Weaponitus K

1NC
 Weaponitis Kritik 1NC
The affirmative’s focus on arms reductions is a flawed approach to understanding
violence and war – it distracts us from more systemic analysis
William A. Schwartz and Charles Derber 91, Boston Nuclear Study Group, and Charles, BNSG and
professor of political economy and sociology at Boston College, “Does Nuclear Arms Race matter?”:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/424411.pdf?ab_segments=0%2Fdefault-
2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A94f6b620c5328933de55bae51655be32 //EN

The second major thesis is that the real threat of nuclear war is not to be found in the instruments of
destruction, but in the periodically reckless behavior of nuclear superpowers in fueling the flames of
violence and intervening in conflicts around the world, especially in the Third World. For Schwartz and
Derber the most signifi- cant chronology of the nuclear age is not that of the deployment and counter-
deploy- ment of weapon systems, but the series of crises and confrontations that came close - in some
cases perilously close - to crossing the 'firebreak' into nuclear war. Thus the most effective steps that can
be taken to reduce the risk of nuclear war involve pri- marily political, versus technological, issues. Most
important here would be development of a politics making it difficult or impossible for the
superpowers to intervene in external conflicts, intervention which is not only morally unjustifiable,
but which inherently runs the risk of escalation (by design or acci- dent) into nuclear confrontation. It
is here that certain kinds of arms control could make a real difference, especially measures that reduced
the forward deployment of tac- tical and intermediate-range nuclear wea- pon systems, including the
provocative and dangerous projection of nuclear naval forces. The authors find it ironic that these kinds
of arms control measures have gener- ally received the least attention. In considering the arguments put
forward in support of these theses I will indicate where these are likely to encounter the most debate. It
should be noted at the outset that a central objective of the many bold conten- tions in The Nuclear
Seduction is to provoke precisely this kind of debate. Whether or not one agrees with their conclusions,
readers will benefit from the acuity of their arguments and the wealth of documenta- tion. 2.
Remembering the Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution Part I, 'Why the Arms Race Doesn't Matter',
presents a series of interrelated arguments to support the claim that the increment in weapons and
technology has little relationship to either the likelihood or outcome of nuclear war. (Schwartz and
Derber are not arguing the arms race doesn't matter in social, economic, or moral terms. It does, and
they are well aware of the social costs in these dimensions.) First, and perhaps most important, we are
reminded of the awesome destructive power of thermonuclear weapons. The nuclear revolution put an
end to the weapons paradigm, where the quantitative increment in weaponry could represent
significant mili- tary advantage, and which governed war- making for millennia. Hydrogen warheads
numbering in the tens can inflict vast des- truction on societies. Since the 1950s, cer- tainly by the early
1960s, both superpowers have possessed nuclear arsenals guarantee- ing a situation of 'existential
deterrence', by which is meant that no foreseeable alter- ation in strategy, technology, or increase in
weapons can alter the fundamental reality of mutual vulnerability to nuclear destruction.

The focus on war as a singular event ignores the larger process of structural violence –
adopting a broader understanding of violence is a prerequisite to real solutions
Dr. Laksiri Fernando 3, Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (“Transforming
negative peace to positive peace,” Daily News, April 2,
http://archives.dailynews.lk/2002/04/02/fea01.html //EN
However, the ceasefire is not enough .
All ceasefires are fragile by nature whatever the monitory mechanisms that
are in place. War is only the symptom . Ethnic conflict is the ailment. Ceasefire or negative peace is like
treating the symptoms without addressing the ailment. Unless and until solutions are sought to resolve the ethnic conflict in a
reasonable manner, and reasonable to all ethnic communities to mean the Tamils, the Sinhalese and the Muslims, the ailment will not be cured.
The United Nations observed the year 2000 as the "International Year for the Culture of Peace." In its declaration announcing the year, the
following definition was given for us to contemplate.
"Peace is not only the absence of conflict, but requires a positive, dynamic and participatory process
where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are resolved in a spirit of mutual understanding and
cooperation."
Clear distinction
Following from the above definition there is a clear distinction between negative peace and positive peace. What we have achieved so far is negative peace, the
absence of war for the time being. The ceasefire itself is fragile. There is still the readiness and capacity on both sides to wage war in case of a major disagreement.
There is no firm commitment on both sides to resolve disputes and disagreements permanently on a peaceful and democratic manner . The fire of the
gun has temporarily ceased, but the guns are still aimed at each other. This is the fragility of the present peace.
If there is firm commitment to resolve the disputes through peaceful and democratic manner, then the necessary steps in a positive peace
process should commence. That means decommissioning, demobilization and disarmament at least on an incremental manner. What we have
achieved so far is the disarmament of other parties and de-mining on a limited scale. A positive peace process also implies primarily the
resurrection of democratic institutions and holding of elections by allowing people to enter the democratic main stream in the affected areas.
The steps towards positive peace also mean the re-establishment of the justice system with firm safeguards particularly for human rights.
Positive peace in its broadest sense means many more things than even the above measures. No one should be asking all these overnight. But
there should be a vision and a direction towards achieving positive peace in its fullest possible meaning in the future. Otherwise, there will be
no future for our society. There is endemic violence in our society - violence at home, work place, university and elections. Societal violence
undoubtedly breeds into ethnic violence and war. Curtailing violence at micro level obviously is necessary to curtail violence at macro level and
vise versa.
Positive peace in its ultimate objective means not only the absence of direct violence, but also the structural
violence in its all forms. It means a full measure of justice, equality and social harmony in all respects. The negative peace is like "negative healthiness,"
the mere absence of sickness. But healthiness should be a positive one. Not only the absence of sickness, but also the physical fitness and good muscle tone. Peace
should be like that, a positive one.
Johan Galtung is the person who made the distinction
between what we normally call violence (physical violence) and
structural violence. Structural violence might not harm the victims directly. But the people are harmed, victimized and
violated through institutional means and structures . Discrimination, inequality and social marginalization are some forms of
structural violence on the ethnic front. Poverty, malnutrition, and economic marginalization are several forms of structural violence on the social front. If peace is
the absence of violence, it should mean the absence of violence including structural violence as well. Peace means not only the absence of war and violence but also
the absence of causes of war and violence.
Links
 2NC Weaponitis links
The affirmative’s focus on arm reduction, in order to mitigate nuclear war, turns case
Schwartz and Derber 1991
William A., Boston Nuclear Study Group, and Charles, BNSG and professor of political economy and
sociology at Boston College, online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/424411.pdf?
ab_segments=0%2Fdefault-2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search
%3A94f6b620c5328933de55bae51655be32 //EN
There are two central theses of The Nuclear Seduction. The first is that the nuclear arms race, while
producing an end- less succession of technologically sophisticated and frightening weaponry, is itself not
the major factor determining the likelihood of nuclear war. Hence peace movements on the left, arms
controllers in the center, and nuclear hawks on the right, have all been victims of 'the nuclear seduction'
- the belief that the characteristics and specific numbers of weapons matter most when it comes to
the issue of nuclear war . In the authors' view far too much of the nuclear debate has focused on
hardware, on which weapons should be deployed, or opposed. This obsession with weapons, or
'weaponitis', has obscured a central truth:
.. . short of near-total nuclear disarmament, we believe that no change in the arms race can in fact make
a profound difference. MX, Star Wars, INF, a freeze, or even a 90 percent reduction in nuclear arsenals
cannot reliably change the horror of a nuclear war. They cannot much affect the risk that the nuclear
states will plunge us onto that horror. They cannot make the world much safer or more dangerous than
it already is (p.1)

Focus on weapons reductions covers the political and personal motivations that make
war possible
Schwartz and Derber 93 -- William A. Schwartz, a professor of property law at Yeshiva University's Cardozo
School of Law, and Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, THE NUCLEAR SEDUCTION:
WHY THE ARMS RACE DOESN’T MATTER- AND WHAT DOES, University of California Press, 1993. p. 1-2.

A nuclear sword, we all know, hangs over the earth. But where does the danger of nuclear war come
from? What makes it worse? How can we reduce it?
For many years, a striking consensus has reigned: the nuclear arms race between the superpowers is
the main source of danger. The arms race is “the central concern of the closing years of the century," the cause célebre of our
time. A U.S. senator says that "the very survival of our planet, the survival of the human race, is at stake," a common view.
The right, the center, and the left disagree, of course, about how the United States should run the arms
race. The right urges us to build weapons like the MX missile, the Stealth bomber, and "Star Wars"; the center, to
sign arms control treaties like NF and START with the Soviet Union; and the left, to stop and then reverse the
arms race through a test ban, a "freeze," and huge reductions in nuclear arsenals. But all focus on the hardware,
the weapons themselves. Most of the nuclear debate concerns which weapons should be deployed and which destroyed.
But short of near total nuclear disarmament, we believe that no change in the arms race can in fact make a profound
difference. MX, Star Wars, IN,F, a freeze, or even a 90 percent reduction in nuclear arsenals cannot reliably
change the horror of a nuclear war. They cannot much affect the risk that the nuclear states will plunge us into that hor-
ror. They cannot make the world much safer or more dangerous than it already is.
The nuclear danger is real—even more ominous, as we will show, than most people appreciate. But the fixation on weapons
has obscured the real menace: the political conflict and violence raging around the world that could one
day burn out of control and set off a nuclear cataclysm. As the world debates largely irrelevant
missiles and arms control treaties, the superpowers are fanning the flames of conflict and war from
Afghanistan to Nicaragua, Lebanon to Cambodia. Forty years of history reveal that such conflicts can
suddenly veer out of control and even erupt into open superpower confrontation. Yet in a time of
 unprecedented public concern about nuclear war, few—even in the peace movement—protest the
nuclear hazards of their governments’ foreign intrigues and interventions.
Those of us concerned with the nuclear threat have long been like the apocryphal drunk who
searches for his lost keys hour after hour under a lamppost-because it‘s light there. The giant
weapons systems are seductive, the obvious place to look for answers to the nuclear peril. The light
there is good. But there is little to be found. lf we want the keys to a safer world, we must turn the light to the real
conflicts and battlefields where the superpowers and their clients confront each other every day, often hidden from public view, and
where they periodically collide in terrifying crises that threaten to provoke worldwide catastrophe.

Normative discourse focuses on weapons as the cause of insecurity --- this “weapons
paradigm” drastically exaggerates the role weapons play in causing violence
Schwartz and Derber 93 -- William A. Schwartz, a professor of property law at Yeshiva University's
Cardozo School of Law, and Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, THE NUCLEAR
SEDUCTION: WHY THE ARMS RACE DOESN’T MATTER- AND WHAT DOES, University of
California Press, 1993. P. 2.

Public issues generally develop a "culture," a consensus about the key questions, the level of analysis, and the
language of debate. Since these assumptions are shared, they rarely come up for discussion. The
common perspective that guides discourse on nuclear war and peace is what we call the “weapons paradigm.” It
magnifies the importance of the weapons themselves far beyond their real significance. It views
weapons as the basic source of security or insecurity, power or weakness, peace or war. It pegs the
arms race as the problem and some change in that race as the solution.
If nuclear weapons were like conventional ones, then their number and technical characteristics would of
course matter. But nuclear weapons are different. They are so powerful that both superpowers long ago
acquired the means to utterly destroy each other along with much of the rest of the planet. For decades the arms race
and arms control have changed only the number of times that we can bounce the radiating rubble of the world.

Their defense of particular weapon systems distracts from an overall critique of

militarism—always another weapon for another war.
Schwartz and Derber 1990
William A., Boston Nuclear Study Group, and Charles, BNSG and professor of political economy and sociology at Boston College, online:
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1n39n7wg/
The real threat of the anti-nuclear war movement has always been that it might politicize and
encourage a mass revolt against American militarism in the Third World. This could well occur if the U.S. population
realized that the victims include not only Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Lebanese, Libyans, Grenadans, Angolans, and so on, but potentially
themselves and their families as well. As
long as concerned citizens busy themselves with learning MX missile
throw weights and Pershing II flight times, demonstrating at nuclear weapons bases, and pressuring Congress
about Star Wars, this threat is coopted. These functions of weaponitis have not gone completely unnoticed
within the anti-nuclear weapons movement . Activist Tom Atlee observes that weapons systems and arms control proposals—
technically complex and easily multiplied year after year—are ideal for keeping the opposition busily ineffective. He asks, "Could it be that our
friends in the Military Industrial Complex Establishment (let's call them MICE, shall we?) long ago figured out how
to keep us (in the peace movement) hopping around on their playing field, dutifully following their game plan—
without us realizing we were being manipulated?" The method is simple. "The MICE entice us into debates about
weapons systems…. The catch is that even when we 'win' one of these debates, the MICE always come up
with new weapons systems … for us to argue about. And since it takes the American public months or
years just to figure out what each debate is about, the MICE have plenty of time to start a new
development before the old one runs out of steam . So we never catch up to the MICE…. It is their game and they rig it in
their favor."
 2NC Anti-War protest
The affirmatives anti-war stance is classic placebo activism, in their firm stance against
state policy they legitimize it by being the ying to militarisms yang---when people
protested against Iraq, Bush reacted by saying “you see what we are fighting for! For
people to have the right to protest against government policy…soon that will be
possible in Iraq!”
Zizek 2007
Slavoj, Resistance is Surrender: What to Do about Capitalism?, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/slavoj-zizek/resistance-is-surrender
The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US attack on Iraq a few years ago offer an
exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance. Their paradoxical outcome
was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they
don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it:
not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to
legitimise it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in
effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for , so that what people are doing here – protesting
against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’

The problem the affirmative wants to solve is one of spectacle; nonviolence put some
people on top and others on the bottom of a binary politic that still labels some as
courageous and others as cowards, it just judges that with inverted values, this
ultimately results in violence; peace being a struggle for justice is just as narratable as
the spectacle of war; our task is not to swap obsessions-vote negative to explore the
nexus of war and peace
Mariani 8 (Giorgio Mariani is Professor of American Literature at the “Sapienza” University of Rome.
He is Vice-President of the International American Studies Association and the co-editor, with Bruno
Cartosio and Alessandro Portelli, of A ` coma, an Italian journal of American studies, “Ad bellum
purificandum, or, Giving Peace a (Fighting) Chance in American Studies,” Project Muse)
Although, as Sollors argues, “There may be no American Lysistrata, and American literature may not be concerned with peace as was the book
of Psalms . . . there is a tradition of American imaginings of ‘peace’ that could be profitably studied and taught” (34). I agree, and here I should
perhaps reconsider a point made earlier on. Perpetual
peace (like happiness, harmony, or requited love) may indeed lack aesthetic
appeal and—to the extent that all storytelling hinges on some kind of conflict—be virtually impossible to
narrate. However, if peace is reimagined as the struggle for peace and justice, it becomes both as narratable
and “spectacular” as war. It is certainly no accident that what we found appealing in the lives of figures such as Addams, Gandhi, and
King is first and foremost their readiness to be women or men of action and that they themselves often couched their longing for peace in the
language of strife and heroism. Yet we must also come to realize that “imaginings of peace” may be often found precisely in
those texts that we would consider more appropriate to teach in a “War and American Literature” course.
The most urgent task is not simply to replace the obsession with America’s obsession with war with a focus on
an alternative gun-less and peace-loving national tradition, but rather to explore the dialectic of war
and peace which quite often animates even those texts—like Emerson’s—that may at first strike us as only promoting “the charm of war.”
In Burkean terms, I hope to see more studies of American history, literature, and culture in which war “would not be used primarily as a
constitutive anecdote but rather as an admonitory anecdote” (Grammar 330). As Burke writes towards the end of his Grammar, one must be
aware that “the world as we know it, the world in history, cannot be described in its particularities by an idiom of peace . . . hence the
representative anecdote must contain militaristic ingredients. It
may not be an anecdote of peace—but it may be an
anecdote giving us the purification of war” (Grammar 337).38 The kind of renewed interest in US antiwar discourse I am calling
for should by no means be construed as being simply yet another call to condemn America for not living up to its own ideals. I agree with Amy
Kaplan when she notes that “condemning the U nited S tates for failing to measure up to its own highest standards
may have some strategic value in public debates , but this approach is both insular and exceptionalist, as it
implicitly makes the U nited S tates the bearer of universal values,” and I am all for holding “the US to standards beyond its
ideal self-image. . . . Standards of human rights, of international law, of ethics that stem from cosmopolitan,
transnational, and local sources and are not prescribed by and limited to the ideals of a single nation ”
(145). My contention is that, by paying closer attention to the dialectic of war and peace , American studies may both
rediscover an important homegrown tradition of militant pacifism and avoid the parochialism of the
jeremiad . A genuine concern for peace is by definition meant to curb rather than promote nationalism .
Unsurprisingly, all the great pacifist manifestos have always been the product of cultural cross-fertilization. For example, as John Gruesser has
argued in reference to Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” “drawing on Greek mythology, Confucius, the New Testament, and
Shakespeare and inspiring Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, suffragettes in England and the United States, anti-apartheid activists, Martin Luther
King, Jr., as well as antiwar and antinuclear demonstrators around the world, Thoreau’s essay is international in both its pedigree and influence”
(173).39 I would therefore conclude by noticing that, given the recent push towards the internationalization of American studies, it is somewhat
surprising that peace has not achieved the buzzword status wished for by Sollors. Yet, I believe it is high time that it should—especially today
when, as Djelal Kadir has put it, “the global repercussiveness of America makes it imperative for us Americanists to be international
Americanists” (149). At a time when the “peace” promoted by the Bush administration is a shameless Pax Americana, it is
no wonder that some of us are tempted, to quote Kadir once again, to replace “the essentialist idealization of America as devotional object”
with “the equally essentialist reification of a dark side of America as compensation for our chagrin at demystification and disenchantment”
(151). It
is therefore all the more urgent for a truly international American studies to rediscover a tradition of militant
pacifism that has opposed various versions of Pax Americana, from the days of the proto-Gringos and the Trail of Tears to the
Vietnam War and the attack on Iraq. As we do this, we should not—as Michael Bellesiles apparently did—manipulate the historical or textual
record to suit our wishes, yet we should also never ignore those instances in which Americans have raised their voices against the gun-fighting
spirit of the US. To invoke once again Emerson’s example, let us consider his “Cherokee Letter,” dated 23 April 1838. Seldom discussed in
Emerson criticism, this document is unquestionably marked by both paternalism and a belief in the originally “savage” nature of American
Indian societies. Yet, if read against contemporary texts like James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels, or Washington Irving’s American
Indian stories in The Sketch Book (1819-20), Emerson’s letter provides a telling example of what we are used to thinking of as a quintessentially
American voice taking his nation to task not simply for not measuring up to its own ideals, but precisely for violating standards of human rights,
international law, and ethics that are not limited to the US: Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, such a denial of justice, and such deafness
to screams for mercy were never heard of in times of peace and in the dealing of a nation with its own allies, since the earth was made. . . . [A]
crime is projected that confounds our understanding by its magnitude,—a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country;
for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and
dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this
instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world. (102–103) Judged by
today’s standards, Emerson’s words are unmistakably those of an anti-American. By polemically contextualizing in world history the cruelty of
the Indian Removal, Emerson imagines an international public opinion condemning the criminal behavior of the US government. To the
nationalist rhetoric of “my country right or wrong,” Emerson juxtaposes the notion that I can only call that country mine that behaves in a just
and humane way. Yet, important as they are, such critiques
of nationalism and militarism are more significant when
read against the background of the ad bellum purificandum tradition I have tried to sketch and which we are in
dire need of rediscovering today, at a time when “the pacific neoliberal rhetoric of globalization has been
replaced by the Hobbesian imaginary of endless war ” (Deer 1), and—as James Hillman has argued in his recent and
important A Terrible Love of War (2004)—we are once again left to wonder why war (both as fact and symbol) remains to many a fascinating
and attractive business. In Hillman’s view the only way to fight for peace under current conditions is by “going to war” with our minds. Even
though he never mentions Emerson in his book, when in the very first paragraph he urges us to plunge our imagination into “the martial state
of the soul,” he is unknowingly quoting from Emerson’s “Heroism.” Similarly, the epigraph of Hillman’s book—“The Lord is a great warrior; His
name is The Lord,” from Exodus—is the Biblical counterpart to Emerson’s quotation from Mohammed in “Heroism”—a reminder that any
religion of peace is always, perhaps inevitably, a religion of war. While I think that some of the points Hillman makes in A Terrible Love of War
are rather perplexing, I do find his critique of all forms of naı¨ve pacifism both convincing and timely.40 Some of the best pages of his book are
indeed the ones where he shows that no neat boundaries can be drawn between Mars and Venus, peace and war, the field of love and the
battleground of hate. In sum, there is absolutely no need to think that peace should achieve buzzword status in
American studies at the expense of war. The important lesson that American thinkers such as Emerson and Kenneth
Burke have taught us is analogous to the conclusion Hillman arrives at in his book: “Similis similibus curantur is the old motto: cure by
means of similars (rather than by means of opposites)” (202). Or, as Burke put it roughly 70 years ago, “Militaristic patterns are
fundamental to our ‘virtue,’ even the word itself coming from a word which the Latins applied to their warriors” (Attitudes 256). To
the peace that is under the shadow of Patriot missiles , we must oppose the warlike courage of the
virtuous peacefighter , so as to avoid, years later, having to repeat Tim O’Brien’s bitter words on his Vietnam
experience: “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (63).
 2NC Arms Sales links
Attempts to reduce arm sales legitimizes them
Neil Cooper, 5-24-2011, "Humanitarian Arms Control and Processes of Securitization: Moving Weapons along the Security
Continuum," Taylor; Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13523260.2011.556855 //EN
This article undertakes a critical analysis of what have been labelled humanitarian arms control (HAC) initiatives, most notably, recent agreements to ban
cluster munitions and landmines as well as efforts to restrict the proliferation of small arms . The article critiques
conventional accounts that view such initiatives as illustrating the potential of global civil society to interject human
security concerns into the domain of arms regulation through the exercise of bottom-up power . In order to do
this, the article first outlines the concept of securitization, particularly Floyd's discussion of positive and negative forms of securitization and Abrahamson's concept
of the security continuum. This is used to frame an analysis of contemporary HAC initiatives that locates them in the much longer history of pariah weapons
regulation and the way it
relates both to the framing of legitimized weapons and changes in the broader
regulation of the conventional defence trade in different eras . In contrast to conventional accounts of the HAC agenda, it is
argued that initiatives such as those on landmines and cluster munitions were successful precisely because they were consonant with the same discourse used to
legitimize both post-Cold War liberal interventionism and the new generation modern high-tech weapons. Moreover ,
the extra-securitization of
landmines, cluster munitions and small arms has been accompanied by the (relative) desecuritization of
the trade in major conventional weapons and associated dual-use technologies, a process that has a
number of quite negative effects in terms of arms trade regulation . The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of
the preceding analysis both for thinking about processes of securitization and for arms trade non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
 2NC Drones
Focus on drone tech crowds out real violence
Noble 13 (Doug, antiwar activist, “Is It the Drones or the Killings We
Oppose?,” http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/29/is-it-the-drones-or-the-killings-we-oppose/) //EN
US drone strikes make news every day, fostering worldwide outrage and public scrutiny. The drone has
become an icon of US lethality and dominance, and it has understandably become a principal focus of
our antiwar effort.
But recent controversial revelations about presidential-approved “kill lists,” used to identify targets for
drone assassinations, suggest a broader scope for our opposition. US assassination and targeted killing,
with presidential approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a century, and continues to this
day, both with and without drones. Drone strikes may be merely the most visible portion of a wider,
global program of US targeted killing, “a covert side to the Global War on Terrorism that is not visible
and not currently knowable.”[1] Perhaps a limited focus on remote-controlled murder by drone
technology blinds us to a broader US enterprise of targeted assassination around the globe. Shouldn’t
we, then, turn more of our attention to this wider canvas of US killing, repositioning our drone protest
within a larger context, rather than limiting ourselves by our focused opposition to drone technology?

A Focus on drones redirects attention to a more important focus on killings

Noble 13 (Doug, antiwar activist, “Is It the Drones or the Killings We
Oppose?,” http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/29/is-it-the-drones-or-the-killings-we-oppose/) //EN
There are, however, equally good reasons not to focus our opposition on drones. The wizardry of
drone technology has great popular appeal in the US. According to Pew Research’s latest polling, 62% of
the US public enthusiastically approve of drone use for remote-controlled killing in the war on terror.
The New York State Fair now has a popular exhibit providing children the simulated thrill of piloting a
drone mission. The burgeoning drone manufacturing industry appears unstoppable, with nearly 50
companies developing some 150 different systems, ranging from miniature models to those with
wingspans comparable to airliners. Law enforcement and security agencies will have $6 billion in U.S.
sales by 2016, for domestic surveillance. Altogether, the drone industry’s lobbying group , Association
for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International , claims 507 corporate members in 55 countries. There is
virtually no Congressional opposition to the drone fever that has gripped the military, which is spending
$4.2 billion on drones this year alone; one large bipartisan congressional committee is solely committed
to promoting drone technology.
Furthermore, as the technology develops, drones will have many positive uses beyond war and
surveillance, diluting potential opposition to the technology itself. So  a continued focus on drones
carries the danger of distracting our attention from the horrific, illegal and immoral, targeted killing of
civilians, including women and children, which is the original motivation for our years of opposition and
protest.
Instead, then, we should perhaps return our attention to the killing itself. This would move us beyond
the public fascination with technology and would expose the criminality of targeted assassination of
civilians as not merely “collateral” but instead as an intentional counterterrorist strategy aimed at
preemptive elimination of suspected enemies. It could also offer an unprecedented opportunity to
expose the long sordid history of US counterinsurgency policy that set the stage for Obama’s current use
of kill lists against suspected militants in al Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups. It could also open up a
broader investigation of the covert killing now allegedly being conducted by CIA and Special Forces, or
their indigenous proxies, throughout many countries in the world.
 2NC Negative/Positive Peace
The affirmative represents “war” as a singular, bounded event. This ontological
distinction between “war” and “peace” ensures the continuation of everyday militarism
and violence, turning the case.
Chris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, 1996 (“War Is Not Just an Event:
Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence,” Hypatia, Volume 11, Number 4, Fall, Available
Online to Subscribing Institutions via JSTOR, p. 30-31)
Philosophical attention to war has typically appeared in the form of justifications for entering into war, and
over appropriate activities within war. The spatial metaphors used to refer to war as a separate,
bounded sphere indicate assumptions that war is a realm of human activity vastly removed from
normal life, or a sort of happening that is appropriately conceived apart from everyday events in
peaceful times. Not surprisingly, most discussions of the political and ethical dimensions of war
discuss war solely as an event—an occurrence, or collection of occurrences, having clear beginnings
and endings that are typically marked by formal, institutional declarations. As happenings, wars and
military activities can be seen as motivated by identifiable, if complex, intentions, and directly
enacted by individual and collective decision-makers and agents of states. But many of the questions
about war that are of interest to feminists---including how large-scale, state-sponsored violence affects
women and members of other oppressed groups; how military violence shapes gendered, raced, and
nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations; what such violence consists of and why it persists;
how it is related to other oppressive and violent institutions and hegemonies—cannot be adequately
pursued by focusing on events. These issues are not merely a matter of good or bad intentions and
identifiable decisions. In "Gender and 'Postmodern' War," Robin Schott introduces some of the ways in
which war is currently best seen not as an event but as a presence (Schott 1995). Schott argues that
postmodern understandings of persons, states, and politics, as well as the high-tech nature of much
contemporary warfare and the preponderance of civil and nationalist wars, render an event-based
conception of war inadequate, especially insofar as gender is taken into account. In this essay, I will
expand upon her argument by showing that accounts of war that only focus on events are impoverished
in a number of ways, and therefore feminist consideration of the political, ethical, and ontological
dimensions of war and the possibilities for resistance demand a much more complicated approach. I
take Schott's characterization of war as presence as a point of departure, though I am not committed to the
idea that the constancy of militarism, the fact of its omnipresence in human experience, and the paucity of
an event-based account of war are exclusive to contemporary postmodern or postcolonial circumstances.1
Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or
address the depth and specificity of the everyday effects of militarism on women, on people living in
occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on the environment. These effects are
relevant to feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions help construct
gendered and national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities
and communities during peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or
preventing military violence in an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot
accommodate the connections among the constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other
closely related social phenomena, such as nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence,
and current ideological gravitations to military solutions for social problems.

This representation of “war” as an isolated event leads to politics of crisis-control that can
never hope to address the underlying structures of violence. Every singular “war” the
affirmative hopes to prevent will just reappear over and over again—every time we do
crisis-control, it trades off with deeper structural changes that can create a positive peace.
Chris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, 1996 (“War Is Not Just an Event:
Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence,” Hypatia, Volume 11, Number 4, Fall, Available
Online to Subscribing Institutions via JSTOR, p. 31-32)
Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military practices are woven
into the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based politics and
analyses. For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political
options, crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need
for sustained resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so
often function as givens in most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the
false belief that the absence of declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is
particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not regularly
encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that militarism is an
ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to militarism that
are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the "real" violence
finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult
not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities. Crisis-driven attention
to declarations of war might actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general
presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence
draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of
the time, and that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state.
Moving away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also
enables consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can
shape more nuanced theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways
in which war is part of a presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the
following: how militarism is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive
presence and symbolism of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats
of state-sponsored violence are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and
corporate interests; the fact that vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst
of excruciatingly violent circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among
the various kinds of violence that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with
nationalism, guns, and militias, and growing hunger for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful
police state, one cannot underestimate the need for philosophical and political attention to connections
among phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on crime," and other state-funded militaristic
campaigns.
Impacts
 2NC Impact
Outweighs and turn their case --- the focus on weapons at the expense of state
violence more broadly ensures that the state will ignore their appeal while larger and
deadlier weapons get built
Martin 86, Brian, associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of
Wollongong, Australia, Peace Studies, No. 3, June/July 1986, pp. 36-39,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/86ps.html

Nuclear disarmament is a key theme of the Australian peace movement. There are, for example, the
various People for Nuclear Disarmament groups, the Nuclear Disarmament Party, and the major Nuclear
Disarmament Conference held in Melbourne in August 1985. I argue that it is dangerously narrow to
focus so much on nuclear weapons, and also to focus so much on disarmament.
The basic problem with focussing on nuclear weapons is that they are only one product of the war
system. The history of modem warfare is one of recurrent technical innovation to increase the killing
power of weaponry. This process has been routinised in the past century through the heavy sponsorship
of science and technology by the state. In effect, much of the knowledge and skills produced and used
by science and technology is tied to the military aims of separate states.[1] It so happens that nuclear
weapons are currently the most prominent of technological threats to human life. But the driving force
behind the development of weapons of mass destruction is the state-technology system, not the
weapons themselves.
As a potential solution to the problem of mass killing in warfare, the locus on nuclear weapons has
several limitations:
The killing power of conventional weapons has been increasing at a great rate for decades. A large-scale
conventional war between major industrialised powers could kill many tens or even hundreds of millions
of people.
Even if all nuclear weapons were dismantled tomorrow, the capacity to produce new nuclear weapons
would remain. With technological advances in uranium isotope separation, in a few years time it may be
possible for small states and non-state groups to produce nuclear weapons without great difficulty or
expense.
Chemical and especially biological weapons have the potential to kill large numbers of people. Future
biological weapons could easily pose as great a threat as present nuclear weapons.
Quite a few people realise that getting rid of nuclear weapons is not enough, but nevertheless think that
concentrating on nuclear weapons is essential. One view is that cutting back on nuclear weapons should
be seen as only the first stage of efforts against war. The problem with this is that most people, including
members of peace groups, get caught up with the immediate demands. The peace movement in the late
1950s and early 1960s made the cessation of nuclear testing in the atmosphere a major demand, with
the result that the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 took a lot of the wind out of the movement.
Another stance is that the threat posed by nuclear weapons is so enormous and unprecedented that
focussing on nuclear weapons is necessary to buy time for any other social action: if there is a nuclear
war we will not be around to worry about poverty or sexism. In response I would argue that there is no
automatic reason why 'buying time' is best achieved through a narrow concern about nuclear weapons.
The effectiveness of social movements does not derive simply from the size of the threat to human life
that they are protesting about, but rather from a whole range of factors, including the possibility of
reforms, the bandwagon effect and the organisation of the movement.
Another argument is that a wider alliance can be built by focussing on nuclear weapons and not
alienating people by bringing up other demands. The problem with that case is reliance on the lowest
common denominator makes it difficult to achieve anything more than pious declarations. The heads of
all the major weapons states tell us that they are in favour of 'peace', but that doesn't achieve anything.
The major problem with the concentration on nuclear weapons is that it encourages a technical fix
approach such as the nuclear freeze or other agreements made by governments. The evidence is
overwhelming that arms negotiations hold little potential for changing the war system, irrespective of
popular pressure applied to governments.[2]
Quite a number of historical examples show the limitations for social movements of making demands
which are too narrow. For example, the progressive movement in the United States around the turn of
the century was a powerful reform movement. One of its major concerns was the abuses perpetrated by
large corporations: monopoly, exploitation, etc. The focus was on large corporations, and the solution
sought was 'trust-busting', in other words, using government intervention to break up the monopolies.
As in the case of nuclear disarmament negotiations, there was more sound than action from politicians
who took up the progressive cause. But the basic limitation of the approach was seeing the problem in
the trusts rather than deeper in the capitalist system. It hardly needs mentioning that although some
monopolies were broken up at the time, the size and power of US-based transnational corporations is
greater than ever today.
A similar difficulty faced the first wave of the feminist movement when around the turn of the twentieth
century it made achieving the vote for women the major target. Barring women from voting was useful
but - as later events showed - not essential to continued male domination. After the feminist movement
achieved its immediate aim of the vote, it went into decline for decades. This is the great danger of
focussing too much on 'achievable' reforms.
'Disarmament' is the other side of the central attention placed on nuclear disarmament. Disarmament is
normally conceived as a reversal of the armament process and as something that is undertaken by
governments. The major limitation here, once again, is that concentrating on disarmament does not
address the driving forces behind the war system. If the system of states, with each state founded on
claims to a monopoly on 'legitimate' violence, is at the basis of the war system, then it is futile to expect
to turn back the armament process by appealing to the rationality or political concerns of state elites.[3]
And yet that is exactly what the Australian peace movement has attempted to do.
The main strategy of the Australian peace movement - inasmuch as a main strategy can be perceived - is
to apply pressure to the Australian government to push for cutting free of the nuclear weapons
connection. The major rallies have been largely aimed at getting as many people on the streets as
possible, to impress the public and the government with the breadth of concern.
Efforts to support the Democrats or the Nuclear Disarmament Party are designed to apply electoral
pressure on the government to sever its links to the US nuclear system. The trouble with this is that the
peace movement has no alternative to military defence which it can proceed to implement itself. By
focussing on nuclear disarmament, the movement ties itself to a 'see and plea' approach of the sort
which has failed time and time again.
Will getting millions of people into the streets force the government to take action? There were a million
in the streets of New York in 1982. Furthermore, opinion polls show that a large majority of US people
favour a nuclear freeze. Have the US policy-makers responded? Not in terms of the substance of their
policies.
 Turns Case
Removing weapons doesn’t address the root cause of war- even disarm maintains the
war system
Martin ‘90
(Brian-, Uprooting War, http://uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw00.html; Jacob)

If all the military weapons in the world suddenly disappeared, this would not eliminate the
problem of war. If current social structures, such as states and other systems of political and
economic inequality, remained, then it would not be long before armaments built up again to
the previous level. Nor would the problem of war be solved if disarmament were decreed and
carried out by a dominant institution , such as a world government. It would be easy for resisting
groups to hide weapons, including nuclear weapons, or to make new ones with presently available
knowledge and resources. Disarmament as a goal is not enough for confronting the problem of war.
It is also necessary to transform the structures that lead to war.
War cannot simply be eliminated while leaving the rest of society as it is, namely by freezing the
status quo. Yet that is what is assumed in efforts to stop war by appealing to elites. The structural
conditions for war need to be removed and superseded by alternative structures which do not
lead to war.
In what direction do dominant social structures need to be changed? In very general terms, the direction needs to be towards greater political, social and economic equality , towards greater
justice and freedom, and towards greater control by people over the decisions which influence their lives. Methods for moving in these directions are discussed in later chapters.

The principle of structural change is a far-reaching one. The focus of peace movements in the 1980s, as
it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, has been nuclear war. But even accepting the unlikely
possibility that state elites would ever dismantle their nuclear weapons, eliminating nuclear weapons
would not eliminate war, nor would it prevent the creation of weapons more deadly than nuclear
weapons. The goal needs to be more than disarmament, and certainly much more than nuclear
disarmament.
 2NC Structural Violence Impact
Their focus on “negative peace” ignores structural violence—this outweighs the case.
Michael E. Nielsen, Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgia Southern University, 2004
(“Mormonism and Psychology: A Broader Vision for Peace,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought,
Volume 37, Issue 1, Spring, Available Online at http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/peace.htm,
Accessed 08-02-2010)
Structural violence refers to aspects of society that limit people’s ability to reach their potential.
Economic stratification, which occurs when one segment of society has difficulty finding adequate shelter or
food while other segments of society do not, is an important factor in structural violence. When there are great
differences in the educational facilities available to students in different locales, based on funding formulas and
other socio-economic structures, structural violence has been committed. Because it is interwoven with the
society’s economic system, structural violence is seen as a normal part of living in society, an inadvertent
consequence of “the way things are.” Thus, features of an economic or political system that limit human
potential for some while enhancing life for others are considered structural violence.[30] In contrast to direct
violence, structural violence kills slowly, unintentionally, and indirectly.[31] It shortens people’s lives by
chronic exposure to difficult living conditions, rather than by a specific, direct act. Globalization adds to
structural violence because it fuels tremendous differences between people in terms of their wealth and
resources, making some suffer at the expense of others. For example, when economic sanctions are placed
on a country, the effect on the leadership of that country is slight relative to that experienced by the general
populace. If we define peace in terms of what it is—“the presence of qualities, values and approaches in
human relationships that build greater harmony”[32]—rather than what it is not—the lack of war or
conflict—then the scope of peace broadens substantially. At least two things are gained by doing this.
First, if we are truly concerned about peace and the prevention of violence, we must address its root
causes. Some causes, such as anti-social personality disorder, greed, and lust for power, are classically
“psychological” and reside within the individual. Others are broader, systemic conditions that lie outside the
scope of the individual but nevertheless affect his or her actions.[33] In order to lessen war, violence, and
conflict effectively, we must recognize and utilize multiple levels of analysis, and not limit our efforts
simply to individuals, groups, or societies. By improving oppressive living conditions, we may reduce the
likelihood of direct violence and improve people’s quality of life.[34] A second benefit from using a
broader, more positive definition of peace is moral consistency. It seems inconsistent to claim to seek
peace, while at the same time endorsing practices that harm children and others particularly affected by
structural violence.[35] A morality that opposes direct violence while supporting structural violence
would be inhumane at best. From an LDS perspective, charitable concern and action on behalf of others is
inextricably linked to peace.[36] From the perspective of psychology, an interesting question regarding
structural violence is how people who aspire to live good, moral lives, can do so while ignoring social ills and
the problems of structural violence.[37] They appear to do this by limiting their scope of justice so that it
applies only to certain people, drawing some people within and leaving others outside their circle of justice.[38]
We care for members of our own groups, disregarding the welfare of others. Although societies often have laws
and religious prohibitions against direct violence, structural violence is less likely to result in punishment.
Indeed, even “Good Samaritan” laws designed to encourage citizens to intervene in emergencies remain a
controversial form of legislation. Because the targets of structural violence are those people with less power
in society, children, women, and minority group members are disproportionately represented. Structural
violence toward children manifests itself in many ways. Social policies punish children for their parents’
actions; more subtly, children being raised under conditions of economic distress have lower levels of cognitive
development due to their parents’ limited time and resources to provide cognitive and linguistic stimulation to
their children.[39] Structural violence also disproportionately affects mothers worldwide through a systematic
denial of access to health care and other resources, and even by denying women legal status and rights of
citizenship.[40] Similar problems affect minority groups throughout the world.
Alternative
 2NC Alternative
Challenging the war system holistically is key- weapons focus cuts off movements
Martin 90 (Brian-, Uprooting War, http://uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw02.html; Jacob)

Focussing on the roots of war, such as political and economic inequality, suggests that war
should be seen as only one of a range of social problems, and that the elimination of war must
go hand in hand with elimination of other problems . In terms of strategies, this means that war should
not be given undue attention compared to other social problems. Campaigns to oppose sexism,
heterosexism, economic exploitation, racism, poverty, political repression, alienation and environmental
degradation are also a contribution to the overall antiwar effort in as much as they are oriented
to challenge and replace oppressive social structures.
An implication of this principle is that campaigns of different social movements should be linked at
the level of strategy, and should be mutually stimulating and provide mutual learning. This already happens to
some extent, for example when feminists emphasise the fostering of aggressiveness in men as a factor in war, or
when antiwar activists support environmentalists opposed to nuclear power.
On the other hand, antiwar movements, like other social movements, often adopt strategies or
demands which have little relevance to other social problems. One example is the demand for a
nuclear freeze, promoted heavily in the United States in the 1980s. This demand, that the United States
and Soviet governments halt new developments in or additions to their nuclear arsenals, has
little immediate relevance to other social problems . This is no coincidence. The nuclear freeze
campaign, which is based on influencing state elites by public pressure, has worked through
existing structures rather than attempting to transform them .
To claim that the problem of war, or nuclear war in particular, is so pressing that it should be given
priority over other issues is bad politics. It cuts the antiwar movement off from other social
movements vital to opposing war-linked structures. And it often leads to strategies such as the
nuclear freeze which do not address the roots of war. The aim should not be to set up
hierarchies of oppression, but to link social issues and movements in theory and action.
An orientation towards structural change is often connected with awareness of the connections
between social issues. For example, the British journal Peace News, which has the subtitle 'for nonviolent
revolution' and is oriented to structural change, features articles on Third World problems, feminism, workplace
democracy and many other issues.

The judge should endorse our non-violent discursive move as an antidote to the
affirmative’s representations. Silence is violence—only the critical approach manifested in
our alternative offers a way out.
William C. Gay, Professor of Philosophy at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 1998 (“The
Practice of Linguistic Non-Violence,” Peace Review, Volume 10, Issue 4, December, Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Elite)
From a pacifist perspective or, even more generally, from a nonviolent perspective, much discourse that
calls for an end to violence and war or that calls for the establishment of peace and social justice
actually places a primacy on ends over means. When the end is primary, nonviolence may be
practiced only so long as it is effective. For the pacifist and the practitioner of nonviolence, the
primary commitment is to the means. The commitment to nonviolence requires that the achievement
of political goals is secondary. Political goals must be foregone or at least postponed when they
cannot be achieved nonviolently. Various activities promote the pursuit of the respect, cooperation and
understanding needed for positive peace and social justice and for the genuinely pacific discourse that is an
integral part of them. Linguistically, these activities go beyond the mere removal from discourse of terms
that convey biases based on race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. Open dialogue, especially face-to-
face conversation, is one of the most effective ways of experiencing that the other is not so alien or
alienating. Beyond having political leaders of various nations meet, we need cultural and educational
exchanges, as well as trade agreements among businesses and foreign travel by citizens. We can come to
regard cultural diversity in the expression of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation as making up the
harmonies and melodies that together create the song of humanity. Just as creative and appreciated cooks
use a wide variety of herbs and spices to keep their dishes from being bland, so too can we move from an
image of a culture with diverse components as in a melting pot to one of a stew that is well seasoned with a
variety of herbs and spices. A pacific discourse that expresses such an affirmation of diversity needs to be
an understood language of inclusion. While linguistic violence often relies on authoritarian,
monological, aggressive and calculative methods, a positively nonviolent discourse is democratic,
dialogleal, receptive, and mediative. A positively nonviolent discourse is not passive in the sense of
avoiding engagement; it is pacific in the sense of seeking to actively build, from domestic to
international levels, lasting peace and justice. A positively nonviolent discourse provides a way of
perceiving and communicating that frees us to the diversity and open-endedness of life rather than
the sameness and senselessness of violence. A positively nonviolent discourse can provide the
communicative means to overcome linguistic violence that does not contradict or compromise its goal
at any point during its pursuit. The first step is breaking our silence concerning the many forms of
violence. We need to recognize that often silence is violence; frequently, unless we break the silence,
we are being complicitous to the violence of the situation. However, in breaking the silence, our aim
should be to avoid counter-violence, in its physical forms and in its verbal forms. Efforts to advance
peace and justice should occupy the space between silence and violence. Linguistic violence can be
overcome, but the care and vigilance of the positive practice of physical and linguistic nonviolence is
needed if the gains are to be substantive, rather than merely formal, and if the goals of nonviolence
are to be equally operative in the means whereby we overcome linguistic violence and social injustice.
Framework
 2NC Framework
The roll of the judge is to vote for the team that best draws a systemic critique of
executive violence— it’s a prereq to solving the aff
Sass 12 (William, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the
Pennsylvania State University, “Critique of Charismatic Violence,” Project Muse.)  //EN
Hidden in plain sight: a sprawling bureaucracy designed to justify and deliver military violence —clothed in the new war
lexicon—to the world. How might one critique this massive network of violence that has become so enmeshed in our contemporary geo-socio-political reality? Is
there any hope for reversing the expansion of executive violence in the current political climate , in which the
President enjoys minimal resistance to his most egregious uses of violence? How does exceptional violence become routine? Answers to these broad and difficult
questions, derived as they are from the disorientingly vast and hyper-accelerated retrenchment of our current political situation, are best won through the broad
“systemic” critique. For Žižek, looking squarely at interpersonal or subjective
strokes of what Slavoj Žižek calls

violences (e.g., torture, drone strikes), drawn as we may be by their gruesome and immediate appeal, distorts
the critic’s broader field of vision . For a fuller picture, one must pull one’s critical focus back several
steps to reveal the deep, objective structures that undergird the spectacular manifestations of everyday,
subjective violence (Žižek 2008, 1-2). Immediately, however, one confronts the limit question of Žižek’s mandate: how does one productively draw the
boundaries of a system without too severely dampening the force of objective critique? For practical purposes

Criticism must precede problem-solving—the alternative is a prerequisite to the plan.

Oliver P. Richmond, Professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, 2001 (“A
Genealogy of Peacemaking: The Creation and Re-Creation of Order,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political,
Volume 26, Issue 3, July-September, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Political Science
Complete)
Approaches to peacemaking and peacekeeping that are derived from traditional statecentric
management diplomacy and conflict-resolution approaches provide narrow frameworks capable only
of addressing a single dimension of conflicts that in their very nature are multidimensional. While
peacemaking and peacekeeping are restrictive approaches to ending conflict, however, conflict-resolution
approaches, while essentially being monodimensional, have recognized and provided impetus for a
broadening of approaches in the context of the human-needs and human-security debates. Both approaches,
to varying degrees, rationalize conflict via "manageable," acultural frameworks so that conflicts can
be reduced to their dominant dynamics, according to each approach. First-generation approaches are
guilty of reductionism and consequently undervalue significant aspects of conflict, and while second-
generation approaches allow for a consideration of subjective issues, their frameworks again tend to restrict
this. First- and second-generation approaches operate by prioritizing the issues that need to be addressed;
first-generation approaches did this within the Westphalian context, whereas second-generation approaches
expanded this within a human-needs context, which underlined the inconsistency of the international
system's attempts to reconcile state security with human security. Both approaches have been subject to
hybridization in order to produce a more multidimensional approach to ending conflict--yet this has meant
that two approaches with contradictory epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies have been brought
together. This has seen an uncomfortable merger between state- and human-security-oriented approaches.
The problem with both generations is that as approaches to ending conflict serve "the task of historical
and cultural reproduction in times of crisis"[29] in favor of dominant actors and their discourses, this
means that they reproduce the frameworks that underpin the sociopolitical and international systems
that its proponents are constituting and are constituted by. This implies that before any intervention
to make peace or settle a conflict takes place, there needs to be a critical understanding of what is
being reproduced, why, and whether it is normatively desirable to do so.
AFF
 AT: Weaponitis
Arms reductions are meaningful --- changes in weapon doctrine prevent us from using
those weapons – Cold War proves
McLauchlan 91 -- Gregory McLauchlan, Associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon,
Ph.D. from UC – Berkeley, “Review: Does the Nuclear Arms Race Matter?” Journal of Peace Research,
Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. p. 328.

The authors argue that the difference between any nuclear war and conventional war is the danger
the former will escalate out of control. Unfortunately, not all political elites and military planners have
accepted this distinction. The core of many of these questions comes down to the issue of perception.
The arms race matters if people think it matters. Nuclear weapons are more likely to be used if leaders think this can be kept within
limits. While in reality changes in the strategic balance are not militarily meaningful, leaders might think they are.
Are leaders subject to such misperceptions? Do they believe their own rhetoric that weapons matter? Schwartz and Derber
think for the most part they do not. Citing the research of Steven Kull (1983) and others on attitudes of US strategic planners, and
historical studies of international superpower crises, they conclude that leaders have generally been well aware of
the risks and consequences of nuclear war. When leaders have made nuclear threats (overt or implied),
these have been based on political calculations and risks, not technological assessments. Moreover, they
offer evidence that in crises leaders have generally exercised a certain degree of caution, as if suddenly realizing their peacetime
rhetoric regarding the strategic balance, counterforce strategies, ‘limited nuclear options' etc.. mattered for nothing. Such `nuclear
schizophrenia` seems to characterize a great deal of superpower behavior, especially by US leaders.
But perceptions are shaped not only by weapons, but also by strategies and doctrine. How do we
account for the proliferation of new variations of nuclear strategy in the 1970s and 1980s, including a
renewed emphasis on both fighting limited nuclear war and counterforce strategies, in a period when the nuclear
stockpiles of the super- powers had reached a total of some 50.000 weapons? Schwartz and Derber
are too willing to treat nuclear strategy and doctrine as epiphenomenal, and verge on the suggestion
that developments in strategy and doctrine are in essence part of a cleverly calculated superpower
competition of appearances and bluff. The danger here is that an undeserved rationality may be imputed to
the nuclear past (and present).

Restrictions on weapons are effective – reduce use

McLauchlan 91 -- Gregory McLauchlan, Associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon,
Ph.D. from UC – Berkeley, “Review: Does the Nuclear Arms Race Matter?” Journal of Peace Research,
Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. p. 328

Nuclear strategy and doctrine - however illusory some of these might be — have mattered more in the history
of the arms race than the discussion in The Nuclear Seduction implies. What should peace movements do in the
face of provocative or irrational nuclear strategies? The authors argue they should expose the falseness and danger of the strategy, but
that opposing weapon systems only gives credence to claims that weapons matter. The former is certainly necessary, but it is also clear
that the proliferation of nuclear strategies has followed closely on the heels of technological advances
in nuclear weaponry. If we take away the weapons, peace movements and arms controllers have argued, we take
away the basis for some of the most dangerous nuclear doctrines. Weapon systems can be opposed on
grounds broader than those characterized as weaponitis, as many have argued.
 AT: Positive Peace
Negative peace precedes positive peace—absence of war is a prerequisite to social
justice.
Jerry Folk, Professor of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, 1978 ("Peace Education –
Peace Studies Programs: Towards an Integrated Approach," Peace & Change, Volume 5, Number 1,
Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via JSTOR, p. 58)
Those proponents of the positive peace approach who reject out of hand the work of researchers and
educators coming to the field from the perspective of negative peace too easily forget that the prevention
of a nuclear confrontation of global dimensions is the prerequisite for all other peace research,
education, and action. Unless such a confrontation can be avoided there will be no world left in which
to build positive peace.12 Moreover, the blanket condemnation of all such negative peace oriented
research, education or action as a reactionary attempt to support and reinforce the status quo is
doctrinaire. Conflict theory and resolution, disarmament studies, studies of the international system
and of international organizations, and integration studies are in themselves neutral. They do not
intrinsically support either the status quo or revolutionary efforts to change or overthrow it. Rather
they offer a body of knowledge which can be used for either purpose or for some purpose in between.
It is much more logical for those who understand peace as positive peace to integrate this knowledge
into their own framework and to utilize it in achieving their own purposes. A balanced peace studies
program should therefore offer the student exposure to the questions and concerns which occupy
those who view the field essentially from the point of view of negative peace.13

Their argument puts the cart before the horse—in order to pursue social justice, we
must first ensure the absence of conflict.
Joshua S. Goldstein, Professor of International Relations at American University, 2001 (“Reflections:
The Mutuality of Gender and War," War and Gender, Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN
0521001803, p. 411-412)
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace. Many
peace scholars and activists support the approach, "if you want peace, work for justice." Then, if one
believes that sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps among
others) in order to pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women,
labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book
suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way. War is not a product of capitalism,
imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence
wars' outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other
injustices. 9 So, "if you want peace, work for peace." Indeed, if you want justice (gender and others),
work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from types of
individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes
in attitudes towards war and the military may be the most important way to "reverse women's oppression."
The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and moral
grounding, yet, in light of this book's evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of war
seems to be empirically inadequate. 10

There is no tradeoff between positive and negative peace—focusing on our war

impact does not preclude consideration of structural impacts.
Jerry Folk, Professor of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, 1978 (“Peace Education –
Peace Studies Programs: Towards an Integrated Approach," Peace & Change, Volume 5, Number 1,
Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via JSTOR, p. 59)
 The conflicting positions held by various researchers, educators, and activists in the peace studies
field can be seen as complementary rather than contradictory. Tensions, disagreements, and
arguments of considerable intensity are unavoidable and indeed desirable in this as in other fields of
endeavor. Such dialectical tensions ensure a depth and breadth of perception which one position
alone could not produce. Truth is often paradoxical, and therefore a dialectical approach to it is
most appropriate. Antagonisms insure that the dialectic is kept alive. They introduce a third
dimension into one's understanding of truth and preserve it from petrification and sterility.
Therefore, premature closures, mutual excommunications, and fixations on a particular but
incomplete position or approach should be avoided.

Their argument is lefty nonsense that results in appeasement and violence—reject

their “Peace Studies” agenda.
Barbara Kay, Columnist for The National Post (Canada), B.A. in English Language and Literature from the
University of Toronto and M.A. in English Literature from McGill University, 2009 (“Forty years of
"peace" studies and nothing to show for it,” The National Post, February 18th, Available Online at
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/18/barbara-kay-forty-years-
of-quot-peace-quot-studies-and-nothing-to-show-for-it.aspx, Accessed 08-02-2010)
Peace, peace, peace. In vogue as never before. Yes, “Peace Studies” is very hot, even though, unlike
“Renaissance Studies” or “Canadian Studies,” there is no actual subject to analyze. Peace is not a
“thing” or a place or a related series of events. Just as dark is the absence of light, peace — warm or
cold — is essentially the absence of war. The rest is opinion and commentary. Yet Peace Studies has
become a huge academic industry over the last 40 years. The name is benign — what could be more
worthwhile in principle than studies that claim to further what all of us desire? — but its allegedly
disinterested agenda is anything but. Peace Studies programs — the “idealistic” school of conflict
resolution as opposed to the realist schools of military studies, geopolitics and the like — began as a
response to the threat of nuclear armageddon during the Cold War. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
accelerated their growth. Then the further upheaval of the Vietnam War prompted lavish donations from
foundations like the Institute for World Order, which gave the movement academic security and political
respectability. But Peace Studies hasn’t produced practical prescriptions for managing or resolving
global conflicts, because ideology always trumps objectivity and pragmatism. The movement exploits
the terminology of human rights, borrowing lofty catchwords like “empowerment,” “reconciliation,”
“ripeness,” “rebalancing of power relationships” and “historic justice.” Peaceniks extol the values of
dialogue and empathy. Their promotional materials exude sentimental clichés: “[We can find] ways of
working toward a just and harmonious world community.” Once past the rhetoric, though, it is clear that
peace programs are code for advocacy of left wing ideology. The “scholarship” exists to put a
respectable face on Western self-loathing. Apart from Western “imperialism,” which they excoriate
nonstop, peace “scholars” do not acknowledge the reality of ideologies that cannot be reasoned with,
or the irrational hatred fuelling our enemies’ violent aggression against us. Neither do they admit the
idea of just war or self-defence — at least not for powerful nations (read America and Israel). Most
troubling, they tacitly or openly support terrorism as a permissible strategy for the “disempowered”
to redress real or perceived grievances against the powerful (read America and Israel). The gurus of
the Peace Studies movement are far-left shills for the world’s worst dictators. In 2007, for example,
the same Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution that sponsored this week’s conference gave its
imprimatur to another, “Peace as a Profession in the 21st Century.” The keynote speaker was Norwegian
professor Johann G altun and g, billed in the conference literature as “the father of modern peace research.”
What the publicity omitted was the fact that Galtung despises the “structural fascism” of “rich, Western,
Christian” democracies admires tyrannies. He believes the annihilation of Washington, D.C., would be a
fair punishment for America’s arrogance. He adores Fidel Castro. In 1974 he mocked the West’s reverence
for “persecuted elite personages” like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov. He compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany
for bombing Kosovo. Galtung’s highest accolades are reserved for Chairman Mao. His gushings about
Mao’s “endlessly liberating” China are revealing, but too sickening to publish in a family newspaper. And
this is the moral quisling Canadian Peace Studies academics choose to honour. But they are not alone.
Brandeis University’s Peace Studies chairman justifies suicide bombings; the director of Purdue
University’s program is coeditor of Marxism Today; the Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict
 Studies awarded a prize to Hanan Ashrawi, a spokesman for the terrorist PLO. In the 1980s and again in
1990, human rights activist Caroline Cox and philosopher Roger Scruton analyzed Peace Studies curricula.
They not only pronounced them bereft of information about the U.S.S.R., even at the height of the Cold
war, but found them to be intellectually incoherent, riddled with bias and unworthy of academic status.
Katherine Kersten, senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, says Peace Studies programs
are “dominated by people of a certain ideological bent, and [are] thus hard to take seriously.” Peace
Studies’ graduates — patriotism-sapped converts to anti-Westernism — now swarm the globe, staffing left
wing NGOs, giving credibility to the Islamofascism-promoting Cairo Conferences and applauding the anti-
Semitic Durban hatefests. Our realists can keep the literal barbarians from our gates. Indeed, real
peace studies are to be found in military colleges, which seek through studies of past wars strategies
for avoiding present wars where possible, and where impossible, for waging and ending honourable
wars expeditiously. What is needed are self-respecting intellectual soldiers to protect us from the
“idealistic” barbarians within our gates: to protect our naive children from these latter-day
Chamberlains and to dash from their lips the poisoned nectar of the peace racket’s dishonourable,
self-defeating prescriptions for peace in our time.

AT: Fear
Fear of nuclear weapons is key to stopping WMD use and prevents military
adventurism
Futterman 94 – J.A.H. Flutterman, MD, Physicist @ Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, “Meditations on
the Bomb”,
http://www.dogchurch.org/scriptorium/nuke0
I could say that if I didn't do it, someone else would, but that answer was rejected at Nuremberg. (It's also a better reason to leave the
weapons program than to stay.) I continue to support the u business with my effort for many reasons, which I discuss throughout this piece.
But mostly, I do it because the fear of nuclear holocaust is the only authority my own country or any other
has respected so far when it comes to nationalistic urges to make unlimited war. As William L. Shirer states in
his preface to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Touchstone Books, New York, 1990), "Adolf Hitler is probably the last of
the great adventurer-conquerors in the tradition of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, and the Third Reich the last of the empires
which set out on the path taken earlier by France, Rome and Macedonia. The curtain was rung down on that phase of
history, at least, by the sudden invention of the hydrogen bomb, of the ballistic missile, and of rockets which can be
aimed to hit the moon." Now this contrasts with the argument of those who would "reinvent government" by putting up bureaucratic
roadblocks to maintaining the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal through research and testing. They reason that if the reliability of
everyone's nuclear arsenals declines, everyone will be less likely to try using them. The problem is that some "adventurer-conqueror" may
arise and use everyone's doubt about their arsenals to risk massive conventional war instead. An expansionist dictatorship might even risk
nuclear war with weapons that are simpler, cruder, less powerful, much riskier (in terms of the possibility of accidental detonation) but much
more reliable than our own may eventually become without adequate "stockpile stewardship."[14] But the inhibitory effect of
reliable nuclear weapons goes deeper than Shirer's deterrence of adventurer-conquerors. It changes the way we
think individually and culturally, preparing us for a future we cannot now imagine. Jungian psychiatrist Anthony J. Stevens states, [15]
"History would indicate that people cannot rise above their narrow sectarian concerns without some
overwhelming paroxysm. It took the War of Independence and the Civil War to forge the United States, World War I to create the
League of Nations, World War II to create the United Nations Organization and the European Economic Community. Only catastrophe, it
seems, forces people to take the wider view. Or what about fear? Can the horror which we all experience when we contemplate the
the moment we
possibility of nuclear extinction mobilize in us sufficient libidinal energy to resist the archetypes of war? Certainly,
become blasé about the possibility of holocaust we are lost. As long as horror of nuclear exchange
remains uppermost we can recognize that nothing is worth it. War becomes the impossible option.
Perhaps horror, the experience of horror, the consciousness of horror, is our only hope. Perhaps horror alone will enable us to overcome the
otherwise invincible attraction of war." Thus I also continue engaging in nuclear weapons work to help fire that world-historical warning
shot I mentioned above, namely, that as our beneficial technologies become more powerful, so will our weapons technologies, unless
genuine peace precludes it. We must build a future more peaceful than our past, if we are to have a future at all, with or without nuclear
weapons — a fact we had better learn before worse things than nuclear weapons are invented. If you're a philosopher, this means that I
regard the nature of humankind as mutable rather than fixed, but that I think most people welcome change in their personalities and cultures
with all the enthusiasm that they welcome death — thus, the fear of nuclear annihilation of ourselves and all our
 values may be what we require in order to become peaceful enough to survive our future technological
breakthroughs.

Fear motivates people to pursue constructive means to sustain peace and prevent
large-scale catastrophe
Lifton 01 -- Robert Jay Lifton, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at John Jay College,
Illusions of the second nuclear age, World Policy Journal. New York: Spring 2001. Vol. 18, Iss. 1;  pg. 25-
31.
The trouble is that in other ways the dangers associated with nuclear weapons are greater than ever: the continuing
weapons-- centered policies in the United States and elsewhere; the difficulties in controlling nuclear weapons that exist under
unstable conditions (especially in Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union);2 and the eagerness and potential capacity of
certain nations and "private" groups to acquire and possibly use the weapons. In that sense, the nuclear quietism is perilous. Or, to put
the matter another way, we no longer manifest an appropriate degree of fear in relation to actual nuclear danger .
While fear in itself is hardly to be recommended as a guiding human emotion, its absence in the face of danger can lead to
catastrophe. We human animals have built-in fear reactions in response to threat. These reactions help us to protect ourselves-to
step back from the path of a speeding automobile, or in the case of our ancestors, from the path of a wild animal. Fear can be
transmuted into constructive planning and policies: whether for minimizing vulnerability to attacks by wild
animals, or for more complex contemporary threats. Through fear, ordinary people can be motivated to pursue
constructive means for sustaining peace, or at least for limiting the scope of violence. Similarly, in exchanges
between world leaders on behalf of preventing large-scale conflict, a tinge of fear-sometimes more than a tinge- can
enable each to feel the potential bloodshed and suffering that would result from failure. But with nuclear
weapons, our psychological circuits are impaired. We know that the weapons are around-and we hear talk about nuclear dangers
somewhere "out there" -but our minds no longer connect with the dangers or with the weapons themselves. That blunting of feeling
extends into other areas. One of the many sins for which advocates of large nuclear stockpiles must answer is the prevalence of
psychic numbing to enormous potential suffering, the blunting of our ethical standards as human beings. In the absence of the
sort of threatening nuclear rhetoric the United States and Russia indulged in during the 1980s, we can all
too readily numb ourselves to everything nuclear, and thereby live as though the weapons pose no danger,
or as though they don't exist.