Saudi Neg

DIB DA
Arms sales and profits are high --- that’s key to military dominance
Keith Webster 18, MA in IR @ Catholic U, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s
Defense and Aerospace Export Council, 8-18-2018, “U.S. Arms Transfer Policy: Shaping the
Way Ahead,” CSIS Forum, https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-arms-transfer-policy-shaping-way-
ahead
MR. WEBSTER: Quickly, I’m sorry. So I just want to make a couple of quick comments. Yes, our defense industries do an incredibly
good job internationally today. The focus of my work is ensuring that they do as well in 15 to 20 years as
they do today. And part of the change in the dynamic is the evolution and success of competitors, like China and
others, who are going to make that more challenging for our industries 15 to 20 years from today. Also I want to point out that our
defense industries ensure that innovation continues to progress. We cannot sustain our position in the
world without security, and in order to have that security, we must have continued innovation. Innovation
comes from revenue. Our defense industries lead in innovation in spite of everything you read in the press. They do
amazing investments with the money that DoD provides them, money they make from international sales. DoD
just announced this week that the 2020 budget for the president will probably be flat, so no surprise. R&D has fortunately not been cut over the years but remains flat.
We need our industries to continue to be vibrant and to reinvest that revenue, as they do, in research for next-
generation capability for our forces and for our allied forces to dominate on the battlefield tomorrow.
Just a thought.

Defense base innovation is key check great power competition from Russia and China.
Michael Marks 19, former Senior Policy Advisor to the Under Secretary for Security
Assistance, Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of State., 10-10-2019, "Strengthen
Us Industry To Counter National Security Challenges," American Military News,
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/10/strengthen-us-industry-to-counter-national-security-
challenges/
While U.S. defense budgets have recently been on the rise, it is likely that we will see a spending decline
in the coming years as competition for non-defense federal budget dollars increases and deficits grow.
The United States, therefore, must take action to ensure that we maintain our technological edge against
our adversaries by empowering the private sector to provide cost-effective innovation for America’s
defense. Since the end of the Second World War the U.S. has relied on qualitative superiority over its
potential adversaries, especially those like the Soviet Union/Russia and China, who enjoyed comparative
quantitative advantages. These qualitative advantages were vital to maintaining global stability and
helped enable our nation to become the preeminent global economy, but they have been eroded over
the last few decades. In 1960, the U.S. share of global research and development (R&D) spending stood at 69%. U.S. defense-related R&D alone
accounted for 36% of total global expenditures. Soon thereafter other nations recognized the need to increase their R&D expenditures and build their own defense
industrial bases to compete with the United States. From 2000-2016, China’s share of global R&D rose from 4.9% to 25.1% while the U.S. share of global R&D
There can be no doubt that Russia
dropped to 28%. U.S. defense-related R&D meanwhile now makes up a mere 4% of global R&D spending.
and China are determined to challenge America’s qualitative advantage. From the rebirth of Russian
military power under Vladimir Putin to the ever-growing Chinese military prowess across the board, their
efforts show no sign of slowing down. Russia has been and continues to undergo a major modernization of its armed forces. For example, they
are in the midst of a ten-year program to build hundreds of new nuclear missiles and have set a goal of modernizing 70% of the Russian Ground Force’s equipment by
2020. Oneof the most frightening examples of Russia’s resurgence is its development of a hypersonic
missile that could be ready for combat as early as 2020. Worryingly, the US is currently unable to defend against this type of missile.
To accompany these developments came the emergence in 2017 of Russia as the world’s second-largest
arms producer, ready and able to support nations hostile to US interests. China, on the other hand, used to be a country that
only manufactured cheap products and knockoffs, but that is no longer true. Technology development and innovation figure
prominently in all of China’s national planning goals, with plans to make the country the global leader in
science and innovation and the preeminent technological and manufacturing power by 2049, the 100th
anniversary of the Chinese communist revolution. This, of course, has huge implications for China’s military capability. The country now has the
second-largest national defense budget behind the U.S. and wants to be Asia’s preeminent military power.
Beijing is developing next-generation fighter jets, ICBMs and shorter-range ballistic missiles, as well as
advanced naval vessels. The People’s Liberation Army has reached a critical point of confidence and now
feel they can match competitors like the United States in combat. This has implications for the security of
Taiwan, Japan, other US allies in the region as well as to America itself. To make matters worse, there
are a growing number of experts that see China developing asymmetric technologies, combined with
conventional and nuclear systems that could create an existential threat to the U.S. pacific based
assets. It is in the wake of these growing threats to our national security American industry will likely be
expected to shoulder an even larger responsibility concerning investment in defense-related R&D. One of the
ways we can empower companies to make these additional investments and lead next-generation defense innovation is to allow commonsense mergers between
important defense and aerospace companies. Horizontal consolidation eliminates the redundancy of enormous fixed costs, leading to savings passed down to
customers. Mergers can also create economies of scale and existing synergies that help the combined company realize access to larger numbers of engineers and
innovators, while keeping costs low and improving the timeline for taking a product from concept to development. A recent exa mple of how this can work is the
proposed Raytheon and United Technologies merger. The two parties project that the new combined company will employ more than 60,000 engineers, hold over
38,000 patents and invest approximately $8 billion per year in research and development. This will allow the development of new, critical technologies more quickly
and efficiently than either company could on its own. Such private sector investments in innovation will be critical in the face of the growing challenges to American
military dominance. America’s
R&D advantage, crucial to maintaining military superiority, is increasingly at
risk. As China and Russia continue to challenge America’s military dominance and pressures on the
defense budget continue to mount, the federal government will likely turn more and more to
contractors and commercial companies to develop next-generation defense capabilities. Strengthening
U.S. industry, therefore, will be critical to countering our national security challenges.

That risks nuclear conflict

A. Wess Mitchell 16, President of the Center for European Policy Analysis, 2-12-2016,
Predators on the Frontier” The American Interest, http://www.the-american-
interest.com/2016/02/12/predators-on-the-frontier/
Revisionist powers are on the move. From eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, large rivals of the United States are
modernizing their military forces, grabbing strategic real estate, and threatening vulnerable U.S. allies. Their goal is not just to assert hegemony
over their neighborhoods but to rearrange the global security order as we have known it since the end of the Second World War. We first wrote
about these emerging dynamics in 2010, and then in TAI in 2011. We argued three things. First, that revisionist powers were using a
strategy of “probing”: a combination of assertive diplomacy and small but bold military actions to test the outer reaches of
American power and in particular the resilience of frontier allies. Second, we argued that the small, exposed allies who were the targets of
these probes were likely to respond by developing back-up options to U.S. security guarantees, whether through military self-help or
accommodation. And third, we argued that that China and Russia were learning from one another’s probes in their
respective regions, and that allies themselves were drawing conclusions about U.S. deterrence in their own neighborhood from how America
handled similarly situated allies elsewhere. Five years later, as we argue in a new book released this month, these dynamics have intensified
dramatically. Revisionist powers are indeed probing the United States, but their methods have become bolder, more violent—and successful.
Allies have grown more alert to this pressure, amid the steady whittling away of neighboring buffer zones, and have begun to pursue an
array of self-help schemes ranging from arms build-ups to flirtations with the nearby revisionist power. It has become harder for the United
States to isolate security crises to one region: Russia’s land-grabs in Eastern Europe provide both a model and distraction effect for China to
accelerate its maritime claims in the South China Sea; Poland’s quest for U.S. strategic reassurance unnerves and spurs allies in the Persian Gulf
and Western Pacific. By degrees, the world is entering the path to war. Not since the 1980s have the conditions been riper for a
since the 1930s has the world witnessed the emergence of multiple large,
major international military crisis. Not
predatory states determined to revise the global order to their advantage—if necessary by force. At a minimum, the
United States in coming years could face the pressure of managing several deteriorating regional security spirals; at a maximum, it could be
confronted with a Great Power war against one, and possibly two or even three, nuclear-armed peer competitors.
In either case, the U.S. military could face these scenarios without either the presumption of technological overmatch or favorable force ratios
that it has enjoyed against its rivals for the past several decades. How should the United States respond to these dynamics? As our rivals grow
more aggressive and our military edge narrows, we must look to other methods for waging and winning geopolitical competitions in the 21st
 America’s frontline allies offer a
century. The most readily available but underutilized tool at our disposal is alliances.
mechanism by which it can contain rivals—indeed, this was the original purpose for cultivating security linkages with small states
in the world’s rimland regions to begin with. In coming years, the value of strategically placed allies near Eurasia’s large land powers will grow
as our relative technological or numerical military strength shrinks. The time has come for the United States to develop a grand strategy for
containing peer competitors centered on the creative use of frontline allies. It must do so now, before geopolitical competition intensifies.
Predatory Peers Probing has been the strategy of choice for America’s modern rivals to challenge the existing order. Over the past few years,
Russia, China, and, to a degree, Iran have sensed that the United States is retreating in their respective regions—whether out of choice,
fatigue, weakness, or all three combined. But they are
unsure of how much remaining strength the United States has, or of
the solidity of its commitments to allies. Rather than risking direct war, they have employed low-intensity crises to
test U.S. power in these regions. Like past revisionists, they have focused their probes on seemingly secondary interests of the leading
power, either by humbling its weakest allies or seizing gray zones over which the United States is unlikely to fight. These probes test the United
States on the outer rim of its influence, where the revisionist’s own interests are strongest while the U.S. is at its furthest commitments and
therefore most vulnerable to defeat. Russia has launched a steady sequence of threatening military moves against vulnerable NATO allies and
conducted limited offensives against former Soviet satellite states. China has sought out low-intensity diplomatic confrontations with small U.S.
security clients, erected military no-go zones, and asserted claims over strategic waterways. When we wrote about this behavior in The American
Interest in 2011, it was composed mainly of aggressive diplomacy or threatening but small military moves. But the probes of U.S. rivals are
becoming bolder. Sensing a window of opportunity, in 2014 Russia upped the ante by invading Ukraine—the largest country in Eastern Europe—
in a war that has so far cost 7,000 lives and brought 52,000 square kilometers of territory into the Russian sphere of influence. After years of
using unmarked fishing trawlers to harass U.S. or allied naval vessels, China has begun to militarize its probes in the South China Sea,
constructing seven artificial islands and claiming (and threatening to fight over) 1.8 million square kilometers of ocean. Iran has recently
humiliated the United States by holding American naval vessels and broadcasting photos of surrendering U.S. sailors. In all cases, revisionist
powers increased the stakes because they perceived their initial probes to have succeeded. Having achieved modest gains, they increased the
intensity of their probes. The strategic significance of these latest probes for the United States is twofold. First, they have substantially increased
the military pressure on frontline allies. The presence of a buffer zone of some sort, whether land or sea, between allies like Poland or Japan and
neighboring revisionist powers, helped to reduce the odds of sustained contact and confrontation between allied and rival militaries. By
successfully encroaching on or invading these middle spaces, revisionists have advanced the zone of contest closer to the
territory of U.S. allies, increasing the potential for a deliberate or accidental military clash. Second, the latest probes
have significantly raised the overall pressure on the United States. As long as Russia’s military adventures were restricted to its own southern
periphery, America could afford to shift resources to the Pacific without worrying much about the consequences in Europe—an important
consideration given the Pentagon’s jettisoning of the goal to be able to fight a two-front war. With both Ukraine and the South China Sea at play
(and with a chaotic Middle East, where another rival, Iran, advances its reach and influence), the United States no longer has the luxury of
prioritizing one region over another; with two re-militarized frontiers at opposite ends of the globe, it must continually weigh trade-offs in scarce
military resources between geographic theaters. This disadvantage is not lost on America’s rivals, or its most exposed friends. Frontier Frenzy
The intensification of probing has reverberated through the ranks of America’s frontline allies. In both Europe and Asia, the edges of the Western
order are inhabited by historically vulnerable small or mid-sized states that over the past seven decades have relied on the United States for their
existence. The similarities in the geopolitical position and strategic options of states like Estonia and Taiwan, or Poland and South Korea, are
striking. For all of these states, survival depends above all on the sustainability of U.S. extended deterrence, in both its nuclear and
conventional forms. This in turn rests
on two foundations: the assumption among rivals and allies alike that the United
States is physically able to fulfill its security obligations to even the smallest ally, and the assumption that
it is politically willing to do so. Doubts about both have been growing for many years. Reductions in American defense spending are
weakening the U.S. military capability to protect allies. Due to cuts introduced by the 2009 Budget Control Act, the U.S. Navy is smaller than at
any point since before the First World War, the U.S. Army is smaller than at any point since before the Second World War and the U.S. Air Force
has the lowest number of operational warplanes in its history. Nuclear force levels are static or declining, and the U.S. technological edge over
rivals in important weapons types has diminished. The Pentagon in 2009 announced that for the first time since the Second World War it would
jettison the goal of being able to conduct a two-front global war. At the same time that U.S. capabilities are decreasing, those of our rivals are
increasing. Both Russia and China have undertaken large, multiyear military expansion and modernization programs and the technological gap
between them and the United States is narrowing, particularly in key areas such as short-range missiles, tactical nuclear weapons, and fifth-
generation fighter aircraft. Recent American statecraft has compounded the problem by weakening the belief in U.S. political will to defend
allies. The early Obama Administration’s public questioning of the value of traditional alliances as “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages
of a long-gone Cold War” shook allied confidence at the same time that its high-profile engagement with large rivals indicated a preference for
big-power bargaining over the heads of small states. The U.S.-Russia “reset” seemed to many allies both transactional and freewheeling, and left
a lasting impression of the suddenness with which U.S. priorities could shift from one Administration to the next. This undermined the
predictability of patronage that is the sine qua non of effective deterrence for any Great Power. As the revisionists’ probes have become more
assertive and U.S. credibility less firm, America’s frontier allies have started to reconsider their national security options. Five years ago, many
frontline states expressed security concerns, began to seek greater military capabilities, or looked to offset risk by engaging diplomatically with
revisionists. But for the most part, such behavior was muted and well within the bounds of existing alliance commitments. However, as probing
has picked up pace, allied coping behavior has become more frantic. In Europe, Poland, the Baltic States, and Romania have initiated military
spending increases. In Asia, littoral U.S. allies are engaged in a worrisome regional arms race. In both regions, the largest allies are considering
offensive capabilities to create conventional deterrence. Their willingness to build up their indigenous military capabilities is overall a positive
development, but it carries risks, too, spurring dynamics that were absent over the past decades. The danger is that, absent a consistent and
credible U.S. overwatch, rearming allies engage in a chaotic acquisition strategy, poorly anchored in the larger alliance. Fearing abandonment,
such states may end up detaching themselves from the alliance simply by pursuing independent security policies. There is also danger on the
other side of the spectrum of possible responses by frontline allies. Contrary to the hopeful assumptions of offshore balancers, not all frontline
allies are resisting. Some are choosing strategies of accommodation. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia in Europe and Thailand and Malaysia in
Asia are all examples of nominal U.S. allies that are trying to avoid antagonizing the stronger predator. Worsening regional security dynamics
create domestic political pressures to avoid confrontation with the nearby revisionist power. Full-fledged bandwagoning in the form of the
establishment of new alliances is not yet visible, but hedging is. Seeds of Disorder The combination of intensifying probes and fragmenting
alliances threatens to unravel important components of the stability of major regions and the wider international order. Allowed to continue on
their current path, security dynamics in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific could lead to negative or even catastrophic outcomes for U.S.
national security. One increasingly likely near-term scenario is a simmering, simultaneous security competition in major regions. In such a
scenario, rivals continue probing allies and grabbing middle-zone territory while steering clear of war with the United States or its proxies;
allies continue making half-measure preparations without becoming fully capable of managing their own security; and the United States
continues feeding greater and greater resources into frontline regions without achieving reassurance, doggedly tested and put in doubt by the
revisionists. Through a continued series of probes, the revisionist powers maintain the initiative while the United States and its allies play catch
up. The result might be a gradual hardening of the U.S. security perimeter that never culminates in a Great Power war but generates many of
the negative features of sustained security competition—arms
races, proxy wars, and cyber and hybrid conflicts—that
erode the bases of global economic growth. A second, graver possibility is war. Historically, a lengthy series of
successful probes has often culminated in a military confrontation. One dangerous characteristic of today’s international
landscape is that not one but two revisionists have now completed protracted sequences of probes that, from their perspective, have been
successful. If the purpose of probing is to assess the top power’s strength, today’s probes could eventually convince either
Russia, China, or both that the time is ripe for a more definitive contest. It is uncertain what the outcome would be.
Force ratios in today’s two hotspots, the Baltic Sea and South China Sea, do not favor the United States. Both Russia and China possess
significant anti-access/area denial (A2AD) capabilities, with a ten-to-one Russian troop advantage in the Baltic and massive Chinese
preponderance of coastal short-range missiles in the South China Sea. Moreover, both powers possess nuclear weapons and,
in
Russia’s case, a doctrine favoring their escalatory use for strategic effect. And even if the United States can maintain
overwhelming military superiority in a dyadic contest, war is always the realm of chance and a source of destruction that threatens the stability of
United States could face the prospect of either a short, sharp war
the existing international order. Having failed a series of probes, the
that culminates in nuclear attack or an economically costly protracted two-front conflict. Either outcome would definitely alter the
U.S.-led international system as we know it. A third, long-term possibility is a gradual eviction of the United States from the rimland regions.
This could occur either through a military defeat, as described above, or through the gradual hollowing out of U.S. regional alliances due to the
erosion of deterrence and alliance defection—and therefore this scenario is not mutually exclusive of the previous two. For the United States, this
would be geopolitically disastrous, involving a loss of position in the places where America must be present to prevent the risk of hemispheric
isolation. Gaining a foothold in the Eurasian rimlands has been a major, if not the most important, goal of U.S. grand strategy for a century. It is
through this presence that the United States is able to shape global politics and avoid the emergence of mortal threats to itself. Without such a
presence, America’s largest rivals would be able to steadily aggrandize, building up enlarged spheres of influence, territory, and resources that
would render them capable of sustained competition for global primacy. Unlike in the 20th century, current A2AD and nuclear technology would
make a military reentry into these regions difficult if not impossible.

Russia DA
Russian arms sales are capped now – that limits the capacity for Russian expansionism
Bershidsky 3-12-2019 – founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded
the opinion website Slon.ru. (Leonid, “Trump Is Winning, Putin's Losing in Global Arms Sales.
Russia is losing market share despite Vladimir Putin's international military adventures.,”
Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-12/u-s-is-no-1-in-arms-sales-
as-russia-loses-market-share)//BB
Global arms sales are on the increase, consistent with the growing number of conflicts and deaths brought about by them. The U.S. and its allies
have been the main beneficiaries. Russia, by contrast, is on the decline, a sign that Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical bets aren’t turning into
long-term influence. The world has grown significantly less violent since 1950, but there has been an marked uptick in the number of armed

conflicts in recent years. The emergence of Islamic State, hostilities in eastern Ukraine, and the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar are just some examples. The number of fatalities
has increased even more dramatically, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Between 2011 and 2017, the average annual death toll from conflict neared 97,000, three times more than
in the previous seven-year period. That helps to explain the 7.8 percent increase in international arms transfers from 2014 to 2018 compared with the previous five-year period seen in the latest
data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the global authority on the weapons trade. The Middle East has been absorbing weapons at an alarming pace: The flow of
Russia took an active part in the bloodiest of the conflicts, but it
armaments to the region rocketed by 87 percent in the last five years.

doesn’t appear to have been able to convert this into more sales. It was the only one of the world’s top five exporters, which together account
for 75 percent of the business, to suffer a major loss in market share. It remains the world’s second-biggest arms exporter. SIPRI has its own, rather complicated, system for calculating transfer
volumes based on the military value of the equipment traded rather than on its market price. But in dollar terms, too, Russia trails the U.S. Yury Borisov, Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge
Russia “steadily reaches” $15 billion in arms exports a year and hopes to retain that amount. This suggests officials believe sales
of the defense industry, said last month that

have hit a ceiling. By contrast, the U.S. closed $55.6 billion of arms deals in 2018, 33 percent more than
in 2017, thanks to the Trump administration’s liberalization of weapons exports. According to the SIPRI figures, U.S. exports were 75 percent higher than Russia’s in 2014 through 2018 –
a far wider gap than in the previous five-year period. For the U.S., Middle Eastern countries have been especially important – particularly Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest arms importer, and its
major irritant, Qatar. Some 52 percent of U.S. weapons sales were to the Middle East in the last five years. Under President Donald Trump, the relationship with Saudi Arabia became even more
lucrative for the defense industry. For Russia, the Middle East accounted only for 16 percent of its weapons exports over the same period, with most going to Egypt and Iraq. Its major
trade partners were India, China and Algeria – but sales to India dropped significantly as its government sought to
diversify suppliers and bought more from the U.S., South Korea and, most painfully for the Kremlin, Ukraine. Russia has been losing key aircraft tenders in

India to the U.S. This, along with the economic collapse of another major client, Venezuela, and the current
potential for regime change in Algeria, all makes a rebound in Russian sales look unlikely. Arms sales are
perhaps the best reflection of a major military power’s international influence. The market isn’t all about price

and quality competition; it’s about permanent and situational alliances. The growing gap between the U.S. and Russia in exports shows that
Putin’s forays into areas such as the Middle East are failing to translate into Russian influence in the region. Although Putin’s
warm relations with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and his alliance with Iran, which has a lot of influence over Iraq, are paying off
to some extent, they can’t quite compensate for ground lost elsewhere. The U.S.’s allies, France, Germany and the U.K. among
them, have been rapidly increasing their market share, too. That’s a rarely mentioned way in which the security alliance with Washington is paying off for the Europeans. All the ethical
objections to selling arms to countries such as Saudi Arabia notwithstanding, European Union member states need markets for their defense industries, which employ about 500,000 people.
Being under the U.S. umbrella opens doors where Russia and China are less desirable partners – that is, in most of the world. Many tears have been shed in the U.S. about the collapse of the
if you take arms sales as a proxy for influence, the U.S.’s global dominance looks to be resilient. In a more conflict-prone,
American-led global order. But

competitive world, America is doing rather well while its longstanding geopolitical rivals stumble.

The plan leaves a supply vacuum for Russia to exploit – they’ll use it to advance
geopolitical power
Bodner 17 – analyst @ Defense News (Matthew, “Sales target: Russia sets its sights on the
Middle East,” Defense News, https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/dubai-air-
show/2017/11/09/sales-target-russia-sets-its-sights-on-the-middle-east/)//BB
The view from Moscow Russia’s arms sales in the Middle East do not take place in a vacuum. While driven by defense industry interests, they are
seen in Moscow as part of a broader Russian effort to reassert itself as a player of major consequence.
Russia’s expert community likes to talk of an emerging multipolar world order, and Moscow in many
ways tries to act as if that is already the case. But it is difficult to attribute any strategy to its actions. “Russia is not seeking to displace the
U.S. in the Middle East, just cut it down to size,” says Vladimir Frolov, an independent Russian foreign affairs analyst. “ Russia sees weapons sales as
additional leverage and a tool to create dependency on Moscow. Sales to the Gulf, particularly to Saudi, are seen as a
tool for other foreign policy objectives, to facilitate agreements on political issues and create
stakeholders in relations with Russia.” While arms sales are certainly seen by the government as tools in a larger game, the arms trade in
Russia is a little more complicated than that. “To a great extent these deals are often worked out independently,” according to CAST’s Andrey Frolov. “For example,
deliveries to Syria are handled by the Defense Ministry and taken from military stores. The state export agency Rosoboronexport has nothing to do with this.” This
jibes with the sometimes diffused nature of decision-making in Russia. Contrary to common perception, Putin does not preside over everything that happens. He sets
the general tone and path, and hundreds of officials below him try to interpret and act according to perceived wishes. This makes dealing with Russia difficult, but it
also makes formulating and pursuing broad strategy difficult for the Kremlin. As far as Russia’s competition with the U.S. in the Middle East arms trade goes, the
situation was best described by independent analyst Vladimir Frolov: “ Russia’s
strategy in weapons sales is to sell everything to
everyone with little geopolitical consideration and zero human rights concern. And Russians will try to seize
every opportunity where the U.S. is seen as an unreliable partner. Egypt and Turkey are just the most recent
examples.”

New arms markets are key to all facets of Russian expansionism

Connolly and Sendstad 17 - *associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at
Chatham House. He is also a senior lecturer in political economy and director of the Centre for
Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham. He is the
author of numerous articles on the political economy of Russia. **Cecilie Sendstad is the
research manager for the Cost Analysis research programme at the Department of Analysis at the
Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). She has authored numerous published studies
on Russian and Norwegian defence-economic issues, and has also conducted research on defence
acquisitions and lifecycle costing for the Norwegian government (Richard and Cecilie, “Russia’s
Role as an Arms Exporter The Strategic and Economic Importance of Arms Exports for Russia,”
Chatham House, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2017-
03-20-russia-arms-exporter-connolly-sendstad.pdf)//BB
This last potential challenge illustrates that the arms trade is as much driven by developments in the geopolitical marketplace as it is by commercial concerns. In turn, the multidimensional nature of the arms trade suggests that

Russia will make great efforts to ensure that it remains successful in this industry for decades to come. This is likely to involve
a concerted effort to ensure that sufficient domestic investment in productive capabilities will take place to guarantee that new weapons systems emerge. It is also likely to involve policymakers attempting

to wield arms exports as a component of wider foreign policy. Indeed, it is this final point that deserves greater attention by researchers in the future. If, as
Keith Krause has argued, arms exports serve as an important tool wielded by states in pursuit of other foreign policy

objectives, then it is plausible that Russia’s strong position in the global arms market might be expected to boost the country’s
position in international affairs more widely.90 In addition to the economic motives behind arms sales, Krause suggests that arms exports can help
states both in the pursuit of victory in war and in the broader pursuit of power in the international
arena.91 Both motives appear to lie behind Russian arms exports in a number of cases. For Krause, arms exports can help the exporting
country achieve several objectives in the pursuit of the beneficiary country’s victory in war. They include: guaranteeing independence of arms supply to ensure military security; acting as a quid pro quo for

military base/landing rights; assisting friends and allies in maintaining an effective (and/or common) defensive posture
against external threats; substituting for direct military involvement; and providing testing for new weapons systems. It is not difficult to find at least
prima facie evidence for these motives playing some role in motivating Russian arms exports to Armenia, Syria and Tajikistan. When looking at the role arms exports play in supporting the exporter’s pursuit of geopolitical power,

the sale of weaponry can help to: provide access to and influence over leaders and elites in
Krause states that

recipient states in pursuit of foreign policy objectives; symbolize commitment to the recipient’s security
or stability against internal or external threats; create or maintain a regional balance of power; create or
maintain a regional presence; and provide access to scarce, expensive or strategic resources. It is likely that at least some of these
motives are present in Russia’s sales to countries all over the world. Moreover, the zeal shown by Russian firms in expanding
arms exports to countries beyond their traditional client base – such as to Saudi Arabia, Turkey or the Philippines – is surely as much to do with the possibility of weakening ties
between those countries and their traditional allies in the West. It is in this respect that Russia’s future
performance as an arms exporter might have truly strategic significance. If Russia is able to expand its
influence beyond its traditional markets, we should expect to see Russia’s broader political influence in
those regions rise. In this sense, the motives underlying the strenuous Russian efforts to expand arms exports might well go

beyond simple commercial concerns or

a desire to place the defence-industrial complex at the centre of efforts to modernize the Russian economy.

Expanded Russian influence leads to nuclear war and collapses the international order
Gray 17 – PhD, professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of
Reading, where he is the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies (Colin, “Russian strategy
Expansion, crisis and conflict,” Foreword, in Comparative Strategy, 36.1)//BB, sex edited
Short of war itself, the international political and strategic relations between Russia and the United States are
about as bad as they can be. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the simultaneous conduct of two air independent campaigns over Syria could
evolve all too suddenly into a war triggered by accident or by miscalculation. There is little, if any, mystery about
the broad political purpose fueling Vladimir Putin’s conduct of international relations. Subtlety is not a characteristic of Russian statecraft; cunning and intended trickery,
though, are another matter. Stated directly, Putin is striving to recover and restore that of which he is able from the late USSR. There is no ideological theme in his governance.

Instead, there is an historically unremarkable striving after more power and influence. The challenge for the Western World, as demonstrated

in this National Institute study in meticulous and troubling detail, is to decide where and when this latest episode in Russian expansionism will be stopped. What we do know, for certain, is that it must

and will be halted. It is more likely than not that Putin himself does not have entirely fixed political-strategic objectives. His behavior of recent years has given a credible impression of opportunistic adaptability. In

other words, he will take what he is able, where he can, and when he can . However, there is ample evidence to support

this study’s proposition that Russian state policy today is driven by a clear vision of Russia as a recovering and somewhat restored superpower,
very much on the high road back to a renewed hegemony over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Putin’s international political objectives appear

largely open today: he will have Russia take whatever turns out to be available to take, preferably if the
taking allows for some humiliation of the principal enemy, the United States. A practical political and strategic problem for Putin is to guess just how far he dares to push
NATO in general and the United States in particular, before he finds himself, almost certainly unexpectedly, in a situation analogous to 1939. Just how dangerous would it be for Russia to press forcefully the Baltic members of

NATO? Vladimir Putin would not be the first statesman [person] to trust his luck once too often, based upon unrealistic
confidence in his own political genius and power. There is danger not only that Putin could miscalculate the military worth
of Russia’s hand, but that he also will misunderstand the practical political and strategic strength of NATO ‘red lines.’ In particular, Putin may well discover, despite some current appearances, that not all of
NATO’s political leaders are expediently impressionable and very readily deterrable. Putin’s military instrument is heavily dependent, indeed probably over-dependent,

upon the bolstering value of a whole inventory of nuclear weapons. It is unlikely to have evaded Putin’s strategic grasp to recognize that these are not simply weapons like any others. A single
political or strategic guess in error could well place us, Russians included, in a world horrifically new to all. This National Institute study, Russian Strategy:
Expansion, Crisis and Conflict, makes unmistakably clear Putin’s elevation of strategic intimidation to be the leading element in Russian grand strategy today. Putin is behaving in militarily dangerous ways and ‘talking the talk’ that
goes with such rough behavior. Obviously, he is calculating, perhaps just hoping, that American lawyers in the White House will continue to place highest priority on avoiding direct confrontation with Russia. This study presents an
abundantly clear record of the Russian lack of regard for international law, which they violate with apparent impunity and without ill consequence to themselves, including virtually every arms control treaty and agreement they have
 The challenge for the United States today and tomorrow is the need urgently to decide what can and must be done to
entered into with the United States since 1972 (SALT I).

stop Putin’s campaign in its tracks before it wreaks lethal damage to the vital concept and physical
structure of international order in much of the world, and particularly in Europe.

Relations
The US-Saudi relationship is strong now because of Trump’s commitment to current
US security policy
Elizabeth Allan, 6-8-2019, a first-year student at Yale Law School, MPhil in Modern Middle
Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, The
Yemen Resolution and the Historical U.S.-Saudi Security Relationship, Lawfare,
https://www.lawfareblog.com/yemen-resolution-and-historical-us-saudi-security-relationship
fact that Congress and the president are at odds over U.S. security policy toward
As this history demonstrates, the
Saudi Arabia is not a new development in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. In the current dispute, Congress is leveraging
several old tools for influencing security policy—including opposition to arms sales under the AECA and restrictions on foreign assistance—and
previously unused tools, such as the War Powers Resolution.
Congress’s specific objections to the U.S.-Saudi security relationship reflect contemporary concerns over
the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Beyond Yemen, however, several structural factors complicate traditional pillars of the U.S.-Saudi
security alliance, including concerns that Saudi Arabia’s actions are undermining regional security, growing scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s
internal politics (for example, its human rights track record), and the U.S.’s increased capacity to produce
domestic oil (although Saudi Arabia remains important to global energy markets). Those in support of continuing the relationship emphasize
that, although the Saudi-U.S. partnership is far from perfect, it has strategic benefits, particularly in counterterrorism, opposition to Iran, and
maintenance of regional stability against a more chaotic alternative.
Ultimately, congressional supporters and skeptics must cooperate with the executive branch to change
U.S. security strategy, and the Trump administration has consistently indicated that it has no intention of
turning away from the U.S.-Saudi alliance. As long as this remains administration policy, Congress
may use various legislative tools to chip away at U.S. security support for the kingdom—but there is
unlikely to be a fundamental realignment in the U.S.-Saudi security relationship.

Collapsing relations causes Saudi prolif

Peterson ‘18 (J. E.; Sir William Luce Fellow, University of Durham, part of the University of Arizona Center for Middle Eastern
Studies; 2018; "Prospects for Proliferation in Saudi Arabia"; Chapter 4, Prospects for Proliferation in Saudi Arabia, published by Macmillan;
http://www.jepeterson.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Peterson_Prospects_for_Proliferation_in_Saudi_Arabia_2018.pdf; accessed 6-24-
2019; SM-Camp)
Cultural factors cannot be separated from strategic factors. Influences on the decisionmaking process regarding whether to pursue nuclearization arc myriad. In the first instance, it must be
recognized that the national leadership will be doing the actual decisionmaking; therefore, the personalities and conviction of those leaders are major determinants. Is a leader houghtful and

the status of the relationship between the

contemplative, or is he impetuous and hotheaded, driven by emotion more than logic? More globally, it can be assumed that

KSA and the United States would be a major driver: a deterioration in ties and confidence would
undoubtedly spur greater Saudi resolve to pursue an independent security course. This may
be influenced by existing or near-term KSA capabilities to pursue a nuclear program: if at least
preliminary work had been done in achieving such capability, it is more likely that leadership would consider it a
viable alternative and public opinion would be more receptive. The latter of course would particularly hold the more the citizenry feared
existentialist external threats. The role of prestige may also play a significant role. Nuclear capability would enhance the

KSA's leadership status among Arab and Islamic nations and raise its standing on the global stage. This
would be particularly effective among elites and other educated sectors of the population ( including within the royal
family) who share a more globalized outlook, although the majority of citizens may also regard it as a patriotic

plus. More to the point, a nuclear policy may be regarded as an assertion of the KSA's national right, and the
kingdom has always been very assertive of its perceived rights. At the same time, both leadership and
citizenry may express an inability to comprehend why the nonproliferation regime should apply to
theKSA. Factors holding influence against proliferation may be economic, particularly relevant in the period of 2015-2017 when oil prices plummeted and the KSA's budget went into
serious deficit. But religious and cultural norms against the possession and use of nuclear weapons undoubtedly would play a part in the dccisionmaking process as well. In part, this is due to the
inordinately important role that the religious establishment plays in directing or at least constraining domestic policies. At the same time, this establishment has been given great latitude in
carrying out a foreign policy that parallels and sometimes conflicts with— the official foreign policy. For the question of nuclear acquisition, it is certain that the approval or at least acquiescence
of the Islamic authorities in the KSA would be required. Such acquiescence would seem to depend on Islamic authorities' views on such points as waging war in defense, waging war against
other Muslims, the moral right to possess nuclear weapons, and whether threats to the state would permit such a course of action. Quranic injunctions that any combat engagement must
distinguish between the innocent and the guilty while applying the minimum amount of force to achieve the objective and sparing the lives of noncombatants would seem to limit the acquisition

and use of WMD." At the same time,an argument has also been advanced for possessing nuclear capability as a
deterrent.34At least one prominent conservative Saudi Arabian cleric has argued that WMD should not be
used if victory can be achieved by using less powerful weapons but its use is permissible otherwise,
particularly if it is suspected that the enemy might do so.35Another has used the analogy of early Islamic armies' use (including by the
Prophet Muhammad) of catapults against enemy cities to justify WMD in extremis.36 Any clear-cut distinction within the religious

establishment between religious justification of acquisition and religious abhorrence is likely to be

distorted by the establishment's relationship with the country's secular authorities. The KSA's special
perception of its role as protector of the Holy Places and thus serving as the guardian of Islam (as reflected in the king's other title, "Custodian of the Holy Places") gives its clerical establishment

a certain power to establish the norm as regards Islamic injunctions concerning nuclear weapons. Triggers Triggers for acquisition are likely to be
prompted by such causes as a concern over regional disintegration, Israeli provocation, KSA perceptions of regional and wider power
status to be gained, and, especially, continued Iranian belligerence and involvement in regional crises. Proliferation may t

lien be triggered by the deterioration of the JCPOA or evidence of direct Iranian provocation or interference in domestic affairs, such as has been claimed by Kuwait and Bahrain. Perhaps an

even more compelling trigger would be the opening of a major breach in KSA-US relations.
Still, it would seem that the actual use of nuclear weapons would remain restricted to perception of an existentialist threat to the KSA.

Even the perception of Saudi pursuing nukes causes arms races with Iran and Turkey
Weindling 2019 - Covers politics @ Paste Politics
Jacob, "Trump Wants Saudi Arabia to Have Nuclear Power. Here Are 5 Ways That Can Go Very
Wrong," Feb 12, https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/02/trump-is-trying-to-get-saudi-
arabia-nuclear-power.html
2. It Sparks a Nuclear Arms Race Even if Saudi Arabia doesn’t get nuclear weapons, just the pursuit or even the perception of a pursuit

can spark a nuclear arms race. Iran has been trying for years to obtain a nuclear weapon, and
of nuclear weapons

they would surely ramp up those efforts if their other geographical foe tried to get one. I said “other” geographical foe because Israel’s
claim to not have nukes is the most well-known lie in the world. Saudi Arabia trying to get nukes means Iran trying to get nukes. Period. And I haven’t even mentioned Turkey yet. 3. Oh yeah,
Turkey is ruled
Turkey Oh yeah, the country with, according to the World Bank, the 17th largest economy in the world—larger than the economies of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel.

by a despot who spends his days persecuting political dissidents and trying to get the starting center for the New York Knicks extradited and would not hesitate to
incorporate nuclear weapons into his widening power grab. If Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran have nukes, that means Turkey gets nukes. Period.
We could be barreling towards a scenario where 28% of the highlighted countries and the vast majority of landmass in this picture are controlled by nuclear powers. 4. This Nuclear Arms Race
Could Spill Out of the Middle East Given that “Middle East” is an inherently colonialist term (what is it “middle” and “east” of?), it’s not exactly concretely descriptive, but given the recent
history of U.S. foreign policy adventurism, that image is more or less a good representation of what landmass constitutes the Middle East as we have come to know it. To its east, India and
Pakistan have been rattling the world’s nerves with their nuclear weapon-empowered posturing for decades. North of that is the western portion of nuclear-armed China, and north of that is
Giving the Saudis nuclear weapons would kick-start a chain-reaction that would lead to a
nuclear-armed Russia.

nuclear firewall stretching from the Mediterranean to the Pacific—and that’s only including countries that already have nuclear weapons. If
the entire Middle East power center is laden with nukes, why not the North African power center? Nigeria has a
larger economy and much more oil than Israel, why shouldn’t they have nukes too? South Africa ended its nuclear weapons program in 1989, but you can bet that those files still exist somewhere
and they could restart the program next year if they wanted to. And if a country like Nigeria gets nukes, why not the eighth largest economy the world (Brazil)? Like South Africa, they have a
dormant Cold War-era nuclear program that they could resuscitate if they wanted to.

That escalates to nuclear war

Eric Edelman 11, Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
& Former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67162/eric-s-edelman-andrew-f-krepinevich-jr-and-evan-
braden-montgomer/the-dangers-of-a-nuclear-iran
There is, however, at least one state that could receive significant outside support: Saudi Arabia. And if it did, proliferation could accelerate
throughout the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been geopolitical and ideological rivals. Riyadh would face tremendous pressure to
respond in some form to a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to deter Iranian coercion and subversion but also to preserve its sense that Saudi Arabia is
the leading nation in the Muslim world. The
Saudi government is already pursuing a nuclear power capability,
which could be the first step along a slow road to nuclear weapons development. And concerns persist
that it might be able to accelerate its progress by exploiting its close ties to Pakistan. During the 1980s, in response to the use of missiles during
the Iran-Iraq War and their growing proliferation throughout the region, Saudi Arabia acquired several dozen css-2 intermediate-range ballistic
missiles from China. The Pakistani government reportedly brokered the deal, and it may have also offered to sell Saudi Arabia nuclear warheads
for the css-2s, which are not accurate enough to deliver conventional warheads effectively. There
are still rumors that Riyadh
and Islamabad have had discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, or security guarantees. This
“Islamabad option” could develop in one of several different ways. Pakistan could sell operational nuclear weapons and
delivery systems to Saudi Arabia, or it could provide the Saudis with the infrastructure, material, and
technical support they need to produce nuclear weapons themselves within a matter of years, as opposed to a decade
or longer. Not only has Pakistan provided such support in the past, but it is currently building two more heavy-water reactors for plutonium
production and a second chemical reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. In other words, it might accumulate more
fissile material than it needs to maintain even a substantially expanded arsenal of its own. Alternatively, Pakistan might offer an extended
deterrent guarantee to Saudi Arabia and deploy nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and troops on Saudi territory, a practice that the United States
has employed for decades with its allies. This arrangement could be particularly appealing to both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It would allow the
Saudis to argue that they are not violating the NPT since they would not be acquiring their own nuclear weapons. And an extended deterrent from
Pakistan might be preferable to one from the United States because stationing foreign Muslim forces on Saudi territory would not trigger the kind
of popular opposition that would accompany the deployment of U.S. troops. Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial benefits and international
The Islamabad option
clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as well as strategic depth against its chief rival, India.
raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how India would respond.
Would it target Pakistan’s weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear
weapons? How would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia?
Regardless of India’s reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by
whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the incentives of other nations in
the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do
so by eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires
nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its particular method of
acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT. Were Saudi Arabia to acquire
nuclear weapons, the Middle East would count three nuclear-armed states, and perhaps more
before long. It is unclear how such an n-player competition would unfold because most analyses of nuclear deterrence are based on the
U.S.- Soviet rivalry during the Cold War. It seems likely, however, that the interaction among three or more nuclear-
armed powers would be more prone to miscalculation and escalation than a bipolar competition. During the Cold
War, the United States and the Soviet Union only needed to concern themselves with an attack from the other. Multi- polar systems
are generally considered to be less stable than bipolar systems because coalitions can shift
quickly, upsetting the balance of power and creating incentives for an attack. More important,
emerging nuclear powers in the Middle East might not take the costly steps necessary to preserve
regional stability and avoid a nuclear exchange. For nuclear-armed states, the bedrock of deterrence is the knowledge that
each side has a secure second-strike capability, so that no state can launch an attack with the expectation that it can wipe out its opponents’ forces
and avoid a devastating retaliation. However, emerging
nuclear powers might not invest in expensive but
survivable capabilities such as hardened missile silos or submarine- based nuclear forces. Given
this likely vulnerability, the close proximity of states in the Middle East, and the very short flight
times of ballistic missiles in the region, any new nuclear powers might be compelled to “launch
on warning” of an attack or even, during a crisis, to use their nuclear forces preemptively. Their governments might also delegate
launch authority to lower-level commanders, heightening the possibility of miscalculation and escalation. Moreover, if early warning systems
were not integrated into robust command-and-control systems, the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch would increase further still. And
without sophisticated early warning systems, a nuclear attack might be unattributable or attributed incorrectly.
That is, assuming that the leadership of a targeted state survived a first strike, it might not be able to accurately determine which nation was
responsible. And this
uncertainty, when combined with the pressure to respond quickly, would create a
significant risk that it would retaliate against the wrong party, potentially triggering a regional
nuclear war. Most existing nuclear powers have taken steps to protect their nuclear weapons from unauthorized use: from closely screening
key personnel to developing technical safety measures, such as permissive action links, which require special codes before the weapons can be
armed. Yet there
is no guarantee that emerging nuclear powers would be willing or able to
implement these measures, creating a significant risk that their governments might lose control
over the weapons or nuclear material and that nonstate actors could gain access to these items.
Some states might seek to mitigate threats to their nuclear arsenals; for instance, they might hide their weapons. In that case, however, a single
intelligence compromise could leave their weapons vulnerable to attack or theft. Meanwhile, states outside the Middle East could also be a source
of instability. Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race that other nations were
essentially powerless to influence. In a multipolar nuclear Middle East, other nuclear powers and states with advanced military technology could
influence—for good or ill—the military competition within the region by selling or transferring technologies that most local actors lack today:
solid-fuel rocket motors, enhanced missile-guidance systems, war- head miniaturization technology, early warning systems, air and missile
defenses. Such transfers could stabilize a fragile nuclear balance if the emerging nuclear powers acquired more survivable arsenals as a result.
But they could also be highly destabilizing. If, for example, an outside power sought to curry favor with a potential client state or gain influence
with a prospective ally, it might share with that state the technology it needed to enhance the accuracy of its missiles and thereby increase its
ability to launch a disarming first strike against any adversary. The ability of existing nuclear powers and other
technically advanced military states to

Case
Instability and humanitarian crisis continues despite Saudi withdrawal
Johnsen 18 (Gregory D. Johnsen, Resident Scholar at the Arabia Foundation, former Member
of the Yemen Panel of Experts for the UN Security Council, holds an M.A. in Near and Middle
Eastern Studies from Princeton University, 2018 (“Yemen’s Three Wars,” Lawfare, September
23rd, Available Online at https://www.lawfareblog.com/yemens-three-wars, Accessed 06-28-
2019)
Last month, over the course of a few days in Yemen, one governor survived a roadside bomb while a second was denied entry through a
checkpoint ostensibly run by his own government. At a military college in Aden, the government’s temporary capital, pro-secessionist soldiers
opened fire on a graduation ceremony in response to the raising of the national flag. Three small security events—barely blips in Yemen’s daily
catalogue of strikes that have already disappeared from the news. But each incident happened far from Yemen’s frontlines, and each, in its own
we call the war in Yemen is actually three separate yet overlapping conflicts.
way, is a reminder that what
There is the U.S.-led war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State in Yemen. There is
a regional conflict, pitting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Iran. And there is a messy and
multi-sided civil war, featuring the Houthis, what’s left of the Yemeni government, a southern
secessionist movement, UAE proxy forces, and various different militias—some Salafi, some local, and
some closer to criminal gangs—all vying to grab and hold as much territory as they can. As distinct as
these three wars are, each has porous borders, which bleed into one another. So the United States, which is fighting
AQAP and the Islamic State, is also aiding Saudi Arabia and the UAE in its war against the Houthis, who are, in turn, themselves fighting AQAP
and the Islamic State. UAE proxy forces, which were established to fight AQAP and the Houthis, also periodically clash with government troops
loyal to President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who asked for the UAE’s military help in the first place. Salafi militias in Taizz fight the Houthis
one day and government forces the next. Yemen, which only unified in 1990, is broken and probably will be for years to
come. No one peace agreement, no matter how comprehensive, will be able to end each of these three
wars. The most likely scenario—which itself will not be easy—is that a UN-sponsored deal will end the
regional war, leading to the withdrawal of Saudi and UAE troops and the end of Iranian support to the
Houthis, while the fighting on the ground in Yemen continues. UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths has made clear his
preference that the domestic future of Yemen, including the south, be discussed as part of a future national dialogue, not as part of UN-sponsored
talks. Yemen has been down this road before, with poor results. Indeed, much of the current fighting in the
country canbe traced back to Yemen’s last national dialogue, which ended in 2014 and left many parties
frustrated, most notably the Houthis. Within months of the dialogue’s conclusion, the Houthis moved out of
Sadah, initiating the coup and subsequent civil war. The problem that prevented a conclusive agreement
then is the same problem that prevents one today: There are too many armed groups in the country, none
of which is strong enough to impose its will upon the entire country but all of which can act as spoilers
anytime they don’t like a particular decision. Add a couple of terrorist groups to the mix and you have a
recipe for the sort of disaster that can destroy multiple generations and unravel a nation.

Even if the coalition withdraws, the humanitarian crisis will continue indefinitely.
Byman 18 — Daniel Byman, Professor and Senior Associate Dean at the School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University, Senior Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, former Director of the Center for Security Studies and Security Studies
Program at Georgetown University, former Research Director of the Center for Middle East
Public Policy at the RAND Corporation, former Professional Staff Member on the 9/11
Commission and the Joint 9/11 Inquiry Staff of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees,
holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018
(“Yemen After a Saudi Withdrawal: How Much Would Change?,” Lawfare, December 5th,
Available Online at https://www.lawfareblog.com/yemen-after-saudi-withdrawal-how-much-
would-change, Accessed 06-25-2019)
An end to the Saudi intervention is long overdue—but even if it occurs, don’t expect Yemen’s nightmare
to draw to a close. For a change in Saudi policy to have the most impact, it must be coupled with a
broader pullout of foreign powers and a ceasefire among Yemen’s many warring factions. By itself, an
end to the Saudi bombing campaign and blockade would be a milestone. The air strikes have killed
thousands of Yemenis, including many children. The bombing also destroyed much of Yemen’s
already-tottering infrastructure, making medical care and food distribution even more difficult.
Less visibly, but more deadly, the Saudi blockade of many of Yemen’s ports and airport—done
in the name of stopping Iranian arms from entering Yemen— has prevented food and
humanitarian aid from entering the country as well. This has contributed to the massive famine.
Strategically, a close to the Saudi intervention would also benefit a key U.S. ally in the region—
Saudi Arabia. Riyadh justified its intervention as a way to counter Iran, fight terrorism and
restore a stable government in Yemen. But terrorists remain active in Yemen, and stability is
farther off than ever. The Saudi-backed president of Yemen, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, has no
power base and little popular support. Perhaps most important from Riyadh’s point of view,
Iran’s position in Yemen is stronger than ever. The war has increased the Houthis’ dependence
on Iran for arms and financial support. In addition, the court of world opinion has come to see
Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the aggressor in the conflict, and it is Saudi Arabia whose reputation is
damaged by the ongoing disaster there. Yet even if Saudi Arabia comes to its senses or is compelled
to do so, an end to the intervention would only be the beginning of what is needed. The United Arab
Emirates (UAE) would still be militarily involved in the fighting against the Houthis, and it is a much
more active player than Saudi Arabia on the ground in Yemen. Local actors would continue to fight: The
country is highly divided, and the main factions themselves are further divided. Yemen today is a failed
state, and there is no accepted political leadership to pick up the pieces. The Houthis, Iran’s ally, would
be the strongest of the factions, and they are brutal and authoritarian as well as tied to Tehran.
Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would remain active, trying to establish
themselves in any areas that lack a strong rival. Perhaps most important from Riyadh’s point of
view, Tehran can claim a victory over its long-time rival. Although Houthi reliance on Iran
would decrease as well, the alliance is likely to endure, and Iran will have influence on yet
another of Saudi Arabia’s borders. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who championed the
Yemen war, would be admitting his intervention failed. To improve both the strategic and
humanitarian situation, any decrease in the Saudi military campaign must become the impetus for broader
measures to end the war and decrease the suffering. Most important, Iran and the UAE should also be
pressed to end their involvement. Yemen’s fires won’t be extinguished if outsiders no longer fuel
them, but they will diminish. Hoping to seize the moment, U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths is currently
trying to arrange a ceasefire and ensure the key Yemeni port of Hodeidah is open for
international aid to enter the country. Griffiths is also fostering a broader dialogue, and key
parties to the conflict are expressing a willingness to negotiate— a willingness that might grow if
Riyadh moves to end its bombing campaign and other forms of intervention. The United States
should continue to offer Saudi Arabia assistance with its territorial defense from any Houthi
missiles. In addition, the Saudis are more credibly able to hold Iran responsible for Houthi
missile attacks on the Kingdom after a withdrawal if Washington is behind them, so U.S. support
for deterrence is vital. Because terrorist groups remain a concern, the United States must also
continue counterterrorism operations in Yemen. All this must be supplemented by a rapid and
massive humanitarian effort to move Yemenis away from the brink of starvation. An end to the
Saudi intervention is a good first step to ending this suffering, but by itself it will not be enough.

Ending US complicity won’t stop the conflict

Katulis, 18 – Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Dr. Lawrence J.
Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and served as assistant secretary of
defense from 1981 through 1985. (Brian, “Five Lessons from the Iraq War for What the U.S.
Should Do in Yemen” 12/28, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/five-lessons-iraq-war-what-
us-should-do-yemen-39977
The Iraq drawdown offers an instructive lesson. The Obama administration completed a full withdrawal of U.S. troops by December 2011—and also proceeded to
downgrade America’s focus and investment in Iraq. A few short years later, Iraq’s security collapsed under the rise of the Islamic State. This experience in Iraq offers
five important lessons learned for how to end the war in Yemen, including: 1. There
is a difference between ending America’s
involvement and moral complicity in a war versus actually ending a war. Advocacy groups can often ignore
the complicated realities driving conflicts—and in the case of Yemen, there are multiple conflicts, alongside
Saudi bombing and Iranian meddling. Those conflicts and the resulting suffering of millions of Yemenis are not likely to end
simply because Congress legislates an end to U.S. military involvement. 2. Terrorism remains an enduring threat and
requires vigilance. After withdrawing from Iraq, the Obama administration was slow to respond to the mutating terrorist threats that became the Islamic State. This
had a devastating effect on the people of the Middle East and almost overtook Barack Obama’s broader second-term foreign policy agenda. Fortunately, the Obama
administration ultimately developed an effective response, and the Trump administration used the template to defeat the Islamic State militarily. In Yemen today,
groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), with regional and international reach, can threaten U.S. interests—and America needs to remain engaged
to protect against those threats.

Russia and China will fill in---turns stability because they don’t care about Yemen
John Hannah 19, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 3/27/19, "Trump
Should Salvage U.S.-Saudi Relations," https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/27/trump-should-
salvage-u-s-saudi-relations/
Today, China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner. It’s among the biggest customers for Saudi oil—while
the U.S. shale boom increasingly poses the greatest threat to Riyadh’s economic prosperity. Thanks in no small part to decades of intellectual-
property theft on a world-historical scale, So
what can the United States do to stop the fighting? as well as critical
emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence, is increasingly closing the gap with the best U.S. high-
tech offerings. And Beijing, like Moscow, is perfectly prepared to sell its most advanced capabilities to
Riyadh with no strings attached. No complaints about the kingdom’s human rights record. No mentions
of Khashoggi. No threats to withdraw support as punishment for the war in Yemen. As was painfully obvious
during Mohammed bin Salman’s recent values-free trip to China in February, in an increasingly ideological age of great-power competition that
pits Western-style liberal democracy against Beijing’s model of authoritarian capitalism, it’s no secret in which camp the house of Saud feels
most at home.
The only point being that the decades-old assumptions that have governed the U.S.-Saudi relationship, while
largely still valid, may be on increasingly shaky ground. Before the Senate passed a resolution earlier this month to end all
U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut confidently reassured his colleagues,
“The Saudis won’t go somewhere else.” The suggestion that they might turn to another great power for weapons, he claimed, “is
belied by how this alliance has worked for years and the complication of the Saudis turning around and choosing to go to another partner.” While
I’d still bet that Murphy is more right than wrong on this issue, if only due to the immediacy of the Iranian threat for Riyadh, I increasingly lack
Arabia, U.S. foreign policy, and the global balance of power are all now in flux in
his sense of certitude. Saudi
ways that are quite unprecedented.
Even 30 years ago, the Saudis were capable of some nasty surprises, such as purchasing intermediate-
range ballistic missiles from China capable of striking Israel. And just a couple of months ago, credible
reports emerged that the Saudis have built a facility for producing and testing solid-fuel ballistic missiles
west of Riyadh—one with features that bear striking similarities to comparable facilities in China. The danger that as Saudi doubts
about the United States’ reliability grow, so too will their efforts to hedge by looking for weapons and
support (in Murphy’s words) “somewhere else,” including to hostile great-power rivals of the United States, is
probably greater than it’s ever been in the history of the countries’ relationship. The recent decision to introduce
Chinese-language instruction at all stages of the Saudi educational system was no accident.

Bombings still continue.

Knights ‘18 (Michael Knights, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, holds a D.Phil. from the Department of
War Studies at King's College London (UK), 2018 (“U.S.-Saudi Security Cooperation (Part 1): Conditioning Arms Sales to Build Leverage,” The
Washington Institute, November 5th, Available Online at https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/u.s.-saudi-security-
cooperation-part-1-conditioning-arms-sales-to-build-lev, Accessed 06-25-2019)
Precision-Guided Munitions Sales of air-delivered precision-guided munitions (PGMs) are another lightning rod issue in the bilateral security
relationship. Following the 2009-2010 round of hostilities with the Houthis, the kingdom sought to refresh its stock of antipersonnel bombs with
a large order of 1,300 U.S.-built CBU-105 sensor-fused weapons (a higher-reliability submunition that manufacturers say does not qualify as a
cluster bomb due to its low malfunction rate). Yet by November 2015, eight months into the current war, the Saudis had used up nearly 2,600
PGMs, according to strike metrics compiled by The Washington Institute. In response, the Saudis requested a $1.29 billion package comprising
around 19,000 air-delivered PGMs, an order that began delivery in July 2017. In addition to that package, the Senate narrowly approved a new
$500 million commercial sale of PGMs to Riyadh in June 2017—the first installment in a mammoth $4.46 billion series of air-launched munition
deals that would provide the Saudis with 104,000 U.S. PGMs in the next half decade. Riyadh may be accelerating its purchases in anticipation of
a prolonged war in Yemen and the potential loss of U.S. sales down the road. According to Washington Institute data collected in Saudi Arabia
and Yemen, the kingdom’s forces have used around 14,500 munitions since March 2015, almost all PGMs, with the average rate gradually
declining from 333 PGMs per month in 2015 to 270 per month this year. The U.S. munitions currently arriving in Saudi Arabia were ordered in
November 2015, when Riyadh recognized it might need new PGMs by 2019, but the intervening years have seen few signs of a PGM shortfall.
Based on a rough sense of prewar stocks and a constant dribble of replacements, Riyadh could probably
keep bombing at its current rate for several years even if all new U.S. PGM deals were rejected. Thus,
while cutting off such sales may be a good way to signal U.S. displeasure or publicly distance
Washington from the war, the data indicates that it would not meaningfully slow the air campaign
anytime soon.

Framing
Util is good – existential threats outweigh and cognitive bias goes aff
GPP 17 (Global Priorities Project, Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford,
Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, “Existential Risk: Diplomacy and Governance,” Global
Priorities Project, 2017, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-
01-23.pdf
1.2. THE ETHICS OF EXISTENTIAL RISK In his book Reasons and Persons, Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit advanced an influential argument about the importance of
avoiding extinction: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare
three
outcomes: (1) Peace. (2) A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population. (3) A nuclear
war that kills 100%. (2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people
believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and
(3) is very much greater. ... The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization
began only a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind, these few thousand years may be
only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference between (2) and (3) may thus
be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible
history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second.65 In this argument, it seems that Parfit is
assuming that the survivors of a nuclear war that kills 99% of the population would eventually be able to recover civilisation without long-term effect. As we have
seen, this may not be a safe assumption – but for the purposes of this thought experiment, the point stands. What makes existential
catastrophes especially bad is that they would “destroy the future,” as another Oxford philosopher, Nick Bostrom,
puts it.66 This future could potentially be extremely long and full of flourishing, and would therefore have
extremely large value. In standard risk analysis, when working out how to respond to risk, we work out the expected value of risk reduction, by
weighing the probability that an action will prevent an adverse event against the severity of the event. Because the value of preventing
existential catastrophe is so vast, even a tiny probability of prevention has huge expected value.67 Of course,
there is persisting reasonable disagreement about ethics and there are a number of ways one might resist this conclusion.68 Therefore, it would be unjustified to be
overconfident in Parfit and Bostrom’s argument. In
some areas, government policy does give significant weight to future
generations. For example, in assessing the risks of nuclear waste storage, governments have considered timeframes of thousands, hundreds of thousands,
and even a million years.69 Justifications for this policy usually appeal to principles of intergenerational equity according to which future generations ought to get as
much protection as current generations.70 Similarly, widely accepted norms of sustainable development require development that meets the needs of the current
generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.71 However, when it comes to existential risk,
it would seem that we fail to live up to principles of intergenerational equity. Existential catastrophe
would not only give future generations less than the current generations; it would give them nothing.
Indeed, reducing existential risk plausibly has a quite low cost for us in comparison with the huge expected
value it has for future generations. In spite of this, relatively little is done to reduce existential risk. Unless we give up on norms
of intergenerational equity, they give us a strong case for significantly increasing our efforts to reduce
existential risks. 1.3. WHY EXISTENTIAL RISKS MAY BE SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERINVESTED IN, AND
THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY In spite of the importance of existential risk
reduction, it probably receives less attention than is warranted. As a result, concerted international cooperation is required if
we are to receive adequate protection from existential risks. 1.3.1. Why existential risks are likely to be underinvested in There are several reasons
why existential risk reduction is likely to be underinvested in. Firstly, it is a global public good. Economic
theory predicts that such goods tend to be underprovided. The benefits of existential risk reduction are
widely and indivisibly dispersed around the globe from the countries responsible for taking action.
Consequently, a country which reduces existential risk gains only a small portion of the benefits but bears the full brunt of the costs. Countries thus have strong
incentives to free ride, receiving the benefits of risk reduction without contributing. As a result, too few do what is in the common interest. Secondly, as
already suggested above, existential
risk reduction is an intergenerational public good: most of the benefits are
enjoyed by future generations who have no say in the political process. For these goods, the problem is
temporal free riding: the current generation enjoys the benefits of inaction while future generations
bear the costs. Thirdly, many existential risks, such as machine superintelligence, engineered pandemics, and solar geoengineering, pose
an unprecedented and uncertain future threat. Consequently, it is hard to develop a satisfactory governance regime for them: there are
few existing governance instruments which can be applied to these risks, and it is unclear what shape new instruments should take. In this way, our position with
regard to these emerging risks is comparable to the one we faced when nuclear weapons first became available. Cognitive
biases also lead people
to underestimate existential risks. Since there have not been any catastrophes of this magnitude, these
risks are not salient to politicians and the public.72 This is an example of the misapplication of the
availability heuristic, a mental shortcut which assumes that something is important only if it can be
readily recalled. Another cognitive bias affecting perceptions of existential risk is scope neglect. In a seminal
1992 study, three groups were asked how much they would be willing to pay to save 2,000, 20,000 or 200,000 birds from drowning in uncovered oil ponds. The
groups answered $80, $78, and $88, respectively.73 In this case, the size of the benefits had little effect on the scale of the preferred response. People
become numbed to the effect of saving lives when the numbers get too large. 74 Scope neglect is a
particularly acute problem for existential risk because the numbers at stake are so large. Due to scope
neglect, decision-makers are prone to treat existential risks in a similar way to problems which are less
severe by many orders of magnitude. A wide range of other cognitive biases
are likely to affect the evaluation of existential risks.75

Risk is magnitude times probability—balances their framing with ours—BUT,

probability first falls prey to psychological biases and leads to mass death.
Clarke 8 [Lee, member of a National Academy of Science committee that considered decision-
making models, Anschutz Distinguished Scholar at Princeton University, Fellow of AAAS,
Professor Sociology (Rutgers), Ph.D. (SUNY), “Possibilistic Thinking: A New Conceptual Tool for
Thinking about Extreme Events,” Fall, Social Research 75.3, JSTOR]
In scholarly work, the subfield of disasters is often seen as narrow. One reason for this is that a lot of scholarship on disasters is practically oriented, for obvious reasons, and the social sciences
have a deep-seated suspicion of practical work. This is especially true in sociology. Tierney (2007b) has treated this topic at length, so there is no reason to repeat the point here. There is
work on disaster is seen as narrow, a reason that holds some irony for the main thrust of my argument here:
another, somewhat unappreciated reason that

disasters are unusual and the social sciences are generally biased toward phenomena that are frequent.
Methods textbooks caution against using case stud- ies as representative of anything, and articles in mainstreams journals that are not based on
probability samples must issue similar obligatory caveats. The premise, itself narrow, is that the only way to be certain that
we know something about the social world, and the only way to control for subjective influences in data acquisition, is to follow the tenets of probabilistic sampling.
This view is a correlate of the central way of defining rational action and rational policy in academic work of all varieties and also in much practical work, which is to say in terms of
The irony is that probabilistic thinking has its own biases, which, if unacknowledged and
probabilities.

uncorrected for, lead to a conceptual neglect of extreme events. This leaves us, as scholars, paying attention to disasters only when they
happen and doing that makes the accumulation of good ideas about disaster vulnerable to issue-attention cycles (Birkland, 2007). These conceptual blinders lead

to a neglect of disasters as "strategic research sites" (Merton, 1987), which results in learning less about disaster
than we could and in missing opportunities to use disaster to learn about society (cf. Sorokin, 1942). We need new conceptual tools because of
an upward trend in frequency and severity of disaster since 1970 (Perrow, 2007), and because of a growing intellectual attention to the idea of
worst cases (Clarke, 2006b; Clarke, in press). For instance, the chief scientist in charge of studying earthquakes for the US Geological Service, Lucile Jones, has worked on the combination of
events that could happen in California that would constitute a "give up scenario": a very long-shaking earthquake in southern California just when the Santa Anna winds are making everything
dry and likely to burn. In such conditions, meaningful response to the fires would be impossible and recovery would take an extraordinarily long time. There are other similar pockets of
scholarly interest in extreme events, some spurred by September 11 and many catalyzed by Katrina. The consequences of disasters are also becoming more
severe, both in terms of lives lost and property damaged. People and their places are becoming more vulnerable. The most important
reason that vulnerabilities are increasing is population concentration (Clarke, 2006b). This is a general phenomenon and includes, for example, flying in jumbo jets,
working in tall buildings, and attending events in large capacity sports arenas. Considering disasters whose origin is a natural hazard, the specific cause of

increased vulnerability is that people are moving to where hazards originate, and most especially to where the water is. In some places, this makes them

vulnerable to hurricanes that can create devastating storm surges; in others it makes them vulnerable to earthquakes that can create tsunamis. In any case, the general

problem is that people concentrate themselves in dangerous places, so when the hazard comes
disasters are intensified. More than one-half of Florida's population lives within 20 miles of the sea. Additionally, Florida's population grows every year, along with
increasing development along the coasts. The risk of exposure to a devastating hurricane is obviously high in Florida. No one should be surprised if during the next hurricane season Florida
demographic pressures and attendant development are wide- spread. People are
becomes the scene of great tragedy. The

concentrating along the coasts of the United States, and, like Florida, this puts people at risk of water-related hazards. Or consider the Pacific Rim,
the coastline down the west coasts of North and South America, south to Oceania, and then up the eastern coast- line of Asia. There the hazards are particularly threatening. Maps of
population concentration around the Pacific Rim should be seen as target maps, because along those shorelines are some of the most active tectonic plates in the world. The 2004 Indonesian
earthquake and tsunami, which killed at least 250,000 people, demonstrated the kind of damage that issues from the movement of tectonic plates. (Few in the United States recognize that
there is a subduction zone just off the coast of Oregon and Washington that is quite similar to the one in Indonesia.) Additionally, volcanoes reside atop the meeting of tectonic plates; the
Perrow (2007) has generalized the point about concentration, arguing not
typhoons that originate in the Pacific Ocean generate furiously fatal winds.

only that we increase vulnerabilities by increasing the breadth and depth of exposure to hazards but also by

concentrating industrial facilities with catastrophic potential. Some of Perrow's most important examples concern
chemical production facilities. These are facilities that bring together in a single place multiple stages of production used in the production of toxic substances. Key to Perrow's
argument is that there is no technically necessary reason for such concentration, although there may be good economic reasons for it. The general point is that we

can expect more disasters, whether their origins are "natural" or "technological." We can also expect more death and
destruction from them. I predict we will continue to be poorly prepared to deal with disaster. People around the
world were appalled with the incompetence of America's leaders and orga- nizations in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Day after day
we watched people suffering unnecessarily. Leaders were slow to grasp the importance of the event. With a few notable exceptions, organi- zations lumbered to a late rescue. Setting aside
our moral reaction to the official neglect, perhaps we ought to ask why we should have expected a competent response at all ?
Are US leaders and organiza- tions particularly attuned to the suffering of people in disasters? Is the political economy of the United States organized so that people, espe- cially poor people,
are attended to quickly and effectively in noncri- sis situations? The answers to these questions are obvious. If social systems are not arranged to ensure people's well-being in normal times,
if we are ever going to be reasonably well prepared to avoid
there is no good reason to expect them to be so inclined in disastrous times. Still,

or respond to the next Katrina-like event, we need to identify the barriers to effective thinking about, and
effective response to, disas- ters. One of those barriers is that we do not have a set of concepts that would help us

think rigorously about out-sized events. The chief toolkit of concepts that we have for thinking about important social
events comes from probability theory. There are good reasons for this, as probability theory has obviously served social research well. Still, the toolkit is

incomplete when it comes to extreme events, especially when it is used as a base whence to make normative judgments
about what people, organizations, and governments should and should not do. As a complement to probabilistic thinking I
propose that we need possibilistic thinking. In this paper I explicate the notion of possibilistic thinking. I first discuss the equation of probabilism with
rationality in scholarly thought, followed by a section that shows the ubiquity of possibilis- tic thinking in everyday life. Demonstrating the latter will provide an opportunity to explore the
possibilistic thinking is widespread suggests it could be used more rigorously in social research. I will then
limits of the probabilistic approach: that

possibilism can be used with

address the most vexing prob- lem with advancing and employing possibilistic thinking: the prob- lem of infinite imagination. I argue that

discipline, and that we can be smarter about responding to disasters by doing so.
2NC
DIB DA
US is still dominant in the arms sale industry – increased its share last year
SIPRI, 12/10 [SIPRI = Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Global
arms industry: US companies dominate the Top 100; Russian arms industry moves
to second place,” https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2018/global-arms-industry-
us-companies-dominate-top-100-russian-arms-industry-moves-second-place, AC]
US companies increase their share of total Top 100 arms sales With 42 companies listed in 2017,
companies based in the United States continued to dominate the Top 100 in 2017. Taken together, the arms
sales of US companies grew by 2.0 per cent in 2017, to $226.6 billion, which accounted for 57 per cent
of total Top 100 arms sales. Five US companies were listed in the top 10 in 2017. ‘US companies directly benefit
from the US Department of Defense’s ongoing demand for weapons,’ says Aude Fleurant, Director of SIPRI’s Arms and Military Expenditure
Programme. Lockheed Martin remained the world’s largest arms producer in 2017, with arms sales of $44.9
billion. ‘The gap between Lockheed Martin and Boeing—the two largest arms producers in the world—increased from $11 billion in 2016 to
$18 billion in 2017,’ says Fleurant.

Russia and China are closing the gap

Frank A. Rose 18, Brookings Senior Fellow, Security and Strategy, 10-23-2018, "As Russia and
China improve their conventional military capabilities, should the US rethink its assumptions on
extended nuclear deterrence?," Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-
chaos/2018/10/23/as-russia-and-china-improve-their-conventional-military-capabilities-should-
the-us-rethink-its-assumptions-on-extended-nuclear-deterrence/
As part of this competition, over the past decade Russia and China have dramatically improved their
conventional and asymmetric military capabilities. Though the United States currently possesses unmatched
global military power projection capabilities, and spends substantially more on defense than Russia and China, there is little doubt that
Russia and China have achieved conventional military parity or local superiority with the United States
in certain regional contingencies in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific. A recent RAND Corporation report notes that
Russian military investments over the past decade have significantly reduced the “once-gaping qualitative
and technological gaps between Russia and NATO.” The report also asserts that Russia currently enjoys a favorable balance-of-forces, in short warning
regional conflicts on its borders. The same can be said for Chinese conventional military capabilities in the Western Pacific. For example, during testimony before the Senate Armed Services
Committee in March 2018, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lieutenant General Robert Ashley highlighted that China is continuing “to develop capabilities to dissuade, deter, or
And an increasing number of independent
defeat potential third-party intervention during a large-scale theater campaign, such as a Taiwan contingency.”

defense analysts, including retired U.S. Admiral and former NATO Supreme Commander James
Stavridis, argue that China has essentially achieved military parity with the United States in East Asia.
Russia and China are also devoting significant resources to develop disruptive technologies like
offensive cyber and anti-satellite weapons, which are designed to exploit perceived gaps and vulnerabilities in U.S. defenses. As Director of National
Intelligence Daniel Coats testified before the Senate Select Committee in February 2018: “Both Russia and China continue to pursue anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons as a means to reduce U.S. and
allied military effectiveness…Military reforms in both countries in the past few years indicate an increased focus on establishing operational forces designed to integrate attacks against space
systems and services.” Coats also noted that both nations were continuing to develop offensive cyber capabilities designed to disrupt, degrade, and destroy U.S. and allied critical infrastructures.
Most importantly, the United States’ long-term technological advantage is eroding. From the 1950s through the mid-1980s
the United States retained an overwhelming technological advantage in the development of key technologies such nuclear weapons, computer chips, and precision-guided munitions. This began
to change in the late 1980s. As a recent New York Times article notes: “In the late 1980s, the emergence of inexpensive and universally available microchips upended the Pentagon’s ability to
control technological progress. Now, rather than trickling down from military and advanced corporate laboratories, today’s new technologies increasingly come from consumer electronic firms.”
And Russia and China are investing heavily in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, cyber,
and hypersonics. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that whoever becomes the world leader in the artificial intelligence sphere will “become ruler of the world.”
Russian and Chinese objectives are clear: Create a more favorable military balance in Eastern Europe and
the Western Pacific. Indeed, the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) concedes that in the face of
improving Russian and Chinese military capabilities, the U.S. “competitive military advantage has been
eroding.” The NDS recommends a number of specific steps the United States could take to improve its
conventional capabilities, such as: building a more lethal force; modernizing key systems like space,
cyber, and missile defense; developing innovative operational concepts; and cultivating workforce talent .
While implementing the proposals in the NDS would certainly improve U.S. conventional forces, they are unlikely to restore the overwhelming conventional military superiority that the United
States once enjoyed.
Relations
Arms sales define the relationship---ending them spills over to all security cooperation
Christopher M. Blanchard 9/21/18, a Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs at the CRS, "Saudi
Arabia: Background and U.S. Relations", Congressional Research Service,
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33533
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s relations with the United States, its stability, and its future trajectory are
subjects of continuing congressional interest. In particular, Saudi leadership transitions, trends in global
oil prices, Saudi budget pressures and reform plans, aggressive transnational terrorist threats, assertive
Saudi foreign policies, and Saudi-Iranian tensions have fueled recent congressional discussions. U.S.-Saudi
security cooperation and U.S. concern for the continuing global availability of Saudi energy supplies continue to anchor official bilateral relations
as they have for decades. In this context, the Trump Administration’s efforts to reinvigorate U.S.-Saudi relations have drawn increased public
attention and have generated debate. Previously, the Obama Administration had differed with Saudi leaders over Iran, the Iranian nuclear
program, and conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Amid some continuing differences on these issues, bilateral ties have been defined since 2017 by arms sale
proposals, Yemen-related security cooperation, and shared concerns about Iran, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State organization (IS, aka
ISIL/ISIS or the Arabic acronym Da’esh). From
2012 through 2016, the Obama Administration notified Congress of
proposed Foreign Military Sales to Saudi Arabia with a potential value of more than $45 billion. President
Donald Trump and Saudi officials announced agreement on some of these sales and others during the
President’s May 2017 trip to the kingdom, as part of a package that may potentially be worth more than
$110 billion. This package of previously discussed and newly proposed defense sales is intended to
address Saudi needs for maritime and coastal security improvements, air force training and support,
cybersecurity and communications upgrades, missile and air defenses, and enhanced border security and
counterterrorism capabilities (see “Arms Sales, Security Assistance, and Training” below and Appendix B).
King Salman bin Abd al Aziz Al Saud (age 82) succeeded his late half-brother King Abdullah bin Abd al Aziz following the latter’s death in January 2015. King Salman later announced dramatic changes to succession arrangements
left in place by King Abdullah, surprising observers of the kingdom’s politics. King Salman first replaced his half-brother Crown Prince Muqrin bin Abd al Aziz with their nephew, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abd al Aziz, who
was then Interior Minister and counterterrorism chief. The king then named his own son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abd al Aziz, then 29, as Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister.
In June 2017, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was relieved of his positions and Prince Mohammed bin Salman (age 33) was elevated further to the position of Crown Prince, placing him in line to succeed his father (see Figure 1, Figure
2, and “Leadership and Succession” below). Both princes are members of the generation of grandsons of the kingdom’s late founder, King Abd al Aziz bin Abd al Rahman Al Saud (aka Ibn Saud). The succession changes and Crown
Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s efforts to assert his role as the shaper of the kingdom’s national security and economic policies have resulted in an apparent consolidation of authority under one individual and sub-branch of the
family that is unprecedented in the kingdom since its founding.
Shifts in Saudi foreign policy toward a more assertive posture—typified by the kingdom’s military operations in neighboring Yemen and a series of regional moves intended to counteract Iranian initiatives—have accompanied the
post-2015 leadership changes. Saudi leaders launched military operations in Yemen following the early 2015 ouster of Yemen’s transitional government by the Zaydi Shia Ansar Allah (aka Houthi) movement and backers of the late
former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh (see “Conflict in Yemen” below). A U.S.-facilitated, Saudi-led coalition air campaign has conducted strikes across the country since late March 2015, coupled with a joint Saudi and
Emirati ground campaign aimed at reversing Houthi gains and compelling them to negotiate with U.N.-recognized transition leaders.
Concerns about Yemeni civilian deaths in Saudi airstrikes, the operation’s contribution to grave humanitarian conditions, and gains by Al Qaeda and Islamic State supporters have led some Members of Congress and U.S. officials to
urge all parties to seek a prompt settlement. President Obama maintained U.S. logistical support for Saudi operations in Yemen but decided in 2016 to reduce U.S. personnel support and limit certain U.S. arms transfers. President
Trump has chosen to proceed with precision guided munition technology sales that the Obama Administration deferred. In September 2018, the Trump Administration certified conditions set by Congress on Saudi actions in Yemen
and renewed calls for a political solution. A U.S. State Department travel advisory issued in April 2018 warns that “rebel groups operating in Yemen have fired long-range missiles into Saudi Arabia, specifically targeting populated
areas and civilian infrastructure” and that “rebel forces in Yemen fire artillery at Saudi border towns and launch cross-border attacks against Saudi military personnel.” 1

U.S. support to the kingdom’s operations in Yemen and Saudi use of U.S.-origin weaponry has drawn
new attention to congressionally reviewed arms sales and questions of authorization. In the 114th Congress, some
Members scrutinized proposed sales of thousands of guided air-to-ground munitions and tanks to Saudi Arabia in the context of concerns about
the Saudi military’s conduct in Yemen (see Appendix D below).
In the 115th Congress, legislation has been enacted that prohibits the obligation or expenditure of U.S. funds for in-flight refueling operations of Saudi and Saudi-led coalition aircraft that are not conducting select types of operations
if certain certifications cannot be made and maintained (Section 1290 of the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 115-232, Appendix D). 2 The provision is subject to an Administration national security waiver.
A similar measure would place conditions on the transfer of any air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia (S.J.Res. 40), and, in June 2017, the Senate narrowly voted to reject a motion to further consider a joint resolution of
disapproval (S.J.Res. 42) on proposed sales of precision guided munitions to the kingdom. The House and Senate also have considered resolutions (H.Con.Res. 81 and S.J.Res. 54) that would direct the President to end U.S. military
support for Saudi operations in Yemen unless Congress specifically authorizes the continuation of such support.
Inside the kingdom, arrests of Islamic State (IS) supporters have continued since 2014, as Islamic State affiliates have claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks against Saudi security forces and members of the kingdom’s
Shia minority across the country (see “The Islamic State’s Campaign against the Kingdom” below). Saudi authorities report having disrupted planned IS attacks on government targets in 2017 and counted 34 terrorist attacks in 2016,
including an attempted IS-claimed suicide bombing against the U.S. Consulate General in Jeddah. Saudi leaders and their IS adversaries have reiterated their hostility toward each other since 2015, with Saudi leaders proposing new
transnational counterterrorism cooperation and IS leaders redeclaring war against the royal family, condemning official Saudi clerics, and urging attacks inside the kingdom (see “Terrorism Threats and Bilateral Cooperation”). The
current U.S. State Department travel advisory for Saudi Arabia warns that “terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks” and that “terrorists may attack with little or no warning.”
Since 2011, significant shifts in the political and economic landscape of the Middle East have focused international attention on Saudi domestic policy issues and reinvigorated social and political debates among Saudis (see “Domestic
Issues” below). These regional shifts, coupled with ongoing economic, social, and political changes in the kingdom, may make sensitive issues such as political reform, unemployment, education, human rights, corruption, religious
freedom, and extremism more prominent in U.S.-Saudi relations than in the past. U.S. policy initiatives have long sought to help Saudi leaders address economic and security challenges in ways consistent with U.S. interests. Recent
joint U.S.-Saudi diplomatic efforts to strengthen economic, educational, and interpersonal ties have focused on improving opportunities for the kingdom’s young population. Tens of thousands of Saudi students continue to pursue
higher education in the United States, although numbers have declined in response to Saudi government funding changes.
Some nongovernment observers have called for a reassessment of U.S.-Saudi relations amid the kingdom’s ongoing military campaign in Yemen. 3 They cite concern about human rights conditions in the kingdom, as well as
resurgent questions about the relationship between religious proselytization by some Saudis and the appeal of violent Islamist extremism. U.S. officials have called publicly for the kingdom to seek a negotiated settlement in Yemen,
allow peaceful expressions of dissent at home, and help fight extremism abroad. Any more strident official U.S. criticisms of the kingdom’s policies traditionally remain subjects of private diplomatic engagement rather than official
public discussion.
Saudi concerns about U.S. leadership and policies in the Middle East grew during the Administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in parallel to U.S. concerns about Saudi priorities and choices. In particular,
Saudi leaders at times signaled their displeasure with U.S. policy approaches to Egypt, Israel and the Palestinians, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Saudi officials also opposed the changes to U.S. sovereign immunity law that were made
by the 114th Congress through the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (S. 2040, P.L. 114-222, aka JASTA) and have sought their amendment or repeal.4
Saudi official public responses to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran were initially relatively neutral, emphasizing elements of an agreement with Iran that Saudi Arabia would support rather
than expressing Saudi endorsement of the JCPOA as negotiated and agreed. King Salman eventually endorsed the JCPOA during his September 2015 visit to Washington, DC, but later called for the agreement to be reexamined and
welcomed President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the agreement. Saudi officials have engaged in civil nuclear cooperation talks with the United States and other countries since 2017 (see “Potential U.S.-Saudi
Nuclear Cooperation”).

Policy differences and specific current disagreements notwithstanding, U.S. and Saudi officials have long
favored continuity over dramatic strategic shifts, despite some Saudis’ and Americans’ calls for
fundamental changes to the bilateral relationship. The Trump Administration, like its predecessors,
engages the Saudi government as a strategic partner to promote regional security and global economic
stability. The Saudi government appears to view the United States as an important security partner. At the
end of President Trump’s May 2017 visit, the U.S. and Saudi governments agreed to “a new Strategic
Partnership for the 21st Century in the interest of both countries by formally announcing a Joint Strategic
Vision.”5
With a new generation of Saudi leaders assuming prominent positions in the kingdom and chaotic conditions persisting in the Middle East region,
some change in U.S.-Saudi relations may prove inevitable. The Trump Administration has thus far partnered with King Salman and Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman on their domestic policy initiatives and their approaches to Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. The success or failure
of these initiatives may have considerable significance for the bilateral relationship and consequences
for international security for years to come.

Saudi will overreact and cut off the US

Beevor, 18 - Dr Eleanor Beevor is a Research Analyst on the Conflict, Security and
Development programme at IISS. She oversees the Institute’s research and analysis of conflict
and terrorism in Central and East Africa and the Horn of Africa. PhD in Anthropology at Oxford
(“Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Washington is Intimidated by Saudi Arabia” 9/25, Al-
Bawaba News, factiva)
True, it's not unreasonable for Pompeo to fear backlash from the Saudis. But it goes to show that Washington has become deeply afraid
of Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Prince Mohammed's relationships with his international allies are not "alliances" in the typical sense.
He does not want cooperation and trade as and when possible. He wants total deference to his wishes from world powers, on matters
both great and extremely small. Germany was the first to find out just how fragile the Prince's pride is. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said last November that
Germany could not tolerate the adventurism” that had grown in the Middle East. This was soon after the shock resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri,
which was apparently forced by Saudi Arabia. Prince Mohammed was reportedly deeply offended” and responded by recalling the Saudi Ambassador to Berlin (who
has still not returned) and severing masses of business ties with Germany.// Lest anyone think this was an isolated incident, Riyadh kicked off an extraordinary spat
with Canada last month over a pro-human rights tweet by the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland. Freeland urged Saudi Arabia to release detained
women’s rights activists. Her tweet – hardly unusual – would probably have passed unnoticed if it had been left alone. Instead, an epic tantrum followed. Saudi Arabia
recalled its ambassador, suspended all trade deals with Ottowa, pulled thousands of Saudi students and patients out of Canadian universities and hospitals and forced
them to come home, sold off all Canadian assets, and even seemingly threatened Canada with a 9/11 style attack. Yet Canada’s western allies, who would be expected
Spain tried to halt the sale of 400 laser guided bombs
to come to Ottowa’s defence, responded with a deafening silence. More recently,
to Saudi Arabia over concerns that they would be used in Yemen. But the decision was overturned after fears that the Saudis
would cancel a $1.8 billion deal to buy warships from Spain as well if the bomb sale was halted. This fear was probably
well founded. Riyadh no longer sees arms sales as just a transaction, but as a litmus test of whether a
country is with or against it.// The grim truth is that this international bullying seems to be working for the moment. Washington’s major foreign
policy decisions are now being swayed by fears of retaliation from Riyadh. Given current Saudi willingness to blow up otherwise
functional alliances over anything from arms sales to trivial swipes, it’s not surprising that the US is anticipating
backlash. No question there would be plenty if Washington suspended support to the coalition.

Arms sales are uniquely key

Knights ‘18 (Michael Knights is a Boston-based senior fellow of The Washington Institute, specializing in the military and security affairs
of Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states. (“U.S.-Saudi Security Cooperation (Part 1): Conditioning Arms Sales to Build Leverage” 11/5,
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/u.s.-saudi-security-cooperation-part-1-conditioning-arms-sales-to-build-lev)
The U.S.-Saudi strategic relationship is built on a simple premise: Washington provides physical security
for the Saudi state, while Riyadh serves as a cooperative counterterrorism partner and an apolitical, responsive
supplier to global energy markets. Arms sales are integral to this relationship: the task of maintaining
the large Saudi military binds Washington and Riyadh together, while the kingdom’s massive purchases of U.S. armaments and
related services strengthen the American defense industry and general economy. Traditionally, the relationship was also based on the expectation that the United
States would take the lead on foreign and security policies to protect Saudi Arabia. Under the Obama administration, however, this formula was replaced by a
partner-based approach that encouraged the kingdom to develop more forces capable of providing security on their own. Riyadh subseque ntly begun to take
unforeseen unilateral action on its self-perceived security interests, leading to crises such as the brutal war in Yemen, the isolation of Qatar, the abduction of
Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri, and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. These developments have heightened the sentiment within Congress
that U.S. security cooperation with Saudi Arabia should be reviewed—an attitude that will likely grow stronger after the November 6 midterm elections. The push
for such scrutiny will become particularly urgent if the parties involved in the Yemen war fail to establish the lasting ceasefire called for by Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last week.
Cutting off arms sales is perceived as a calculated insult and status denial
Spindel, 18 – Jennifer Spindel – PhD candidate at the time of writing this; currently an assistant
professor of international security at the University of Oklahoma and the associate director of the
Cyber Governance and Policy Center (Jennifer, A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE
FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, “BEYOND
MILITARY POWER: THE SYMBOLIC POLITICS OF CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS
TRANSFERS” May,
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/199011/Spindel_umn_0130E_19187.pdf?s
equence=1&isAllowed=y italics in original
weapons can be used as political signals. Arms can be part of a reciprocal agreement for some other good, or they can
There is, however, a sense that

be a means of gaining influence in the receiving state.59 As I show later, weapons are long-term investments and
providing (or denying) new technologies to a state is a central process in the development of status
hierarchies. Unlike iPads, new fighter jet models are not released every year. The transfer of high-tech weapons thus creates durable status hierarchies between and within groups of
states. Additionally, arms can send signals ranging from “gestures of political support,” to friendship and trust, to
signals of technological modernity.60 In sum, arms can do things, but there is no consensus about which arms or what things. There is also a startling lack of attention to the decision not to sell
withholding arms can be an act of great political import. Freedman is a rare exception, accurately observing that, “though only
arms, even though

refusing to sell arms is a major political

limited political benefits can normally be expected from agreeing to sell arms, since this is seen in commercial terms,

act. It appears as a calculated insult, reflecting on the stability, trust, and credit-worthiness, or technical competence
of the would-be recipient.”61 However, other researchers have not pursued this line of thinking, perhaps because the usual databases focus on the arms transfers that come to
fruition. Since withholding arms means a transfer does not appear in these databases, the act is usually ignored.62

they have existing stocks

Knights, 18 - Michael Knights is a Boston-based senior fellow of The Washington Institute,
specializing in the military and security affairs of Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states. (“U.S.-
Saudi Security Cooperation (Part 1): Conditioning Arms Sales to Build Leverage” 11/5,
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/u.s.-saudi-security-cooperation-part-1-
conditioning-arms-sales-to-build-lev
PRECISION-GUIDED MUNITIONS Sales of air-delivered precision-guided munitions (PGMs) are another lightning rod issue in the bilateral security relationship.
Following the 2009-2010 round of hostilities with the Houthis, the kingdom sought to refresh its stock of antipersonnel bombs with a large order of 1,300 U.S.-built
CBU-105 sensor-fused weapons (a higher-reliability submunition that manufacturers say does not qualify as a cluster bomb due to its low malfunction rate). Yet by
November 2015, eight months into the current war, the Saudis had used up nearly 2,600 PGMs, according to strike metrics compiled by The Washington Institute. In
response, the Saudis requested a $1.29 billion package comprising around 19,000 air-delivered PGMs, an order that began delivery in July 2017. In addition to that
package, the Senate narrowly approved a new $500 million commercial sale of PGMs to Riyadh in June 2017—the first installment in a mammoth $4.46 billion series
Riyadh may be accelerating its
of air-launched munition deals that would provide the Saudis with 104,000 U.S. PGMs in the next half decade.
purchases in anticipation of a prolonged war in Yemen and the potential loss of U.S. sales down the road.
According to Washington Institute data collected in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the kingdom’s forces have used around 14,500
munitions since March 2015, almost all PGMs, with the average rate gradually declining from 333 PGMs per
month in 2015 to 270 per month this year. The U.S. munitions currently arriving in Saudi Arabia were ordered in November 2015, when
Riyadh recognized it might need new PGMs by 2019, but the intervening years have seen few signs of a PGM shortfall. Based on a rough sense of prewar
stocks and a constant dribble of replacements, Riyadh could probably keep bombing at its current rate for
several years even if all new U.S. PGM deals were rejected. Thus, while cutting off such sales may be a
good way to signal U.S. displeasure or publicly distance Washington from the war, the data indicates that it would not
meaningfully slow the air campaign anytime soon.

We have like 50 troops and they aren’t key

Fraker 14 ― Ford Fraker, former president of the Middle East Policy Council, B.A. from
Harvard University, 2014. (“U.S. Commitments To The Gulf Arab States: Are They Adequate?”,
American Power & Interests, June 5th, 2014, Available Online at:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mepo.12067 Accessed 8-28-2018)
The other thing I would comment about is the nature of U.S. engagement in the region. Mark made a
comment about everyone measuring the U.S. commitment to the region over the last few years on the
basis of how many boots are on the ground. That's not traditionally the measure. The measure really is
how much behind-the-scenes, ongoing diplomatic engagement and involvement there is. John Kerry
made this point in Davos when he was being challenged about the United States retreating from
the region. He said: Don't measure it on the basis of boots on the ground. We're back to the
situation that preceded the invasion of Iraq, to an engagement that is a lot more diplomatic, a lot
more private, very much behind the scenes, which is traditionally how we've been engaged in the
Middle East. And our engagement at that level is as intense, if not more intense, these days than
ever before.

Cutting off arms sales is perceived as a calculated insult and status denial
Spindel, 18 – Jennifer Spindel – PhD candidate at the time of writing this; currently an assistant
professor of international security at the University of Oklahoma and the associate director of the
Cyber Governance and Policy Center (Jennifer, A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE
FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, “BEYOND
MILITARY POWER: THE SYMBOLIC POLITICS OF CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS
TRANSFERS” May,
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/199011/Spindel_umn_0130E_19187.pdf?s
equence=1&isAllowed=y italics in original
weapons can be used as political signals. Arms can be part of a reciprocal agreement for some other good, or they can
There is, however, a sense that

be a means of gaining influence in the receiving state.59 As I show later, weapons are long-term investments and
providing (or denying) new technologies to a state is a central process in the development of status
hierarchies. Unlike iPads, new fighter jet models are not released every year. The transfer of high-tech weapons thus creates durable status hierarchies between and within groups of
states. Additionally, arms can send signals ranging from “gestures of political support,” to friendship and trust, to
signals of technological modernity.60 In sum, arms can do things, but there is no consensus about which arms or what things. There is also a startling lack of attention to the decision not to sell
withholding arms can be an act of great political import. Freedman is a rare exception, accurately observing that, “though only
arms, even though

refusing to sell arms is a major political

limited political benefits can normally be expected from agreeing to sell arms, since this is seen in commercial terms,

act. It appears as a calculated insult, reflecting on the stability, trust, and credit-worthiness, or technical competence
of the would-be recipient.”61 However, other researchers have not pursued this line of thinking, perhaps because the usual databases focus on the arms transfers that come to
fruition. Since withholding arms means a transfer does not appear in these databases, the act is usually ignored.62

Weapons transfers are the most important political symbol of relations between
states
Spindel, 18 – Jennifer Spindel – PhD candidate at the time of writing this; currently an assistant
professor of international security at the University of Oklahoma and the associate director of the
Cyber Governance and Policy Center (Jennifer, A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE
FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, “BEYOND
MILITARY POWER: THE SYMBOLIC POLITICS OF CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS
TRANSFERS” May,
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/199011/Spindel_umn_0130E_19187.pdf?s
equence=1&isAllowed=y
 weapons
Weapons transfers are intimately linked to foreign policy and grand strategy because they reveal information about the political relationship between the sender and receiver. To actors in the international system,

are credible signals of alignment and intentions, even when the weapon does not affect the relative
balance of power. State leaders and policymakers have long observed that weapons transfers have effects beyond the military balance. Scholarly assessments of the consequences of arms transfers have not
incorporated this insight, and thus reaches contradictory conclusions: arms might increase the likelihood of conflict, or decrease it; arms might build alliance trust, or they might undermine it; or, they might have no independent effect

The signals sent by weapons

on state behavior whatsoever.54 I argue that weapons affect a state’s military power and send signals about the relationship between the sending and receiving state.

transfers help states differentiate between close friends, acquaintances, and opponents in a manner that is
clear and comprehensible in an otherwise noisy international system. These political signals have observable effects
on a state’s foreign policy behavior. Weapons are intimately linked to grand strategy and foreign policy because they create two types of power.55 Weapons most clearly provide material
power, enabling a state to more credibly make coercive threats or undertake forceful diplomatic actions because of increased capabilities. Weapons transfers are also signals of political ties, which creates a more diffuse, relational

Weapons transfers signal the extent and depth of states’ political alignments, and can even sort states
power.

in intra-group status hierarchies. Weapons transfers are bright lines against the noisy (and sticky) background
that is state’s broader political networks. They affect the shape of and tensions in the network. State leaders use the ties created by
weapons transfers as a convenient shortcut for understanding how states are related to one another, where the
center of power is located, and the relative power of one group of states compared to another. In focusing on the signals sent by weapons transfers, I show, for example, that some transfers facilitate cooperation, while other transfers

weapons transfers, more generally show the importance of the

incentivize prevention or aggression. These foreign policy outcomes, determined by the signal sent by

symbols and signals that make and unmake relations that constitute world politics.

Nationalism means prior resilience no longer holds

Hannah ‘19, - senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on U.S.
strategy. He served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security advisor from 2005 to
2009. During the first term of President George W. Bush (2001 to 2004), he was Vice President
Cheney’s deputy national security advisor for the Middle East. Hannah worked as a senior
advisor to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during the Bill Clinton administration, and as a
member of Secretary of State James Baker’s Policy Planning Staff during the presidency of
George H. W. Bush. Hannah has also served as deputy director and senior fellow at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and has practiced law, specializing in international
dispute resolution. (John, "Trump Should Salvage U.S.-Saudi Relations" Foreign Policy, 3-27-
19, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/27/trump-should-salvage-u-s-saudi-relations/) //AL
there’s a lot of ruin in U.S.-Saudi ties. The relationship has endured oil boycotts, the 9/11 attacks (15 of
It’s true that

and more than 70 years of constant clashing of cultures and values. The national
the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals),

interests that have bound Washington and Riyadh together through the decades, despite their deep differences, remain formidable.
But real changes are now afoot in the underlying dynamics of the relationship. They should at minimum give
pause to anyone who blithely assumes that there’s no amount of public derision that the United States could heap on the kingdom that might put
the broader U.S.-Saudi partnership at risk, and the Trump administration should take notice. One such change is the rapid rise of
Saudi nationalism—especially among the country’s large youth population. As part of his reform agenda for transforming the kingdom, Mohammed bin Salman has consciously
sought to build a new sense of identity among Saudis, grounded in nationalism rather than Wahhabism, the fundamentalist religious sect that served as an ideological gateway for terrorist groups
such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. While largely a positive development, the nationalist tide could have a double edge, as I learned on an Atlant ic Council trip to Riyadh in February. It was
striking how many researchers, activists, and government officials in Riyadh seemed defensive, resentful, and even angry when asked about the United States. “We’re getting sick and tired of
having our country reduced to its worst mistakes,” one woman said, referring to the Khashoggi tragedy. Another said, “Thanks to the crown prince, the lives of millions of women are being
positively transformed in ways that our mothers couldn’t even dream of. If the United States can’t appreciate the historical importance of what’s happening here, and chooses to focus only on our
the sense of hurt, of being
faults and trying to change our leadership, then you’re hurting our cause—and I’ll oppose you.” Whether justified or not,

misunderstood and unfairly attacked, even humiliated, appeared genuine. It’s not hard to see how that
kind of raw populist emotion, sufficiently stoked, could result in overreaction, miscalculation, and
counterproductive policies. At a minimum, it’s a new variable in the equation that U.S. policymakers, in both the administration and Congress, should be taking into
account as they calculate how best to pressure the kingdom to change its most problematic behaviors.
The political symbol of a weapons cutoff matters more than the weapon’s actual
utility – the plan severs relations
Spindel, 18 – Jennifer Spindel – PhD candidate at the time of writing this; currently an assistant
professor of international security at the University of Oklahoma and the associate director of the Cyber
Governance and Policy Center (Jennifer, A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, “BEYOND MILITARY POWER: THE
SYMBOLIC POLITICS OF CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS TRANSFERS”
May, https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/199011/Spindel_umn_0130E_19187.pdf?sequ
ence=1&isAllowed=y

weapons serve dual functions in international politics. They affect military capabilities but also send signals about political
This example shows that

relationships. I argue that weapons transfers are credible signals of political relationships, and that these
signals matter because they affect the foreign policy behavior of states. Weapons transfers are an
essential tool for producing, sustaining, and severing political ties, even when the weapon does
not affect the relative balance of power. These signals sent through weapons transfers help explain why war does or does not occur, why states pursue
cooperative or belligerent foreign policies at various times, and are tools for establishing hierarchies within alliances
Russia
Russian arms sales and their defense industry are low now
Stratfor ‘19 ( American geopolitical intelligence platform and publisher founded in 1996 in
Austin, Texas, by George Friedman, who was the company's chairman. Chip Harmon was
appointed president in February 2018. Fred Burton is Stratfor's chief security officer (“Russia's
Defense Industry Finds Itself in a Tailspin,” Strafor Worldview, 4-29-19,
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/russias-defense-industry-finds-itself-tailspin)
Russia's defense industry is face to face with a major foe, but it's not a foreign military power. The Kremlin
has been striving to modernize all branches of the Russian military, but the country's defense
industry is struggling thanks to decreasing volumes of orders, difficulties in attracting high-skilled
talent and limits to its technological capabilities. According to recent figures, the performance of Russia's
aerospace sector is declining precipitously. In 2018, for instance, Russian aircraft and spacecraft makers produced 13.5
percent less than in 2017. And there's been no letup in 2019 either: In the first two months of the year, aerospace output
plummeted 48 percent year on year. The decline in Russia's defense output raises concerns about the
competitive strength of Russia's defense industry in general, whose health is critical if the
country is to project itself as a military power in the longer term. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov attributed
the reduction in output to a slowdown of orders for military systems, but projections suggest the slowdown is not just a short-
term fluctuation; in fact, it's expected to become even worse in the future. The downturn in oil prices has
taken a bite out of Russia's bottom line, squeezing spending for the military — all at a time when the
country's arms manufacturers have lost their competitive edge in the global arms market. Together, these factors ensure that Russia's
defense industry will struggle to get out of its funk. Suffering From a Dearth of Funds This dire picture stands in stark
contrast to Russia's frequent presentation of sensational new platforms. In reality, however, just a few of the big-ticket weapon systems — such as
the T-14 main battle tank or the Su-57 fighter aircraft — find buyers, as the rest remain mere prototypes. Russia has prioritized some hardware,
such as the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, due to their strategic relevance to the country's overall military posture, but Moscow has
failed to fully develop other programs or only introduced them on a limited scale. Under
pressure from a limited government budget, the
Kremlin even started reducing its military spending in 2017 — a strong indicator that, despite the modernization push,
Russia's financial challenges are taking a toll on the country ambitions. Economically, the plunge in oil prices at the end of 2014 hurt Russia's
bottom line, depriving the country of essential revenue and forcing it to dip into its reserves to bridge the gap. Today, more than four years on,
Russian oil revenues are rising, yet the country is continuing to deal with the consequences of the lean years. Beyond that, low revenues from
taxes, which have forced Russia to raise taxes and the retirement age, and Western sanctions over Moscow's activities in Ukraine and elsewhere,
have shrunk the financial pool available to military planners. Low oil prices, declining revenues from taxes and Western sanctions have taken a
chunk out of the financial pool available to Russia's military and the broader defense industry. But the Kremlin's problems don't end there. In
the past, Russia has benefited from its position as a major global arms exporter to fuel further
military development. During the 1990s, for example, such sales were critical to the country as it
faced severe economic hardship. While Russia remains the world's second-largest arms exporter
(only the United States sells more), the actual value of those exports has been decreasing
significantly. Between 2014 and 2018, their total value dropped by as much as 17 percent. Again,
budgetary limits are somewhat to blame: In the past, Russia frequently used arms exports as a political
tool, offering weapons at a heavy discount, if not entirely free. But with Russia no longer able to offer
customers a good deal on its fighter jets and other defense products, the country is losing business.

They say that saudi arabia won’t get arms from russia but we say:
Saudi Arabia buys from Russia in scenario of a cut of US arms sales – connections
already in place
Turak ’18 (Natasha, correspondent for CNBC, “Threats of US sanctions could accelerate a Saudi shift
eastward”, October 23, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/threats-of-us-sanctions-could-
accelerate-a-saudi-shift-eastward.html)
As the fallout over the killing of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi continues, age-old alliances are being tested. In contradiction
to President Donald Trump, who has voiced opposition to any interference in U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, members of Congress are
openly calling for sanctions on America’s number one arms customer. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday announced a hold on arms
sales to the kingdom for the time being, a move lauded by many in the international community. But some now fear that
severing arms
sales to the Saudis will simply push them to turn eastward. “If the U.S. and West in general move toward some
meaningful sanctions of Saudi Arabia, we would be joking to imagine that the Saudis would just sit down and accept it,” Ayham Kamel, head of
Eurasia Group’s Middle East and North Africa practice, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday. “ The
Saudis I think will begin
to tilt — they were already doing that beforehand — they’ll be doing more business with China and
Russia. I doubt Mr. Putin would’ve given the Saudis much trouble with this crisis as Mr. Trump has.”
Saudi Arabia has already been increasing business with the Russians and the Chinese. In June, Vladimir Putin
hosted Saudi Crown Prince at the Kremlin, where the two agreed to “expand cooperation in oil and gas
matters” after working together on output deals to stabilize markets amid fluctuating global crude prices.
And October of last year saw the first-ever visit of a Saudi monarch — King Salman — to Russia, during
which a $1 billion joint investment fund was created and 15 cooperation agreements were signed in the
areas of technology, defense and agriculture, including Moscow’s readiness to sell Riyadh its S-400 missile
defense system.

Saudis shift to Russian bombs – more dangerous.

Goldenberg and Thomas, MAs, 18(Ilan, Senior Fellow @ CNAS, International Affairs @ Columbia, Kaleigh, Conflict
Resolution @ University South Carolina, 12-5, “Give Saudi Arabia a Take It or Leave It Deal,” National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/give-saudi-arabia-take-it-or-leave-it-deal-37902)
Walking away from supporting the Saudi-led war in Yemen and ending U.S. mid-air refueling might give
Washington the moral high ground, but it will do little to stop the killing. The Saudis view the threat in Yemen as
crucial to their interests, so U.S. pressure to end the war altogether will fall short of causing real change. To the Saudis, the threat of
Iran establishing a foothold on their southern border is much more vital to their interests than procuring
U.S. weapons. Rather than walk away from Yemen, they will buy Russian bombs or use less
sophisticated weapons and tactics that will kill even more civilians. Americans will have washed our hands of a morally
unacceptable situation, but civilian deaths and the threat of famine will actually get worse, and the world will look on
and do nothing.

Expanded Russian influence causes miscalc and leads to nuclear war.

Gray 17 – PhD, professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of
Reading, where he is the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies (Colin, “Russian strategy
Expansion, crisis and conflict,” Foreword, in Comparative Strategy, 36.1)//BB, sex edited
Short of war itself, the international political and strategic relations between Russia and the United
States are about as bad as they can be. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the simultaneous conduct of
two air independent campaigns over Syria could evolve all too suddenly into a war triggered by accident or by
miscalculation. There is little, if any, mystery about the broad political purpose fueling Vladimir
Putin’s conduct of international relations. Subtlety is not a characteristic of Russian statecraft; cunning and intended trickery, though, are
another matter. Stated directly, Putin is striving to recover and restore that of which he is able from the late USSR. There
is no ideological theme in his governance. Instead, there is an historically unremarkable striving after more power
and influence. The challenge for the Western World, as demonstrated in this National Institute study in meticulous and troubling detail, is
to decide where and when this latest episode in Russian expansionism will be stopped. What we do know, for certain, is that it must
and will be halted. It is more likely than not that Putin himself does not have entirely fixed political-strategic objectives. His behavior of
recent years has given a credible impression of opportunistic adaptability. In other words, he will take what he is able, where he
can, and when he can. However, there is ample evidence to support this study’s proposition that Russian
state policy today is driven by a clear vision of Russia as a recovering and somewhat restored superpower, very much on
the high road back to a renewed hegemony over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Putin’s international political
objectives appear largely open today: he will have Russia take whatever turns out to be available
to take, preferably if the taking allows for some humiliation of the principal enemy, the United States. A
practical political and strategic problem for Putin is to guess just how far he dares to push NATO in general and the United States in particular,
before he finds himself, almost certainly unexpectedly, in a situation analogous to 1939. Just how dangerous would it be for Russia to press
forcefully the Baltic members of NATO? Vladimir Putin
would not be the first statesman [person] to trust his luck
once too often, based upon unrealistic confidence in his own political genius and power. There is
danger not only that Putin could miscalculate the military worth of Russia’s hand, but that he also will
misunderstand the practical political and strategic strength of NATO ‘red lines.’ In particular, Putin may well discover, despite some current
Putin’s military
appearances, that not all of NATO’s political leaders are expediently impressionable and very readily deterrable.
instrument is heavily dependent, indeed probably over-dependent, upon the bolstering value of a whole inventory of
nuclear weapons. It is unlikely to have evaded Putin’s strategic grasp to recognize that these are not simply weapons like any others. A
single political or strategic guess in error could well place us, Russians included, in a world horrifically new
to all. This National Institute study, Russian Strategy: Expansion, Crisis and Conflict, makes unmistakably clear Putin’s elevation of strategic
intimidation to be the leading element in Russian grand strategy today. Putin is behaving in militarily dangerous ways and ‘talking the talk’ that
goes with such rough behavior. Obviously, he is calculating, perhaps just hoping, that American lawyers in the White House will continue to
place highest priority on avoiding direct confrontation with Russia. This study presents an abundantly clear record of the Russian lack of regard
for international law, which they violate with apparent impunity and without ill consequence to themselves, including virtually every arms control
treaty and agreement they have entered into with the United States since 1972 (SALT I). The
challenge for the United States
today and tomorrow is the need urgently to decide what can and must be done to stop Putin’s campaign in its tracks
before it wreaks lethal damage to the vital concept and physical structure of international order
in much of the world, and particularly in Europe.
Case
Even if they win that houthis can consolidate control post aff, we’ll turn that – houthis
are incompennt and brutal causing even more structural violence
Aaron Kliegman 4-17-19 -- news editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the
Free Beacon, Aaron worked as a research associate at the Center for Security Policy, a national
security think tank, and as the deputy field director on Micah Edmond's campaign for U.S.
Congress. (“The Folly of Abandoning Saudi Arabia in Yemen”
https://freebeacon.com/blog/folly-abandoning-saudi-arabia-yemen/) mba-alb
Members of Congress should absolutely want to end the humanitarian suffering in Yemen. Indeed, the United States should continue to
support the United Nations' efforts to end the conflict. Butabandoning Saudi Arabia would only perpetuate the violence. Too often lost in discussions about
Yemen is the fact that the Houthis's brutal and incompetent governance has worsened the humanitarian disaster.

They have failed to repair sanitation services, worsening Yemen's cholera epidemic, and have
confiscated food and medical aid from civilians to support their fighters. The Houthis have also used
child soldiers to field more fighters. The Saudis have certainly waged a clumsy and incompetent war, but too many critics are blinded by their
hate of Riyadh to see the Houthis for the monsters that they are. And that does not include their anti-
American, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic ideology, which is all too evident in their slogan: "Death to
America, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam!" Perhaps self-righteous journalists and politicians can find some time to criticize the
Houthis, not just the Saudis. In sum, the United States cannot lose sight of the key strategic objective in Yemen: to prevent the creation of a southern

Hezbollah, which would enhance Iran's nefarious influence in the Middle East and only perpetuate
violence and suffering. That means continuing American support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, as hard a pill as that may be to swallow.

Plan results in a scorched earth policy – they’ll exact revenge

Mohammed Khalid Alyahya 12-10-18 -- Saudi Arabian political analyst, commentator and
senior fellow at the Gulf Research Center, an independent research institute with offices in the
United Kingdom, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. (“What’s at stake in Yemen affects us all”
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/420375-whats-at-stake-in-yemen-affects-us-all) mba-alb
The U.S. Senate is poised to debate a resolution that would force the end to United States support for the Yemen war, and numerous senators have asserted that such a measure could help bring an end to the conflict. With the White
House strongly opposed to this effort, it is far from clear that Congress will end up enacting any Yemen-related legislation. However, no matter what transpires in the final legislative end game, it is worth examining both the premise
of congressional actions and the likely strategic consequences. Unfortunately, calls to “stop the Yemen war,” though morally satisfying, are fundamentally misguided. They ignore what is at stake in the Yemen conflict and the true
identity of the warring parties. A precipitous disengagement by the Saudi-led coalition from militarily backing the UN-backed government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the Yemeni civil war would have calamitous consequences
for Yemen, the Middle East and the world at large. The urgency to end the war reduces that conflict, and its drivers, to a morality play, with the coalition of Arab states cast as the bloodthirsty villain killing and starving Yemeni

The assumption seems to be that if the coalition’s military operations are brought to a halt, all will be
civilians.

well in Yemen. Everybody seems to have forgotten that the conflict was triggered in late 2014 when the Houthis, backed by Iran, toppled the Yemeni government and took over large areas of the country, including
strategic positions on the Red Sea. In seizing power, the Houthis inflicted massive civilian casualties and crippling damage to Yemen’s rudimentary infrastructure. Presented with a strategic threat at its doorstep, posed by an Iranian
proxy and a humanitarian crisis, Saudi Arabia, responding to a request by Yemen’s legitimate government and backed by U.N. Resolution 2216, militarily intervened in the Yemen conflict seeking to restore Yemen’s legitimate
government. As has been the case with the Afghan and Iraq wars, prosecuted by U.S.-led coalitions, the counterinsurgency campaign in Yemen has been a difficult enterprise. Because the Houthis have been fighting in a way that
deliberately places civilians at risk, Yemen has experienced dire security and humanitarian circumstances. To curtail the influx of Iranian arms, the Saudi-led coalition periodically has restricted access to the port of Hodeidah, one of
six main ports in Yemen, and a vital transit area for both humanitarian supplies and Iranian weapons transfers. The Houthis have exploited both of these for their war efforts and to consolidate their tactical gains on the ground, and so,

abandoning the coalition efforts would leave Yemen in the rebels’ hands. We have seen this in Syria. Over the past several years, U.S. policymakers have called
for “de-escalating” the Syrian war. On paper, the policy sounded prudent and moral. In practice, however,
as the United States froze its assistance to the Syrian opposition, Russia, Iran and the regime of Bashar al-
Assad took advantage of the de-escalation process. Towns and villages were besieged and forced to
surrender to Assad. In many of those towns, the government exacted revenge by arresting or killing people. It also forcibly conscripted
civilians into the army or loyalist militias. Even as the U.S. administration lauded “de-escalation” in its rhetoric, Syria and its Russian and Iranian patrons simply consolidated their position and continued their military campaign. A

similar scenario will unfold in Yemen if the Saudi-led coalition were to cease operations. Iran’s long arm,
the Houthis, would march on coalition-liberated areas and exact a bloody toll on the populations of
cities such as Aden and Marib with the same ruthlessness to which they subjected Sanaa and Taiz
during the past three years. The rebels have ruled Sanaa, kidnapping, executing, disappearing,
systematically torturing, and assassinating detractors. In Taiz, they fire mortars indiscriminately at the
civilian population and snipers shoot at children to force residents into submission.
Framing
Ethical policymaking requires calculation of consequences
Gvosdev 5 – Rhodes scholar, PhD from St. Antony’s College, executive editor of The National Interest (Nikolas, The Value(s) of Realism, SAIS Review 25.1,
pmuse, AG)
the morality of a foreign policy action is
As the name implies, realists focus on promoting policies that are achievable and sustainable. In turn,

judged by its results, not by the intentions of its framers. A foreign policymaker must weigh the
consequences of any course of action and assess the resources at hand to carry out the proposed task. As Lippmann
warned, Without the controlling principle that the nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means and its means
equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources and its resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible to think at all about foreign affairs.8
Commenting on this maxim, Owen Harries, founding editor of The National Interest, noted, "This is a truth of which Americans—more apt to focus on ends rather
than means when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world—need always to be reminded."9 In fact, Morgenthau noted that "there can be no political morality
without prudence."10 This virtue of prudence—which Morgenthau identified as the cornerstone of realism—should not be confused with expediency. Rather, it
it is more moral to fulfill one's commitments than to make "empty" promises, and to seek solutions that
takes as its starting point that

minimize harm and produce sustainable results. Morgenthau concluded: [End Page 18] Political realism does not require, nor does
it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible, between what is
desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances of time and place .11 This is why,
prior to the outbreak of fighting in the former Yugoslavia, U.S. and European realists urged that Bosnia be decentralized and partitioned into ethnically based
cantons as a way to head off a destructive civil war. Realists felt this would be the best course of action, especially after the country's first free and fair elections had
brought nationalist candidates to power at the expense of those calling for inter-ethnic cooperation. They had concluded—correctly, as it turned out—that the
United States and Western Europe would be unwilling to invest the blood and treasure that would be required to craft a unitary Bosnian state and give it the
wherewithal to function. Indeed, at a diplomatic conference in Lisbon in March 1992, the various factions in Bosnia had, reluctantly, endorsed the broad outlines of
such a settlement. For the purveyors of moralpolitik, this was unacceptable. After all, for this plan to work, populations on the "wrong side" of the line would have
to be transferred and resettled. Such a plan struck directly at the heart of the concept of multi-ethnicity—that different ethnic and religious groups could find a
common political identity and work in common institutions. When the United States signaled it would not accept such a settlement, the fragile consensus collapsed.
The United States, of course, cannot be held responsible for the war; this lies squarely on the shoulders of Bosnia's political leaders. Yet Washington fell victim to
the belief that "high-flown words matter more than rational
what Jonathan Clarke called "faux Wilsonianism,"

calculation" in formulating effective policy, which led U.S. policymakers to dispense with the equation of
"balancing commitments and resources."12 Indeed, as he notes, the Clinton administration had criticized peace
plans calling for decentralized partition in Bosnia "with lofty rhetoric without proposing a practical
alternative." The subsequent war led to the deaths of tens of thousands and left more than a million people homeless.
After three years of war, the Dayton Accords—hailed as a triumph of American diplomacy—created a complicated arrangement by which the federal union of two
ethnic units, the Muslim-Croat Federation, was itself federated to a Bosnian Serb republic. Today, Bosnia requires thousands of foreign troops to patrol its internal
borders and billions of dollars in foreign aid to keep its government and economy functioning. Was the aim of U.S. policymakers, academics and journalists—
creating a multi-ethnic democracy in Bosnia—not worth pursuing? No, not at all, and this is not what the argument suggests. But aspirations were not matched with
As a result of holding out for the "most moral" outcome and encouraging the Muslim-led government in
capabilities.

Sarajevo to pursue maximalist aims rather than finding a workable compromise that could have avoided

bloodshed and produced more stable conditions, the peoples of Bosnia suffered greatly. In the end, the final settlement
was very close [End Page 19] to the one that realists had initially proposed—and the one that had also been roundly condemned
on moral grounds.

Don’t Dismiss Neg Ev — sweeping ad hominem attacks don’t disprove our arguments.
Sammut 16 — Jeremy Sammut, Senior Research Fellow and the Director of the Culture,
Prosperity ,and Civil Society Program at The Centre for Independent Studies—an Australian
think tank, holds a Ph.D. in Australian Political and Social History from Monash University,
2016 (“The Role of Think Tanks: A Reply to the Critics,” Centre for Independent Studies
Occasional Paper #145, June, Available Online at
https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2016/06/op145.pdf, Accessed 06-28-2019, p. 9)
Play by the rules, not the man
With negligible access to the traditional channels of political and, indeed, cultural influence, think tanks
can attain influence only by providing credible answers to the complex questions policymakers grapple
with. Credibility is the only political asset a think tank can acquire, and credibility is achieved by work
that is based on sound research.
Think tank research is basically applied scholarship. This means that scholarly methods are used to
accurately describe policy problems and suggest workable solutions. Findings and recommendations are
also expressed in clear and direct language shorn of the jargon that mars academic writing, so the points
made are effectively communicated and can be understood by the media, politicians and the general
public. Any political impact achieved by dint of empirical graft among the academic journals, official
statistics, and the assorted ephemera of public policy is not an example of ‘influence’ in the tainted
pejorative sense. Rather, it is the product of rational analysis that has offered policymakers rigorous,
evidence-based, and comprehensible guidance as they seek to plot a course between alternative
approaches and amid competing priorities.
Yes, think tanks are values-based organisations, and their research emits ideological convictions. (So too,
of course, does academic research that doubles as left-wing advocacy.) But in seeking the support of
fellow citizens and policymakers for those convictions, an effective think tank does not ask people to join
a cult or take a leap of faith. Instead, they invite readers to acknowledge the logic of the ideas
presented, and be convinced by the quality of the research and the facts and arguments adduced in
support of the position set out. Critics who tar all think tanks on the centre-right as propagandist fronts
and money launderers are particularly unfair to think tanks [end page 9] with high research standards.
As a think tanker who works at one of the organisations singled out by critics like Menadue and
Ackland, I personally resent the implications. These accusations dismiss without mention the blood,
sweat, toil and tears of reading, thinking, and writing that goes into the production of think tank
research.8 Ignored as well is the fact that not only does the best think tank research comply with the rules
of scholarship, it also thereby encourages scholarly scrutiny, criticism and fair-minded debate. Some
critics, unfortunately, do not return the courtesy. Regardless of whether you line up on the left or
right of the political spectrum, it is intellectually lazy to simply point the finger of ‘special interest’ at
think tanks whose work is disliked or disagreed with. Casting aspersions on the motives of opponents and
alleging bad faith is a poor substitute for doing the hard work of refuting a think tank’s ideas by
cogently marshalling the relevant evidence.
In assessing the role of centre-right think tanks, critics would make a more considered and substantial
contribution to the quality of public debate if they also played by the rules of scholarship, and did not
indulge in ad hominem abuse. If this were to happen, we would have underway in this country, a
debate about the work and worth of think tanks that