I am traditionally a list lover, however, I have to admit to having a TON of problems with this topic the more I do research on the area. ** *Resolution 3: Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially change its nuclear posture in one or more of the following ways: -- Ratification and implementation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty -- Adoption of a nuclear declaratory policy substantially reducing and restricting the use of its nuclear weapons --A substantial reduction in the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal --Negotiation and implementation of a bilateral agreement with Russia that at least includes a substantial reduction in nuclear weapons --A substantial decrease in the operational readiness of its nuclear weapons.* ** My first objection is that parts are accidental (the list isnt bound by a common generic theme) and certain parts of this topic are different enough to make a squad looking for common generics to have problems. I have always believed that lists are good when they are unified and debate out poorly when they are an attempt to shoe horn "cases" into a list. This is the latter IMHO. I supect you will say Deterrence DA applies to all of these things and thats probably so although I suspect operational readiness might have some interesting holes to expose in that one. ** Second, the declartory policy arm arguably makes sense but is kind of confusing and certainly not using a term of art ** *Adoption of a nuclear declaratory policy substantially reducing and restricting the use of its nuclear weapons *
Reductions are force structure policy NOT declatory policy. Declatory policy is NOT reductions....Even establishing NWFZones is not a reduction in the weapons or the use of weapons per se. I get that the topic says reducing the use of its weapons...but what the hell does that mean. Either all declarations are a use of nuclear weapons meaning all changes of declatory policy reduce and restrict that use....OR it means actual reductions and restrictions of deployments. In other words, its a confusing and unnecessary distinction (I assume you didnt want people to be able to increase uses of weapons through declatory policy but if the current policy is a use I am not sure if that is a meaningful distinction). Third, this is the real big problem: *Negotiation and implementation of a bilateral agreement with Russia that at least includes a substantial reduction in nuclear weapons * Guess what, the real life version of this was announced in principle as agreed to yesterday, minor modification affs become pretty sweet and hard to beat I suspect. I also had more than enough CTBT and its never ending sack of add-ons that were each more absurd than the one before (testing causes the center of the earth to warm accounting for global warming was one such gem) Anyway, just thinking out loud and there hasnt been much topic discussion going on...... Josh
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