in the sixteenth century, the civilizing
mission in the nineteenth century, and human rights and democracy in the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries…” (2006: 27). Juan Gines de Sepúlveda (1984) in his book, Democrates Segundo o de las
Justas causas de la guerra contra los indios, outlined “basic arguments that have been used to justify all
subsequent ‘interventions’ by the ‘civilized’ in the modern world into ‘noncivilized’ zones”
(Wallerstein, 2006: 6). Sepúlveda (1984) accused the indigenous population of barbarism due to their practice of human sacrifice,
which violates the divine and natural law. As such, according to Sepúlveda (ibid.), the Spanish had the responsibility to protect the
innocent harmed by such hostile practices. In addition, Sepúlveda (ibid.) argued, Spanish rule was essential in bringing the message
of Christ to the secular indigenous population. Therefore, as Sepúlveda (ibid.) notes, the positive ends including the spread of the
natural law for the great benefit of the barbarians and protection of the innocent justify bellicose means employed by the civilized.
Bartolome de Las Casas, the first priest appointed in the Americas in the early 1500s, however, questioned the morality of such
intervention. By denouncing the injustices of the Spanish conquest of South and Central America, Las Casas sought to secure the
protection of the indigenous population. Las Casas (1999) countered Sepúlveda’s arguments by asserting that irrespective of how
prevalent those motives were, they lacked moral significance. Moreover, even if such claims were justified, it did not mean that
Spain was the appropriate actor to protect the innocent, or even that it could be done without causing more harm than good (Las
Casas, 1999). “Humanitarian” Military Interventions: “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) and the Double Game Such
sentiments,
the inability of the barbarians to govern themselves and the consequent need for civilizing
missions, followed through to the nineteenth century, and were even shared by the most liberal
and progressive of Western thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill. While mainly agreeing with the principle of
nonintervention, Mill (1867) argued the case for ‘benign colonialism’. In other words, Mill’s principles of
nonintervention were applicable only to ‘civilized’ nations. According to Mill (1867), ‘uncivilized’
peoples suffer from debilitating infirmities such as anarchy, despotism, familism and amoral
presentism, which, in turn, makes them incapable of self-determination and, therefore, unfit for
the principles of nonintervention. As such, Mill notes: “…there assuredly are cases in which it is allowable to go to war,
without having been ourselves attacked, or threatened with attack… To suppose that the same international customs, and the same
rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is
a grave error….” (1867: 166-167). Nevertheless, once Mill’s words are put into the context of the whole paper, it is clear that Mill
(ibid.) advocates for neither racial domination nor exploitation; on the contrary, Mill (ibid.) promotes the duty of paternal care,
precluding exploitation and oppression while acquiring education and care so that one day colonized people become fit for
independent national existence. That is to say, in
order for ‘uncivilized’ societies to advance to the point
where they are capable of sustaining liberal institutions and self-government, a temporary
period of political dependence or tutelage is necessary. From this perspective, colonialism is not principally a
form of economic exploitation and political domination, but rather an empire’s paternalistic practice that exports ‘civilisation’ in
order to foster the improvement of indigenous population (Mill, 1867). However, a benign trusteeship is a slippery slope that
generally, as history has shown (refer to colonialization of Africa, Latin and Central America as well as Asia), become malign
imperialism. After all, as Doyle (2006) notes, how far is it from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and King Leopold’s Congo Free
State to the Aborigines’ Protection Society and the Anti-Slavery Campaign? Furthermore, there is a great difficulty of consistently
and objectively delineating between the ‘uncivilized’ and ‘civilized’ peoples. The problematic nature of such can, therefore, be
exploited in order to legitimize subjugation as a way to facilitate the salvation and enlightenment of indigenous peoples. With the
passage of WWII, and the inception of the United Nations, powerful
states shifted their rhetoric from the
notions of cultural and racial superiority and consequent ‘civilizing missions’ to human rights.
Such sentiments intensified after the end of the Cold War, which subsequently saw a surge in the number of humanitarian
interventions, concomitant to the seemingly decreasing prominence of state sovereignty. This “revolution of moral concern”
(Davidson, 2012: 129), emphasized through the moral necessity (Teson, 2001) and responsibility to intervene militarily in the face of
gross violations of human rights, has, therefore, been promoted heavily within contemporary liberal circles. Up until the beginning
of 1990s, an act of self-defence was a predominant justification for intervention, however, the
rise to pre-eminence of
liberal ideas regarding states’ responsibilities to individual rights “seemed to be manifesting
itself in the interpretation of international law” (Davidson, 2012: 134). Thus, the principle of non-intervention,
which was founded on the principle of states’ sovereignty, no longer had the authority it once did within the international
community. Such shift in attitudes regarding the permissibility of military interventions culminated
in the formulation of the term ‘Responsibility to Protect’ based on the principle of natural law
theory — “our common human nature generates common moral duties — including, in some
versions, a right of humanitarian intervention” (Holzgrefe and Keohane, 2003: 25). However, an absence of
international legal mechanism that is able to address and enforce laws formulated on the back of such principle provides room for
powerful states to act flexibly based upon their own political and economic bias and challenges
the traditional humanitarian values of “impartiality, neutrality and independence” (Barnett, 2005:
724), ultimately rendering such principle purposeless and, in some cases, even damaging,
susceptible to manipulation and exploitation. In sum, the use of military force to further humanitarian ideals
seems, at the very least, a paradox in terms. That is, “wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign
who must be defended, they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone” (Foucault, 1990: 137).
According to Dillon and Read (2009), such are the paradoxes inherent in humanitarian intervention —
liberal powers are waging war against human life in the name of human life’s protection and
preservation. In other words, issues such as poverty, health crises, environmental concerns and civil
conflicts are re-conceptualized as international threats that necessitate intervention so that they
do not “inundate and destabilize Western society” (Duffield, 2007: 1). Accordingly, those ways of life
that do not conform to Western liberal standards are viewed as a threat to society as a whole.
This notion is at the root of the drive to liberal interventionism. Considering the above-outlined historical
survey, it is difficult to argue that, despite it humanitarian cloak, liberal interventionism has not, in reality, always
been a part of a liberal strategy of global governance. That is to say, liberal imperialism. As such, it can be
concluded that liberal enterprise is “quintessentially concerned with the art of global supremacy” (Burchell, Gordon and Miller,
1991: 14). As illustrated, there are distinct similarities between the current discussions surrounding liberalism and old rhetoric of the
empire. In other words,humanitarian
intervention is basically a veil behind which political and
economic imperialism can disguise itself. Furthermore, it seems there exists a significant cognitive
dissonance between liberal universalism proclaimed through cosmopolitan humanitarianism,
and liberal imperialism expressed through high-sounding principles of humanitarian intervention
that, in reality, functions as a vehicle through which all forms of life that do not conform to
liberal ideals are eradicated or expelled (McCarthy, 2009: 166).
 Disease Link
The United deviously carries out its acts of biterror – after creating a conflict
they create a façade of attempting help the colonized and instead carry out
more colonial violence
Pugliese 13 [Pugliese, Joseph] "State Violence and the Execution of Law Biopolitical
caesurae of torture, black sites, drones” GlassHouse Book, 2013]//Raunak Dua
the shadow archive is an historical repository of discursive
As I remarked in Chapter 2 in the context of Abu Ghraib,

practices that, although barely discernible because of its shadow status, continues to animate and shape the cultural
intelligi- bility of contemporary practices. Haunting this contemporary use of medicine for biopolitical
warfare, experimentation, and torture is a dense shadow archive of colonial and racist medicine
that has been critical in shaping the biopolitical configuration of the US nation. The brutal
literality of the power of colonial disease to determine who would live and who would die is
clearly evidenced in the case of smallpox. The colonial settlers of North America deployed smallpox as a technique of biowarfare to advance the
destruction of Native Americans in order to facilitate land clearing and white colonization. In their study of the destructive impact of the disease on Native American

communities in colonial North America, Kristine Patterson and Thomas Runge note that: ‘ Smallpox ultimately killed more Native
Americans in the early centuries than any other disease or conflict. It was not unusual for half a tribe to be wiped out;
on some occasions, the entire tribe was lost.’25 Referring to the first documented account of the power of smallpox to effect mass extermination, the authors write that: ‘The

first epidemic occurred in 1616 along the Massachusetts coast, eliminating nearly 90% of the
Massachusetts tribe of the Algonquin nation. This was later referred to as an act of Divine Providence to clear the land for settlers that
landed at Plymouth in 1620.’26 The historical moment that marks the colonial foundation of the white nation

is inscribed with an epidemiological case of ethnic cleansing that dovetails perfectly with a
germinal form of that providential myth that will expand expo- nentially in its latter guise as
Manifest Destiny – with its attendant massive campaign of genocidal expropriation of Native American lands. As a technique of biowarfare, smallpox
operated as a ‘Trojan Horse,’ entering Native American communities through gifts of blankets
and barrels inoculated with the disease. In an effort to quash Native American resistance against the conquest of their lands, one military
officer recommends that: ‘You [Colonel Henry Bouquet] will do well to try and inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method tha[t] can serve

This campaign of extir- pation assumed many forms and continued well into
to extirpate this execrable race.’27

the twentieth century, with the US state mobilizing medical personnel in the forced sterilization
of Native American women. Native American women, Andrea Smith notes, are ‘threat- ening because of their ability to reproduce the next generation of
peoples who can resist colonization’;28 consequently, their bodies become the target of biowarfare practices such as sterilization. Administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs,

steril- ization rates as ‘high as 80 percent’ have been documented on some reserva- tions.29 The
practice of obtaining informed consent was either entirely disregarded or ‘consent forms were
signed while the patient was anesthetized or in the throes of labor.’30 As a technique of biowarfare
deployed in order to neuter and extin- guish the state’s designated enemies, the threat of sterilization reared its
contem- porary head in one of the US’s transnational gulags: ‘In January 2004 at a holding facility, an interrogator assigned to a SOF [Special Operations Forces] unit told two
detainees that they would be sterilized, then poured the contents of a Chemlight onto one of the detainee’s genitals.’31
 Link – Israel
US imperialism has created an endless war in the Middle East through arms
control and military support to Israel – the language of criminality is used to
justify the extermination of Black and Native populations
Haiphong 18 (Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributor, “The Defeat of US Imperialism is a Strategic
Necessity, not a Single Issue,” [Black Agenda Report], May 23rd in 2018, accessed: 6/23/19,
https://blackagendareport.com/defeat-us-imperialism-strategic-necessity-not-single-
issue)//DCai

Many in the United States have a hard time seeing beyond single issues or individuals. The
ruling class has taken full
advantage by relegating the blame for the problems of US imperialism on Trump, Russia, or
some combination of the two. This is a uniquely US phenomenon. It is an outgrowth of the US empire’s roots in classical,
capitalist liberalism and the vulgar idealism attached to it. The imperatives of race-based slavery and class oppression have made it
difficult for workers in the US to see themselves as a collective instead of a diverse set of individuals, each with their own grievances
and investments with the US empire. Recent events worldwide point to the urgent need for the struggling masses in the US to
defeat empire, not invest in it. Too
often are the particularities of US imperialism, such as the plight of
the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli settler state, viewed as separate, unrelated
issues. The same goes for US provocations toward Syria, Iran, or Russia. Yet none of these strategic
priorities for US imperialism stand alone on the world stage. They are all deeply interconnected and point to the common enemy
that all oppressed people share both in the US and all over the planet. The current Israeli assault on Palestinians in
Gaza is a case in point. On the day that the US embassy in Jerusalem was opened and just one day before Palestinians
mourned the anniversary of the “Nakba,” Israeli snipers killed over sixty Palestinians and injured thousands more. The mass
murder of Palestinians on the colonial border of the Gaza strip was part and parcel of a larger
series of violent responses to the Great March of Return that has been going over a month prior
to the US embassy’s move to Jerusalem. Palestinian resistance has once again placed a spotlight
on Israel’s colonial genocide of the Palestinian people. The Trump Administration has looked
away from the carnage due to its strained relationship with much of the world. Only Trump’s advisor
Jared Kushner has made a definitive statement on the matter, calling the protesters “part of the problem” for “provoking violence.”
Kushner speaks fluidly in the language of the colonizer. Colonial powers throughout history have used the
language of criminality and unruliness of the native population to justify the violent
suppression of anti-colonial resistance. Israel is no different. The Zionist settler state has
repeatedly criminalized Palestinians as “Hamas terrorists” over the last several years, rendering
the population as unworthy of land or life. Lacking allies in the European imperialist camp, Trump has leaned heavily
on strengthening relations with two countries that can always be counted on to fulfill US interests: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel
and Saudi Arabia want nothing more than a weakened Palestine as part of their broader policy
to keep the region under imperialist domination Israel’s latest massacre of the Palestinian people has engendered
legitimate anger across the world. The sheer cruelty of the massacre has been difficult to hide despite the best efforts of the
corporate media. The New York Timesand the BBC, for example, have whitewashed Israel’s crimes as “clashes” and described
Palestinians as having “died” because of them. According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), “Israel has killed 11
Palestinian children, two journalists, one person on crutches and three persons with disabilities.” FAIR adds that “to this point, the
only Israeli casualty during the entire cycle of demonstrations has been one “lightly wounded ” soldier, considerable space in
coverage of the massacres is devoted to blaming Palestinians for their own slaughter.” In contrast to the distortions of the media,
complete silence over the massacre reigns in Washington. Silence protects the politicians or capitalists in control of US policy, all of
which possess a vested interest in maintaining cordial relations with last remaining settler state in the Middle East. US
imperialism bears the most responsibility for Israel’s immunity on the world stage. The United
States provides nearly four billion dollars per year in military aid alone to Israel, a historic
expenditure made possible by the Obama Administration. Trump has shouldered the blame for officially
moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, a site many see as the heartland of Palestine. But it was under the Clinton Administration that
the US officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This has been affirmed by the Bush and Obama Administrations in a
number of speeches to Zionist audiences such as American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Only by taking the issue
of Palestine out of the narrow confines of single-issue politics and into the struggle against US
imperialism can we answer the real question as to why such unanimous support for Israel exists
in Washington. Washington has a nearly a half century long history in keeping the Zionist settler state immune from popular
resistance or international accountability. While Israel is a creation of Western imperialism, the settler state
receives over ten million USD per day in military equipment to fulfill US objectives in the region.
Israel returns the favor by showering US political officials with campaign donations through its slush-fund, AIPAC . The US-Israeli
partnership is not always one of consensus, as proven by Israel’s attack on theUSS Liberty during the Six Day War or Netanyahu’s
steadfast opposition to President Obama’s signature “Iran deal,” recently nixed by Trump. When it comes to their strategic interests
in the Middle East, however, there is little that the US and Israel disagree upon. Washington’s inaction toward Israeli atrocities is
about more than a lack of concern for the lives of Palestinians. The demand for Washington to sanction Israel or withdraw military
support is fruitless unless Palestine is placed in the larger context of imperialist aggression. Washington
arms Israel to
the teeth because, as imperialist powers, they share a common vision for the region and the
world. What foremost unites them is the aim to suppress and destroy Arab nationalism, the anti-
colonial movement that has always placed Palestine at the front and center of its political
activities. US imperialism has long charted a course to destabilize any independent nation in the Middle East that ascribes to
some version of nationalism, whether the Arab nationalism of the Libyan and Syrian states or the Islamic nationalism of the Iranian
state. Anti-colonial nationalism is the antithesis of US imperial rule, which is predicated to the
unmitigated corporate and military plunder of the planet. Israel is heavily dependent on US imperialism but
not to the extent where the settler regime is devoid of its own interests. The settler state not only wants to erase
the Palestinian population from existence, but also sees the erasure of all sovereign and
independent formations in the region as a prerequisite to its own expansionist dreams. Israel called
for the removal of Saddam Hussein in the Clean Breakpolicy document authored in 1996. Israel has also provided aid to jihadists
operating in Syria since the very beginning of the foreign-backed insurgency against the Syrian government led by Bashar Al-Assad.
The Syrian Constitution codifies the Syrian state as the antithesis of Zionist rule in the region. President Assad has made numerous
statements in support of Palestine. It is a myth that Palestinians live in a friendless Middle East. Palestine stands at the center of a
broader struggle for national liberation that many falsely assumed had come to an end in the late 20thcentury. If the struggle for
national liberation has indeed ended, then why does US imperialism militarily occupy part of Northeast Syria to compliment Israel’s
occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights? Why does US imperialism occupy Afghanistan and incessantly pressure the Iraqi
government to give up its alliance with Syria and Iran? Why is Israel so concerned about Hezbollah’s growing influence in Lebanon or
Iran’s growing influence in the region, generally? The answer is because the Syria-Hezbollah-Iraq-Iran alliance is holding on to dear
life to prevent the complete collapse of the region to US and Israeli rule. In
the struggle against imperialism, national
liberation is a matter of survival. It is a life or death struggle, a class struggle. Either the national liberation struggles that
bore the fruits of independence in Syria and Iran prevail or the boot of the US and its imperial allies suffocates the masses of people
in the region. Israel’s
massacre of Palestinians is possible because US imperialism has waged
endless war on the region, beginning with Afghanistan in 1979 and moving one by one to Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran. This
has placed the struggle for national liberation in Asia and Africa in a state of siege and underdevelopment. What Palestine needs
most is for this state of siege to end. However, the
imperialist siege on national liberation movements has
poisoned the politics of what passes as the “left” in the US imperialist orbit. Israelis, like their
American brethren, are racist to the core and unable to acknowledge the humanity of the
people in Iraq, Syria, or Palestine. The “left” in the imperialist orbit is fully committed to regime change and war as long
as it targets “authoritarian regimes”—a euphemism for a nation that the US or Israel doesn’t like. US imperialism is not a system to
the left. US imperialism has become a single issue, with many leftists choosing to express solidarity with Palestinians but not for
Syrians, Iranians, or Iraqis. Palestine is a worthy cause mainly because Palestinians can be stripped of their class character in the face
of an overwhelming enemy in Israel. The Arab and Islamic nationalist sentiments of Syria or Iran pose a real, existing challenge to
imperial rule and are thus not afforded any solidarity at all despite the unwavering support that organizations like the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) give to them. Of course, this is not to say that solidarity with Palestine should be abandoned.
Rather, it should be expanded. Yes, only the people of the United States can truly stop the Zionist state of Israel’s genocide of the
Palestinian people. The question is, how? The US imperial war on the poor, especially the Black and Native
poor inside of its own borders, cannot be ignored. Anti-imperialism must also mean anti-system.
It is a unity of struggles against the oppressor class, against class society itself. Imperialism thus cannot be relegated
to a single issue. Its defeat is a strategic necessity for the liberation of humanity.
 Link – Military Industrial Base
We can’t rely on politics to restrict the military-industrial complex – imperialist
bombings and weapons exports will continue as long as it benefits the ruling
class
Krieger 19 (Sonja Krieger, an editor and writer for Left Voice since 2016. She teaches college
students and is an active AFT member ,“Made in the USA: How the U.S. Manufactures Death
and Destruction in Yemen,” [Left Voice], 1/23/19, accessed: 6/25/19,
https://www.leftvoice.org/made-in-the-usa-how-the-u-s-manufactures-death-and-destruction-
in-yemen)//DCai

It happened on August 9, 2018, in Sa’ada Province, northern Yemen. A

bomb was dropped on a bus at a market in
the town of Dahyan, killing 40 little boys, ages 6 to 11. They were on a school trip. The bomb
also killed 11 adults and wounded 79 people (including 56 children). The bomb, made in the
United States, was Lockheed Martin’s 500-pound laser-guided MK 82. It was likely part of a shipment that
had been approved by the State Department during Obama’s presidency. Obama had canceled a sale of precision-guided munitions
to Saudi Arabia in December 2016 due to “human rights concerns,” but that did nothing to save those children in 2018, nor did the
Saudi-led coalition’s subsequent apology for “mistakes made” alter their tragic fate. The fact is that the bomb
that targeted
and killed those kids was just one of thousands of bombs exported by the United States to Saudi
Arabia, and this one ghastly episode was just one of the well over 17,000 airstrikes that have
claimed the lives of countless Yemeni civilians since the war began in 2015. The Awful Truth About the
“Invisible War” The pictures of Yemeni children with their sad eyes are gut wrenching to look at. Shocking are the images of babies
that are but skin and bones, held in the arms of desperate parents. It’s hard to stomach the sight of the human face of what is
referred to everywhere as the “the worst humanitarian crisis on earth.” Faced with a devastating famine, 22 million people in Yemen
(out of a population of 29 million) urgently need food and other aid. Seventeen million people are suffering from hunger, and
according to the UN, 14 million are on the brink of starvation (“seriously food deficient”). According to some estimates, 85,000
people may have already starved to death, most of them children. Only half of the population has access to clean water.
Communicable diseases have resurged, including 1.2 million cases of confirmed or suspected cholera since April 2017. Diphtheria,
which was all but eradicated in Yemen by the 1980s, has reappeared. One hundred and thirty Yemeni children die each day due to
hunger or disease. Human-made, this famine is the product of war—a war that has been dragging on
for well over three years. The Saudi-led coalition has erected a sea, air and land blockade that is preventing import goods
and humanitarian aid from getting into the country. Prices have soared, effectively making basic necessities unaffordable for most
people. Inflation is, however, only one aspect of the country’s near total economic devastation. Factories, farms and companies have
slowed production or shut down; millions of people have no work. This war has caused mass suffering in many ways, but the most
direct, most immediate source of misery remains the world’s advanced military technology. No
amount of “precision”
targeting changes the fact that this imperialist war is a giant annihilation campaign; it kills and
maims, obliterates homes, workplaces and cities. There have been 18,000 air raids since the spring of 2015, or
roughly 14 air raids each day. The New York Times reported that over 4,600 civilians have been killed as a result of the air strikes
(and 6,500 including other war-related violence). The Guardian wrote that more than 57,000 civilians and combatants have died
since the beginning of 2016, and 2 to 3 million have been displaced. The country’s infrastructure is utterly demolished, including half
the hospitals. Many people cannot pay for transportation to the nearest medical facility because of the rising fuel prices. Eight
civilians die each day as a result of the fighting and the bombardment. War For Profit With no end in sight, the “forgotten war” is
finally getting attention. The numbers cited above are all over the media. But while the situation in Yemen is becoming more visible,
a deeper understanding of what is happening requires that we expose the role of the military-
industrial complex in creating and perpetuating this crisis. After all, religious and political conflict
becomes lethal when weapons are involved, and in a world where global capitalism reigns
supreme, weapons are produced and sold by private companies whose sole purpose is to profit
from death and destruction. Aided in their objectives by their alliance with the government,
defense contractors are literally making a killing. War is big business. Although it is Saudi
Arabia and its coalition that is leading the war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the war wouldn’t
be possible without the United States, which therefore carries a large part of the responsibility.
The United States has been an ally of the Saudis for 75 years. This alliance is built on oil and weapons. Saudi Arabia is the United
States’ second-largest supplier of oil, after Canada, and its No. 1 buyer of arms, making up about 18% of total U.S. arms sales.
However, U.S. military support goes beyond the provision of arms. Since the start of the war, the
United States has
reinforced the blockade, refueled the Saudi military airplanes and supplied the coalition with
targeting intelligence and technical assistance. The UK also sells munitions to Saudi Arabia and is quietly training
Saudi forces. On a lesser scale, France and China have made deals with Saudi Arabia as well. Spain recently canceled an arms sale to
Riyadh, as did a few other European nations, but it
is highly doubtful that there is any real intention to
completely stop or even significantly roll back what ultimately amounts to the capitalist
countries’ military support of this war. Meanwhile, other countries, including Russia, are looking to get a slice of the
pie and profit from this massive and ongoing criminal assault on a people who have nowhere to escape to. According to a
Congressional Research Service Report published in December 2016, the Obama administration made sales (in equipment, and
training) to Saudi Arabia worth $115 billion, which is more than any prior administration had spent. President Trump then made an
agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, according to which Saudi Arabia would purchase $110 billion of arms now and
$350 billion over the course of the next 10 years. So far, “only” $14.5 billion worth have been purchased, but Trump
insists
that the American people need more arms deals with Saudi Arabia because… jobs! The appalling
logic behind Trump’s claims is that the United States should be willing to accept a continuation
of the war and mass suffering because American workers benefit from it, that is, manufacturing
and selling death is good for the working class. Morality aside, these claims are based on a lie. Yes, weapons
production is a significant part of the American economy, making up about 10% of the United
States’ factory output. However, the assertion that this most recently negotiated deal would support 500,000 new jobs is a
colossal exaggeration; a realistic figure would be closer to a few hundred. More importantly, this is capitalism, and the arms
manufacturers are capitalist companies, which means the defense industry executives are the ones raking in the big money, not the
assemblers at Lockheed Martin, who make a little over $16 an hour. Ultimately, the
biggest lie is that the interests of
American workers are served by politicians making sure that the capitalist class can keep
exploiting labor, killing brown people in poor countries, and swimming in more and more wealth
while doing so. Geopolitics in the Middle East and Beyond We have all heard the term “proxy war” in connection with Yemen,
meaning that Yemen has been made into a battleground where Saudi Arabia and Iran are acting out their political aspirations and
aggressions without directly attacking each other. This may well be an accurate description of what’s happening, though it is not
clear to what extent Tehran is actually supporting the Houthis, while it is perfectly clear that Saudi Arabia is waging a war
on them and the civilian population of Yemen. Leaving aside for the moment the truth that there is nothing proxy
about Yemen serving as yet another, particularly deadly, battleground for the war of the global capitalist class on the rest of
humanity, it is useful to take a look at the specific confluence of forces that led a tragedy of immense proportions to unfold in the
poorest country in the Middle East. Saudi
Arabia and Iran are two major political powers in the Middle
East, locked in a decades-old conflict. Today, this conflict has reached a point where the Saudi
monarchy fears it is losing its status as the leader of the Muslim world to the Iranian theocracy,
which is in fact expanding its influence in the region. While Saudi Arabia is supported by the United States, Iran is
an ally of Russia. These alliances are also critically involved in Syria, where Iran and Russia are supporting Assad while Saudi Arabia is
backing some of the rebel groups, making the conflict in Syria today look more and more like a real proxy war. Israel, of course, with
the United States as its closest ally, is not altogether opposed to the Saudi military adventures because its foreign policy is mainly
directly against Iran, which supports Hezbollah, the Shia militia in Lebanon. As
these global strategic games are being
played, with the lives of human beings used as tools in the struggle for power, religious and
other divisions are taken advantage of. For most of its recent history, Yemen has been politically divided. Northern
Yemen gained independence in 1918 after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, whereas southern Yemen did not become
independent from the British until 1967. At that point, there were two Yemeni states: the Yemen Arab Republic in the north
(formerly the Zaydi Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen) and the People’s Republic of Yemen (later the People’s Democratic Republic
of Yemen) in the south, which was oriented toward the Soviet Union. Unification in 1990 did not bring an end to the separation and
the conflict. Today, the Saudi-led coalition is exploiting the strife between the Shia al-Houthi rebels in northern Yemen and the Sunni
supporters of the former government in southern Yemen while waging war on the former and furthering any effort to bring former
president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power. The events over the last two decades have made Yemen more vulnerable to
foreign interference. One of the key sites of the “war on terror” early on, Yemen has been under
drone attack by the United States since the beginning of President Obama’s term. There had been
only one drone strike before that (in 2002), but after 2009, there was a massive escalation of the drone war, which has already
claimed the lives of up to 1,700 people in Yemen, including hundreds of civilians with no connection to al-Qaida. In 2011, U.S. citizen
Anwar al-Awlaki was killed near the town of Khashef in the province of Jawf by a CIA drone. That same year, the corrupt and
autocratic then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced out of office as the Arab Spring reached Yemen. After Saleh escaped to
Riyadh, he was replaced by his vice president Hadi, who was facing more unrest as economic and social problems were worsening,
adding fuel to an already volatile political situation. The Houthis took over the capital city of Sana’a in 2014 and forced Hadi to flee,
first to Aden in the south and then also to Riyadh, which launched its military campaign in 2015. The other parties that are actively
responsible for the attacks on Yemen are the members of the coalition assembled by Saudi Arabia, including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan,
Sudan, Senegal, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar (which was suspended in 2017). For its part, Saudi Arabia is using its military
spending to buy itself control over the region. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s largest arms importers, by many accounts the
largest, and has significantly increased its import of arms over the last few years. The United States accounts for more than half of
Saudi Arabia’s imports. Even
though Saudi Arabia is procuring more weapons than it is using, the war
in Yemen would clearly not be what it is without U.S. military equipment. Ending the arms
sales would therefore have a major impact on the Saudis’ ability to continue bombing Yemen. At
the same time, it is untrue that doing so would significantly affect the U.S. economy, though individual companies would be
affected, including Lockheed Martin, which stands to gain $28 billion in sales in the $110 billion deal negotiated by Jared Kushner.
End the War: Demanding More than Symbols Congressional Democrats have recently called for an end to
U.S. arms deals with Saudi Arabia and an end to U.S. support for Saudi military operations in
Yemen. These include Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff (the chair of the House Intelligence Committee) and others.
Some of them took this position after President Trump responded tepidly to the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal
Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The brazen manner in which
this heinous crime was committed shows that the royal house thinks itself free to commit grotesque acts of violence with impunity.
So far, any pressure coming from progressive Democrats has yielded few results, although the United States suspended mid-air
refueling of Saudi warplanes, which was likely negotiated by the Trump administration and the Saudis to prevent Congress from
taking more serious measures. Given that only a fifth of the coalition airplanes depend on U.S. refueling, this decision makes very
little difference. In March 2018 the Senate voted on a resolution to end support for the war, but it lost. In November, Republicans
blocked another resolution. Then, at the end of the year, Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 54, which had been sponsored by Sen. Bernie
Sanders (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), passed the Senate 56-41. Sanders acknowledged that this resolution would not affect
foreign policy (because of the subsequent transition to the 116th Congress) but emphasized its symbolic significance. Unfortunately,
symbolic gestures are not enough to save Yemeni lives and end this bloody war. Regardless of what, if anything, is going to happen
to the Sanders-Lee resolution, a resolution like it will probably pass in the now Democrat-controlled House. For example, a
bipartisan bill has been introduced by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), and cosponsored, among others, by
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). This Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act of 2018 would halt “certain weapons transfers” to
Saudi Arabia, prohibit refueling of coalition aircraft and place sanctions on any parties that block humanitarian access in Yemen or
aid to the Houthis, and on persons responsible for the murder of Khashoggi. It also mandates reports on human rights and
accountability for harm to civilians. All this may sound comprehensive, but even if such a bill is passed, it will likely not alleviate the
suffering in Yemen, and it certainly won’t bring the peace that Yemenis need so badly. The
truth is that we can’t rely on
politicians, proposing and passing this or that resolution, this or that legislation, no matter
how “progressive” these politicians are. In the capitalist system, political decisions are made
based on whether they ultimately benefit the ruling class, or at least do not significantly
interfere with their interests and ability to amass wealth. Even Sanders’ resolution does not call for an end to
the drone strikes in Yemen or the end to the war on terror. Instead, it invokes the War Powers Act of 1973 to demand the “removal
of U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress”. It is significant that this
is the first time since 1973 that the authority of the War Powers Resolution has been used in the Senate to assert congressional
responsibility for war over the president. And it is not a bad idea to attempt to rein in President Trump. However,
the U.S.
Congress has authorized drone strikes and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have killed
210,000 civilians. Congress clearly does not protect people around the world against U.S.
imperialism. The struggle for peace in Yemen must rely on the international workers’ movement. Workers in countries that
trade with Saudi Arabia must engage in workplace actions demanding their governments cut off ties and send humanitarian aid to
Yemen. They must call for an end to the embargo and the immediate and direct delivery of food and medical supplies to the people
of Yemen. In the United States, workers must organize against Trump’s anti-refugee policies and for an end to all arms sales and the
drone war. The socialist left must defend the Yemeni people’s right to self-determination, condemn Saudi Arabia’s attacks on
civilians and denounce all Republican and Democratic representatives who feed the war industry. The working class cannot wait for
the political elites to put an end to their own complicity with the capitalist profiteering from the devastation of human lives. The
working class must build international solidarity to fight against the corporate-driven projects of destruction and imperialist
domination.
 Prolif Good
The terrorist elite of the world continue to deploy empty promises of de-
escalation while simultaneously exercising the threat of imperial control – only
a consistent flow of power back to the hands of smaller countries can ensure
global stability
Shellenberger 18, [Michael. “Who Are We To Deny Weak Nations The Nuclear Weapons They
Need For Self-Defense?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 28 Aug. 2018,
www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/08/06/who-are-we-to-deny-weak-nations-
the-nuclear-weapons-they-need-for-self-defense/#2aa47921522f.]
In a 2012 cover story for Foreign Affairs, Bomb, “Waltz notes that “nuclear balancing would mean stability.” Why?
Because, “It is Israel’s nuclear arsenal, not Iran’s desire for one, that has contributed most to the
current crisis.” Israeli air strikes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and destroyed a Syrian
reactor in 2007. Wrote Waltz: Israel's proven ability to strike potential nuclear rivals with impunity has
inevitably made its enemies anxious to develop the means to prevent Israel from doing so again.
In this way, the current tensions are best viewed not as the early stages of a relatively recent
Iranian nuclear crisis but rather as the final stages of a decades-long Middle East nuclear crisis
that will end only when a balance of military power is restored." Little surprise that Israeli hardliners
responded with outrage to Waltz’s essay. “Some have even said that Iran with nuclear weapons
would stabilize the Middle East,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after Foreign Affairs
published Waltz’s article. “I think people who say this have set a new standard for human stupidity.” But
was Israel stupid for acquiring the bomb in 1968 to protect itself from its neighbors? No doubt
Netanyahu would say no. How do nuclear-armed nations justify their double-standard on
nuclear weapons? Mostly through fear-mongering. “Those who dread a world with more nuclear
states do little more than assert that more is worse,” noted Waltz, “and claim without
substantiation that new nuclear states will be less responsible and less capable of self-control
than the old ones have been.” Nuclear-armed nations perpetuate two fictions, the first of which
is that they will give up their weapons. They point to the weak language in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty,
which says treaty members will “pursue negotiations” to achieve the goal of “complete disarmament under strict and effective
international control.” And yet no nuclear-armed nation in the world is pursuing negotiations with the goal of “complete
disarmament.” Indeed, most nuclear-armed nations are upgrading, not downgrading their arsenals. The
second fiction is
that nuclear-armed nations will protect their unarmed allies with nuclear weapons. But ask yourself:
would President Donald Trump risk New York for Montenegro (population 643,000) — the newest member of NATO? In July, Trump
suggested he was would not, even though the US is obligated to under NATO rules.

The non-proliferation regime is faltering under the weight of its own

contradictions as the disparity between armed and un-armed nations grows – a
move towards equalizing the playing field through proliferation is key for the
end of terroristic invasions of weak nations
Shellenberger 18, [Michael. “Who Are We To Deny Weak Nations The Nuclear Weapons They
Need For Self-Defense?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 28 Aug. 2018,
www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/08/06/who-are-we-to-deny-weak-nations-
the-nuclear-weapons-they-need-for-self-defense/#2aa47921522f.]
The end of extended deterrence provided by the U.S. to Europe should not come as a surprise.
Its temporary nature was foreseen as early as 1962, when André Fontaine wrote in Le Monde: “It is inconceivable, unless
we are resigned to an interminable cold war, that Europe forever relies on America for its
security and for the orientation of its diplomacy.” As to be expected, the usual fears are being drummed up
against why a militarily-weak nation like Germany shouldn’t get the bomb. “If Germany was to relinquish its status as a non-nuclear
power, what would prevent Turkey or Poland, for example, from following suit?” a former German ambassador to the U.S., wrote in
response to Hacke’sessay. “Germany as the gravedigger of the international nonproliferation regime? Who can want that?” In truth,
it’s remarkable the nonproliferation regime has lasted as long as it has. It made sense for
nuclear-armed nations in the 1950s and 60s to try to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
After all, nations weren’t accustomed to the revolutionary new technology, and the likelihood was
far higher back then that a weapon could get used accidentally or fall into the wrong hands. But
60 years later, in a multipolar world where the dominant power, the U.S., has grown tired of its role
as global hegemon, the non-proliferation regime is falling apart under the weight of its own
contradictions. The division of the world into nuclear-armed and unarmed nations has long been
arbitrary and unfair. Nuclear-armed nations, except for France, hypocritically punished India for decades with trade
sanctions for acquiring a weapon. People rightly worry about accidental or unauthorized use of weapons,
such as by terrorists, but nations today safeguard their weapons and materials far better than
they did in the past. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States spent $10 billion to help Russia
maintain control of and destroy many of its nuclear weapons, and intelligence agencies around
the world work together to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of non-state
actors. As for terrorism, why would a nation like Iran go to all the trouble of getting a bomb only
to give it to a non-state actor like Hamas or Hezbollah? Not only would doing so risk retaliation
from Israel, but the bomb could be used by those groups to gain leverage over Iran itself. Today,
the greatest opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons to weak nations like North Korea and
Iran comes from militaristic figures like U.S. national security advisor John Bolton, who
advocated the disastrous invasion of Iraq, and who now advocates “the Libya model” for North
Korea. It’s easy to see why. “In a world without nuclear weapons,” a U.S. nuclear weapons designer explained,
“the U.S. would have uncontested military dominance.” In other words, a world without nuclear
weapons would be a world where relatively weak nations — like France and Britain before World War II and
North Korea and Iran today — are deprived the only power on Earth capable of preventing a military
invasion by a more powerful adversary. Who are we to deny weak nations the nuclear weapons they need for self-
defense? The answer should by now be clear: hypocritical, short-sighted, and imperialistic.

Fear is key for dismantling of the possibility for terroristic invasions – only
through the proliferation of power for weaker nations can we instill fear against
terror itself
Waltz 81 [Kenneth Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better,” Adelphi
Papers, Number 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981)]

States coexist in a condition of anarchy. Self-help is the principle of action in an anarchic order, and the
most important way
in which states must help themselves is by providing for their own security. Therefore, in weighing
the chances for peace, the first questions to ask are questions about the ends for which states
use force and about the strategies and weapons they employ. The chances of peace rise if states
can achieve their most important ends without actively using force. War becomes less likely as
the costs of war rise in relation to possible gains. Strategies bring ends and means together. How nuclear weapons
affect the chances for peace is seen by considering the possible strategies of states. Force may be used for offence, for
defence, for deterrence, and for coercion. Consider offence first. Germany and France before World War 1 provide a
classic case of two adversaries each neglecting its defence and both planning to launch major attacks at the outset of war. France
favoured offence over defence, because only by fighting an offensive war could Alsace-Lorraine be reclaimed. This illustrates one
purpose of the offence: namely, conquest. Germany favoured offence over defence. believing offence to be the best defence, or
even the only defence possible. Hemmed in by two adversaries. she could avoid fighting a two-front war only by concentrating her
forces in the West and defeating France before Russia could mobilize and move effectively into battle. This is what the Schlieffen
plan called for. The Plan illustrates another purpose of the offence: namely, security. Even if security had been Germany's only goal,
an offensive strategy seemed to be the way to obtain it. The offence may have either or both of two aims: conquest and security.
An offence may be conducted in either or in some combination of two ways: preventively or
pre-emptively. If two countries are unequal in strength and the weaker is gaining, the stronger
may be tempted to strike before its advantage is lost. Following this logic, a country with nuclear
weapons may be tempted to destroy the nascent force of a hostile country. This would be
preventive war, a war launched against a weak country before it can become disturbingly
strong. The logic of pre-emption is different. Leaving aside the balance of forces, one country may strike
another country's offensive forces to blunt an attack that it presumes is about to be made. If each
of two countries can eliminate or drastically reduce the other's offensive forces in one surprise blow, then both of them are encour-
aged to mount sudden attacks, if only for fear that if one does not, the other will. Mutual
vulnerability of forces leads
to mutual fear of surprise attack by giving each power a strong incentive to strike first. French and
German plans for war against each other emphasized prevention over preemption - to strike before enemies can become fully ready
to fight, but not to strike at their forces in order to destroy them before they can be used to strike back. Whether pre-emptive or
preventive, an offensive first strike is a hard one. as military logic suggests and history confirms Whoever strikes first does so to gain
a decisive advantage. A pre-emptive strike is designed to eliminate or decisively reduce the
opponent's ability to retaliate. A preventive strike is designed to defeat an adversary before he
can develop and deploy his full potential might. Attacks. I should add, are not planned according to military logic
alone. Political logic may lead a country another country to attack even in the absence of an
expectation of military victory, as Egypt did in October of 1973. How can one state dissuade another
state from attacking? In either or in some combination of two ways. One way to counter an intended attack
is to build fortifications and to muster forces that look forbiddingly strong. To build defences so
patently strong that no one will try to destroy or overcome them would make international
life perfectly tranquil. I call this the defensive ideal. The other way to inhibit a country's intended aggressive moves is to
scare that country out of making them by threatening to visit unacceptable punishment upon it. 'To deter' literally means
to stop someone from doing something by frightening him. In contrast to dissuasion by defence,
dissuasion by deterrence operates by frightening a state out of attacking, not because of the
difficulty of launching an attack and carrying it home, but because the expected reaction of the
attacked will result in one's own severe punishment. Defence and deterrence are often confused. One
frequently hears statements like this: 'A strong defence in Europe will deter a Russian attack'. What is meant is that a strong defence
will dissuade Russia from attacking. Deterrence
is achieved not through the ability to defend but through
the ability to punish. Purely deterrent forces provide no defence. The message of a deterrent
strategy is this: 'Although we are defenceless, if you attack we will punish you to an extent that
more than cancels your gains'. Second-strike nuclear forces serve that kind of strategy. Purely defensive forces provide
no deterrence. They offer no means of punishment. The message of a defensive strategy is this: 'Although we cannot strike back,
you will find our defences so difficult to overcome that you will dash yourself to pieces against them'. The Maginot Line was to serve
that kind of strategy. States may also use force for coercion. One state may threaten to harm another state not to deter it from
taking a certain action but to compel one. Napoleon III threatened to bombard Tripoli if the Turks did not comply with his demands
for Roman Catholic control of the Palestinian Holy Places. This is blackmail, which can now be backed by conventional and by nuclear
threats. Do nuclear weapons increase or decrease the chances of war? The answer depends on whether nuclear weapons permit
and encourage states to deploy forces in ways that make the active use of force more or less likely and in ways that promise to be
more or less destructive. If nuclear weapons make the offence more effective and the blackmailer's threat more compelling, then
nuclear weapons increase the chances of war—the more so the more widely they spread. Lf defence and deterrence are made
easier and more reliable by the spread of nuclear weapons, we may expect the opposite result. To maintain their security, states
must rely on the means they can generate and the arrangements they can make for themselves. The quality of international life
therefore varies with the ease or the difficulty states experience in making themselves secure. Weapons and strategies
change the situation of states in ways that make them more or less secure, as Robert Jervis has
brilliantly shown. If weapons are not well suited for conquest, neighbours have more peace of mind.
According to the defensive-deterrent ideal, we should expect war to become less likely when weaponry is such as to make conquest
more difficult, to
discourage pre-emptive and preventive war, and to make coercive threats less
credible. Do nuclear weapons have those effects? Some answers can be found by considering how nuclear deterrence and how
nuclear defence may improve the prospects for peace. First, wars can be fought in the face of deterrent threats, but the higher the
stakes and the closer a country moves toward winning them, the more surely that country invites retaliation and risks its own
destruction. States are not likely to run major risks for minor gains. Wars between nuclear states may escalate
as the loser uses larger and larger warheads. Fearing that.states will want to draw back. Not escalation but de-escalation becomes
likely. War remains possible. but victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. If states can score only small gains because large ones
risk retaliation, they have little incentive to fight. Second,
states act with less care if the expected costs of war
are low and with more care if they are high. In 1853 and 1854, Britain and France expected to win an easy victory if
they went to war against Russia. Prestige abroad and political popularity at home would be gained. if not much else. The vagueness
of their plans was matched by the carelessness of their acts. In blundering into the Crimean War they acted hastily on scant
information, pandered to their people's frenzy for war, showed more concern for an ally's whim than for the adversary's situation,
failed to specify the changes in behaviour that threats were supposed to bring. and inclined towards testing strength first and
bargaining second. In sharp contrast, the presence of nuclear weapons makes States exceedingly cautious. Think of Kennedy and
Khruschev in the Cuban missile crisis. Why fight if you can't win much and might lose everything? Third, the
question demands a negative answer all the more insistently when the deter rent deployment of nuclear weapons contributes more
to a country's security than does conquest of territory. A country with a deter-rent strategy does not need the extent of territory
required by a country relying on a conventional defence in depth.

Proliferation of firearms has the potential to symbolically stand in the face of

white masculinity that is sutured within American imperialism – only through
the proliferation of such goods can nations project symbols of group power
against imperial terrorists
Fisher 18 [Fisher, Ryan J. "Defending the American Way: White-Masculine Gun Ownership and
the Projection of Power." (2018).]
In recent years, the organized opposition to Queer Rights and threats of violence have caused some
to turn to firearms as symbols of power. Gun clubs such as Trigger Warning and the Pink Pistols argue that guns can
combat homophobia and transphobia. 282 Trigger Warning formed in 2017 in Rochester, New York. Its members cited a year
marked by political protests and the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as having increased
their anxiety of armed and organized conservative extremists.283 A founding member of the group, Jake Allen told the Associated
Press that “[Trigger Warning is] a way to assert our strength … Often, Queer people are thought of as being weak, as being
defenseless, and I think in many ways this pushes back against that. And I want white supremacists and neo-Nazis to know that
Queer people are taking steps necessary to protect themselves.”284 Founded in 2000, the Pink Pistols are a similar Queer gun club
that has created dozens of chapters across the country. 285 Expressing anger over the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, an article
in Salon by Jonathan Rauch called for gay communities to arm themselves against violence and inspired the founding of the Pink
Pistols. 286 Groups
such as Trigger Warning and the Pink Pistols exemplify that guns can be used to
symbolize and project both individual and group power, even without instigating violence. These
Queer gun clubs lack the strongly developed ideology of the Black Panthers and Black Nationalists who took up arms to defend
themselves and project their power against white supremacy. Nonetheless, they
have created unique social spaces
for gun use in support of progressive social principles, defying the binary rhetoric of
conservative “gun nuts” versus progressive “gun grabbers.” Through the mid-to-late twentieth century, post-
war progressive social movements challenged the structures of racism, sexism, and homophobia within American society. In these
movements, American white-masculinity faced its most dangerous threat. Previously under the sole direction of white-men citizens,
the post-war state and especially the Federal Government used its power to advance the causes of Civil Rights, Feminism, and Queer
Rights through legislation, the courts, and executive action. African, women, and Queer Americans began to enter public spaces and
politics previously reserved for white men. As these movements interrogated the white-masculine social order, United States politics
and economics contributed to the growing white-men perception of American decline…Throughout American history, the
dominant gun culture has borne firearms as a symbol of white masculine power, enforcing a
social order that oppresses African, women, Queer, and immigrant Americans. Groups such as
the Black Panthers, Trigger Warning, and Pink Pistols have used guns in a progressive manner,
arming themselves against the white-masculine social order.
AFF
2AC
 UQ
There are movements for arms reduction. being organized globally right now
and they are being led by the global south. The capacity for global disarmament
through delegitimization has empirical success – now is the opportune moment
for denuclearization.
Ray Acheson 18, director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom. She represents the WILPF on the international
steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, 02-02-18, “Resisting
Nuclear Weapons Means Resisting Injustice and Oppression,”
https://www.thenation.com/article/resisting-nuclear-weapons-means-resisting-injustice/

Every minute since July 1945 we have been living under the threat of
, when the United States tested its first nuclear weapon in New Mexico,

massive nuclear violence. Nuclear weapons are designed to incinerate cities, to burn and irradiate human bodies, to destroy everything we have built and that we love. They are

the ultimate symbol of the extreme edge of human power and hubris—the ability to
perhaps

devastate the entire planet. In his latest book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg uses classified materials and personal notes to describe the seven decades of US policies and practices related to nuclear
weapons as “immoral,” “insane,” and “a chronicle of human madness.” Today we have to look no further than Twitter. 2018 more or less began with the president of the United States using social media to taunt another nuclear-armed country’s president about the

While there may be no real nuclear

size of his… arsenal. A few weeks later, the wrong push of a button led to Hawaiians’ being terrified by a notification that there was an incoming ballistic missile.

button for anyone to actually push, the use of nuclear weapons is not that far away. It never
really has been. “Fire and fury” have put the threat of nuclear war back in the headlines, but it was never off the table. And, where there was once only one, there are now nine countries that can unleash this fire and fury, with North Korea

There is one difference, however, between now and decades past. In 2017, activism
the latest to join the group.

and advocacy against the bomb achieved a legal ban on nuclear weapons.
, combined with diplomatic action on the international stage,

This is a
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), comprised of 468 nongovernmental organizations in 101 countries, helped to outlaw nuclear weapons—for which it was then awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. treaty

feat of collective action by people who came together to do something that had not been tried
before. Like anything created by people, it has its imperfections. But it gives a glimpse of what is
possible in this world . Resistance may take time
—including that it is possible to do something that all of the “great powers” in the world collectively forbid to have an effect,

but it can make a difference. the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear

On July 7, 2017, 122 governments voted for the adoption of

Weapons outlaws the development, testing, production, manufacture, acquisition possession,

, which ,

stockpiling, stationing, deployment, transfer, use, or threat of use of nuclear weapons, or

assisting with any of these prohibited activities. You can’t do anything with nuclear weapons under this

except get rid of them.

treaty— You might not have heard about the ban, though media did cover it at the time—albeit sparsely, and with skepticism. The skepticism was greatly encouraged by the nine countries that possess
nuclear weapons: China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They did not participate in the negotiations. Nor did the countries that claim security from US nuclear weapons, countries that rely on the fantasy

of “extended nuclear deterrence” for their perceived protection (those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Australia, Japan, and South Korea). Meanwhile, the governments supporting the
ban were largely those of the Global South . Most of the countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia led the initiative to ban the bomb. A cross-regional “core

They
group” of countries, comprising Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa, together with a number of others such as Costa Rica, Jamaica, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand, drove the process forward despite the opposition to it.

were compelled to do so by a simple logic, one that seems lost to policy makers in nuclear-
armed states. Nuclear weapons have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental
consequences and must never be used again. The only way to ensure that they are never used
again is to eliminate them. The nuclear ban was part of a set of tools that could help change conceived as

the politics and economics related to nuclear weapons. It was also a departure from the past
practice of allowing the nuclear-armed states to dictate terms to the rest of the world. The representatives of

Attempts to convince or cajole the nuclear-armed states

nuclear-armed states have been dismissive and disrespectful of the views of the rest of the world for decades.

into nuclear disarmament have been unsuccessful. While the United States and Russia
dismantled thousands of warheads they and the other nuclear-armed states have after the Cold War,

continued to invest billions since that period in “modernizing” and extending the lives of their nuclear arsenals. These countries broke disarmament
 The situation has been untenable for years, but those without nuclear
commitments made to each other and to the rest of the world.

weapons felt unable to change it. Until now. A flame was lit around 2010, and it grew into a
raging fire by 2017 . At the beginning of this decade, US President Obama spoke about nuclear disarmament. His rhetoric ignited the imaginations of those who wanted a nuclear-weapon-free world, and this new sense of urgency did

while progress stalled on nuclear disarmament, two other weapons

not wither away even when Obama’s failed to deliver. In addition, had

causing serious humanitarian harm had been banned: antipersonnel landmines in 1997 and
cluster munitions These set the
in 2008. International treaties prohibited the possession, use, manufacture, and trade of these weapons, and provided for their clearance and elimination. treaties also

standard for a new concept of humanitarian disarmament, containing provisions for victim
assistance nuclear weapons
. Facing pressure from well-organized divestment campaigns, banks and pension funds withdrew investments from companies that produced these illegal weapons. During this period, had

become more visible as a symbol of oppression and inequality in international relations.

also arguably Rivalry

Even while nuclear war

between the United States and Soviet Union, which had resulted in conflict as well as economic and political inequality around the globe, had ended—but the conflicts and inequalities had not.

was a fading threat in the consciousness of the general public, the injustice of nuclear weapons
was only growing among diplomats representing countries without them. Given the vested
interests of a few powerful countries in favor of retaining nuclear weapons, a key goal was
further stigmatize these weapons . Making them illegal, for everyone, is a key part of this stigmatization process. This has been true for biological and chemical weapons, land mines, and cluster bombs. These

weapons have not magically disappeared, but prohibition has led to stigmatization, to their their

elimination processes, and to condemnation of their use Those supporting the nuclear ban .

expect that the prohibition of nuclear weapons will have similar effects Stigmatizing nuclear .

weapons is easier than you might think. Even the handful of countries that possess nuclear weapons of declare US weapons essential for their security suddenly burst with righteous indignation
and economic sanctions against any new country that may be developing a nuclear-weapon capacity—at least, against any country that they don’t particularly like. If a North Korean or Iranian bomb is so awful that anything is justified to stop it, how is an American

The recent process to ban the bomb has, more than any other disarmament
or Russian bomb any different?

initiative before it, exposed the cognitive dissonance of “nuclear deterrence,” illuminating its
corrupt self-serving rationale and its influence over international affairs . Those engaged in banning nuclear weapons took away the veil of

But
legitimacy and authority of the nuclear-armed states—dismantling their arguments, disrupting their narratives, and ultimately standing up to their projection of power. It took governments to negotiate the treaty banning nuclear weapons.

governments alone did not ban nuclear weapons. They could not have done so without the ideas,

support, advocacy, analysis, and coordination of activists. In negotiating and adopting the nuclear-ban treaty, Ambassador Courtenay Rattray of Jamaica explained last October, “we

They were the ones who steadfastly set aside the

acted on behalf of a grand coalition of committed activists, survivors, civil society, scholars and politicians.

entreaties of the naysayers—that band of skeptics who at every turn told us we were embarked
on a fool’s errand.”
 Link Turn – Human Rights
Ending arms sales on the basis of human rights is ethical and good – key to
challenge US imperialism and the lies of media
Ball 18 (Zach Ball, “https://www.epreview.org/opinion/2018/10/13/the-syrian-conflict-a-call-
to-end-us-imperialism”, [The Emory Political Review], October 13th of 2018, accessed: 6/27/19,
https://www.epreview.org/opinion/2018/10/13/the-syrian-conflict-a-call-to-end-us-
imperialism)//DCai

On the night of April 13th, 2018, global

news media exploded with wall-to-wall coverage of a joint air
strike launched by the United States, Britain, and France against various research and military
facilities in Syria. The attack came in response to reports earlier in April that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had purportedly
launched a chemical weapons attack against civilians, killing at least 42 people and leaving many others hospitalized. While
American involvement in the Syrian civil war has been ongoing since 2014 (in the form of military aid to various rebel factions in the
region), the most recent airstrike, along with a separate air strike launched by President Donald J. Trump in April 2017, constitute
direct attacks by the United States on the Syrian government. The
Trump administration announced in January
that it plans to sustain American military presence in the country in order to continue working
toward overthrowing the Assad regime. As America ramps up involvement in the Syrian civil war, it is imperative for
the world’s sole superpower to reflect on potential geopolitical outcomes of regime change operations. With an increased American
military presence in Syria on the horizon, it is
essential, now more than ever, for American voters and
government officials to push back against mainstream media narratives about the true
motives behind modern United States imperialism. It is deceptive to suggest that the United
States’ desire for geopolitical dominance and the campaign contributions of defense contractors
who stand to profit from war do not play a significant role in the United States’ international
military presence. The most notorious example of international United States involvement with unintended consequences is
the American occupation of Iraq, which began in 2003 after the Bush administration reported that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
possessed weapons of mass destruction, a claim which later turned out to be false. When the United States military successfully
toppled the government of President Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, it created a power vacuum that increased tensions between domestic
Sunni and Shia Islamic groups, and allowed jihadist terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (I.S.I.S.) to gain significant
influence in the region. While President Hussein was no friend to human rights, President George W. Bush’s decision to oust him and
implement a regime change inadvertently resulted in the destabilization of the region and paved the way for I.S.I.S. to come about.
These ends certainly do not seem to justify the means, with there being tens of thousands of American military deaths and more
than a hundred thousand Iraqi civilian casualties, not to mention the $1 trillion used to fund the Iraq war. Back in 2011, the Obama
administration approved military operations that were instrumental in ousting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The United State
gave military support to rebel factions and militias who sought to remove Gaddafi from power to end the ongoing civil war. The
effects of United States involvement in Libya are just now beginning to be observed, and they do not appear promising. Libya is now
afflicted with similar political instability and violence to that of Iraq. Additionally, slave markets have become more widespread in
the region ever since the overthrow of Gaddafi, as African migrants arriving on ships are being forced into servitude. In the
aftermath of the conflict, Libya has been branded a “failed state” by prominent media outlets, yet there seems to be little to no
means for the United Nations to effectively stop these inhumane practices. Once again, United States military intervention in the
Middle East has destabilized another country and can be argued to have aided in the expansion of slavery in the 21st century. If
the United States were truly concerned with human rights and the well-being of the innocent
around the world, then the United States would not be providing military support and arms to
Saudi Arabia, a country which is currently blockading supplies to Yemen and, just recently,
accused of killing a Saudi journalist and staunch critic of the government. The United States
would also not be providing aid to the state of Israel, which upholds an apartheid system that
discriminates heavily against Palestinian civilians and suppresses opponents by firing bullets at
them. If there is anything to be learned from Iraq and Syria, then it is that America cannot and
should not police the entire world, even if that means that repressive governments like that of
al-Assad retain power. With torture advocate Mike Pompeo as secretary of state and Iraq War apologist John Bolton as
national security advisor, the Trump administration appears almost destined to reflect that of the second Bush administration.
Americans must dissent against skewed media narratives and politicians who champion these
types of irresponsible interventions. In addition, Americans must push for those in positions of
power, regardless of their political affiliation, to oppose needless war and bloodshed.
Oftentimes, the evil left unknown is greater than that which is known.
 Link Turn – Saudi Arabia
Ending US arms sales to Saudi Arabia is a step in ending the war in Yemen –
sends a signal of commitment to allies that inspire international response
Spindel 19 (Jennifer Spindel, assistant professor of international security at the University of
Oklahoma, and the Associate Director of the Cyber Governance and Policy Center, "The Case for
Suspending American Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia," [War on the Rocks], 5-14-2019, accessed: 6-
27-2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/05/the-case-for-suspending-american-arms-sales-
to-saudi-arabia/)//DCai

Arms embargos are often dismissed as symbolic, and therefore ineffective. But just because
something is symbolic, doesn’t mean that it won’t have an effect. A U.S. arms embargo against
Saudi Arabia would be a clear signal of American disproval of Saudi actions in Yemen, and would
be an equally important signal to Washington’s allies, who are left wondering if the United
States is ambivalent or uninterested in the growing Yemeni humanitarian catastrophe. By
continuing to provide weapons, President Donald Trump tacitly endorses Saudi policies. This signal is strengthened by Trump’s
recent veto of the resolution that called for an end to U.S. support for the war in Yemen. While Trump justified the veto by saying
that the resolution was a “dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities,” statements from Congressional
representatives show they are aware of the powerful signals sent by arms sales. Sen. Tim Kaine said that the veto “shows the world
[Trump] is determined to keep aiding a Saudi-backed war that has killed thousands of civilians and pushed millions more to the brink
of starvation.” An arms embargo against Saudi Arabia would be a signal both to leaders of that country, and other states, that the
United States does not endorse Saudi actions. Those arguing against a ban are correct on one point: Embargos as blunt force
instruments of coercion are rarely effective. But arms embargos are effective as signals of political dissatisfaction, and serve an
important communication role in international politics. Arms Embargos Are Signals and Can Build Coalitions Policymakers and
scholars agree that arms embargoes are not effective “sticks” in international politics. Rarely
do states cave when faced
with punishment in the form of an embargo. But even if an arms embargo isn’t a direct tool of
coercion, an embargo would be an important political signal. There are at least two reasons for the United
States to seriously consider an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia. First, arms sales are signals that cut through the
noise of the international system. Cutting off arms transfers is a common way that states
express their dissatisfaction with others and try to influence behavior. As Lawrence Freedman observed in
1978, “refusing to sell arms is a major political act. It appears as a calculated insult, reflecting on the stability, trust, and credit-
worthiness, or technical competence of the would-be recipient.” Yet
this crucial point seems to have been lost in
the current policy debate about whether or not the United States should continue selling arms
to Saudi Arabia. My research shows that stopping arms transfers or denying requests is an effective way to signal
dissatisfaction and causes the would-be recipient to re-think their behavior. Take, for example, the U.S. relationship with Israel in the
1960s. The United States sold Israel Hawk surface-to-surface missiles in 1962, M-48 Patton tanks in 1964 and 1965, and A-4E
Skyhawk bombers in 1966. Israeli leaders understood that these transfers signaled a close U.S.-Israeli relationship. As diplomat Abba
Eban wrote, the arms transfers were “a development of tremendous political value.” Even against this backdrop of close ties and
significant arms sales, Israeli leaders were extremely sensitive to arms transfer denials. In April and May 1967, the United States
denied Israeli requests for armored personnel carriers and fighter jets. Approving the transfers would have signaled support, and
likely emboldened Israel, as tensions were growing in the region. Israeli leaders believed these transfer denials overruled prior
signals and demonstrated that the United States was not willing to be a close political ally for Israel. Eban described Israel as
“isolated,” and the head of Israel’s intelligence service said that the arms transfer denials made it clear that “in Israel, there existed
certain misperceptions [about the United States].” If
arms transfer denials could have such a significant effect
on Israeli thinking — keeping in mind that there was a close and significant political relationship
between the US and Israel — imagine what a transfer denial would mean for U.S.-Saudi
relations. Like Israel, Saudi Arabia would have to re-think its impression that it has political
support and approval from the United States. We can, and should, ask whether or not
withdrawal of U.S. support would affect Saudi behavior, but it’s important that this question not
get overlooked in the current debate. Because arms transfers (and denials) are powerful
signals, they can have an effect even before a transfer is actually completed. This suggests that
even the announcement of an embargo against Saudi Arabia could have an effect. Take, for example,
Taiwan’s recent request for a fleet of new fighter jets. As reports mounted that Trump had given “tacit approval” to a deal for F-16
jets, China’s protests increased. The United States has not sold advanced fighter jets to Taiwan since 1992, partially out of fear of
angering China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province. Even if the deal for F-16s is formally approved, Taiwan is unlikely to see
the jets until at least 2021, and the balance of power between China and Taiwan would not change. As one researcher observed, the
sale would be a “huge shock” for Beijing, “But it would be more of a political shock than a military shock. It would be, ‘Oh, the U.S.
doesn’t care how we feel.’ It would be more of a symbolic or emotional issue.” Yet China’s immediate, negative reaction to even the
announcement of a potential deal shows how powerful arms transfer signals can be. If
this same logic is applied to an
arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, an arms embargo would signal that Saudi Arabia does not
have the support of the United States. This signal would be an important first step in changing
Saudi behavior because it would override other statements and actions the United States has
sent that indicate support. And Trump has given Saudi Arabia a number of positive signals: He called Saudi Arabia a “great
ally” and dismissed reports that that the Saudi government was involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has
expressed interested in selling nuclear power plants and technology to Saudi Arabia. And he has repeatedly claimed that he has
made a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia (he hasn’t). With these clear signals of support, why should Saudi Arabia alter its
behavior based on resolutions that come out of the House or Senate, which are likely to be vetoed by Trump, anyway? An arms
embargo would be a clear and unambiguous signal that the United States disproves of Saudi
actions in Yemen. The second reason for supporting an embargo concerns U.S. allies and the logistical difficulties of making an
embargo have an effect. One of the reasons embargoes have little material impact is because they
require cooperation among weapons exporting states. A ban on sales from one country will
have little effect if the target of the embargo can seek arms elsewhere. Germany, instituted an arms ban
against Riyadh in November 2018, and German leaders have pressured other European states to stop selling arms to the Saudis.
Germany understands the importance of the embargo as a political signal: as a representative of the German Green Party explained,
“The re-start of arms exports to Saudi Arabia would be a fatal foreign policy signal and would contribute to the continued
destabilization of the Middle East.” But the German embargo has had minimal effect because Saudi Arabia can get arms elsewhere.
According to the 2019 Military Balance, most of Saudi Arabia’s equipment is American or French in origin, such as the M1A2 Abrams
and AMX-30 tanks, Apache and Dauphin helicopters, and F-15C/D fighter jets. Saudi Arabia has some equipment manufactured
wholly or in part in Germany, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Tornado ground attack craft, but these weapons are a small
portion of its complete arsenal. A
U.S. embargo would send an important signal to the allies who also
supply Saudi Arabia, allowing them to explain participation in the embargo to their own
domestic constituencies. This is especially important for countries like France, Germany, and the
United Kingdom, that need to export arms to keep their own production lines running. While the
research shows that sustaining an arms embargo is often the most difficult step, embargoes can restrain sending states’ arms
exports. Even
if a U.S. embargo won’t have a direct effect on Saudi Arabia on its own, an embargo
is important for building coalitions for a more expansive embargo that could affect Saudi
behavior. The Difficulty of Stopping Atrocities Beyond signaling, we know U.S. arms sales often end up in the
wrong hands, and have been used in Yemen. The Saudi-led war in Yemen has led to starvation
conditions, caused thousands of civilian casualties, and has led to the displacement of millions
of people. The United Nations estimates that 80 percent of Yemen’s population – 24 million people – require some form of
humanitarian or protection assistance, and that the severity of the situation is increasing. Would an arms embargo create
meaningful change in Yemen? An
initial effect of an embargo is that Saudi Arabia would have to work
harder to access war materiel. As Jonathan Caverley noted, more than 60 percent of Saudi Arabia’s arms delivered in the
past five years came from the United States. Even if this percentage decreases over time, it will be costly for Saudi Arabia to
transition to a primarily Russian- or Chinese-supplied military. Though
Saudi Arabia might be willing to pay this
cost, it would still have to pay, and take the time to transition to its new weapons systems. This
would represent a brief break in hostilities that could facilitate the delivery of aid and assistance
in Yemen. The United States could, in theory, impose stricter end-user controls on Saudi Arabia. This would have the advantage
of keeping Saudi Arabia within the world of U.S. weapons systems, and might prevent it from diversifying its suppliers, which would
ultimately weaken any leverage the United States might have. Longer-term, it would not be to America’s advantage if Saudi Arabia
takes a lesson from Turkey, and starts courting Russia as a new arms supplier. It is difficult to enforce end-user controls, since, once
a weapon is transferred, the recipient can use it however it wishes. It might also be the case that Saudi Arabia would object to
stricter end-user controls, and would seek new suppliers as a result. An
arms embargo will not be a panacea. But
not doing something sets a problematic precedent, and allows the difficulty of coordinating an
arms embargo outweigh the potential benefits of one. An embargo is unlikely to have an
immediate effect on Saudi behavior, because an embargo would be a political signal, rather than
a blunt instrument of coercion. It will take time for a multilateral embargo to emerge and be put
into place, and the United States should work with its allies to help support their ability to
participate in the embargo. Not acting, however, would continue to implicitly endorse Saudi
behavior, and would make it more difficult for U.S. allies to believe that future threats of an
embargo are credible.

Ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia can limit the war and open avenues for key
humanitarian aid in the Yemen region
Weber 18 (Emily Weber, Staff Writer, “The United States Should End Arms Sales to Saudi
Arabia,” [International Affairs Review], November 18th of 2018, accessed: 6/25/19,
http://www.iar-gwu.org/content/united-states-should-end-arms-sales-saudi-arabia)//DCai
Recently, UN-sponsored peace talks between the Houthi movement and the internationally recognized Yemeni government failed
after members of the Houthi delegation did not attend. The talks should have ended the brutal three-year Yemeni civil war. Violence
began when the Houthis, a Shia movement supported by Iran, took over the city of Sana’a and announced their plan to take over the
rest of the Yemeni government. When the internationally recognized government began to falter, Saudi Arabia came to their aid by
establishing a coalition of Arab states to stop the Houthi revolt and restore the Hadi government. Saudi-led
coalition air
strikes have led to the deaths of thousands of Yemeni civilians. Many of these strikes use
imprecise munitions such as cluster bombs that deliberately target civilian sites such as
hospitals, schools, markets, and mosques. These weapons that unnecessarily harm civilians are
made and sold by the United States to Saudi Arabia for use in this conflict. The United States
needs to re-evaluate, and limit, its strategy and instead focus its efforts on protecting suffering
civilians through ending Saudi arms sales. Millions of Yemenis have become displaced due to the Yemeni civil war.
These refugees strain an already destabilized Middle East region and increase the severity of the migrant crisis that began with the
Syrian civil war. Displacement will put pressure on U.S. allies in Europe and spread across the Middle East and Africa. In addition, the
famine caused by the civil war led to the deaths of 50,000 children and a cholera outbreak that killed over 2,000 Yemenis. The
United States has been involved in this conflict from the outset because this conflict is a proxy
war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Many, if not all, of these strikes used American-made
munitions and equipment. Under President Obama, arms exports increased significantly, and Saudi Arabia was the second
largest customer. Under President Trump, the arms trade with Saudi Arabia has increased again, including an agreement to sell the
Saudi government over $100 billion worth of military equipment. The United States also has helped the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen
by sharing intelligence, assisting with air strikes, and even putting U.S. troops on the ground. Other U.S. interventions in
the Middle East to promote democracy and state-building have proven ineffective at best. The
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were intended to end the threat of terrorism and build democratic
states but have not achieved their goals. The Taliban is still controls a great deal of Afghanistan. In Iraq, Al-Qaeda and
ISIS continue their incursion. Both of the latter groups have become widespread in Yemen because of the war. Although it is
reasonable that the United States would want to prevent these groups from gaining more
power in the region, similar U.S. interventions in the Middle East have failed. Ground troops, special
forces operations, and air strikes are not long-term solutions for preventing the spread of these non-state actors. The United
States should end its current level of military involvement and instead focus on humanitarian
efforts and stabilizing Yemen. Yemen’s civil war has led to immense destruction and instability in what is essentially a
Shia and Sunni proxy war. Additionally, the United States should limit its role in this conflict by suspending
current and future arms sales and instead, increase its humanitarian presence. It is time to re-evaluate
what role the United States will play, since its current strategy in Yemen and the Middle East is not working. In 2016 the United
States canceled a million-dollar weapons sale to Saudi Arabia as a result of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a funeral that killed over
a hundred Yemeni civilians. Even
though the United States had already sold Saudi Arabia millions of
dollars’ worth of weapons by that point, the canceled sale demonstrated consequences for the
Saudis’ complete disregard of civilian casualties. It also showed that a country’s ability to pay for
weapons was not the only factor the United States would consider when selling arms. The United
States should continue suspending current arms sales and abandon any promise of future arms sales to Saudi Arabia while this proxy
war in Yemen continues. The United States should consider foreign arms sales on a case by case basis, instead of offering a “blank
check” to a government without considering their foreign policy and human rights record. U.S.
supporters of arms deals
with Saudi Arabia argue that the revenue generated from these sales are too beneficial to
end. However, the arms sales and continued conflict create larger and farther-reaching costs.
The U.S. government should redirect its involvement towards humanitarian actions in Yemen.
This policy would help to stabilize Yemen and enhance U.S. soft power in the region.
Additionally, the United States should focus on relieving the famine and disease ubiquitous
throughout the country. The danger from both Saudi forces and terrorist organizations makes aidwork nearly impossible.
The United States should try to create safe zones for aid organizations. These zones would be in a few areas throughout the country
providing food and medical care to civilians caught in the crossfire. These areas would allow the United States to target aid
depending on civilians’ changing needs. Since the UN already provides designated refugee areas, safe zones could use existing UN
aid management infrastructure. By
limiting its interventions in Yemen to delivering humanitarian aid, the
United States would create more stabilization in the region and work more effectively to end
the civil war. U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia along with U.S.- led military interventions create
chaos and unnecessarily involve the United States in a proxy war. Ending arms sales to Saudi
Arabia would improve relations with other countries in the Middle East and would force other
countries we consider our allies to ensure their actions were in line with international and U.S.
norms. Overall, this action would improve our entire strategy for managing conflicts across the
region.
 Link – 1033 Program
Reducing arms sales participates in the militarization of US police – this makes
communities and protests less safe
Neyfakh 17 (Leon Neyfakh, former Slate staff writer, “Cops Can Already Get Military Gear.
Trump’s New Policy Ensures They Can Use It Recklessly.” [Slate], August 28th of 2017, accessed:
6/27/19, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/cops-can-already-get-military-gear-
trumps-new-policy-ensures-they-can-use-it-recklessly.html)//DCai

Jeff Sessions wants you to believe that the Obama administration made it impossible for police
departments to obtain military gear from the federal government—and that Donald Trump, by signing an
executive order that reverses that restrictive policy, is triumphantly turning that faucet back on. As Sessions said in a speech to the
Fraternal Order of Police on Monday, “The executive order the president will sign today will ensure that you can get the lifesaving
gear that you need to do your job.” What Sessions did not say is that, with a few small exceptions, law
enforcement
agencies could already acquire whatever military equipment they want, so long as they
committed to certain best practices, maintained consistent policies about when the equipment
could be deployed, and could demonstrate that the officers who would be using the equipment
were properly trained. The fact that the Trump administration wants to get rid of these conditions tells you everything you
need to know about what’s driving the change in policy. This is not about making communities safer. It’s about
handing America’s police departments the kind of unshackled power and authority that Trump
and Sessions think they intrinsically deserve. The Obama policy went into effect in October
2015, about a year after demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, provoked local authorities to
send terrifying military vehicles and police officers dressed in riot gear to confront Black Lives
Matter protesters. Obama’s executive order set forth two categories of military equipment: “prohibited equipment” and
“controlled equipment.” The first category, which law enforcement agencies could no longer procure
through federal grants under any circumstances, was relatively small, and included such
weapons of war as bayonets, grenade launchers, and tanklike armored vehicles. The second
category was broader, and included less extreme items like riot helmets, battering rams,
Humvees, drones, and helicopters. Despite what Sessions suggested at his speech on Monday, Obama’s policy in no
way prohibited law enforcement agencies from obtaining items in this second category. It merely asked them to provide assurances
that the gear would be used safely and appropriately. “The
prohibited list is a tiny list of equipment that,
honestly, when we talked to law enforcement agencies no one could reasonably defend the use
of that equipment. Truly no one,” said Roy L. Austin, a former Justice Department official who worked with Obama’s
Task Force on 21st Century Policing.* “What we ran into were sheriffs who said we had no right to monitor what they get or how
they use what they get, even though they all acknowledged the fact that this was taxpayer-funded equipment. All we were asking
for was this: Don’t just acquire the equipment and use it willy-nilly. If you’re going to get it, have a reason.” Ed Chung, a former
Justice Department official who headed the working group that developed the Obama administration’s policy, explained that the
training rules and other protocols—which you can read starting on Page 17 of this document—were “about good governance:
making sure that people who received equipment through federal programs had common-sense policies in place prior to acquiring
them.” Chung, who is now vice president for criminal justice reform at the Center for American Progress, added, “These weren’t
crazy requirements.” Trump’s
dismantling of those requirements is yet another step his
administration has taken to unleash and embolden law enforcement officers for ideological as
opposed to pragmatic reasons. For Trump and Sessions, a society that does not worship its police
officers and trust them blindly is a society hurtling toward dysfunction and depravity. It is a
worldview that aligns the administration with the most radical voices in the law enforcement
community while alienating the many decorated and ambitious police executives who have
tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Trump that force alone will not solve the crises of legitimacy
that police departments around the country are confronting. “We will not put superficial concerns above
public safety,” Sessions said during his speech to the FOP. The implication was that the Obama administration insisted on reining in
the use of military vehicles and weapons by state and local police because they looked scary. That was indeed part of it. But
worrying about how it looks when a tank drives down an American street is not superficial.
What’s superficial is thinking you can achieve “law and order” by making cops the most
powerful people in our cities and telling them they can do whatever they want.
 I/L-US Restraint Key
Reduction in arms sales is the first step in resolving US primacy abroad—
restrained foreign policy limits military presence and funds that aid in foreign
tensions.
Doremus 6-25-2019 [“Say Goodbye to American Primacy and Hegemony · 71 Republic.” 71
Republic, 25 June 2019, 71republic.com/2019/06/25/goodbye-american-primacy-hegemony/.]
The United States has been involved in four military conflicts since the end of the Cold War: Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Of course, this is not
counting proxy wars. The U.S. has spent an enormous amount of money and blood in regions that are known to be unstable. There needs to be
increased restraint in how the government involves itself in foreign affairs. Over
the past decade, the United States has
engaged in a policy commonly referred to as primacy, or liberal hegemony. Its advocates argue
that the U.S. needs to preserve its power advantage and defend Western values such as
democracy, universal human rights, and open markets. In Washington D.C., it is a strategy that has bipartisan support.
Yet, the American populace has seemingly rejected this policy at the polls. The Values of Primacy Primacists argue that it is

a moral good to spread Western values across the world. Proponents of this foreign policy see failed, rogue, and
illiberal states as threats to the rule-based international system they claim the U.S. was built to be. Failed states are a threat because they could
potentially harbor terrorists. States that are deemed to be rogue are ones that are estimated to use weapons of mass destruction. An
illiberal
state is considered a threat because it opposes the U.S. from acting freely. To counter all these
threats, the U.S. is required to invest in its military and increase international political
commitments, which is an enormous task. Restraining the American Empire A restrainer believes that the U.S. should modify its
foreign policy. Primacy, historically, has been counterproductive and costly. The U.S. is surrounded by weaker powers and two bodies of water, making
it easy to defend. National interests should be narrowed from the ambitious strategy to remake the world. A foreign policy of restraint would lead to a
decrease in excessive government spending. Restrainers are supportive of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) which “identifies property and
improvements that are surplus to [the] military…” According to the Department of Defense, infrastructure excess is estimated to be at 19%. Annually,
the closure of excess bases would save the government $2 billion. The power of the U.S. military is dependent on a strong economy. Prosperity has
allowed the military to have capabilities that are unmatched by other countries. Excessive spending only weakens the country over time. In a world
where the global system is changing, the U.S. needs to be prepared, economically, for the new realities. Sacrificing the needs at home for the ambitions
abroad has resulted in a middle- and lower-class revolt against the establishment. The country is unprepared for a multipolar world. It is unknown if the
major powers will decouple or co-exist. The U.S. should reduce its commitments to the world. Primacy prioritizes preserving the liberal order over U.S.
interests with proclamations that the U.S. is the defender of democracy and universal human rights, thus it is easy to become entangled in conflict
across the world. Partners and allies should be responsible for their own security and not rely on America to do their fighting. If the Europeans and
Asians have their own security interests, they should be the ones investing and defending their own countries. The
U.S. should deter
attacks on its soil from other states. Reducing its international presence means that the country
will be “a less attractive target for violent political entrepreneurs motivated by identity
politics…” In other words, reduce presence in the Middle East to avoid blowback. Restrainers
recognize that nuclear weapons are here to stay. While the nuclear club (U.S., Russia, China, France, and the United
Kingdom) does not want another nuclear peer emerging, the abolition of such weapons is a fantasy. The technology is

becoming more accessible that small countries such as Pakistan have nuclear weapons. For
small states, “nuclear weapons are the great equalizer.” The destructive nature allows smaller
states to defend their country from predatory states. Even if the majority of countries want to abolish nukes, it only takes
a holdout to prevent everyone from following through. These weapons of mass destruction provide a real deterrent,

“Nuclear weapons permit Israel to insure itself against the more populous Arab states even if it

lost the support of the United States, Pakistan to insure itself against a much more populous and
powerful India, and Russia to ensure itself against a rapidly developing and more populous
China.” A restrained foreign policy is an alternative to primacy. It reduces military spending,
bases located domestically and abroad, and ends projecting power across the world. Primacy
is an attempt to preserve the U.S. power advantage and spread liberal ideas across the world. It
was an expensive ambitious plan that led interventions on global humanitarian arguments. Restraint argues that the U.S. should stop pursuing idealistic
adventures and prioritize security at home. International commitments would have to diminish to avoid foreign entanglements. The benefit of this
policy is that money would not be wasted on foreign military endeavors and the possibility of blowback would potentially be lowered. With a
strong defense, the U.S. can deter aggressive state actors but can still economically trade and
prosper with other countries.
Impact
 Counter-Terrorism
T/!— global spread of the bomb locks in repressive governments and causes
crackdown on their populations.
Roy 16 (Roy, Arundhati. The End of Imagination, Haymarket Books, 2016. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wfu/detail.action?docID=4596388.
Created from wfu on 2018-09-24 11:27:41.,
I am prepared to grovel. To humiliate myself abjectly, because, in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible. So
those of you who are willing: let’s pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes, and speak our secondhand lines in this
sad secondhand play. But let’s not forget that the stakes we’re playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our shame could
mean the end of us. e end of our children and our children’s children. Of everything we love. We have to reach within
ourselves and nd the strength to think. To ght. Once again we are pitifully behind the times— not just scienti cally and
technologically (ignore the hollow claims), but more pertinently in our ability to grasp the true nature of nuclear weapons.
Our Comprehension of the Horror Department is hopelessly obsolete. Here we are, all of us in India and in Pakistan,
discussing the finer points of politics, and foreign policy, behaving for all the world as though our governments have just
devised a newer, bigger bomb, a sort of immense hand grenade with which they will annihilate the enemy (each other)
and protect us from all harm. How desperately we want to believe that. What wonderful, willing, well-behaved, gullible
subjects we have turned out to be. The rest of humanity (yes, yes, I know, I know , but let’s ignore them for the moment.
They forfeited their votes a long time ago), the rest of the rest of humanity may not forgive us, but then the rest of the rest
of humanity, depending on who fashions its views, may not know what a tired, dejected heartbroken people we are.
Perhaps it doesn’t realize how urgently we need a miracle. How deeply we yearn for magic. If only, if only , nuclear
war was just another kind of war. If only it was about the usual things— nations and territories, gods and
histories. If only those of us who dread it are just worthless moral cowards who are not prepared to die in defense of our
But it isn’t. If
beliefs. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries battle countries and men battle men.
there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth
herself. e very elements— the sky, the air, the land, the wind and water— will all turn against us. eir
wrath will be terrible. Our cities and forests, our elds and villages will burn for days. Riv- ers will turn to poison. e air will
become re. e wind will spread the ames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the res die, smoke will rise and
shut out the sun. e earth will be enveloped in darkness. ere will be no day. Only interminable night. Temperatures will drop
to far below freezing and nuclear winter will set in. Water will turn into toxic ice. Radioactive fallout will seep through the
earth and contaminate groundwater. Most living things, animal and vegetable, sh and fowl, will die. Only rats and
cockroaches will breed and multiply and compete with foraging, relict humans for what little food there is. What shall we
do then, those of us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our
children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe? e head of the
Health, Environment and Safety Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Bombay has a plan. He declared in an
interview ( Pioneer , April 24, 1998) that India could survive nuclear war. His advice is that if there is a nuclear war, we
take the same safety measures as the ones that scientists have recommended in the event of accidents at nuclear plants.
Take iodine pills, he suggests. And other steps such as remaining indoors, consuming only stored water and food and
avoiding milk. Infants should be given powdered milk. “People in the danger zone should immediately go to the ground
oor and if possible to the basement.” What do you do with these levels of lunacy? What do you do if you’re trapped in an
asylum and the doctors are all dangerously deranged? Ignore it, it’s just a novelist’s naiveté, they’ll tell you, Doomsday
Prophet hyperbole. It’ll never come to that. ere will be no war. Nuclear weapons are about peace, not war.
“Deterrence” is the buzzword of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks. (Nice birds,
those. Cool. Stylish. Predatory. Pity there won’t be many of them around after the war. “Extinction” is a word we must try
and get used to.) Deterrence is an old thesis that has been resurrected and is being recycled with added local avor. e eory
of Deterrence cornered the credit for having prevented the Cold War from turning into a ird World War. e only immutable
fact about the ird World War is that if there’s going to be one, it will be fought after the Second World War. In other words,
there’s Roy, Arundhati. The End of Imagination, Haymarket Books, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wfu/detail.action?docID=4596388. Created from wfu on 2018-09-24 11:27:11. no
fixed schedule. In other words, we still have time. And perhaps the pun (the ird World War) is prescient. True, the Cold
War is over, but let’s not be hoodwinked by the ten-year lull in nuclear posturing. It was just a cruel joke. It was only in
remission. It wasn’t cured. It proves no theories. After all, what is ten years in the history of the world? Here it is again, the
disease. More widespread and less amenable to any sort of treatment than ever. No, the theory of Deterrence has
some fundamental flaws. Flaw Number One is that itpresumes a complete, sophisticated
understanding of the psychology of your enemy. It assumes that what deters you (the fear of
annihilation) will deter them. What about those who are not deterred by that? e suicide-bomber
psyche— the “We’ll take you with us” school— is that an outlandish thought? How did Rajiv Gandhi die? In any case
who’s the “you” and who’s the “enemy”? Both are only governments. Governments change. ey wear masks within masks.
ey molt and reinvent themselves all the time. e one we have at the moment, for instance, does not even have enough
seats to last a full term in o ce, but demands that we trust it to do pirouettes and party tricks with nuclear bombs even as it
scrabbles around for a foothold to maintain a simple majority in Parliament. Flaw NumberTwo is that deterrence is
premised on fear. But fear is premised on knowledge. On an understanding of the true extent and scale
of the devastation that nuclear war will wreak. It is not some inherent, mystical attribute of nuclear bombs that they
automatically inspire thoughts of peace. On the contrary, it is the endless, tireless, confrontational work of people who
have had the courage to openly denounce them, the marches, the demonstrations, the lms, the outrage— that is what has
averted, or perhaps only postponed, nuclear war. Deterrence will not and cannot work given the levels of ignorance and
illiteracy that hang over our two countries like dense, impenetrable veils. (Witness the Vishwa Hindu Parishad— VHP—
wanting to distribute radioactive sand from the Pokhran desert as prasad all across India. A cancer yatra?) e eory of
Deterrence is nothing but a perilous joke in a world where iodine pills are prescribed as a prophylactic for nuclear
irradiation. India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs now and feel entirely justi- fied in having them.
Soon others will, too. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I’m trying to be eclectic here),
Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bosnia, Singapore, North
Korea, Sweden, South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan . . . and why not? Every country
in the world has a special case to make. Everybody has borders and beliefs. And when all our larders are bursting
with shiny bombs and our bellies are empty (deterrence is an exorbitant beast), we can trade bombs
for food. And when nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly competitive and prices fall, not just
governments, but anybody who can afford it can have their own private arsenal— businessmen,
terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer (like myself ). Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will
be a new world order. The dictatorship of the pro-nuke elite. We can get our kicks by threatening each
other. It’ll be like bungee jumping when you can’t rely on the bungee cord, or playing Russian roulette all day
long. An additional perk will be the thrill of Not Knowing What to Believe. We can be victims of the predatory imagination
of every green card– seeking charlatan who surfaces in the West with concocted stories of imminent missile attacks. We
can delight at the prospect of being held to ransom by every petty troublemaker and rumormonger, the more the merrier if
truth be told, anything for an excuse to make more bombs. So you see, even without a war, we have a lot to look forward
to. But let us pause to give credit where it’s due. Whom must we thank for all this? e Men who made it happen. e Masters
of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here, folks, stand up and take
a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a di erence. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank
It is such supreme folly
you for altering the very meaning of life. From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living.
to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they’re used. The fact that they exist at all,
their very presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear
weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams.
They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness.
They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of
whiteness. All I can say to every man, woman, and sentient child here in India, and over there, just a little way away in
Pakistan, is: take it personally. Whoever you are— Hindu, Muslim, urban, agrarian— it doesn’t matter. e only good thing
about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not
be asked to present your credentials. e devastation will be undiscriminating. e bomb isn’t in your backyard. It’s in your
body. And mine. Nobody , no nation, no government, no man, no god, has the right to put it there. We’re radioactive
already, and the war hasn’t even begun. So stand up and say something. Never mind if it’s been said before. Speak up
on your own behalf. Take it very personally.