Credibility Advantage

! O/v
Un-credible commitment causes Russian probing to hollow out eastern NATO – that
causes military incidents – political pressure causes US response – and emerging tech
results in escalation via use or lose fears – new simulation proves

Aff solves – removes Russian probing incentive

Group the no war stuff

 A2: No US Draw-In---1AR
US gets drawn-in – Baltics will force us to get involved

US gets drawn in---they’ll escalate quickly in response to small Russian aggression

O’Hanlon 19 [Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow, and director of research, in Foreign Policy at the
Brookings Institution. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia and Georgetown universities, a
professional lecturer at George Washington University, and a member of the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, “The Senkaku Paradox”, Chapter 1: Introduction Expanding the Competitive Space,
2019, http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.7864/j.ctv3znzxb.7] IanM

Why are such scenarios worth worrying about? I do not mean to suggest they are necessarily imminent.
But they are far from inconceivable. China or Russia could have many motives to consider such risky
action. They might simply want to flex their muscles to boost national pride and assert prerogatives.
They may hope to weaken American global leadership together with U.S.-led alliance systems, and
thereby enhance their own regional dominance near their respective borders. Even if they did not seek
to overturn the existing order or threaten existentially a key American ally or interest, Washington could
not be sure. It would have to worry about a worst-case scenario. Because the American proclivity
toward activism and assertiveness in national security policy has become deeply ingrained in the
nation’s foreign affairs DNA since World War II, there would be a substantial chance of a very strong
—possibly even excessive—U.S. response. A major war could develop out of an
initially very small-scale aggression .
 War Now---1AR
Lanoszka card they read is SO BAD – the contradiction it talks about is wrong –
enlarging NATO provokes Russia bc they think we COULD use the Baltics to attack BUT
it still weakens the alliance BECAUSE we have the expectation to defend the Baltics
against Russian probing which is literally the fucking aff!

Transition period gives Putin a window of opportunity to strike---COVID, bad

economy, racial divide, and climate disasters mean Putin doesn’t think US can respond
magnified by Trump blocking Biden transition and institutional uncertainty

Any Biden solves arg bolsters this because if Putin thinks Biden will defend---then the
best time to attack is while Trump is still in office – that’s Pazzanese 10/28

He’ll strike Narva---it’s dominated by Russians that want to be used for hybrid war,
can be invaded in hours, and he can cyber-attack first making any response impossible
– that’s DeBatto 20
 Deterrence Top---Conflict Inev---1AR
Baltic conflict inevitable---fear of invasion, socio-cultural links, and credibility crisis
lock it in

**It’s imminent---US distraction from COVID and transition period give Putin a golden
window to strike – that’s Pazzaneese

no specific defense to narva means its game over---deterrence fails because it’s
dominated by ethnic Russians and Putin can invade in hours – makes hybrid tactics
unbeatable

Putin wants to strike before Trump leaves office

Goble 7-22 [Paul Goble is an American analyst, writer and columnist with expertise on Russia, Eurasia,
public diplomacy and international broadcasting, “Russia expert: Putin wants to make Baltic states
Russian protectorates”, 7-22-2020, https://estonianworld.com/security/russia-expert-putin-wants-to-
make-baltic-states-russian-protectorates/] IanM

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin , wants Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to become Russian protectorates; and
now that he has won the right to stay in power for decades, he is no longer constrained and will take
dangerous risks to achieve that, Vladimir Yushkin , the head of Tallinn’s Baltic Centre for Russian Studies ,
says.

From the Kremlin leader’s perspective, the British protectorate over Eastern Europe has become the American protectorate; but the
presence of ethnic Russian compatriots and Russian citizens means he “will insist that this protectorate be joint”
and that Moscow has the right to engage in “humanitarian intervention”.

According to the Tallinn scholar, Putin’s strategy rests on the assumption that those around US president Donald Trump are
not prepared to challenge Putin on this and that the US won’t, in the words of the former House Speaker, Newt
Gingrich, has no interest in fighting a war in Putin’s backyard.

Given this is what Putin believes , whatever the facts are, he is going to try to achieve his goal and the
possibility that Trump may not be reelected may mean he will take action sooner rather than later lest
what he views as a window of opportunity begin to close , Yushkin concludes.

These conclusions flow from his analysis of Putin’s recent article on the runup to World War II, an article almost universally
acknowledged to be not about the past but rather about the present and future and the ways in which the Kremlin leader views the world in
general spatially and temporally and Eastern Europe and the Baltics in particular.

Putin thinks he’s in charge for the entire former USSR

At one level, Putin’s

arguments were little more than a warmed-over version of Soviet propaganda from the last years of Stalin’s rule,
Yushkin says; but at another more fundamental and disturbing one, they reflect
his understanding of the nature of
geopolitical space around Moscow.
For Putin, that space consists of three overlapping sets of coordinates: the borders of the USSR, the borders of the
Russian world and the borders of the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, lines that have the effect
of dividing Putin’s focus on what he conceives of as the divided ethnic Russian people.

Putin sees and the Russian constitution as amended defines the Russian Federation as the legal
successor to the USSR . The Kremlin leader takes this to mean that it is in charge of the space that was recognised
as legitimately Moscow’s by the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, even though the US took an exception about the status of the occupied Baltic
countries.

Putin’s second coordinates are the borders of what he calls “the Russian world”. Since 2014, he has viewed himself as “the
guarantor of the security” of that world and made this notion “the ideology of post-Soviet revenge” and of Russia once again being
“the ingatherer of a world divided by artificial borders”. Since 2009, he has had the right to use force to do that.

And the third set of coordinates for Putin are the borders of the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church. That includes 16 countries
– Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Japan.

When one reads Putin’s article, one can see that he feels “comfortable in the past when borders were redrawn and continents
divided up” by the great powers involved in a great game. He signalled that in particular by quoting Marshal Foche’s observation at Versaille
that “this is not a peace: this is a 20-year amnesty”.

Putin feels he had a right to take something back

For Putin, “the victory in the cold war and the disintegration of the USSR also are not a peace but only an armistice”, Yushkin says. As a Chekist,
Putin cannot view August 1991 “as the victory of the people of Russia over an occupying communist regime. He was part of this region. Thus,
psychologically for him, the collapse of the USSR was a defeat.”

Moreover, “Russia also was humiliated” just like Germany and just like Hitler, Putin feels he had the complete right to take
something back , in his case, Ukraine’s Crimea. But he isn’t limiting himself to that: he believes the non-
Russian countries took Russian lands and haven’t given it back and Russia must have a voice in all of their
actions as well.

At the same time, Putin knows perfectly well that “integrationprojects initiated by Russia on the post-Soviet space are met
by the newly independent states with concealed or open expressions of fears about the loss of their
sovereignty”, that most want to cooperate with others like China and that Moscow’s moves in South Ossetia, Abkhazia
and Crimea frighten them.

“Putin also understands,” Yushkin says, “that

the disintegration of the USSR is still not completed.” Unless its
component states come together, the largest one will fall apart; but he has no attractive idea to bring
them together. Consequently, he will use force or the threat of force to get his way.

For most of the region, this will involve threats to take parts of the territory of these countries unless they
cooperate. For the three Baltic countries, it may involve that, but it will also involve, the Tallinn-based analyst says, demands and soon that the
three accept becoming protectorates of the Kremlin.

There’s a high risk of war---Kaliningrad

---he’s militarizing now, which indicates preparation for attack

---he wants to attack before the new admin comes in

---even if he doesn’t invade, it makes miscalc inevitable since US is responding by also building up which
causes accidents
Peterson 12-7 [Nolan Peterson, a conflict journalist and a former U.S. Air Force special operations
pilot and a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “CONTINUING MILITARY BUILDUP, RUSSIA TO
FIELD NEW INFANTRY DIVISION ON NATO’S DOORSTEP,” https://coffeeordie.com/russia-nato-military-
buildup/, y2k]

Moscow will field a new motorized infantry division in its Kaliningrad exclave — across the border
from Poland, where some 5,500 US soldiers are stationed — underscoring the latest disruption in
Eastern Europe’s precarious military equilibrium since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

The commander of Russia’s Baltic Fleet announced on Monday that a new motorized infantry division
will be formed in the Kaliningrad region in 2021 . This new division — comprising infantry, artillery, and
tank regiments — will be part of the 11th Army Corps of the Baltic Fleet’s coastal defense and ground
forces stationed in Kaliningrad. A pocket of territory nestled between the NATO countries of Lithuania
and Poland on the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad is home to Russia’s Baltic Fleet and two air bases.

“Kaliningrad is already one of the most highly militarized regions in Europe , and this decision is part of
Russia’s continued military buildup in NATO’s neighborhood, including in the Baltic and Black Seas, and
in the Mediterranean,” a NATO official told Coffee or Die Magazine. “Six NATO countries border the
Baltic Sea, so what happens in the region is of strategic importance to the alliance. We continue to
monitor the situation closely.”
A top Russian military official said the decision to augment Russia’s military footprint in Kaliningrad was due to a buildup in NATO forces in the Baltic region.

“In response to this threat, the [Russian] Armed Forces’ command has to take measures in response. As one of such measures, a full-strength motorized infantry division will be formed to make part of the Baltic Fleet’s army corps. The new formation will comprise motor rifle and artillery regiments and a separate tank regiment,” Adm. Alexander Nosatov, Russia’s Baltic Fleet
commander, said in an interview with the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the Russian news site TASS reported on Monday.

As part of a plan to draw down American forces in Germany, the US agreed over the summer to add an additional 1,000 troops to the 4,500 already deployed to Poland on a rotational basis.

In 2014, Moscow invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequently launched a proxy war in eastern Ukraine. In the intervening years, Russia has ratcheted up military provocations against NATO forces across Eastern Europe. Russian warplanes have made provocative flybys of NATO ships and aircraft. And Moscow has incrementally deployed new military
hardware to its Kaliningrad exclave — including Iskander short-range, nuclear-capable missiles.

At the July 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, alliance leaders announced the rotational deployment of four 1,000-troop-strong combat battalions — known as Enhanced Forward Presence multinational battle groups — to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The move was meant to deter Russian aggression against a NATO member — whether by accident or design, such a
possibility could lead to war.

The four NATO battle groups deployed to the Baltics are fielded by Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. NATO describes the units as “robust, multinational, rotational, combat-ready forces demonstrating the strength of the Alliance, and making clear that an attack on one Ally will be considered an attack on all.”

The US-led NATO battle group stationed in Orzysz, Poland, includes 857 soldiers in an armored cavalry squadron, according to the Congressional Research Service.

NATO also fields a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. Comprising about 6,000 troops and based in Poland, the unit is tasked to “respond to emerging security challenges posed by Russia,” according to a statement on the alliance’s website.

“Claims that NATO poses a threat to any nation are false,” the NATO official told Coffee or Die Magazine. “In response to Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, NATO deployed multinational battle groups to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, and stepped up our presence in the Baltic and Black Sea regions. Everything we do is strictly defensive, proportionate, and designed to
prevent conflict and preserve peace.”

Polish citizens greet the soldiers of Battle Group Poland as the convoy of tactical vehicles crosses the border from the Czech Republic into Poland March 26, 2017. The contingency of US, United Kingdom, and Romanian soldiers convoyed to Orzysz, Poland, where they will integrate with the Polish 15th Mechanized Brigade, 16th Infantry Division. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Patricia
Deal/US Army, courtesy of DVIDS.

Some military experts say Russia’s new infantry division in Kaliningrad is part of Moscow’s larger gambit to establish military dominance over NATO forces in the Baltics.

“This new formation appears to comport with Moscow’s apparent posture to expand its force structure in the expectation of a NATO threat of regional and/or large-scale war,” Stephen Blank, senior expert for Russia at the US Institute of Peace, told Coffee or Die Magazine.

Another line of thinking is that, by increasing its military footprint across the border from US troops in
Poland, Moscow may be looking to scramble the deck with Washington in advance of a new
presidential administration.

“Russia is building Kaliningrad into its forward military and intelligence base, that is a visible trend ,”
said Jakub Janda, director of the Prague-based European Values Center for Security Policy.
“Russia keeps increasing its military posture, also with the expectation that it can use it as a negotiating chip with the Biden administration so that Russia can ‘give something up’ in the expected future negotiating,” Janda told Coffee or Die Magazine.

Some military experts, however, say the Baltic Fleet’s new infantry division may be more bluster than substance — mostly reflecting a command-level reorganization of military forces already positioned in Kaliningrad, rather than a significant increase in troop strength within the exclave.

Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, told Coffee or Die Magazine that Russia already has a motorized rifle brigade and a tank regiment based in Kaliningrad. Those units will likely be rolled into the new infantry division,
Bielieskov said.

“It may be that all these forces just may be transferred to the new division command — so no new forces in Kaliningrad,” Bielieskov said.

“From the Russian point of view, it’s the necessary defensive measure since the Kaliningrad exclave is surrounded by NATO countries,” Bielieskov said of Russia’s new infantry division, adding that Poland’s armed forces alone comprise four army divisions.

“So [Russia] needs to have proper grouping to defend itself,” Bielieskov said. “On the other hand, one division — especially if it will just be composed of forces already there — changes nothing in the overall military balance.”
A Russian infantry division typically includes six regiments: one tank regiment, three motor rifle regiments, one artillery regiment, and one air defense regiment. According to Bielieskov, the number of motor rifle regiments included within a Russian infantry division is often reduced from
three to two.

“The number of armored and motor rifle battalions in the 11th army corps is expected to rise by several units as a result of its reorganization,” TASS reported on Monday, explaining the composition of the new division to be based in Kaliningrad.

A Russian motorized rifle division typically comprises about 8,500 military personnel, according to the US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office.

Formerly known as Königsberg, Kaliningrad became a Russian province following the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. About 440,000 Russians now live in the 5,800-square-mile Russian exclave.

Wedged between Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad is separated from Belarus (a Russian ally) by a 64-
mile-wide stretch of NATO territory called the Suwalki Gap . Many military experts say the Suwalki Gap
is the most likely target for a hypothetical Russian invasion of the Baltics. Such a move by Moscow
would effectively seal off the Baltics from any overland reinforcements by NATO forces staged
elsewhere in the region.

“Kaliningrad is a key strategic territory for Russia, allowing the country to project military power into
NATO’s northern flank,” wrote the authors of an August report by the Congressional Research Service.

As Russia builds up new forces on NATO’s eastern frontier, some Western experts and officials worry
about the increased chance of an accidental conflict arising due to either miscalc ulation or accident .

“The military buildup in the Kaliningrad region shows the Russian political and military leadership’s
intentions to further militarize the region,” Col. Remigijus Baltrėnas, head of Lithuania’s military
intelligence, said in February, addressing news reports at the time that Russia had plans to create a new
infantry division in Kaliningrad.

US GETS DRAWIN IN BC we love nato and feel the need to uphold the commitment – our 1AC card is
good on this question
 Top---Article 5 Fails---1AR
Article 5 isn’t credible---Baltics are low value, US won’t use nukes for them, and
Russian proximity and dominance make it unwinnable

It can’t deter Putin---aggression abroad prove he’s overconfident, new weapons make
him think US nukes aren’t a threat, and nationalism make him think costs are worth it

That causes probing to hollow out NATO---turns the DA

Putin doesn’t think A5 is credible – that matters most for deterrence ********
---he thinks NATO is weak and knows they couldn’t defend Baltics

---getting the Baltics, collapsing NATO, and forcing the US to retreat outweigh any costs the west could impose

---Putin’s perception is the only thing that matters so prefer it

Luik and Jermalavičius 17 [Jüri Luik is director of International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS), a
think-tank based in Tallinn, Estonia. He is a former minister of foreign affairs and minister of defense of
Estonia and also served as Estonia’s ambassador to NATO, the United States of America, and the Russian
Federation. Tomas Jermalavičius is head of Studies and a research fellow of ICDS. He is a former civil
servant at the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence and was also a dean of academics at the Baltic
Defence College, a multinational joint staff and war college in Tartu, Estonia. “A plausible scenario of
nuclear war in Europe, and how to deter it: A perspective from Estonia”, BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC
SCIENTISTS, 2017 VOL. 73, NO. 4, 233–239,
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.2017.1338014?journalCode=rbul20]

Let us not be naïve about who really calls the shots in Russian foreign policy and makes the decisions
about use of force. Vladimir Putin regards the West as weak and unwilling to take high risks , reads the
NATO alliance’s solidarity as political posturing covering up relatively low regard for the intrinsic value
of the “object” (e.g. the Baltic states ), perceives the eFP units moved to NATO’s eastern periphery as a
militarily manageable problem in the context of blitzkrieg invasion, and might see a good opportunity at
some point in time. As risky a strategy as it may be, the reward for seizing the Baltics – potential
collapse of NATO and retreat of the United States from the security affairs of the continent – could in
Putin’s mind outweigh those risks many times over , especially if the regime needs a high-reward action to consolidate its
power and retain its domestic legitimacy. He might just go for it and catch the West off guard again. The need for deterrence by denial Herein
lies the crux of the matter: What does Vladimir Putin think, and how does he read NATO’s deterrent credibility? Would he really dare to cross
the nuclear threshold, or would he just bluster and bluff, only to step back when confronted with the show of strength? If he actually uses a
tactical nuclear weapon, would it remain a one-off signal, or would he feel compelled to escalate under some circumstances? After all,
deterrence lies in the eye of the beholder, so understanding the strategic calculus of Russia’s decision-
maker-inchief is essential . The trouble is that the West knows so little about his calculus. We certainly observe his ability
to take bold risks and surprise everyone , as well as his willingness to issue nuclear threats in high-risk
games as a method of coercion, as he did in the aftermath of the Crimean annexation (Durkalec 2015). We
also know fairly a lot about his low regard of the West’s collective political and societal willpower and his
respect for shows of strength (Lucas 2008). Many other aspects of his thinking and calculations are obscured, however, by
blustering, bluffing, posturing, and bragging about (often nonexisting) “no-analogs-in-the-world” capabilities, and by either hysterical or
contemptuous propaganda. More often than not, the Putin approach is all intended as suasion toward NATO, its hostility being tactical and
opportunistic. But Putin’s worldview is also layered with profound fears about the possibility of his regime losing domestic control (Parent and
Dyson 2016) and meeting the hour of reckoning that befell such “comrades” as Muammar Gaddafi, Slobodan Milošević, and Viktor Yanukovych.

**Russia thinks it has the tech to push back on NATO---that causes volatile crises
Johnson 18 [Dave Johnson is a staff offi cer in the NATO International Staff Defence Policy and
Planning Division, which he joined in 2005. He has worked in the NATO-Russia Council on defense
transparency, risk reduction, and NATO-Russia missile defense cooperation, “Russia’s Conventional
Precision Strike Capabilities, Regional Crises, and Nuclear Thresholds”, Livermore Papers on Global
Security No. 3 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Global Security Research February,
https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/Precision-Strike-Capabilities-report-v3-7.pdf] IanM

The Russian challenge will be an enduring one because Russia is acting on what it perceives as its long-
term interests . Russia will continue to adapt its strategy in order to achieve its aims, many of which are inimical to the security of NATO
Allies. For this reason, it is imperative that NATO “continue to adapt its strategy in line with trends in the security environment – including with
respect to capabilities and other measures required – to ensure that NATO’s overall deterrence and defense posture is capable of addressing
potential adversaries’ doctrine and capabilities, and that it remains credible, flexible, resilient, and adaptable.”8 Russia can be
expected to challenge the alliance on every point of its Warsaw adaptations. Of particular relevance to the issue of regional
crises and escalation, NATO leaders asserted at Warsaw that the alliance “will not accept to be constrained by any potential adversary as
regards the freedom of movement of Allied forces by land, air, or sea to and within any part of Alliance territory.”9 They also stated their
intention “to enhance the Alliance’s role in projecting stability” and to retain the “ability to respond to crises beyond our borders.”10 Russia
is challenging NATO on these principles and intentions along its entire eastern periphery, including by harassing
NATO vessels in international waters of the Baltic and Black seas, by sustaining war and illegal occupations in partner
countries, and by conducting military operations in the eastern Mediterranean in proximity to a NATO ally and
contrary to the efforts of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria. In particular, Russia’s willingness to intervene in Syria in the presence of the U.S.-led
coalition signals a level of boldness, quickly underscored by its surprise cruise missile strikes, a step beyond the daring which Russia displayed in
Ukraine. As a corollary to this, the implications for NATO security of the end of permissive operational environments in the Euro-Atlantic region
loom large, including the combination of instrumental conventional precision strike for warfighting with nuclear deterrence for aggressive
sanctuarization. This is an example of how the implications of Russia’s integration of conventional precision strike and nuclear weapons for
deterrence, intra-war deterrence, and nuclear thresholds will need to be factored into NATO’s ongoing adaptation. Efforts to address these
challenges will also need to take into account the non-nuclear strategic triad of conventional precision strike, cyber, and space and their
potential implications for deterrence, intra-war deterrence, and nuclear thresholds. Moscow
now perceives the alchemy of
conventional precision strike and nuclear weapons as a credible and effective tool to be used in
combination with other means to push back against perceived encroachment by the United States and
its NATO allies on Russian security interests. This all points to the potential for increasingly complex and highly
volatile crisis scenarios . NATO is responding with measures that are defensive in nature, proportionate, consistent with its
international obligations, and that demonstrate respect for the rules-based European security architecture.11 Allies are working to ensure full
and timely implementation of the strengthened deterrence and defense measures agreed at Wales and Warsaw which, along with allied
commitment to meaningful dialogue and engagement with Russia , are the most effective way to ensure
that the scenarios examined in this paper remain hypothetical .12
 Top---Escalation Inev---1AR
Once conflict occurs---escalation is inevitable---US will nuke and Russia will respond---
AND even non-aggressive actions are misinterpreted as first strikes – due to flawed
assumptions

Specifically, they dropped that:

- Cyber-attacks cause escalation---generate use or lose fears over loss of
command and control – that’s Beebe 19
- Hypersonics escalate---they’re unbeatable, compress decision time, and can’t
be tracked
- AI causes escalation---they can track nuke arsenals using machine learning---
causes use or lose fears
- ASATs cause escalation---they generate use or lose fears over satellite loss
- Conventional-nuclear blur causes escalation---can’t distinguish between nukes
and conventional missiles and states assume the worst

If biden does restore cred on prolif da---it causes overcommitting---causes accidents to

---Biden will overcommit to signal resolve but that causes Russia to react to greater US presence which
leads to more aggressive Russian moves and more accidents

---even small conflicts will escalate because US doesn’t want credibility to be hurt so they respond to
anything with disproportionate response

Marston and Bruce 10-16 [Hunter Marston (@hmarston4) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Coral Bell
School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, and an independent consultant at
GlobalWonks, and Thomas Bruce (@tbrue1) is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. He is a
veteran of the Royal Canadian Navy, “Hedging, Over Commitment, and the Escalating Risk of Conflict in
Southeast Asia”, 10-16-2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/10/hedging-over-commitment-and-the-
escalating-risk-of-conflict-in-southeast-asia/] IanM

The Dangers of Superpowers Overplaying Their Hand

Such tenuous alignments and shaky alliances produce a related danger that great power patrons will overreach in an effort
to demonstrate resolve . Fears of China’s increasing influence have fueled regional perceptions of the
United States’ declining political and economic influence. History is rife with examples of misguided
military action based on fears that inaction would badly damage U.S. credibility. Concerns that the
Washington could not risk the credibility hit of failing to defend South Vietnam are perhaps the  best studied
example  of over-commitment to a conflict that was not vital to U.S. security interests.
Today, Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Singapore, and even Malaysia, may quietly support increased U.S. presence to push back on
Beijing’s bullying tactics in the South China Sea, but they are careful not to voice those concerns publicly. Mixed messages from
Southeast Asian capitals could lead Washington to misplay its cards . Rather than a policy of restraint that lets China alienate
itself with its confrontational behavior, U.S. leaders appear tempted to overplay their hand and force a conflict in
the South China Sea to forestall Chinese expansion. In such a scenario, the United States may be surprised by how suddenly it finds
itself isolated, particularly if allies like the Philippines and Thailand decline to support U.S. confrontation of China.

The recent clarification of U.S. South China Sea policy and subsequent carrier deployment point to the probability of
increased presence, not only of U.S. warships, but also those of allies like Australia, Japan, and even India. Indeed, the U.S., Australian,
Indian, and Japanese joint exercise in the Philippine Sea in late July indicates this is already taking place. The Chinese military will
undoubtedly view these moves as escalatory and respond with increased deployments by the PLA Navy,
increasing the odds of more aggressive actions, “accidental” collisions between warships, as well
as locking on ships  with targeting radars. These developments further highlight the potential for great power conflict in
Southeast Asia, which could draw in regional states. A conflict between Beijing and a regional claimant such as Vietnam could also threaten to
invite a U.S. military response.

While China has continued its aggressive actions in Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese waters and air spaces, it has also done so with increasing
frequency and intensity in Philippine, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian waters in the past few years. The growing presence of Chinese H-
6K bombers and J-11 fighters on the Paracel Islands alone underscores how permanent the militarization of the South China Sea has become.
While possibly deterring further Chinese assertiveness, the greater presence of U.S. and non-ASEAN member states’ warships
increases the potential for conflict.

Chinese regional hegemony is not assured, but nor are sustained American interest and commitment to
the region. Nevertheless, demonstrations of U.S. resolve must be carefully calibrated to its partners rather than purely
maximalist displays of force and zero-sum declarations of confrontation with Beijing.

But Biden can’t restore credibility

Spetalnick 11-7 [Matt Spetalnick, Reuters Staff, “Despite change at the White House, U.S. allies will
remain wary after Trump,” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-allies/despite-change-at-
the-white-house-u-s-allies-will-remain-wary-after-trump-idUSKBN27N0VY, y2k]

Trump’s treatment of traditional U.S. allies, on a personal and policy level , has left presumed President-elect Joe
Biden with shell-shocked American friends likely forever wary of Washington’s credibility - no matter
who resides in the White House, say some diplomats and analysts.

“The transatlantic relationship has never been this bad. The trust between the U.S. and Europe is not there anymore ,”
said a senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It can be repaired, but ... I’m not sure it will be the same.”
Biden, who was vice president under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, pledged before the Nov. 3 election to stand up for U.S. allies and
“make it clear to our adversaries the days of cozying up to dictators are over,” referring to Trump’s friendliness with North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“ You just can’t reset to four years ago. In particular in both Europe and Asia, how we are smarter about rebuilding alliances to deal with
the threats from China and Russia is going to be a major challenge for Biden,” said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia under
Obama and now a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution think tank.

Biden has promised to hold a global “Summit for Democracy” to fight corruption, defend against authoritarianism, and advance human rights.
Though there may have been a collective sense of relief among U.S. allies after his narrow election victory, he has acknowledged that “picking
up the pieces will be an enormous task” after Trump.
“ Memories of Trump will remain and create a certain degree of background anxiety in what future U.S.
presidents might do,” said Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, describing it as an “alliance
PTSD.”

U.S. friends and partners are also mindful that once Biden take office on Jan. 20, he is expected to focus heavily on twin domestic challenges of
fighting the coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. economic crisis caused by it.

Trump championed an “America First” policy and while he said that didn’t mean “America alone” there were several occasions where his
administration was isolated, including on votes in the 15-member United Nations Security Council.

The United States split with allies over Trump’s decisions to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, leave the Iran nuclear deal, quit a
global climate accord, challenge sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and leave the U.N. Human Rights Council and the World
Health Organization.

Biden had vowed to rejoin the nuclear deal if Iran returns to compliance, return to the climate accord, abandon plans to leave the WHO and
end a U.S. rule that bans funding of aid groups that discuss abortion.

“Now in Europe, leaders and people have realized that you conclude agreements with the U.S. and four years later, the following
administration throws the agreements in the garbage,” the senior European diplomat said. “So there is a question of credibility and reliability of
the U.S.”

A senior Trump administration official said it was unfair to conclude that the “America First” approach had hurt Washington’s key alliances,
insisting that Trump had just taken a tougher stance than Obama that had made relationships stronger and that most key allies had grown
accustomed to his abrasive style.

A central issue for Trump has been NATO. He has pushed members, particularly Germany, to spend more and eroded faith in a pillar of post-
war European security - that U.S. forces would defend members against any Russian aggression.

“Such points of contention do not explain why the U.S. administration has shown contempt for and sought to humiliate an erstwhile close ally,”
former German ambassador to Washington, Peter Wittig, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last month. “The house of the West has lost its
guardian.”

Biden wrote in the same magazine earlier this year that his foreign policy would “place the United States back at the head of the table” because
“the world does not organize itself.”

‘COMMON APPROACH’

The United States’ northern neighbor and ally Canada, has also had a rocky relationship with Trump. Roland Paris, Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau’s former foreign policy adviser, said if Biden made an unequivocal commitment to NATO it would help salvage some of the bad
feelings.

“And in turning to allies to develop a more common approach to the challenges posed by China and Russia could also help to rebuild some of
the trust that was lost during the Trump years,” he told Reuters.

Biden has described U.S. commitment to NATO as “sacred.”

In Asia, South Korea endured Trump questioning the value of their alliance and demanding Seoul pay more for U.S. troops stationed there.
South Korean officials and analysts expect a change of tone, particularly on one of the world’s top issues - North Korea.

While Trump and North Korean leader Kim met three times, no progress was made toward Pyongyang giving up its nuclear weapons. In
contrast, Biden has vowed “a sustained, coordinated campaign with our allies and others, including China,” a Pyongyang ally, to push for
denuclearization.

However, Biden can be expected to continue at least one of Trump’s policies - an effort that in the past two months has secured agreements by
three Arab states, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, to start normalizing relations with U.S. ally Israel.

It is widely seen as one of Trump’s few foreign policy successes, though Biden has made clear he will do more to restart talks between Israel
and the Palestinians, who consider the moves by their Arab brethren a betrayal of their cause for statehood.

Despite a new U.S. administration , Michael Kergin, a former Canadian ambassador to Washington, said traditional allies
would remain wary of the U nited S tates.
“ Publicly there will be a lot of positive things said,” Kergin said. “But from a strategic calculus , countries have
already started to look around at alternatives and will weigh (matters) very carefully as they go forward in their
relationship with the U nited S tates.”

It's structurally inevitable---Biden re-affirming can’t solve

Pletka 12-8 [Danielle Pletka is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “On Foreign Policy,
Trump Created Opportunities for Biden: Will the president-elect build on them or rush to repudiate
Trump’s legacy?” 12-8, https://thedispatch.com/p/on-foreign-policy-trump-created-opportunities, y2k]

Take NATO for example. Trump’s early failure to accept NATO’s mutual defense obligations under
Article 5 was seen as American abdication of one of its most sacred defense responsibilities and met
with a loud outcry . But like so many Trumpian excesses, there was a kernel of truth—and sometimes
more—at the heart of these complaints. The same NATO allies who were tut-tutting about Trump’s
unwillingness to honor U.S. obligations had long neglected their own obligations to NATO. And while
the president may have misunderstood who owes whom what under the treaty’s terms, he completely
grasped the idea that the United States has without fail invested in its own military while the majority of
its allies have preferred to slosh cash into social safety-net programs.

Nor was Trump off his rocker when he asked—rudely, to be sure—whether NATO would follow tiny
NATO ally Montenegro into war should that be necessary. The unpleasant , and rarely stated, truth is
that there are real questions about whether the bulk of NATO would defend, say, Latvia, Lithuania , or
Estonia from Russian aggression. After all, Georgia and Ukraine twisted in the wind after Russian
attacks. They are not NATO allies, to be sure, but have no doubt that Baltic leaders worry they
would suffer the same fate . Certainly the defense spending practices of their European partners
gives them plenty of reason for concern .

Biden will surely affirm his commitment to Article 5 and refrain from badmouthing the hapless
Montenegrins, but the troubles at NATO’s core will remain . A shrewd strategy for the new
president would be to privately but firmly emphasize he will expect a more serious European
commitment to upping defense spending as he enjoys Europe’s warm embrace. Trump secured an
increase of more than $100 billion from nervous NATO allies; Biden should warn he will not tolerate
backsliding. And if he can leverage a more serious attitude toward the danger posed by NATO “ally”
Turkey, all the better.
 A2: Lanoska---1AR
Lanoska would vote aff---probing is likely and Russia can invade
---Russia can invade: decisive local conventional dominance over Baltics, intense military modernization,
and hybrid war is effective

---Even if Russia doesn’t invade---they will inevitably engage in low-level probing because of their adv
and to test NATO resolve which escalates

---deterrence fails---Russia thinks it can beat the US and achieve a limited land grab because of snap
exercises and they think the US won’t respond to it---that outweighs whether Russia could actually
invade

**Alexander Lanoszka and Michael A. Hunzeker 19. Lanoszka is an Assistant Professor of

International Relations at the University of Waterloo. Hunzeker is an Assistant Professor at George
Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and is also the Associate Director of the
Center for Security Policy Studies. “Conventional Deterrence and Landpower in Northeastern Europe.”
http://www.alexlanoszka.com/lanoszkahunzekerssi.pdf] IanM

SUMMARY

The Baltic region faces a challenging and uncertain future amid Russian provocation, subversion, and
aggression. Though the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and its Baltic allies are already taking action, this
monograph identifies how the U.S. Army can build upon existing measures to enhance defense and deterrence along NATO’s northeastern
flank.

Chapter 1 begins by assessing Russian intentions. Since intentions are hard to divine, it instead offers two plausible ways to think about Russia’s
goals and motivations: 1) Russia is a revisionist actor, motivated by imperial ambitions; and, 2) Russia is a defensive actor, motivated by fear
and insecurity. Both viewpoints are consistent with Russia’s recent behavior, but they yield contradictory strategic prescriptions. The United
States needs a robust deterrence posture to stop a revisionist Russia, but such measures will provoke a defensive Russia. Conversely, the United
States should try to assure a defensive Russia, but a revisionist Russia will perceive assurances as a signal of weakness. Without definitive
intelligence on Russian intentions, the U.S. Army must thread the needle between two contrasting deterrent postures.

We then discuss Russia’s capabilities, of which three stand out:

Russia enjoys a decisive local advantage in terms of conventional military power over its immediate
NATO neighbors;

Russia is undergoing an intense , long-term military modernization program , has reorganized its
major commands , conducts large-scale “snap exercises ,” and has invested heavily in modern
weapons systems ; and,

Russia is adept at so-called “hybrid warfare ,” using non-military tools while exploiting local escalation
dominance to achieve its goals without triggering retaliation.
Nevertheless, we wish not to overstate Russia’s strength, and therefore conclude chapter 1 by considering Russian vulnerabilities:

Russia enjoys local escalation dominance, but the United States and NATO possess global escalation dominance. NATO’s total defense
expenditures exceed Russia’s by a factor of 10, whereas Russia’s modernization program seems less impressive in light of how little Russia spent
on its military after the Cold War; • Russia is itself vulnerable to anti-access/area
• Russia is itself vulnerable to anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies. Specifically, Russia needs the Suwałki Gap almost as much as the
United States and NATO do because it is the shortest land route to Kaliningrad. Even if Russia manages to close the gap, the United States and
NATO can just as easily do the same to Russia, turning it into a 110-kilometer no man’s land; and,

Belarus may not be in Russia’s pocket. President Aleksandr Lukahensko knows that if Russia uses Belarusian territory to close the Suwałki Gap
or otherwise strike at NATO, the United States and NATO will have a casus belli to strike targets inside Belarus and surge reinforcements
through Belarusian territory.

Chapter 2 examines Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish capabilities and threat perceptions. We also
assess the most likely and most dangerous scenarios facing each of them. The most likely scenarios are
hybrid in nature, whereas the most dangerous involve a surprise invasion or conventional attack.
Estonia and Latvia face the greatest risk of hybrid warfare . However, we should be careful not to overstate the
effectiveness of such hybrid stratagems. Even if Russophones in Estonia and Latvia appear to support Russia’s foreign policies, most do not
want to live under Russian rule. Life in the European Union is strictly better than in Russia, even in the absence of clear citizenship rights. By
contrast, Lithuania and Poland are relatively immune to the hybrid threat.

In all four cases, full territorial conquest appears improbable. This is especially true of Poland, as Russia would have to traverse Baltic and
The Baltic States are more vulnerable , but Estonian, Latvian, and
Belarusian territories to invade Polish territory.
Lithuanian defense experts are more concerned about a limited incursion aimed at grabbing small
portions of their territory as a test of NATO’s resolve.
Chapter 3 outlines our threat assessment and policy recommendations. We agree that a worst-case, largescale fait accompli attack against one
or more of the Baltic States is unlikely in the near term. Regardless of Russia’s underlying intentions, an invasion risks much and gains little,
especially since a major war could easily spiral out of Moscow’s control. We assess that Russia’s most probable course of
action is to continue doing what it has been doing for years: foment ing unrest , spreading disinformation , and
engaging in low-level military provocations .
 A2: Russia Offensive Realist---1AR
No turns case---Russia still coops because issue linkage, and won’t probe cuz no cred
crisis, but US won’t get drawn in so no impact

Plan solves---recognizing Baltic S.O.I causes Russia rebalancing by incentivizing them

to work with the West, treating them with respect, and eastern expansion is what
caused aggression

Not wholly revisionist---participation in INF, New START, Iran Deal, UN peacekeeping,

Open Skies prove they’re a rule taker NOT breaker---one example is sufficient

Revisionism is limited – they support parts of the liberal order

Gotz & Merlen 19 [Elias Götz a and Camille-Renaud Merlen b a Institute for Russian and Eurasian
Studies, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; b School of Politics and International Relations, University
of Kent, Canterbury, UK. "Russia and the question of world order." EUROPEAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
2019, VOL. 20, NO. 2, 133–153.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23745118.2018.1545181]

Second, Russia’s revisionist behaviour should not be exaggerated . Its intervention in Ukraine has
remained relatively limited , as has its military activity in other post-Soviet states (Götz, 2016, p. 9). In
fact, the scope of Russia’s revanchist aims is a matter of debate . It is doubtful whether Moscow has a
blueprint for an alternative international order with different norms and principles than the current
one. Nor does its promotion of conservative authoritarianism seem to constitute a genuine agenda . As
Lewis (2016) writes, ‘the export of conservative social and political values (…) has so far not developed
into a coherent campaign, but remains a rather ad hoc and inchoate critique by Russian politicians of
“multiculturalism”, LGBT rights and “political correctness” in Europe.’ Furthermore, the ‘revanchist
Russia’ perspective is unable to account for the numerous instances in which Moscow has adhered to
the norms , rules, and institutions that are associated with the existing liberal order. While it might be
a stretch to describe Moscow as a consistent defender of multilateralism (Lo, 2015), it has supported
frameworks such as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal . It also acceded to the World Trade Organization in
2012 – after 19 years of talks – and continues to be a member of the E uropean Court of Human Rights.
The liberal goals and supranational methods of these institutions hardly fit with a revisionist imperial
agenda .
 Coop Advantage
The Simes 12-20 card is more specific than all of their ev – the only reason China and
Russia form an alliance is because US containment in the Baltics which forces Russia to
escalate with China – that means CP can’t solve it
Not going for any other scenario – but this answers all their no coop scenario
That leads to effective Chinese modernization---Russia gives them unique tech and
operational insight which makes their army effective

Makes China reliant on SSBNs – causing extinction – they’re accident prone

Cyber/Counterspace mod cause first strikes because US reliance and go nuclear

because they’re entangled with nuclear C and C

Independently, Sino Russia naval excursions cause IOR trilemma because India then
Pakistan reacts – causes miscalc

Plan rebalances Russia only we have a card – we don’t have to win coop happens just
that they fear invasion through the Baltics now which is why they’ll ally with China –
we remove that fear
CP
Congress CP
 Top Level---1AR
Perm do the CP – no specific process for withdrawal – constitution doesn’t define a
specific process which means CP is a way the aff can be done – that’s Anderson

There’s no required process

Jean Galbraith 20, Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School, “Rejoining Treaties,”
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3184&context=faculty_scholarship

The text of the Constitution is silent on what domestic legal process is necessary for treaty withdrawal .
We have well-developed standards for determining when withdrawal is consistent with international
law—such as where this withdrawal follows the process set forth in a withdrawal provision in the treaty
itself—but far less guidance about what process is sufficient as a matter of domestic law.44 May the President
unilaterally withdraw the United States from a treaty, or does he or she need the approval of either Congress or two-thirds of the Senate to do so?

Reducing alliances is process agnostic

Olsen 19 [Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public
Policy Center, “It’s time to rethink the NATO alliance”, 4-4,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/04/its-time-rethink-nato-alliance/] IanM

A wise foreign policy would stop trying to revive the old and instead try to create the new. The United States does
have important interests in a strong transatlantic alliance, and the president is wrong to think we should withdraw from
NATO, as he has reportedly done in private. But it may also be pulling on a string to maintain an old alliance that some of its members no
longer value as much as they used to. Such a new policy would involve some form of multi-tiered approach to
European countries depending on the nature of our shared interests. Those who share our interest in directly
combating Russian aggression could be in the first tier, with full U.S. commitment to defend them from all forms of attack. That likely would
include the Eastern European countries, Norway, Britain, Canada and perhaps a couple others. We would shift our bases to those countries so
that U.S. assets are deployed where they are welcome and can provide the most use in case of conflict. A second tier could involve the
extension of the U.S. nuclear umbrella to defend nations against nuclear or chemical attack, but with no mutual commitment to come to one
another’s aid in the event of conventional assault. Continued intelligence sharing and efforts to combat cyberwarfare would also likely be a part
of this tier’s activities. It would probably attract the bulk of NATO’s current membership — especially countries such as Germany, Italy and
Spain which see no current threat to their national integrity but do see some threats to domestic security from terrorists and asymmetric
cyberwarfare. A country such as Turkey, which neither feels threatened by Russia nor shares the Western heritage of liberal democracy that
unites other members, might choose not to sign up for either tier. Any U.S. interactions with Turkey or other countries would be handled on a
bilateral basis, much as we handle the rest of our global alliances. This is all just one possibility ; the parameters of a new
arrangement could be worked out in any number of ways . But the point is that it is critical to
rethink the status quo. The foreign policy establishment will resist this advice. As Ronald Reagan wrote in 1964, “human nature resists
change and goes over backward to resist radical change.” But that establishment can’t click its heels and turn the clock back to 1989. Times
and threats have changed, and the global alliance structure that protects the world’s democracies
should change, too . Every foreign policy expert knows the ancient Athenian Thucydides’ maxim: “The strong do what they can, the
weak suffer what they must.” The West should reform while it remains strong, or it will suffer the consequences when it becomes
weak.
Prefer our model of competition---couple impacts:
1---Aff ground and fairness---they moot the 1AC which makes it impossible to be aff
2--- Education---it hurts research based education because there’s no incentive to cut
specific case negs so no education about the 1AC – that matters because it’s the only
thing that gives meaning to different resolutions each year – 90% of debate is research
so CP kills the reason we’re here
3---Topic DA’s resolve any ground arguments
 A2: normal means
Normal means is a bad standard –
1---Fairness---they can change what normal means is and CP to be competitive – which
is impossible to predict
2---Education---forces research on the circumstances of the plan NOT the implications
of the plan which trades off with topic education and moots the point of debate –

Normal means could be congress

Koh ’18 (Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law, Yale Law School; Legal Adviser to
the U.S. Department of State, 2009-13; Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and
Labor, 1998-2001. I am grateful to Tess Bridgeman, Peter Cane, Sarah Cleveland, Bill Dodge, Kristen
Eichensehr, Gene Fidell, Shikha Garg, Joel Goldstein, Adam Goldenberg, Dieter Grimm, Avril Haines,
Frank Iacobucci, Steve Herz, Rebecca Ingber, Steven Koh, Maxine Lipeles, Hope Metcalf, Patrick Pearsall,
David Pozen, Ashika Singh, Kate Stith, Phil Spector, Gib van Ert, Mike Wishnie, and the members of the
2018 Yale-Duke Foreign Relations Roundtable and the Yale Law School Faculty Workshop for their
thoughtful comments and to Dylan Kolhoff, Wajdi Mallat, Catherine McCarthy, Lucie Olejnikova, Mitzi
Steiner, and Danielle Zucker for their outstanding research assistance. I especially thank Stephen J.
Pollak and Geoffrey Klineberg of the Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit, for giving me the chance to
think through these issues by inviting me to reargue Goldwater v. Carter in a moot court before Judges
Harry T. Edwards and Stephen F. Williams, “Presidential Power to Terminate International Agreements”,
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/presidential-power-to-terminate-international-agreements,
November 12, 2018)

Like Goldwater itself, the Restatement’s black letter comes with significant limitations. First, as discussed further
below with respect to the Iran Nuclear Deal, whatever unilateral termination power may be recognized by historical practice, the Restatement does not recognize it as extending to unilateral

the
acts by the President to suspend, terminate, or withdraw from treaties not in accordance with their terms or otherwise not in accordance with international law.75Second,

Restatement nowhere “suggest[s] that Congress or the Senate lack the ability to limit suspension,
termination, or withdrawal,” for example, by the No NATO Withdrawal Act described above. 76 Third, the
accompanying Reporters’ Notes reaffirm that “[a]lthough historical practice supports a unilateral
presidential power to suspend, terminate, or withdraw the United States from treaties, it does not
establish that this is an exclusive presidential power .” 77 Thus, if the President were to attempt a treaty
termination within zones of either concurrent congressional-executive foreign affairs authority or
exclusive legislative power—such as the foreign commerce power78—the Senate could presumably
limit executive discretion pre-emptively in its advice and consent to a particular treaty, as could
Congress, by enacting a “no unilateral exit” statute with respect to that international agreement . Apart from
historical practice, the only other support offered for the Restatement (Fourth)’s black letter is that “structural

and functional considerations are consistent with the general ability of the President to act unilaterally,
as it has been exercised in practice.”79 But looked at from a dynamic perspective, this statement no longer seems true. If
anything, structural and functional considerations now cut the other way. As a matter of
constitutional structure, the foreign affairs power is generally a power shared: unilateral powers are
the exception, not the rule, so whenever the Constitution’s text does not explicitly assign a plenary
power to one branch, the multiple, overlapping grants of foreign affairs authority should
presumptively dictate that powers be shared between Congress and the Executive.80 As a functional matter, an
overbroad unilateral executive withdrawal power would not only risk overly hasty, partisan, or parochial withdrawals by Presidents, but would also tend to weaken systemic stability and the
negotiating credibility and leverage of all Presidents. The most prominent recent example is President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal at the precise moment that he is

attempting to negotiate a similar denuclearization deal with North Korea.81 Whatever functional sense a cross-cutting Goldwater approach
—strong unilateral presidential termination rights coupled with minimal judicial review— might have
made when first articulated, the world has plainly changed in ways that call into question its normative
logic. Back when “politics stopped at the water’s edge”—and a presumption of basic foreign policy continuity dominated whenever the White House changed hands—academics and
justices might well have believed that their approach would minimize foreign policy conflict and make the United States more compliant overall with international norms. But the rise

of a post-Cold War political era marked by radical foreign policy discontinuities from Presidents
Clinton to Bush to Obama, and now to Trump, has dramatically undermined this assumption .82 As the
current moment illustrates well, unless blessed by Congress in some fashion, unilateral presidential
withdrawals based on individual presidential caprice are highly disruptive of both foreign (and
increasingly domestic) policy. That very disruptiveness and unpredictability will, in turn, make it
harder for future Presidents and Congresses to negotiate valuable international agreements.

The domestic process used to generate an alliance commitment is irrelevant to its

inter-state legal effect---the aff can’t be bound to any specific domestic process
Terry L. Deibel 80, Adjunct Research Fellow at the National Defense University Research Directorate,
Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, April 1980, “Commitment in
American Foreign Policy: A Theoretical Examination for the Post-Vietnam Era,”
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a084965.pdf
Unfortunately, the concept of commitment has not received the kind of attention from foreign affairs analysts necessary to this task. During the
1950's and 1960's political scientists produced a fair amount of material on military alliances, a broader phenomenon which includes
a relatively narrow view of commitment , with particular attention to the manner in which alliance partners interact; and there is,
of course, a sizeable and up-to-date literature on deterrence, one of the effects of commitment. But the character of commitment
itself -the way commitments are formed and terminated, how their binding force is generated across a wide range of
interstate contacts, and how one can reliably determine the existence and strength of a commitment -these
factors have been subject to little systematic treatment . For this purpose several branches of scholarship offer valuable
insights.6 In addition to the political scientists' work on alliances, deterrence, and bargaining, one can turn to the legal profession for analyses
of the binding force of international treaty law and contractual obligation in municipal law. Economists have something to offer, particularly as
concerns the various indicators of economic involvement. Psychologists have a lot to say about the psychology of personal, human
commitment which has remarkable and fascinating relevance to the processes of national commitment. And philosophy, particularly its branch
of ethics, can tell us a great deal about the moral issues involved in a process of commitment modification.

The purpose of this study, then, is to lay out the rudiments of a multidisciplinary framework for the analysis of US international commitments.
First, an effort will be made to define commitment , generally and in the American experience. Next, a rough model will be
offered, breaking commitment down into four levels and specifying the indicators of commitment in each .
Along the way the various characteristics, effects, and dynamics of commitment will be explored. Finally, the model will be applied
comparatively to see what can be determined from data about commitment in current US relationships with several countries in Europe, the
Far East, the Middle East, and Africa.

II. DEFINING COMMITMENT IN THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Any attempt to define commitment must first deal with the fact that the word is used very broadly , even by foreign affairs
professionals. People say, for example, that the United States is "committed" to a particular policy like detente, when they mean only that the
administration has adopted that policy, not that the country is in any sense bound to it. Yet
the dictionary definition of commitment
speaks of the "pledging" or " binding " of an individual to a particular course of action, and a meaningful
international commitment must include that element of promise. Commitment is the antithesis of
freedom; the acid test of its existence is that some restriction be imposed on the committed nation's
absolute freedom of action.' When the commitment at hand is a security guarantee , the limitation may be
operationally defined as an "if.. . then" statement requiring some positive action in a future contingency .
With regard to the Republic of Korea, for example, the mutual defense treaty provides that if an armed attack occurs,
then the U nited S tates will act in some way to meet the common danger.
Though the requirement that a real commitment limit one's freedom of action sounds absolute, in fact psychologists warn us that commitment
is always a matter of degree. We say, quite legitimately, that it is "strong" or "weak." In
a security treaty, the degree of
commitment is directly related to the character and the specificity of the "if" and the "then ," the triggering
Degree of commitment depends both on
cause requiring action by the committed party and the response it is pledged to make.
the certainty that the committed state will respond and on the extent of response promised.
As an example, look at the following clause from a Bismarckian treaty of alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire:

Should... one of the two Empires be attacked by Russia, the High Contracting Parties bind themselves to come to the assistance of each other
with the whole military strength of their Empire.2

Now compare that with Article 5 of the NATO treaty:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all;
and consequently they agree that, if such an attack occurs, each of them ... will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith . . .
such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and

maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.3

As the above examples suggest, the promised response may vary from an immediate declaration of war to a mere
diplomatic protest, and it may be very definitely prescribed or left entirely to the respondent's decision
at the time the triggering event occurs. That event , too, may be restricted to armed attack on a narrow
geographic area, or it may be broadly defined to protect a regime or even a personality against any
threat, direct or subversive, external or internal, including such modern forms as insurrection or infiltration.4
The language comparison above also illustrates an important historical generalization about American commitments. Compared to other
nations, the United States has always been extremely reluctant to accept legal restrictions on its freedom of action of the kind traditionally
embodied in security treaties. For reasons ranging from its relative geographical isolation in the nineteenth century to its enormous power in
the twentieth, and from its laissez-faire economic philosophy to its intense belief in personal liberty, Americans have generally sought
international security in international freedom and have often gone so far as to equate commitment with a loss of sovereignty.5 Even in that
great era of supposed commitment after World War II, when American alliances with nearly fifty countries were signed, the resultant treaties
allowed the United States great flexibility in response. Indeed, their net effect was not one of restricting America's freedom of action but of
extending its power to the farthest defense perimeter ever.6

This is not, it should be carefully noted, to argue that the whole idea of US commitment in the postwar world is a myth which can simply be
explained away. Quite the contrary. For although one analyst concluded in 1970 that the United States has "no outstanding de jure
commitment.., to go to war in defense of any foreign nation or nations whatsoever,"7 the country is committed to many nations across the
globe by other than legal means. In fact, the reluctance of the United States to undertake legal commitments has meant that its real pledges
are usually not given in treaty form. In NATO, for example, the US commitment depends mainly on American leadership of the organized
command and the presence of American troops in Europe, actions taken after the Korean war made the possibility of armed attack seem real; it
does not depend on the 1949 language of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, signed a year before the Korean attack. With Israel there is no treaty at
all, and yet many unofficial observers would be at least as certain of an American response to an armed attack on Israel as to one on treaty-
protected South Korea.
The American penchant for making commitments outside or alongside of the treaty process naturally makes their analysis far more complex. If
commitment means a loss of freedom of action visa-vis another state, then a search for commitment must identify all those aspects of US
overseas relationships that can create such a loss by predisposing us to act in defense of another country at some time in the future. To put it
another way, we must try to specify those elements of our relations with another nation which can bind us in some degree to assist it if it is
threatened, and to analyze the ways in which-singly or in combination-their binding force can be generated. At a minimum, this approach will
provide a means of discovering what commitments the United States actually has and where the strength of those commitments is
concentrated. On that basis it should be possible to approach their modification realistically.

In fact, almost any aspect of our relationship with a country that gives us a real or perceived interest in its preservation may be considered the
source of a commitment. Since commitment itself is a matter of degree, It is often very difficult to say where Involvement with another nation
has reached the level of commitment; the one often seems to shade into the other. Taken individually, most of the pieces of a relationship
probably will not be significant, but their force in combination and overtime may be additive. It is useful for purposes of analysis to group these
aspects of interstate relations into categories on the basis of the way in which they generate the binding force necessary to commit. These
categories can then be seen as levels of commitment, each interacting with the others in a characteristic way, some of which are active in their
binding effect, others passive, with still others catalytic. Four category/levels and the relational elements which comprise them are displayed in
Table I as a guide to the discussion which follows.

TABLE 1. Commitment Levels and Categories

I. Legal /Formal

1. Treaties or executive agreements

2. Executive policy statements or letters

3. Congressional action

II. Physical
A. Military

4. US troops stationed abroad

5. American overseas bases

6. Participation in joint defense organizations and planning

B. Economic

7. Importance as a US customer

8. Key commodity supplied to the United States

9. US direct private investment in country

10. Foreign debt held by private American citizens and institutions

11. Foreign debt held by US Government

C. Personal

12. US citizens living abroad

III. BEHAVIORAL
13, High-level political interaction

14. Current annual trade (both directions)

15. Current military and economic aid

16. Total economic and military aid since World War II

17. Past response to cause

IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL
18. US population with ethnic ties abroad

19. Leadership perceptions of vital interests

20. Public perceptions of vital interests

21. Public willingness to respond

22. Contentious or linkage issues

Ill. THE THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF COMMITMENT

Formal/Legal

Formal commitments -those set down explicitly in writing or oral statements-are the first and most obvious category,
though hardly (as we have seen) the most important in the American experience. The binding force of international law has been a subject of
scholarly debate for centuries, shifting with the political basis of the international system from divine imposition to the current positivist
doctrine that a state can be bound only with its consent. At first glance such a legal description seems at odds with the loss of freedom of action
involved in commitment, for how can a state exercise consent if it is bound? The paradox is resolved by the element of time; once consent is
given, the state's intentions are for a time thereafter suspended.' Thus, the requirement of consent is perfectly compatible with the idea of loss
of freedom, and in exposing the paradox the law teaches the valuable lesson that no commitment can be imposed on a state from outside.
Individuals (like Congressmen) in a political collectivity may feel "trapped" by commitments made by others (say, the President) acting in its
name, or those running the nation may not realize they are creating a commitment by their actions. But commitments of all kinds are created
by the committed party; commitment is never involuntary.2

Who can commit a state legally , of course, is of no concern to international law . Hence, from the
International point of view, a treaty, an executive agreement, or even a secret letter from one head of
state to another are equally valid .3 It Is up to the municipal, especially the constitutional, laws of each state to
specify how consent to be bound shall be registered , so there may well be disparities between the
international and the domestic legal effects of a given document. Within the United States the binding force of a formal
commitment is enhanced in direct proportion to the number of legal bases touched in our system of checks and balances. Treaties (Indicator I
on the Table) are the most dependable because of the requirement for Senate consent, which is lacking in executive agreements. Executive
policy statements (#2) and congressional actions (#3), though unilateral in nature and thereby lacking force in international law, may have
considerable domestic power-especially if they are paired (as was the case in the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1956).

We don’t use word reduce

Aff doesn’t have to defend all words in the res – that forces us to defend the full
resolution and turns into a resolution good bad debate which detracts away from
substantive research because neg can find one reason why resolution is bad and aff
would have to defend it
Their model justifies:
The Japan PIC against NATO affs---aff has no solvency deficit because it’s premised off
NATO and neg gets a fat Japan DA
The list goes on with PICs out of any alliance in the res, which makes it literally
impossible to be aff

Reduce means decrease – excludes the possibility or result of increasing

Friedman, 99 – Senior Circuit Judge, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CUNA MUTUAL LIFE
INSURANCE COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Defendant-Appellee. 98-5033 UNITED
STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT 169 F.3d 737; 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 1832; 99-1
U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) P50,245; 83 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 799 February 9, 1999, Decided, lexis)
B. CUNA's position has another fatal flaw. Section 808 is captioned "Policy Dividends Deduction," and § 808(c) states:

(1) In general

Except as limited by paragraph (2), the deduction for policyholder dividends for any taxable year shall be an amount equal to the policyholder
dividends [**15] paid or accrued during the taxable year.

(2) Reduction in case of mutual companies

In the case of a mutual life insurance company, the deduction for policyholder dividends for any taxable year shall be reduced by the amount
determined under section 809.

"The amount determined" under § 809, by which the policyholder dividend deduction is to be "reduced," is the "excess" specified in § 809(c)(1).
Like the word "excess," the
word "reduced" is a common, unambiguous , non-technical term that is given its
ordinary meaning. See San Joaquin Fruit & Inv. Co., 297 U.S. at 499. "Reduce" means "to diminish in size, amount,
extent, or number." Webster's Third International Dictionary 1905. Under CUNA's interpretation of "excess" in § 809(c), however, the
result of the "amount determination" under § 809 would be not to reduce the policyholder dividends
deduction, but to increase it . This would directly contradict the explicit instruction in § 808(c)(2) that the
deduction " be reduced ." The word "reduce" cannot be interpreted , as CUNA would treat it, to mean
"increase ."
 Solvency Deficits
Allies wouldn’t abrogate the alliance – Baltics love US presence – that’s Pedersen

Biden and congress won’t comply he’s tough on Russia and loves alliances – if there’s
any risk US can still intervene – it can’t solve case because Russia reacts to potential
US aggression
Pezard and Rhoades 20 [ Dr. Stephanie Pezard is a senior political scientist at the RAND
Corporation. Her research focuses on European security and transatlantic relations, and Ashley Rhoades
is a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, “What Provokes Putin's Russia?”, January,
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE338.html] IanM
What Are Russia’s Claimed Redlines? Russia’s key national interests, which guide its foreign policy, can be summarized around three themes:
defending Russia’s borders and preserving the Russian regime; maintaining influence in the near abroad (broadly defined as countries formerly
in the Soviet Union, minus the Baltic states);7 and fulfilling the vision of Russia as a great power, which includes ensuring that it is being treated
as such by other powers.8 Actions by other countries that threaten these interests will likely prompt some reaction
from Russia, but this reaction might be limited in scope and intensity unless specific thresholds, defined by Russian leadership, are crossed. We
call these thresholds redlines for simplification, though in reality, these lines might be blurry and will likely leave some room for Russian
leadership to decide on the scale of the response, or whether a response is warranted at all. The
following redlines have been
publicly mentioned by Russian leadership—including in official documents such as the Military Doctrine—as
being unacceptable to Russia, and have prompted explicit threats of hostile responses . We identify four areas
where redlines have been made clear: NATO enlargement, disruption of the strategic balance, direct
threat to eliminate or overthrow the Russian regime, and loss of influence in the near abroad. These areas sometimes overlap:
NATO enlargement in former Soviet countries might allow the United States to deploy weapons in
new areas that could threaten the strategic balance and the regime in Moscow, and it would also de facto pull
the new member away from Russia’s sphere of influence. Redlines also directly relate to one or more of the national interests outlined earlier.
For instance, disruption of the strategic balance presents a clear threat to Russia’s defense of its territory and regime.
 Congress Loses---1AR
The court would dodge the case---
Courts would invoke PQD in case of intervention – there card is generic ours is specific to interventions
and NATO –

1---even if they didn’t, Congress would lose.

Julian Ku 16. Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Faculty Director of International Programs,
and Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law, Hofstra University. “Preparing for
Trumpxit: Could a President Trump Withdraw the U.S. from International Treaties and Agreements?” 9-
26-2016. http://opiniojuris.org/2016/09/26/preparing-for-trumpxit-how-will-the-u-s-legally-withdraw-
from-nafta-wto-nato/

As an initial matter, we should consider to

what extent a President Trump could unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from
international treaties and agreements. I notice that most commentary, including this scary piece by Eric Posner in the NYT from this
past spring, assume the President has this unilateral power. But I do not think this issue is not entirely settled as a matter of U.S. constitutional
law.

In the 1979 decision Goldwater v. Carter, the U.S. Supreme Court

dodged the question of whether a President could
unilaterally terminate the U.S.-Republic of China (Taiwan) mutual defense treaty without consulting or getting the
approval of the U.S. Senate by invoking the p olitical q uestion d octrine and (in a concurrence) the judicial ripeness doctrine. No
U.S. court has, as far as I am aware, reached the merits of this question. I think scholars are somewhat divided, and historical
practice is mixed.

President George W. Bush did set a precedent in favor of presidentialism , however, by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty in 2002 without getting the approval of the Senate and President Carter did likewise in the 1979 Taiwan defense treaty. It seems
likely that the president does have unilateral authority to withdraw the U.S. from treaties which specify terms for
withdrawal and which don’t require further alterations or changes to domestic U.S. law.

Defense Treaties/Military Alliances

This suggests that a President Trump

could terminate NATO and the US-Japan Defense Treaty pursuant to those treaties’
withdrawal provisions. Interestingly, the NATO Treaty Article 13 specifies that “Any Party” can terminate their membership with one
year’s notice. That notice must be sent to the U.S. Government. So I guess a President Trump could give himself a one year’s notice?

Because the issue has not been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, another Goldwater v. Carter type lawsuit could be brought. It seems less likely
that such a case would be dismissed on political question grounds given recent Supreme Court jurisprudence, but I think the smart
money
would be on a President Trump prevailing on the merits on a challenge to a presidential NATO or US-
Japan Defense Treaty termination .

2---Congress loses---they can’t challenge the President.

Nigel Bowles 16. Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. "Will Congress be able to
hold President Trump in check?" Oxford University Politics Blog. 12-13-2016.
https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/will-congress-able-hold-president-trump-check/

Yet Congress’s authority is limited by recurrent and systematic collective action problems . Those problems
spring from Congress’s bicameralism , from its four-party organisation across the two chambers, and from its
committee structure . They arise, too from electoral bases of legitimacy: from Senators’ identifications with state interests and cultures,
from Representatives’ dependence upon their districts’ majority party voters and party activists for biennial re-election. The collective
action problems are exacerbated in the early twenty-first century by ideologically distinct , and typically hostile ,
Congressional parties ; and they are complicated by clashing personal ambitions of legislators. These constraints upon Congress’s authority in
turn limit its political effectiveness and, accordingly, its collective capacity to bring about intended effects – in other words, its political power.

Presidents, by contrast, have a narrower base in constitutional authority . Hence Richard Neustadt’s wise insistence
that the word with which to begin analysis of the presidency is ‘weak’. But no President suffers collective action problems of the kind that afflict
the bicameral Congress. As George W. Bush expressed the point, the President has the distinct advantage of not having to negotiate with himself.
No President in recent times has exploited that advantage more than President Obama, whose policy achievements have owed much to his powers
not of persuasion but (in national security matters especially) of unilateral decision by means of executive orders. Obama’s master-class in what
William Howellcharacterised as ‘power without persuasion’ should give Madisonians among us pause as we contemplate what is about to unfold
in Washington under a President of different temper and purpose. What might President Trump do by executive orders and other
means of unilateral action ?
No one knows what President Trump will seek to do to international trade agreements, to immigration laws, to the United States’ network of bilateral and collective defence agreements, to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, to the fragile condition of race relations in the United States,
or to the Affordable Care Act. Nor, in all probability, does he. But I make the assumption that by his policy pronouncements on the campaign trail Trump set a broad strategic direction for the United States (that is a much more plausible assumption than its converse). Such a strategy would
appear to have six major components: protectionism, expressed in withdrawal from NAFTA, and the imposition of punitive tariffs upon Mexico and China; indifference (at best) and hostility (at worst) to NATO and other US-led international security structures; revision of the tax code to
eliminate the federal inheritance and gift taxes, to cut the highest marginal rates on income tax, and to reduce tax on corporate revenue and on capital gains; removal of unauthorised immigrants (estimated by government and non-government organizations at approximately 11 million
persons); the nomination of conservatives (however defined) to federal court judgeships; and abolition of the Affordable Care Act. The consequences for international stability and an American-sponsored liberal international trade order are profoundly important matters. So, too, are the
consequences for the distribution of post-tax income in the United States, for the resilience of cross-border supply chains, and for long-term economic growth. But, important as they are, these questions are not my concern here. The question, rather, is whether the Madisonian structure of
American government will obstruct him in his strategic purposes as it usually obstructs presidents bent upon changing the order that they inherit.

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution grants international trade authority exclusively to Congress. Yet Congress has repeatedly delegated that authority to Presidents in the expectation that it would be used for the purpose of tradeliberalisation. Now, Trump might use other provisions in
trade statutes for the purpose of trade restriction. Statutes written by previous Congresses will permit Trump to impose tariffs of whatever size he wishes upon whichever trading partners he has in his sights. Some statutory provisions limit tariff imposition either as to size or duration or both.
Others, of which sections 122 and 301 of the 1974 Trade Act are examples, do more. Section 122 permits the president to address ‘… large and serious United States balance of-payments deficits’ either by a tariff of up to 15 percent, or quantitative restrictions, or both for up to five months
against one or more states having balance of payments surpluses with the US. Section 301 gives the President extensive authority to impose punitive tariffs for a range of reasons including a manipulated exchange rate – a point that might be of particular significance if Trump is serious about
seeking to penalise China.

The Trading with the Enemy Act, the 100th anniversary of whose passage into law will be marked in the year that Donald Trump becomes President, remains in force. It permits the President to regulate international commerce in all its forms, and to seize foreign assets. That the United States
is not currently in a state of war declared by Congress will not prevent President Trump lawfully using the Act as the basis for punitive action against trading partners. Whilst Congress could legislate to restrict the President’s freedom to act in matters of trade, it will not do so – not, at least, in
the short run. What President Trump decides that he wants to do in matters of trade in 2017, he will do. There might be dire consequences (not least for American workers and firms) if he carries out his noisy threats. But that he has the constitutional authority to act in that way is plain.

Nor is Trump’s authority externally limited to trade policy. The Constitution’s framers having written no rules governing the termination of Treaties, the question about President Trump’s right under the constitution to abrogate Treaties remains to be settled. But he has on his side the Federal
District Court case of Goldwater v. Carter (1979) by which President Carter’s authority unilaterally to nullify the Sino-American Defense Treaty of 1954 was upheld. That case does not close off to litigation the broader question of treaty termination, but President Trump will have the
opportunity to set and execute the agenda before opponents have organised themselves to litigate the case(s).

Trump does not even need to rely upon the contentious case of Goldwater v. Carter to give legal force to his proclaimed intention to disrupt
international trade and security regimes. Article 2205 of NAFTA, for example, grants any party to it the right to withdraw six months after giving
other parties six months notice. Similarly, Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty provides that any party may withdraw twelve months after
giving notice. Decisions
about withdrawal from NAFTA and NATO would formally lie within the President’s
authority . Congress would have no available constitutional ammunition .

3---The court shuts it down

Peter J. Spiro 93. December 1993, Associate Professor of Law at Hoftra. New York University Law
Review, “Book Review: War Powers and the Sirens of Formalism; War and Responsibility:
Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath. By John Hart Ely,” 68 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1338

Judicial intervention would be to similar effect. The courts would be no better able to make good on an inflexible
statutory mandate . The stakes are too high, as is the risk of error, and, unlike mistakes in more pedestrian settings, errors here are not so
easily corrected. Proponents of judicial participation in war powers disputes, Ely included, are wont to note that courts are used to dealing with
issues of war and peace, as in considering war-risk insurance clauses. n93 The step from one to the other is grossly understated. A mistake in the
insurance context might implicate the survival of a company; a mistake in a case involving the use of U.S. forces abroad could well jeopardize the
lives of our troops and might conceivably implicate the survival of the nation. n94 The
gravity of combat-related decisions in turn
greatly magnifies the risk of noncompliance with judicial decrees, a risk no less real for its repeated recitation as a
pillar of the political question doctrine. The political branches have [*1362] demonstrated a capacity to circumvent
the judiciary where the courts have assumed a formalist stance against well-established practice , n95
a disrespect that could be far more obvious , and institutionally damaging , in the war powers context.
n96 By way of vaunting the importance of form, one might note that violation of judicial pronouncements, or of statutory
mandates such as the War Powers Resolution, could at least afford a more solid foundation for charges of
presidential lawlessness than would violation of the less precise norms set by history. n97 But where the
formal instruments of law command little practical respect, a claim can be made that there is no
law at all , and presidential overreaching starts to look a little bit like constitutional jaywalking . Because
the executive branch might be justified in violating textual commands in some circumstances, it will be better able to paint a veneer of legitimacy
even where its transgression is in the nature of a higher crime. Heightened formalism thus poses an actual threat to the
constitutional order .
War powers resolution is feckless NOW, which means Biden would still defend given
Rafael’s 2NC cx clarification that the CP still keeps ‘ALL OF THE OBLIGATION ON THE
BOOKS’ – Putin obvi perceives this AND even if he doesn’t, he wants to test the
COMITTMENT ITSELF and TEST whether Biden would follow through on commitment
to the BALTICS, or commitment to the CONGRESS – this means he probes bc the CP
causes a new Biden commitment trap!
Assurance DA
 A2: Mitchell---2AC
Ukraine response and accommodation of China thump BUT removing promise to
defend solves, so case turns the DA, their author, we’re yellow
Dr. A. Wess Mitchell 17, President of the Center for European Policy Analysis, Doctorate in Political
Science from the Otto Suhr Institut für Politikwissenschaft at Freie Universität, Master’s Degree from the
Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of
Foreign Service, and Jakub J. Grygiel, Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America and
Fellow at The Institute for Human Ecology, The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and The
Crisis of American Power, p. 42-71

By observing recent events in the three frontier regions— Central Europe , the Middle East , and East
Asia — we think that the truth is closer to Schelling’s view. It is clear that the effects of probing behavior
do not remain confined to the immediate actors involved (the probing power, the direct target— usually a rival’s ally—
and the rival great power). Other actors in the region are keenly aware of the revisionist state’s probing and of the
responses of the U nited S tates. For instance, other states, from the Baltics to Poland and Ukraine, observed Russia’s war against
Georgia in 2008 and its invasion of Crimea in 2014 with great trepidation.35 These wars were symptoms of a more assertive Russia; a source of
worry in themselves. But they were also meant to elicit an answer from the United States. Any sign of American hesitation to
respond quickly and firmly to Russian small wars in the two states was perceived as affect ing directly these other states ,
not directly involved in the probing event. America’s reputation for reliability , in other words, was at stake,
even though Georgia and Ukraine were not NATO members but only aspiring to closer security and political relations with the United States and
the EU. Similarly, Pacific nations from Japan to Australia follow with great attention China’s probing behavior in the South China Sea that puts
pressure on Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan. They too seek to figure out whether the United States has the will to remain as a security
provider in this region and to the “global commons” in general. How the United States responds to a probe in a particular region therefore
affects its regional image.

The question is whether there is also a wider, global audience to regional probes . Do Middle Eastern leaders
watch American responses to Russia’s probing in Eastern Europe ? Do Kremlin elites draw lessons from U.S.
actions along the “first chain of islands” in East Asia? Or, do Chinese neo- Mahanian leaders think the United States is on the wane if it
accommodates Putin’s imperial fantasies? According to the latest academic literature, the answer should be negative: how the United States is
perceived to be doing in one region does not translate into a similar perception elsewhere. The practical implication of such a view is that the
United States should not have fought in Vietnam to prove that it would stand its ground in Europe; similarly, it ought not to oppose Putin
around the Black Sea basin simply to demonstrate that it will oppose China in the South China Sea. But we are not so confident that there
are no connections between regional demonstrations of will and power . It is at least plausible, and perhaps safer, to
argue that there are wider, global effects of probing. First, the world is indeed global , and regions are not
hermetically separated from each other. As Nicholas Spykman observed, “Global war, as well as global peace, means
that all fronts and all areas are interrelated . No matter how remote they are from each other, success or failure in one
will have an immediate and determining effect on the others . It is necessary, therefore, to see the world as a whole
and to weigh the measures taken to achieve victory in the light of conditions in all theaters. ”36 Leaders watch and learn from
other regions , more than previously in history when conflicts were limited by technology and
geographic knowledge to a contiguous region . Because of their domestic opacity, it is difficult to prove that America’s rivals
learn from U.S. behavior in other regions, but the question whether they do so needs to be asked. Chinese military officials, for example, have
commented publicly on lessons for China from the U.S. handling of the war in Ukraine.37 As one analyst noted, “It might be impossible to
determine definitively whether the Ukraine Crisis has impacted China’s risk calculus in hotspots such as the South
and East China Sea , but the evidence . . . certainly suggests that such eastern reverberations are quite plausible. ”38 At a minimum we
have to recognize that some cross- regional analyses do occur , and it is safer to assume that the U.S. reputation does not
stay limited to a region.

Second, the much strong er effect of probing appears to be on U.S. allies and friends, the key
geopolitical spectators . They watch how the U nited S tates treats other allies and form an opinion
regarding American reliability. The former director of Saudi intelligence summed up the view of many officials from U.S. allied
states in the Persian Gulf when he said in react ion to the Russian seizure of Crimea , “While the wolf is eating the sheep, there
is no shepherd to come to the rescue. ”39 Israel was interested in the war in Georgia; Japan ese analysts followed the
Obama administration’s decision to cancel the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program in Central Europe; and Polish
experts watch U.S. moves in East Asia.40 The probing by revisionist states is first and foremost an attempt to test the strength of their rival’s
commitment to its allies and friends. In sum, probing behavior by revisionist states targets these specific audiences in order to elicit responses
from them. The goal is to figure out whether and how to draw the new map of power. And it puts the burden on the targeted audiences: their
responses determine whether the probe is successful.

EVALUATION OF PROBING: SUCCESS OR FAILURE

From the perspective of the revisionist power that engages in probing, whether a probe has achieved its objectives determines its success or failure. The minimum objective of the probing
state is to measure the rival’s staying power in its neighboring region, an objective that is achieved whether the targeted powers respond or not, but it is difficult to interpret. The targeted rival
may be tempted to ignore the probe not out of a sense of its own weakness but in the belief that ignoring the test will send a signal of strategic insouciance from its pedestal of power. Also,
because of the local and limited nature of a probe, directly involving only the regional actors, it is tempting for the distant security provider to leave the response to its allies and friends. A
direct and strong intervention by the offshore patron would escalate the interaction, raising the chances of a larger war, an outcome that neither party desires. But the shrewdness of a
probing strategy is that it puts the targeted rival power in the position of having either to escalate the tensions in order to respond or to choose a less confrontational approach but one that
risks weakening its alliances. The response to the probe, not the probe itself, is perceived as a potential cause of war. This creates strong disincentives for the tested great power to react by

opposing the revisionist state’s probe in a direct and forceful way, or to respond at all. For instance, in
the case of China’s probing actions in the South China Sea, the Obama administration’s approach seems
to have been to accommodate Beijing , acknowledging a decline in U.S. naval capabilities and
welcoming a greater Chinese role in providing security to the global commons.41 Similarly, after Russia’s
takeover of Crimea, Washington’s first response was to turn the episode into a strictly regional affair.
As President Obama put it in February 2014, “Any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity would be deeply destabilizing, which is not in the interest of Ukraine, Russia, or Europe, ”
tellingly not including the United States in the list of the affected parties.42
The problem is that the temptation of the existing great power to either ignore or regionalize the tension stemming from the revisionist state’s
probes— an attempt to de- escalate the strategic interaction— also constitutes a response. It may, however, be one that serves for the
revisionist power as a confirmation of its initial suspicion that the rival’s commitment to the region was on the wane. An unanswered —
ignored or regionalized— probe is an indication that the existing map of power is open to revisions . Another way to put this is that a probe

is a question of sorts: does the existing hegemon have the will and capacity to oppose the revisionist power? An attempt to dismiss the question or to let allies respond to it is a tacit admission by the tested great power that its interest in maintaining a strong foothold and influence in the
region is in decline. Silence in response to a probe is telling. Probing, therefore, always elicits some sort of answer, and in this narrow sense it is a success.

The purpose of a probe is also to attain a secondary, albeit crucial, goal of beginning to redraw the map of influence without generating counterbalancing pressures from the tested great power and its allies. The most successful
probe would be one that pushes the targeted small states and other regional spectators closer to the revisionist power (or at least convinces them to distance themselves from their existing security patron, the rival great power)
while at the same time convincing the rival great power that it is too costly to maintain its political influence and provide security in the region. Hence the probe needs to be evaluated on what it achieves in the three audiences: the
directly targeted neighboring small state, the distant security patron, and the geopolitical onlookers (in particular other states in the region). The success or failure of a revisionist state’s probe depends on the actions by these three
groups, and, arguably, it can attain partial success by achieving a revision of the status quo in one audience but not the other.

For instance, a probe can succeed in extending the revisionist power’s influence over the immediate target, the ally or would- be ally of the rival, but at the same time it may generate more vigorous efforts by regional onlookers to
counterbalance it through a variety of strategies, ranging from military modernization to tighter defense cooperation with the distant security patron. This seems to be the case for Russia’s takeover of Crimea. Moscow quickly
conquered Crimea and destabilized Ukraine’s easternmost oblast, successfully demonstrating its ability and willingness to use force to achieve limited territorial adjustments. While Kiev maintains its political independence, it has
also been shown to be weak and unable to oppose Russian pressures. The quasi– civil war in the eastern regions and Russia’s conquest of Crimea make Ukraine an unlikely candidate for a closer relationship with the EU and NATO,
even if Ukrainian political elites and public opinion may continue to be in favor of it. Russia’s probe, in the form of its intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, has thus been successful in neutering the westward drift of Kiev. The
EU, and in particular states such as France and Germany, have now an even smaller desire to bring Ukraine closer, as it is deemed too dangerous and risky; Ukraine is not worth losing business deals with Russia, not to mention
starting a war with Russia.

The Ukraine War has also damaged American credibility in the region. Washington after all had given
assurances (not “guarantees, ” which are reserved for NATO members) to the Ukrainian government in
the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. This is undoubtedly a Russian success. But there are also other
consequences of Russia’s probing, unintended and unwelcome by Moscow. Some states in the Central European region, in particular Poland and the Baltic
states, have awakened from the geopolitical vacation of the past two decades. The 1990s and the 2000s were characterized by a widespread sense that threats to
the territorial security of the region were minimal, and most of the strategic focus was on economic cooperation with the EU and on keeping in the good graces of
the United States through participation in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is over, at least in part. While strengthening the EU continues to be a priority in Central
European capitals, there is simply no more interest in “out- of- area” operations, which drain resources and time from territorial defense. From this perspective,
Russian probes have altered the geostrategic outlook of some Central European states. The eastern frontier is what really matters to them now, as their threat
assessment has changed. Russia, in other words, has reached an upper threshold in its probes, creating a backlash among some of the states in the region, which
are pursuing diplomatic counterbalancing and defense modernization. They are also calling for more visible and permanent NATO (and in particular, U.S.) security
presence on their territories to shore up the extended deterrent against Russia.
 Top---Case Turns Cred---1AR
Russian probing turns the DA---it reveals US is unwilling and incapable of responding
which collapses cred

BUT aff solves it – cred is only hurt if there’s an expectation of defense and the US
doesn’t defend---the plan removes that expectation – that’s Stapleton

None of their evidence assumes probing happening now, the strike of Narva and other commitments –
the 2AR gets to spin and answer their specific cards – most of DA was in 1NR which makes the 1AR super
difficult so 2AR gets to answer specificity of their ev

No turns case – allies couldn’t possibly manage a conflict between Russia and the U.S. or China, Russia,
and U.S.
 Top---Link Turn---1AR
Aff increases credibility---commitment to remaining allies is stronger because the US
has greater interest defending them

Especially true since US would reassure remaining NATO allies by explaining why it
won’t defend---which reinforces commitment to those nations – that’s Shifrinson

Other countries lean harder on the US after the plan

---allies have no alternative and if there’s any risk they think China and Russia are emboldened that only encourages them to bind themselves
to the US because they know it’s the best short term solution

Sweeney 19 [Mike Sweeney, fellow at Defense Priorities, “Could America Lose a War Well?” 4-8,
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/could-america-lose-war-well, y2k]

In facing off against China or Russia, the United States can afford to lose as long as the scope of the
conflict remains contained . This doesn’t, of course, mean that the United States shouldn’t attempt to
defeat a Chinese or Russian invasion of its neighbors, but it is to argue that US power would not be
crippled by such a loss, despite the public humiliation of its first true battlefield defeat in seventy years.
Seeing such contests today as all-or-nothing struggles is poor strategic thinking that fails to move
beyond the specific historical circumstances of the Cold War, itself a conflict that is now almost three
decades in the past.

Likewise, I am unconvinced that US failure to successfully defend either Taiwan or the Baltics would
undermine the strength of its alliances elsewhere in Asia or Europe . If anything, by openly attacking
their neighbors, China and Russia are more likely to make other regional states balance against them
by allying more tightly with the United States. To the extent NATO’s constituent members have raised
individual defense spending in recent years, it may have had more to do with the annexation of Crimea
than American brow-beating. Is Vladimir Putin truly content that his revanchist projects have led to
NATO’s rotating Enhanced Forward Presence (or EFP) deployments in the Baltics or to realistic
discussions about permanently basing US forces in Poland? A passive, non-aggressive Russia would
probably do more to undermine alliance cohesion than what we’re experiencing now. The current
rapprochement in US-Philippines relations can similarly be attributed to Chinese assertiveness in the
South China Sea.

BUT our impacts come first---allies would adopt ‘wait and see’ approach---no impact
immediately
---prefer this ev it’s a simulation of the US pulling out of NATO so it has the best predictive power

Fix and Giegerich 19 [Liana Fix is program director for international affairs at Körber-Stiftung’s Berlin
office with a special focus on Russia and Eastern Europe. Previously, she was a doctoral fellow at the
German Institute for International and Security Affairs. She holds a master’s degree in theory and history
of international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and concluded a
Ph.D. on Germany’s role in European Russia policy , and Dr. Bastian Giegerich is the director of defense
and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and leads the team that
produces the annual flagship publication The Military Balance, “EUROPEAN SECURITY IN CRISIS: WHAT
TO EXPECT IF THE UNITED STATES WITHDRAWS FROM NATO”, 11-29-2019,
https://warontherocks.com/2019/11/european-security-in-crisis-what-to-expect-if-the-united-states-
withdraws-from-nato/] IanM

Trump’s musings about a NATO withdrawal have served as a wake-up call for some in Europe that Europeans
urgently need to assume greater responsibility for their own security. This realization is one of the reasons why closer defense cooperation and
a greater degree of strategic autonomy are high on the European Union’s agenda. But are Europeans able to defend themselves? How
would they think about their defense without the United States? A policy game prepared by Körber-Stiftung
and the International Institute for Strategic Studies sought to answer these questions this summer in Berlin. Five country
teams with experts from France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States
addressed a fictional scenario that involved a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, followed by crises in a NATO member state in
the western Balkans and across Eastern Europe. How would Europeans react to such a scenario? What are the red lines,
interests, and priorities of the respective actors? How might Europeans organize their defense if the United States withdraws from NATO, and
what role could the United States play in European security after the withdrawal? The results of the game were sobering, with no clear upside
for any of the participating teams. While a one-time simulation exercise, it provided valuable insights into the interests and preferences of
European member states. At the beginning of the policy game, most European teams adopted a “wait-and-see”
approach focused on persuading the United States to return to NATO, offering concessions that were
unthinkable before (from trade to energy). The unfortunate message for transatlantic relations seems to be that a threat to abandon
NATO might actually yield some results.

the core of NATO supports accommodating Russia

---France, Hungary, Italy, Turkey and others support more accommodating strategy and don’t want to view Russia as a threat anymore

---only the eastern states want a hardline on Russia---NO ONE else---means no collapse

Ted Galen Carpenter 19, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and
a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author of ten books and the contributing editor of
ten books, including four books on NATO, “NATO THE DANGEROUS DINOSAUR,” 8/2/19, published by
the Cato Institute, accessed via b-ok.

Most of the new intra-alliance tensions involve issues that are more substantive, pertinent, and
intractable than the traditional burden-sharing squabbles. For example, the allies have frustrated
Washington’s determination , despite Russia’s opposition and mounting anger, to continue expanding
NATO eastward. France, Germany, and other key members adamantly oppose that step. Those
recalcitrant NATO members appear to have drawn the line against offering membership to Georgia and
Ukraine. Indeed, disagreements within NATO about overall policy toward Moscow are substantial . The
United States and most of the East European members favor a hard-line, confrontational policy,
believing that such a stance is necessary to deter Russian aggression. But France, Hungary, Italy, Turkey,
and other NATO powers advocate a more accommodating approach . They resist the notion of treating
Russia as though it poses a security threat akin to what the USSR once posed. Turkey already has
concluded a major arms deal with Moscow (over Washington’s vehement objections). And there is
proliferating discontent in NATO’s ranks about continuing, much less intensifying, the system of
economic sanctions that alliance members imposed on Russia following that country’s annexation of
Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014.

Aff solves cred---it wins US respect

---courageous liquidation of uncredible commitments makes the US look smart to other powers because they know the US can’t defend and
enhances the cred of remaining commitments because it shows the US is selective in choosing partners – that’s Allison

Allison 20 [Graham Allison is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School
and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, “The New
Spheres of Influence: Sharing the Globe With Other Great Powers”,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-02-10/new-spheres-influence]

In the military arena, the same logic applies, but with more complexity. Washington will need partners—
but partners that bring more in assets than they introduce in risks . Unfortunately, few of the United
States’ current allies meet this standard . The U.S. alliance system should be subjected to a zero-based
analysis : every current ally and partner, from Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand to Latvia , Saudi
Arabia, and Turkey , should be considered in terms of what it is doing to enhance U.S. security and
well-being , and with what risks and costs . Alliances are not forever . Historically, when conditions have
changed, particularly when a focal enemy has disappeared or balances of power have shifted
dramatically, so, too, have other relationships among nations. Most Americans today have forgotten an
era in which NATO had a counterpart in Asia, SEATO (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), and even
an analogue in the Middle East, CENTO (the Central Treaty Organization); both of those are now artifacts
in the museum of retired national interests. As Kennan noted, “ There is more respect to be won . . . by
a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of
extravagant or unpromising objectives .”

To understand the risks entailed in the inheritance of current U.S. alliances, consider two scenarios U.S.
defense planners worry about today. If, watching China’s suppression of protests in Hong Kong, Taiwan
should make a dramatic move toward independence that leads China to react violently, would the
United States go to war with China to preserve Taiwan’s status? Should it? On the European front, if in
response to an uprising of ethnic Russian workers in Riga’s shipyards, the Latvian government cracked
down on ethnic Russians and sparked Russia’s annexation of a swath of Latvia— Crimea 2.0 —would
NATO launch an immediate military response , in accordance with its Article 5 guarantee? Should it? If
the answer to any of those questions is not a straightforward yes—and it is not —then the time has
come for an alliance-focused version of the stress tests for banks used after the 2008 financial crisis .

Such an approach is all the more important given the realities of nuclear weapons in this new world.
Both China and Russia have reliable second-strike nuclear capabilities —that is, the ability to withstand
an initial nuclear attack and conduct a retaliatory strike that could destroy the United States .
Accordingly, not only is nuclear war not a viable option; even a conventional war that could escalate to
nuclear war risks catastrophe . Competition must thus be tempered by caution, constraints, and
careful calculations in risk taking. For a nation that has accumulated a long list of entanglements with
nations that may have, or may imagine they have, a blank check from Washington, this creates a big
problem. The line between reassuring an ally and emboldening its leadership to act recklessly is a fine
one.

If the balance of military power in a conventional war over Taiwan or the Baltics has shifted decisively
in China’s and Russia’s favor, current U.S. commitments are not sustainable . The gap between those
commitments and the United States’ actual military capabilities is a classic case of overstretch . What a
zero-based assessment would mean for the current alliance system, and for U.S. relations with each of
more than 50 treaty allies and partners, should emerge as a result of an analysis of the evidence. But it
would likely lead the United States to shed some allies, double down on others whose assets are as
important for U.S. security as U.S. assets are for them, and radically revise the terms of each
commitment to make obligations and restraints as prominent as reassurances and guarantees.

would also enhance the credibility of the commitments that the

This process
United States chose to renew . While the veterans of the Cold War rightly claim that NATO
has been the greatest alliance in the history of the world, neither Trump nor Obama before him was
convinced. Tellingly, American military commanders doubted that the North Atlantic Council would
authorize a military response to the Russian annexation of Crimea or that the U.S. government would
be able to make a decision about how to respond before the event was over. Rethinking the United
States’ commitments to its allies would enhance American security and make these same pacts
stronger .
 Top---No Spill-Over---1AR
Plan won’t spill-over to other alliances:
1---Case studies prove no one changes behavior based on credibility People invade or
make decisions that are CONTINGENT and PROXIMATE – fisher ev says Putin DIDN’T
invade Ukraine bc the U.S. failed to follow through on the Syria commitment trap but
bc he wanted Ukraine – it’s NOT nobody cares about credibility, but there isn’t an
issue linkage – takes out DA bc nobody cares ab lack of Baltic commitment bc they
KNOW defense is context specific which PROVES they will buy the reassurance link
turns when the U.S. explains Baltic abandonment post-plan
2---Fear of Russia means allies will overlook abandonment
3---Allies will hedge their bets with the US since it’s better than the alternative
---if they think there’s any risk US would still defend than it’s better to stick with the US rather than trash the whole alliance – that’s Larison

Larison 15 Graham’s Desperate Use of the “Credibility” Argument, DANIEL LARISON, senior editor at
TAC, holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, February 7, 2015,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/grahams-desperate-use-of-the-credibility-argument/

Graham makes a desperate appeal to the “credibility” argument a moment later:∂ They may die, they may lose, but I’ll
tell you what…if somebody doesn’t push back better we’re all gonna lose. Because who would join us in the future? What does an agreement
mean anymore when the United States and other world powers sign it? Would you really give up your nuclear weapons? What does this tell the
Iranians about our resolve to stop their nuclear program?∂ In other words, he acknowledges that arming Ukraine may well be useless, but
what matters is to demonstrate that the U.S. will make futile gestures of support in order to preserve
“credibility” and demonstrate resolve. That’s an appallingly bad argument even for the likes of Graham. One might
almost think that these quotes from Graham came from someone trying to parody the worldview of hard-liners, but this really is what Graham
said. He has given us a excellent example of why the obsession with “credibility” and resolve is so poisonous and
harmful to our policy debates. Worrying about “credibility” in this way is irrational and extremely
simplistic, and it amounts to little more than conjuring up very unlikely scenarios to try to scare people
into supporting reckless action.∂ Let’s take Graham’s worries one by one. The willingness of other states to enter
into agreements with the U.S. is in no way harmed if the U.S. refuses to send weapons to Ukraine . The
value of any particular agreement will depend on the provisions it contains, on the extent of political
support for it in the respective countries, and on the obligations that it creates for the different parties. Since Graham
seems to be referring to the Budapest memorandum here, it’s worth remembering that the U.S. and U.K. have fulfilled their obligations under
that agreement, such as they are, so there can be no question of our having failed to honor the agreement. So how are future agreements
imperiled by deciding not to send weapons to Ukraine? The truth is that they are not, and Graham is just trying to con the audience. ∂ Likewise,
other states will remain or become allies and clients of the U.S. when they believe it is in their interest
to do so. America’s ability to gain support from other states on other unrelated matters is not hampered by
refusing to arm the government of a country with the U.S. has no alliance and in which it has few
interests. They will recognize that the U.S . has never made any security commitments to Ukraine, and therefore can’t be
faulted for “failing” to keep commitments that it never made . The remark about nuclear weapons is a red herring,
since Ukraine had not the means to keep the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the USSR, and even if it could have afforded to maintain such an
arsenal its possession of those weapons likely would have made it more of a target for Russian interference rather than less of one. Sending
weapons to Ukraine tells the Iranians precisely nothing about the determination of the U.S. and other
world powers to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program continues to operate within the limits of the NPT ,
because the two things have nothing to do with one another. This bit about Iran is especially rich coming from Graham,
who is one of the leading advocates of new sanctions legislation aimed at sabotaging negotiations with Iran. ∂ Earlier in the panel, Graham had
assured the audience that there was a consensus in the U.S. in favor of sending arms to Ukraine, but that isn’t remotely true. Public opinion is
strongly against doing this, and there is quite a lot of serious disagreement in D.C. as well. There
may be a consensus inside
Graham’s hawkish bubble, but most Americans and many of America’s major European allies don’t share
these reckless views. Fortunately, all of Graham’s remarks received tepid applause at the conference, and that
came from other American hawks seated in the audience. Graham presented the conference with the condensed version of every
stupid hawkish talking point from the last year and a half, and his argument went over like a lead balloon.

3---Issues are contextual

Walt 15 [The Credibility Addiction, The United States can’t stop fighting other countries’ wars — and
its allies are acting like enablers, STEPHEN M. WALT, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international
relations at Harvard University, JANUARY 6, 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/06/the-credibility-
addiction-us-iraq-afghanistan-unwinnable-war/] IanM

As anyone who’s studied the history of U.S. foreign relations knows, American leaders have been obsessed with credibility
ever since World War II. If other states ever doubted U.S. power or resolve, so the argument ran , communists
would be emboldened, deterrence would weaken, and America’s allies would be intimidated and neutralized, leaving the
United States isolated and friendless in a hostile world. This concern led American leaders to constantly reiterate their
pledges to defend allies all over the world, led Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to fight on for years in Vietnam,
and drove U.S. efforts to acquire some sort of “nuclear superiority” over the USSR. Even today, whenever something bad happens
almost anywhere in the world, hawkish voices will immediately proclaim that America’s credibility will
collapse if Uncle Sam does not do something now.∂ It’s not surprising that credibility looms so large in U.S. foreign-policy
thinking. Because the United States is the linchpin of a vast alliance network , it has to convince lots of other
countries that its promises are really believable. A lot of these countries aren’t especially powerful or
strategically significant, however, so there are good reasons to wonder if it was really in America’s
interest to defend them. Moreover, some of these commitments involve nuclear guarantees of one sort or another,
which means they entail at least some slight risk of nuclear war. As a result, Washington has to convince allies
and adversaries that it might be willing to run big risks on behalf of other countries , even when the United
States is not directly threatened and the countries it has pledged to defend aren’t vital to maintaining the
global balance of power or to American security more broadly.∂ Add to these concerns the supposed “lesson” of Munich (i.e., the idea
that all dictators are the equivalent of Adolf Hitler and that appeasement never, ever works), and you have a formula for viewing even trivial
issues as somehow bearing on the broader question of how the United States will respond when its vital interests really are on the line. Of
course, boththe U.S. military and the foreign-policy elite are quick to embrace the notion that U.S
credibility was both fragile and all-important , because it provided another reason for large defense
budgets and another justification for getting involved all over the world. Unfortunately, this obsession with
credibility was misplaced . For one thing, a state’s “reputation” for being tough or reliable didn’t work the way
most foreign-policy elites thought it did. American leaders kept worrying that other states would question
the United States’ resolve and capability if it ever abandoned an unimportant ally , or lost some minor scrap in the

developing world. But as careful research by Ted Hopf, Jonathan Mercer, and Daryl Press has shown, states do not judge
the credibility of commitments in one place by looking at how a country acted somewhere far away ,
especially when the two situations are quite different. In fact, when the United States did lose, or when it chose
to cut its losses and liquidate some unpromising position , dominos barely fell and its core strategic
relations remained unaffected. In other words, how the United States responds to a challenge in Southeast Asia or sub-Saharan
Africa tells you nothing about how it would or should respond somewhere else, and other states understood this all along. When trying to
figure out what the United States is going to do, other states do not start by asking what the United States did in some conflict on the other side
of the world. Instead, they ask whether it is in America’s interest to act in the situation at hand. And guess what? This implies that U.S.
commitments are most credible when the American interest is obvious to all. I mean, nobody really doubts that the United States would fight
like a tiger to defend its own soil, right? Exaggerated worries about U.S. credibility had a number of unfortunate consequences. They
encouraged American leaders to act in places that didn’t matter, in order to convince others that it would also act in places that did.
Squandering resources on marginal conflicts undermined confidence in U.S. protection, however, because it consumed resources that could
have been committed elsewhere and it sometimes made a war-weary American public even less interested in far-flung foreign adventures.
Ironically, misguided efforts to bolster U.S. credibility may have weakened it instead. The credibility obsession also made it easier
for U.S. allies to free-ride (something they were already inclined to do), because they could always get Uncle Sucker to
take on more burdens by complaining that they had doubts about American resolve . I don’t blame them
for trying this ploy, but I do blame American officials for falling for it so often. In fact, had allies been a bit less confident that the United
States was going to protect them no matter what, these states might have been willing to spend more on their own defense and been more
attentive to Washington’s wishes. If
the goal is retaining U.S. influence and leverage , what really matters is
whether other states have confidence in America’s judgment . If they believe that the United States is good at weighing
threats soberly and rationally, and if they are convinced that Washington can set clear priorities and stick to them, then U.S. allies can calibrate
their actions with ours and will be more inclined to follow the U.S. lead. If allies and adversaries believe the United States understands what is
going on in key regions and has a clear sense of its own interests, then they will know that the United States won’t be buffaloed into unwise
actions by self-serving allied whining, or provoked into overreactions by enemies eager to drag us into another costly quagmire. By contrast, if
American leaders panic at every sign of danger and treat minor problems as mortal threats, then other states will
be less inclined to trust Washington’s views on these matters and be more inclined to follow their own counsel. When
Washington goes to war on the basis of cooked intelligence, worst-case assumptions, and unsurpassed hubris, then other countries will be
warier the next time we try to get them to line up alongside us. If the United States keeps throwing soldiers’ lives and billions of dollars into
unwinnable conflicts, confidence in our political system’s ability to make rational decisions will decline even more. If foreign powers believe U.S.
policy is driven more by domestic politics than by strategic imperatives, they’ll view us with barely veiled contempt and meddle even more in
our porous political system. If foreign leaders pay close attention to the bluster and balderdash that pass for strategic debate in official
Washington, they’ll have reason to wonder if the self-appointed Leader of the Free World really knows what it is doing. And of course, when
they see a lengthy series of costly screw-ups (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Ukraine, etc.), they will be more inclined to think for
themselves than to trust Washington’s guidance. What I’m suggesting, in short, is that successful diplomacy depends less on
endlessly reaffirming our “will” or “resolve,” and more on building confidence in the analytical capacity of the American
foreign-policy community and the judgment of top U.S. officials. And that’s not surprising, either. Diplomacy is mostly about persuasion; it is
ultimately about convincing others to do what we want. They are more likely to accept our recommendations when we can tell a truly
convincing story, i.e., one that has the merit of being true. And that means that credibility isn’t the key to a successful
foreign policy , especially when it becomes a reflexive tendency to respond to any and all challenges with threats, bluster, and the use of
force. If America still wants other states to follow our lead, what really matters is judgment: analyzing issues intelligently, setting clear and
sensible priorities, and being willing to rethink a course of action in response to events.

4---Empirical data proves commitments aren’t interdependent

Schuessler and Shifrinson 19 [John M. Schuessler Dr. Schuessler is an associate professor in the
Department of International Affairs and academic director of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at
the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. Previously, he taught at the
Air War College. Dr. Schuessler received his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. He is
the author of Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy (Cornell
University Press, 2015). Joshua R. Shifrinson Dr. Shifrinson is an assistant professor of international
relations with Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, where his work focuses on US foreign
policy, international security, and diplomatic history. A graduate of MIT and Brandeis University, he is
the author of Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Cornell University
Press, 2018). “The Shadow of Exit from NATO”,
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-13_Issue-3/Schuessler.pdf]
Is reputation, in fact, worth fighting for? To a surprising degree, the evidence cuts against the notion
that commitments are interdependent and thus that reputation deserves the importance that policy
makers have ascribed to it . An exhaustive review of the literature is beyond the scope of this article,
but a safe implication to draw from some of its seminal contributions is that reputation has been
overvalued.51
 No Spill-Over---Extra---1AR

Cred is not the basis for countries decisions---ISIS proves

Beinart 14 What Does Global 'Credibility' Even Mean? PETER BEINART, contributing editor at The
Atlantic and National Journal, an associate professor of journalism and political science at the City
University of New York, and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, OCT 7, 2014,
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/what-does-global-credibility-even-mean-
obama-panetta/381175/

The credibility argument was always a stretch . As I noted in a column earlier this year, there is a wealth of academic
literature proving Panetta wrong. As Dartmouth’s Daryl Press writes in his book, Calculating Credibility, “A country’s
credibility, at least during crises, is driven not by its past behavior but rather by its power and interests. If a country
makes threats that it has the power to carry out —and an interest in doing so—those threats will be believed even
if the country has bluffed in the past.” ∂ But a few months ago, there was no way to prove Press’s contention in this particular case. Now there
is. Since he declared war on ISIS, the Obama administration has been recruiting other countries to join

the United States. And whatever you think of the war itself, that diplomatic effort has been remarkably successful. Ten
different Arab countries have agreed to participate in the anti-ISIS campaign. Even John McCain and Lindsey Graham have praised the administration’s coalition-
building skills.∂ All this illustrates the silliness of Panetta’s claim. It
was one thing to speculate a few months ago that Obama’s chemical-
weapons about-face would make it harder for the U.S. to convince allies to join a military coalition the next
time. But the next time is now here . Roughly a year after supposedly squandering America’s credibility by

standing down on chemical weapons, Obama has mustered enough credibility to convince a bevy of
Arab countries to help us bomb fellow Arab Muslims in the heart of the Middle East . Which just
underscores Press’s point : When predicting how other governments will behave in a given situation,
governments examine the particular circumstances of that situation , not “credibility” per se.

Even if allies watch the US---we still have commitments to those nations and still
respond---they won’t give that up and adversaries wouldn’t test it

Bailing indefensible commitments won’t hurt cred---magnified by allied agreement

LeVeck and Narang 16 [Brad L. LeVeck, associate professor of political science at the University of
California, Merced, Neil Narang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, “How International Reputation Matters: Revisiting Alliance
Violations in Context”,
https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/bleveck/assets/pdfs/how_international_reputation_matters.pdf]

In this context, a particularly good indicator of future alliance behavior may be past behavior. If a state
violated its agreements in the past, it seems intuitive that it may be more likely to do so in the future.
However, Spence (1973) famously showed that past behavior is not always equally informative and that
whether past behavior distinguishes one type from another depends crucially on the behavior’s cost . If,
for instance, honoring an alliance becomes so difficult that all states are forced to violate their
commitments together , then a violation conveys little information about how reliable one state is
relative to another. Beyond this extreme example, the general insight is that alliance violations do more
to signal that a state is relatively unreliable when many other states appear to be willing and able to
honor the same agreement .

Of course, whether other states would honor a particular agreement under similar conditions is often
difficult to observe (Narang 2014; Narang and Mehta 2015), as each alliance has elements that are
somewhat unique. However, there may be times and regions where system-level shocks cause a large
number of countries to simultaneously violate alliance commitments together . This may provide
relatively clear evidence to a potential partner that the costs of honoring a previous alliance were so
great that even reliable states that would normally honor their commitment were unable to do so .
 Top---Cred Thumpers---1AR
US cred is thumped or inevitably collapses:
1---European energy reliance---means they won’t respond to Russian aggression and
NS2 inevitably leads to divergence with US – that’s carol
2---Past article 5 failures---US didn’t respond for 9-11, NATO didn’t respond to Turkey
invoking it, and didn’t respond to Baltics after they were cyberattacked---NATO
perceives article 5 as hollow – that’s Fedsyn
3---US said it won’t defend Canada---there’s no distinction between that and the plan
– that’s Shinkman
4---Authoritarians in NATO inevitably collapse cred
---NATO members won’t defend NATO states that are authoritarian like Poland, Turkey, Hungary, even though collective defense forces them
to. Russia knows that and will trigger article 5 which collapses credibility inevitably

Biscop 18 [Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop is the Director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont –
Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, and a Professor at Ghent University. “The
Dangerous Geopolitics of Populism, and What NATO and the EU Can Do About It”,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep21404.pdf]

This authoritarian trend , which affects other countries too, creates a fundamental problem for NATO ,
because it is at odds with how its basic purpose has evolved since the end of the Cold War . The
purpose of NATO today is to defend not just the territorial integrity of its members, but also the model
of society that they have constructed on their territories. In European society, the state is to guarantee
security, prosperity, and democracy for its citizens. This triad cannot be disentangled : a citizen can only
benefit from security, prosperity and democracy together or not at all . Security from violence doesn’t mean much if
one dies of hunger, just as wealth doesn’t mean much if the government can take it away, or even imprison you, arbitrarily.

If an ally no longer upholds this European way of life, then what exactly is NATO supposed to defend?
A government that undermines its country’s democracy thus ipso facto puts its security at risk too .
The more authoritarian a government becomes, the more it puts the bond of solidarity in the Alliance
into question . To put it very starkly: which democratic government could justify to its citizens putting its
forces in harm’s way in order to defend an eventual dictatorship in another NATO country?

This, of course, is obvious to NATO’s potential adversaries too . Russia definitely will not hesitate to use
any opportunity that presents itself in order to weaken NATO, if only to stop the Alliance from interfering in its strategic
design of re-establishing predominance in the former Soviet republics. Hence Russia actively supports various populist actors.

POPULISM AND THE EU

In most cases, populist tactics include Euroscepticism. It is both acceptable and necessary in a democratic polity to criticise EU policies, and
even the EU project as such. But when countries decided, by democratic means, to join the EU, they subscribed to a set of objectives and
limitations. If a government no longer is willing to abide by them, it cannot expect that its country’s status in the EU will remain unaffected,
even if such were the free and informed democratic choice of its citizens (which today is questionable). Therefore, if the EU adopts sanctions
against a government that violates the basic principles that it subscribed to when joining the Union, this does not constitute a violation of the
sovereignty of the state in question.
But certain governments not only violate the EU’s values, they also actively undermine EU policies, notably the Common Foreign and Security
Policy (CFSP). What is worse, they appear to be doing so under the influence of foreign powers such as Russia and China. In full contradiction
with their nationalist rhetoric, some governments have willingly become instruments of outside actors. Worryingly, not only proto-
authoritarian but even some fully democratic governments are undermining the EU in this way, having become hostage, it seems, to Russian
energy or Chinese financial power. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for the EU to take a resolute and united stance in issues
involving China and Russia. Certain governments even undermine EU positions on general human rights policy, directly affecting the core of the
Union’s value-based foreign policy.

The risk is that at some point other EU countries will stop investing in a foreign policy, and other policies, at 28, and forge ahead in a core
group. A multispeed EU is in the offing anyway, and it is the (suboptimal) solution if there is no other way to advance European integration (and
it must advance, for there still are areas in which only a stronger EU role can safeguard the national interest of the member states). But a
multispeed EU should be a positive choice, a way of moving ahead with a view to all member states re-joining the core eventually. It should not
be a negative choice, a way of casting aside those that have come to be seen as obstacles to progress. That would create long-lasting acrimony
from which the EU might not recover.

NATO and the EU can no longer be disentangled . If one weakens the bond between nations in the EU,
ipso facto one weakens ties in NATO . Or do protoauthoritarian governments really think that they can constantly frustrate other
EU member states, and yet those same states will come running to their assistance through NATO when they are in need? Today, there
can no longer be a strong and united NATO without a strong and united EU . Thus, undermining the
EU undermines collective defence just as much as undermining democracy does .

**5---NATO insiders don’t think US will defend

Edwards 19 [Jim Edwards is the editor-in-chief of Insider's news division “Putin got exactly what he
wants from NATO this week, thanks to Trump”, 12-4, https://www.insider.com/putin-got-what-he-
wants-from-nato-trump-2019-12] IanM

The context here is "Article 5," the fundamental guiding principle that underpins the US-Europe military alliance,
and its role in deterring military aggression from Russia. Article 5 states that if any member of NATO is attacked, then all
of NATO will rush to defend that country. On paper, it's a scary prospect for Moscow: If Russian troops were to attempt maneuvers in
even a small country such as Slovakia or Latvia — which both used to be part of the Soviet Union — then troops from the US, UK and Turkey
would rush into war to defend them. Of course, NATO
only works as long as all its 29 countries remain continuously on
board with the promise that they will fight even if the war doesn't directly involve them. This week,
Trump said Article 5 was merely a "question ." "I'm going to be discussing that today," he told reporters.
"And it's a very interesting question, isn't it?" This is exactly what Putin wants to hear Russia's main strategy to deter NATO around its borders is
to encourage splits and division within NATO that will paralyze its ability to respond to aggression in a unified way. From Putin's point of view, it
doesn't matter that NATO controls up to 3.5 million military service personnel — 500,000 more than Russia — if the NATO troops are too busy
arguing amongst themselves when the tanks start rolling. This "mindset" is a key difference between the way Putin views the world and the
way NATO's leaders do. Since the end of the Cold War, Europe and the US have enjoyed the "peace dividend." They went into the 21st Century
assuming the big global conflicts were over. Future wars would be minor, asymmetric skirmishes that superior firepower would easily quash.
The Western mindset, in other words, is that the world would be a largely benign place in which democracy would flourish. Putin, by contrast, is
a creature and a product of the former Soviet Union, the KGB, and its successor agencies. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw many of its
former countries and territories cede away from Moscow and ally with Europe. This wasn't just a blow to Russia's national ego. For the Russian
state's national security apparatus, it represented a security threat. Russia's hatred of "encirclement" For decades, Russia has officially regarded
the growth of NATO as an "encirclement" that threatens Russia, in much the same way that the West's Cold War alliances did. Its defence
against the threat is to make sure it retains as much influence as possible in the countries that line its borders. Failing that, it wants those
countries weak and disabled, so that they form a confusing buffer zone around Russia's actual border. The conflict in Ukraine is a good example
of that. Russia has outright invaded Crimea, claiming it for its own. Simultaneously, it is conducting low-level, ongoing guerilla combat
operations in Donetsk and Donbass, making it impossible for Ukraine to control its territory, but not explicitly declaring it part of Russia. The
strategy is clever. It creates a situation where even if NATO wanted to wade-in full scale to reclaim Ukraine's borders, the mission would be
confusing and diffuse. Which place would be the priority — Crimea or Donbass? And would NATO be willing to keep troops in both territories,
given that the Russian military would be amassed in comfortable readiness, indefinitely, just yards across the border? NATO, in other words,
largely assumes peace is the world's default setting. Russia assumes conflict is the norm. NATO's false assumptions have led to a troubling
decline in military capability That false assumption on the NATO side has had disastrous consequences for the UK's military readiness. Military
funding has dwindled. The British military is no longer big enough nor capable enough of defending the country against a Russian attack,
according to General Sir Richard Barrons, the recently retired chief of the UK's Joint Forces Command. In a 10-page "private" memo to the UK
Ministry of Defence, he warned that Britain no longer had the military management or training to defend the country. "Neither the UK
homeland nor a deployed force — let alone both concurrently — could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort," he wrote, in a copy of
the memo obtained by the Financial Times. NATO
officials regard Trump as a security risk The divisions in NATO don't end
there. Internally , as Insider's Mitch Prothero reported in August, NATO officials regard Trump as a national

security risk . The president has a famously chummy relationship with Putin, and willingly takes meetings
with him that no one else attends. This makes them afraid to take a hard line against Russia's provocations — such as testing
nuclear-propelled weapons — or tell the president national security information. He might just blurt it out in a conversation with Putin. Trump
has tweeted classified information in the past, including one incident where he published a photo of an Iranian rocket launch site. That gave the
US's adversaries a clearer idea of the US's intel-gathering capabilities. And then there is Turkey Turkey controls the largest military force in
Europe, and the largest force in NATO outside the US. It also occupies the most strategically sensitive area of NATO — the border with Syria,
Iraq and Iran. Its military is constantly active. And yet Trump has gone out of his way to annoy Turkey. In 2018, he imposed economic sanctions
on the country, beggaring its currency and plunging the nation into a sharp recession. In response, Turkey made a $2.5 billion arms deal with
Russia for a new missile system. That deal will give Russia — NATO's main enemy — a new microscope into the capability of Europe's most
important military force. Boris Johnson is afraid to be photographed with him Trump is so divisive that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is afraid
to be photographed with him. Last night Johnson hosted drinks for the NATO leaders at Downing Street. According to Politico, "Johnson was so
keen not to be photographed with the U.S. president that he did not even greet him at the door when he and wife Melania arrived at No. 10."
"The edge of a precipice" This is why French president Emmanuel Macron told The Economist: "What we are currently experiencing is the brain
death of NATO." Macron believes Europe stands on "the edge of a precipice." Trump's actions have helped Russia's strategy
— to sew confusion inside its rivals. The rot has reached Article 5 , the fundamental basis of European defence. Europe cannot fight a
war against Russia unless NATO is a functioning institution. Right now, Trump is raising questions about that capability.

6---US refusal of article 5 – should have triggered the DA

Ghosh 19 [Bobby Ghosh writes on foreign affairs for Bloomberg, “Trump is the least of NATO's
problems”, 12-5, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/12/05/commentary/world-
commentary/trump-least-natos-problems/] IanM
NEW YORK – It was meant to be a celebration of the 70th anniversary of NATO. But the mood at a gathering of the alliance’s leaders this week
in London was anything but celebratory. There was no disguising the fact that NATO is in deep — even existential — trouble.
Nothing illustrated this unease more than the brief elation among NATO hands over U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprising defense of the
alliance. If Trump, previously a NATO skeptic, has had a change of heart, perhaps things are not so dire after all. Except Trump didn’t
have a change of heart. His defense of the alliance was little more than a rhetorical stick with which to beat
French President Emmanuel Macron, who had previously bemoaned the institution’s “brain death.” Credit must also go to NATO Secretary-
General Jens Stoltenberg, who has done a masterful job of managing Trump, calming the president’s tantrums and stroking his ego. Witness
Stoltenberg’s eagerness, at a joint news conference, to credit Trump for increased military spending by many members. “Your leadership on
defense spending is having a real impact,” he purred, as the president preened. But Trump’s skepticism was soon on display once
again. He carped about Germany’s paltry defense spending, threatened trade penalties against members who don’t pony up and
refused to commit to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the all-for-one clause that requires
the group to defend any member under attack. Trump is Trump: There’s every possibility that he’ll arrive at the
next NATO summit brandishing a flamethrower instead of the pea shooter he wielded in London. And not even Stoltenberg’s
diplomatic skills can mask the fundamental problems — both philosophical and practical — that bedevil the alliance. These go beyond the
previous spasms of disunity NATO has endured, such as the 1966 French withdrawal from the integrated military command or Turkey’s 1974
invasion of Cyprus and showdown with Greece. An important reason
NATO has held together for 70 years is the common
perception of the threat posed by the Soviet Union and, more recently, Russia. But core members of the alliance
no longer agree on this. Turkey is buying arms from Moscow, including missile systems that endanger
NATO defenses; Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more suspicious about America’s intentions than Russia’s. Trump has
been cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin at every opportunity, against the advice of his entire military and intelligence
community. Macron is ambivalent at best. Nor is there consensus over the other threats to the West: terrorism, cyberwarfare and China.
Turkey and France have accused each other of harboring terrorists. The divisions over Russia compromise the alliance’s
ability to defend against online attacks. And some NATO members see China more as a source of money than menace. Even if
most member states were to agree on what constitutes a threat, it doesn’t automatically follow that NATO is the best shield. Cyberwarfare
requires subtler, more secretive approaches than the alliance is capable of deploying, and counterterrorism calls for swift, supple responses —
not the kind of thing you leave to a giant multinational bureaucracy. Taking on China may require a North Pacific Treaty Organization, in which
European militaries would play only a small part. This doesn’t mean NATO
is no longer relevant. It is relevant for the same reason
it was at its founding: the potent threat of Moscow . Getting all the members to recognize this , and to act
accordingly, will require much more than Stoltenberg’s diplomatic guile — it will take political leadership of a high order
from the most powerful members. Nothing said or done in London this week suggested such leadership is at
hand.

7---Troop pull-out from Germany

Robertson 8-2 [Nic Robertson is an award-winning CNN International Diplomatic Editor, “Trump's
Germany troops pullout may be his last gift to Putin before the election”, 8-2-2020,
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/02/politics/trump-germany-troops-russia-intl/index.html] IanM

London (CNN)Since he came to office, US President Donald Trump

has obsessively picked at the ties that bind America to its
allies. This week in one apparently wanton yank, he ripped one of those cords by announcing a plan to withdraw
nearly 12,000 troops from Germany. This thin green thread of forces, woven through Germany's historic towns, rolling fields and
dense forests, has for three generations helped ensure peace in Europe, embodying an unbreakable commitment between the former foes.
The relationship now though, particularly if Trump is reelected later this year, is in freefall, destination unknown. His decision, if
his tweets have been correctly divined, seems to be to punish Germany . "Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for Energy,
and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia. What's that all about?" Trump wrote in one post. "Also, Germany is very delinquent in
their 2% fee to NATO. We are therefore moving some troops out of Germany!" His undiplomatic data grenades were tossed out in a few
moments in the middle of the night, but it
could take years to undo the damage German officials fear it will inflict
on the military alliance. The head of the German parliament's foreign relations committee, Norbert Roettgen,
replied on Twitter Wednesday, saying, "Instead of strengthening #NATO it is going to weaken the alliance . The US's
military clout will not increase, but decrease in relation to Russia and the Near & Middle East." Bavaria's state governor
Markus Soeder, whose region hosts several US bases, also criticized Trump: "Unfortunately this seriously damages
German-American relations. A military benefit cannot be seen. It weakens NATO and the U.S.A. itself." Little surprise, then,
that the Kremlin is gleefully exploiting Europe's consternation , with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling CNN: 5--"We
never hid that [we think] the less American solders there are on the European continent the calmer it is in Europe." Trump is the gift that keeps
on giving for the Kremlin: his unpredictability, while often a pain, for them is continual grist for their propaganda mill. It has taken America's
45th president almost four self-serving and destructive years to reach this point, but in
pulling the trigger on withdrawing
troops from Germany, one-third of the total stationed in the country, he has signaled an end to what Franklin D. Roosevelt,
America's 32nd president, conceived as a post-World War II order based on common interest and collective aspirations.
Roosevelt and other leaders of his generation witnessed the worst of times as the great powers collided, propelled by a few evil self-possessed
men; assuming Trump is not completely ignorant, he has chosen to ignore this obvious fact. The problem for NATO and America's other allies is
that there seems little that can hold Trump back from his impulses. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper echoed the President's words saying,
"Germany is the wealthiest country in Europe. Germany can and should pay more to its defense." This argument will ring hollow in the
cavernous halls at NATO HQ in Brussels leafy suburbs, where commitment to 2% GDP came long before Trump began his presidency, as will the
claim by Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the drawdown would "bolster" America's support of its allies
because it would "better distribute forces across Europe and increase the use of rotational forces." Esper talked about a "strategic laydown" as
some troops may move to Poland and others could end up in the diminutive Baltic states. And Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's perennially optimistic
secretary general, said "the US had consulted closely with all NATO allies ahead of today's announcement" -- even though German
officials expressed surprise when they first heard about the possible drawdown a month ago. Stoltenberg has
fought a persistent rearguard action against Trump's impulses to cut loose from NATO since the US President took office in January 2017. As
recently as NATO's last leaders' meeting in Luton, England, in December 2019 Stoltenberg let Trump blow his own trumpet by announcing
increasing GDP defense spending commitments he'd squeezed from the alliance's members. He is still trying to save the day now, claiming
rather hopefully that Trump's decision "underlines the continued commitment by the United States to NATO and to European security." The
reality is Trump has bullied German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the get-go, and not just on Germany's sub-par defence spending
commitment of 1.38% of GDP, but about exports of BMW cars and trade in general. At their first meeting in the White House in spring 2017 the
President barely looked Merkel in the eye, refusing to shake her hand; at a NATO summit in 2018 he berated her over breakfast. And now this.
Ironically Trump's generals are moving the US military's Europe command, EUCOM, from Germany to Brussels, home of NATO, to "improve
EUCOM's operational flexibility," according to EUCOM's Commander Tom Wolters -- despite Belgium's glaring NATO contribution deficit; at
0.93% it is lower even than Germany's. Whatever Trump's motive, be it petulance or indeed a strategic pivot to Asia, as Esper has explained in
recent weeks, the
reality leaves allies rattled and runs counter to the US's long-term benefit; now those European
countries must look to themselves for defense -- not for a quick fix, but as a major strategic shift. Germany's Defense
Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said it was a "pity" Trump was pulling troops from Germany, adding, "I want us to
finally advance more quickly towards a common European security and defence policy."
 Eurodeterrent Top---Ext---1AR
If anything, plan leads to Euro deterrent not new nuclear states---France can replace
US with their nukes, it complies with the NPT, and solves deterrence and assurance by
reassuring allies they have nuclear protection
***

Aff causes France to create euro-deterrent with Germany

AFP 7-2 [Cites Merkel’s party, research experts on French nuke deterrence and Macron, “France to
spell out post-Brexit nuclear weapons strategy”, https://www.rfi.fr/en/wires/20200207-france-spell-out-
post-brexit-nuclear-weapons-strategy] IanM

France, the European Union's sole nuclear power since Britain's exit from the bloc, will unveil Friday how it intends to use its atomic
arsenal as a deterrent in an increasingly unstable world. President Emmanuel Macron, in an address to military officers graduating
in Paris, is expected to recommit to upgrading France's capacity, at a time when NATO allies, who would ordinarily
look to the United States in a nuclear standoff, worry about Washington's retreat from the multilateral stage. On
Monday, Macron said his speech, eagerly anticipated in military circles, would address the interests of other European
countries. "I will focus on the doctrine (of French deterrence), but also on the procedures and modalities that I wish to propose on
this topic to our partners in the coming months," he said on a visit to Warsaw. Deterrence theory postulates that countries with nuclear
weapons are less likely to attack each other for fear of mutual destruction, meaning the arms serve as guarantors of peace. France
considers nuclear deterrence a keystone of its defence strategy and the ultimate guarantee of its most vital interests.
Macron has already agreed to a costly modernisation of France's atomic arsenal, arguing in January 2018 that
"deterrence is part of our history, part of our defence strategy, and will remain so." An act of parliament provides for about 37 billion euros
($41 billion) to be spent on the maintenance and modernisation of the French nuclear arsenal from 2019 to 2025 -- some 12.5 percent of the
total defence budget for these seven years. Macron's address Friday comes at a time of high global anxiety, marked by rising tension between
military powers, a proliferation of regional security crises and the breakdown of international arms control. Russia and the US last year
withdrew from the Soviet-era Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, and blamed one another for its demise. That deal was seen as a
cornerstone of global security and its end sparked fears of a new arms race. - 'Sympathetic ears' - Macron last December said the treaty's end
meant that "France, Germany, and other European countries are now threatened by new Russian missiles." Washington has also since
threatened not to renew the New START treaty with Russia, the last key nuclear deal between the former Cold War foes. The treaty, which
expires this month, obliged both sides to halve their number of strategic nuclear missile launchers and establish a new verification regime.
Corentin Brustlein, research director at the Paris-based IFRI institute for international relations, said Europe has always
been a strong focus of France's nuclear vision . There had been several French attempts at dialogue with
European partners on the topic, he said, "that have never succeeded". However, "the balance is shifting, including in
countries such as Germany" where public opinion is deeply anti-nuclear and the subject remains largely taboo, but "where we see
emerging positions on the level of European strategic ambition that must grow," Brustlein said. Just Monday, a senior
member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party pleaded for the EU to create its own nuclear deterrence

capability . Germany should "consider cooperation with France regarding nuclear weapons," Johann
Wadephul said in an interview with the Tagesspiegel daily, and "should be prepared to participate in the nuclear deterrent force with its own
capabilities and means." For analyst Bruno Tertrais of the FRS research institute, writing in The Washington Quarterly, while the discussions
were unlikely to lead to a "European Bomb" in the near future, "a persistent feeling of insecurity and uncertainty vis-a-vis
the future of the US security guarantee is likely to foster a new debate among interested European countries on
nuclear deterrence."
Germany will seek nuclear protection from France and the UK
Fix 20 [Programme Director International Affairs, Körber-Stiftung, Liana, Will NATO Die Aged 70?,
February 5, p. https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/will-nato-die-aged-70, accessed, 6-5-20]
IanM
"We are experiencing the brain death of NATO" – this statement of French President Emmanuel Macron has triggered curious reactions in
Germany: Suddenly, most German politicians – even from center-left parties – felt compelled to underline in very clear terms their commitment
to the Alliance. At this year’s Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made the point: "NATO is alive and kicking!".
Macron’s remarks have served as a wake-up call for the German political elite. While some European countries – namely France and the UK –
can rely on their own security, thanks to Trident and Force de frappe, and others like Poland have started building a special relationship with
the US, Germany has no alternative to NATO as a security provider . A recent Körber Policy Game, conducted in cooperation with
the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), posed the "Gretchenfrage" to high-level senior participants from
Germany , France, Poland, the UK, and the US: What would be the future of NATO if the US withdrew? The results
were telling – and sobering. Without American security guarantees, the principles of European solidarity were quickly challenged and Europe
was at serious risk of splitting into different camps. Confronted with a scenario of Russian escalation, the German team suggested
asking France and the UK to expand their nuclear umbrellas to other European countries, since
developing a German nuclear weapons capacity was considered an unlikely option. The French team even
proposed a new, EU-centered, collective defense alliance after a US withdrawal, which was met with skepticism especially from the German,
British and Polish side. The Körber Policy Game thus demonstrated how existential NATO is for Germany’s security. Yet, is the German public
aware of NATO’s crucial role for their country’s security? In the 2019 survey of The Berlin Pulse, most Germans
preferred a nuclear umbrella provided by the French or the British rather than US nuclear protection. However,
despite this skeptical stance towards the US, most Germans still have a favorable view of NATO – which is a positive sign for the future.
 Solves Deterrence---1AR
France/UK nuclear deterrent would be perceived as credible
Tertrais 19 [Deputy Director of the Paris-based Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (Foundation
for Strategic Research), Bruno, Washington Quarterly, Will Europe Get Its Own Bomb?, Summer, vol. 42,
#2, p. 60] IanM

Would it be credible? Some claim that a France and/or UK-based nuclear deterrent would not have the
necessary credibility. But it is widely considered that a smaller arsenal can deter a major power
provided it has the ability to inflict damage seen as unacceptable by the other party. This has always been
the premise of “deterrence of the strong by the weak”—and is not connected with the size of the other party’s nuclear arsenal as long as
deterrence does not rely on a “counterforce” strategy, or on the ability to destroy the equivalent territory or population of the defender. It is
also not connected with the size of the other party’s conventional military capabilities as long as one does not rely on any war-fighting or
nuclear defense strategy—concepts that even NATO no longer applies. Most importantly, again, deterrence exercised by a
European power might be seen as more credible than when it is exercised by a distant protector; the
idea is that “be ready to die for Helsinki” could be a more credible proposition for a European nuclear
power than for the United States.
 A2: Causes Russia War---1AR
Euro deterrent threads the needle---nuanced approach resolve tensions
---they strike the right balance, deter Russia BUT won’t freak them out because Russia doesn’t think they
want to contain only protect and they have a nuanced approach which solves

Maitre 19 [Emmanuelle Maitre is a research fellow at the Fondation pur la Recherche Strategique, a
France based think tank, “The Franco-German Tandem: Bridging the Gap on Nuclear Issues”, January,
https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/maitre_french_german_tandem_nuclear_issues_20
19.pdf] IanM

Defining what should be the “ appropriate mix ” of conventional forces, missile defense and nuclear deterrence to
support NATO’s deterrence and defense posture is a bigger challenge for France and Germany, as they seek to strike
a balance between the need to assure the security of the Alliance and convince the Kremlin of their
collective resolve to defend all NATO members, without giving Moscow any justification to harden its declaratory

policy , acquire new capabilities or initiate new shows of force abroad to affirm its power both domestically and
externally. They present nuanced approaches on the best way to reassure worried allies in the President Putin’s
policy without going back on commitment made to Russia in the NATO-Russia Founding Act signed in Paris in
1997, and provoking new tensions .

Germany and France temper the deterrent to prevent Russia war

---both understand dialogue is important and will talk to Russia to ease concerns, and they’ll make sure
any military moves aren’t provocative

Pezard et al 17 [Stephanie Pezard is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, Andrew
Radin, Thomas Szayna, and F. Stephen Larrabee are all RAND researchers,“European Relations with
Russia”, Published by RAND in 2017, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1579.html] IanM

Germany, too, has been particularly supportive of maintaining a dialogue with Russia, insisting that NATO
should leave open the possibility for reestablishing a positive relationship with Russia in the future.102 German
analysts interviewed pointed to a belief underlying German foreign policy that the relationship with Russia is
malleable based on how Germany and the other allies choose to interact with Russia.103 In France , there is an
understanding that dialogue with Russia is needed to solve the Ukraine issue, and that isolating Russia would
be even more dangerous, as it could fuel more radical forces in Russia.104 France has suspended defense cooperation with Russia but
maintained scientific, economic, and cultural cooperation—and, more generally, any other area not affected by sanctions.105 One particular
area of continued cooperation has been counterterrorism intelligence sharing, including on issues such as Chechen networks in France and the
India-Pakistan area.106 Russia and France also share concerns about foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria.107 Norway maintains
technical cooperation with Russia on a number of specific areas that include the Arctic, governance of fisheries, search and rescue in the
Barents Sea, and nonproliferation but has cut all high-level and military engagement with Russia.108 The Ukraine crisis limits the European
Union’s ability to engage Russia on a number of topics, including the Eurasian Union.109 One EU official interviewed noted that “everything we
say and do [in the dialogue with Russia]” stumbles on the Ukraine crisis and that “[in] our debates, we are hostage of the Ukraine crisis.”110
The European Union has closed (or excluded Russia from) a number of forums of discussion and canceled annual EU-Russia summits; EU-Russia
talks on visa facilitation; and negotiations on a framework agreement encompassing all EU-Russia trade, including energy.111 Member states,
too, have suspended important bilateral meetings or summits with Russia—unless they are about solving the crisis in Ukraine.112 This general
principle, however, has been ignored by a few member states such as Greece113 and Italy.114 The attempt by a number of European
states to maintain dialogue with Russia also reflects a general concern that an overly military response
to Russia might be seen as provocative and could lead to an escalation of the conflict.115 A French researcher
warned against “pushing Russia in a corner.”116 Similarly, Polish discussants mentioned that because so much of Russian policy is motivated by
domestic factors, Putin is much more dangerous when pressed to the wall.117 They assess that, as Putin’s assertiveness in Ukraine has been
building on Russian pride and the belief of many Russians that the country needed to act, many within Russia have defended the increased
Russian stature even in the face of economic hardship.118 To some extent, Western sanctions may have even reinforced Putin’s position
domestically by providing him with an easy scapegoat for an economic situation that is mostly to blame on Russia’s structural weaknesses and
overreliance on oil revenue.119
 A2: Kills NPT---1AR
France nuclear sharing does not violate the NPT
Tertrais 19 [Deputy Director of the Paris-based Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (Foundation
for Strategic Research), Bruno, Washington Quarterly, Will Europe Get Its Own Bomb?, Summer, vol. 42,
#2, p. 60] IanM

Would it be legal? But such countries would need to do so only to build national nuclear weapons—
something that is not on the agenda. A NATO-like European nuclear deterrent would no more violate
the NPT than the current NATO arrangements do . Also, the argument ignores the German and Italian
reservations they made when they ratified the NPT (see above).
 Germany No Prolif---Ext---1AR
Germany won’t proliferate---assumes the plan
1---NPT---constitutional limits mean they can’t withdraw, and they fear getting
sanctioned
2---No tech---they’d have to reverse and rebuild reactors which takes time and is
costly
3---Norms---public is anti-nuclear, and think arms control is vital and that EU would be
impacted which they want to prevent
 No Prolif---Public---1AR
Politicians won’t push prolif---domestic opinion
Loss 17 [graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Rafael, Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, The folly of a German Bomb, June 26, p. https://thebulletin.org/2017/06/the-folly-
of-a-german-bomb/] IanM

Barriers to going nuclear . Despite flirtations with nuclear weapons in the early days of the Federal Republic of
Germany, and attempts to normalize tactical nuclear capabilities, for decades public opinion has been  strongly
opposed  to nuclear proliferation. Currently, 93 percent of Germans support an international legal ban on
nuclear weapons, and 85 percent want the roughly 20 remaining US warheads removed from Germany.

In fact, opposition to all things nuclear has become something of a tradition in the country. In the early 1980s, massive
public protests against the deployment of medium-range missiles shook West German society. In the early 2000s, Germany made the
decision to gradually phase out the civil use of nuclear energy. Though ultimately unsuccessful, German Foreign Minister Guido
Westerwelle, in 2010, vocally demanded that Washington relocate its stockpile. In this context, any government politician who seriously

advocates for a German nuclear bomb would risk considerable political capital and electoral prospects.

Government will never support German bomb

Tertrais 19 [Deputy Director of the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, Bruno>, Die Welt,
(translated into English), Does Europe need its own nuclear shield?, pfactiva] IanM
Recently, a survey by the Körber Foundation produced a surprising result: When asked whether Germany should continue to be protected by
the nuclear shield of the USA or whether it would be better to seek nuclear protection from France and Great Britain, almost twice as many
Germans favoured a new European solution (40 percent) instead of the existing American solution (22 percent). There is no doubt that Donald
Trump is an important factor here. But the survey also indicates that there is a new realism in Germany about nuclear weapons, exactly 50
years after the country signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in November 1969. Since then, the idea of a European deterrent has been
discussed again and again. And now the debate is on fire again. Doubts about the reliability of the American nuclear guarantee have increased
under Trump, especially in connection with Russia's new strategic aggressiveness. Another debate that is related but separate is whether
Europe should develop its own defence identity - a discussion that the EU started more than two decades ago and which is being driven
forward bit by bit. So the time has come to rethink the role of nuclear weapons in protecting Europe. Some
options should be discarded immediately. One of them's a German bomb . The Federal Republic
of Germany has made no less than three declarations of its renunciation of nuclear weapons, namely in 1954, 1969
and 1990. In the mainstream of German politics there is no need for a national nuclear weapons programme. So
there will be no special nuclear route.
 No Prolif---NPT---1AR
No prolif---NPT reputation cost
Loss 17 [graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Rafael, Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, The folly of a German Bomb, June 26, p. https://thebulletin.org/2017/06/the-folly-
of-a-german-bomb/] IanM

Germany’s international legal obligations also stand in the way of national nuclear weapons. On three
occasions, the Federal Republic renounced their acquisition and possession: with its accession to the Western European
Union in 1954, its signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1969, and the Two Plus Four
Agreement of 1990, which formalized the reunification of Germany. If Germany decided to leave the NPT , it would join the
only other country that has renounced the treaty: North Korea. This would not only come at great reputational cost , as a
break with Germany’s long-standing subscription to the transformative and constraining power of i nternational law,
but would likely encourage proliferation. If a wealthy, powerful, and reputable country like Germany needs the bomb, why should others not
follow?

They’d have to pull out from so many treaties AND public blocks
Volpe & Kühn 17 [Assistant Professor at the Defense Analysis Department of the Naval Postgraduate
School and a Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Tristan; Stanton
Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ulrich, Washington
Quarterly, Germany’s Nuclear Education: Why a Few Elites Are Testing a Taboo, vol. 40, #3, p.11] IanM

Moreover, the political ramifications would be disastrous, as Germany would have to exit from the T reaty on the
N on- P roliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Such a move could fatally damage global efforts to inhibit proliferation,
while sparking political outrage at home from a public that remains strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. In
addition, Berlin would make its power dilemma worse as it withdrew from an additional web of treaties ,

supplier contracts, and legal agreements designed to bind the German civil nuclear program into a
multinational European technology project.[20] The alternative strategy of sneaking out to the bomb would fare no
better, as it would hinge on Germany's ability to build and then operate a clandestine weapons
production complex in total secrecy until an assured retaliation force would be ready to be deployed. Premature detection
would create dangerous security risks, as Russia would likely be highly motivated to prevent Germany from
fielding nuclear weapons.
 No Prolif---Tech---1AR
No prolif---tech and cost
Loss 17 [graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Rafael, Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, The folly of a German Bomb, June 26, p. https://thebulletin.org/2017/06/the-folly-
of-a-german-bomb/] IanM

There are also logistical barriers to going nuclear . With the decision to switch off nuclear power
production in Germany, critical infrastructure has gradually been demolished . Though several small research reactors
remain in use, eight of Germany’s industrial nuclear reactors were decommissioned shortly after the Fukushima incident in 2011. By 2022, all
remaining power plants will follow. Rebuilding the infrastructure to maintain the full fuel cycle would take decades
and come too late to respond to any immediate security threats. A credible nuclear deterrent would also
cost German taxpayers trillions of euros, particularly if it were to be extended over other European Union member states.

Can’t produce weapons

Volpe & Kühn 17 [Assistant Professor at the Defense Analysis Department of the Naval Postgraduate
School and a Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Tristan; Stanton
Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ulrich, Washington
Quarterly, Germany’s Nuclear Education: Why a Few Elites Are Testing a Taboo, vol. 40, #3, p.11] IanM

Third, proponents imply that Berlin could field nuclear forces rapidly without incurring severe costs or risks. In
reality, Germany no longer has the capabilities in place to produce nuclear weapons "almost instantly," as
many security analysts have long assumed.[18] The most direct pathway to a German bomb would be the so-called breakout route: civil
nuclear energy facilities would be repurposed to produce fissile material, and then this highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium would be
manufactured into nuclear explosive devices as quickly as possible. Since
Germany shut down its reprocessing program in
1990, Berlin would have to go down the uranium route by nationalizing the Urenco fuel enrichment plant at Gronau or
weaponizing the modest stockpile of HEU under contract from Avera for the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz (FRM-II) research reactor at the Technical
University of Munich.[19] Neither
capability would be optimally suited to sustain a weapons production
program; nationalizing these resources would take time, set off alarm bells, and create a deep rift in political relations with
other European nations.

Takes decades to rebuild infrastructure

Volpe & Kühn 17 [Assistant Professor at the Defense Analysis Department of the Naval Postgraduate
School and a Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Tristan; Stanton
Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ulrich, Washington
Quarterly, Germany’s Nuclear Education: Why a Few Elites Are Testing a Taboo, vol. 40, #3, p.11] IanM

Yet, Germany’s nuclear latency is undergoing a major decrease as the country abandons nuclear energy. In
the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Chancellor Merkel responded to a groundswell of public opposition toward nuclear technology.
Her ruling coalition decided that all nuclear power plants be phased out by 2022, leaving Germany with a handful of small
research reactors, the Urenco enrichment plant, fuel fabrication facilities, research and development projects, and interim spent fuel storage
sites. Consequently, Josef Joffe, publisher of the liberal German newspaper Die Zeit, denounced a German
latent hedge capacity as
“undoable,” because the country was losing its “wherewithal for a weapons option , except for a limited low-
enrichment capability doomed to go when the last power reactor goes.” In a similar vein, Theo Sommer, former editor-inchief of Die Zeit,
argued that detachment from America was “no real option” because “ Germany no longer has the technical infrastructure
for nuclear weapons production, ” and it “would take decades” to rebuild sufficient ENR capabilities.
 A2: Prolif Impact---1AR
No impact to prolif – empirics prove states only use it for deterrence not coercion BUT
states won’t pursue because acquisition is hard and requires lots of time and money
while giving the state nothing – that’s Mueller 20

No impact to proliferation---empirics
Suzuki 15 [Akisato Suzuki is a researcher at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City
University, “Is more better or worse? New empirics on nuclear proliferation and interstate conflict by
Random Forests”, Research and Politics, April-June,
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053168015589625] IanM

Discussion and concluding remarks The main findings reveal that the optimist expectation of the relationship
between nuclear proliferation and interstate conflict is empirically supported :9 first, a larger number of
nuclear states on average decreases the systemic propensity for interstate conflict; and second, there is no clear
evidence that the emergence of new nuclear states increases the systemic propensity for interstate conflict.
Gartzke and Jo (2009) argue that nuclear weapons themselves have no exogenous effect on the probability of
conflict, because when a state is engaged in or expects to engage in conflict , it may develop nuclear
weapons to keep fighting, or to prepare for, that conflict. If this selection effect existed, the analysis should overestimate
the conflict-provoking effect of nuclear proliferation in the above model. Still, the results indicate that a larger number of
nuclear states are associated with fewer disputes in the system.
 A2: Cascade---1AR
No prolif cascade---it’s slow and limited
Horovitz 15 [Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, PhD candidate at the ETH Zurich &
former research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Liviu>, The Journal of
Strategic Studies, Beyond Pessimism: Why the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Will
Not Collapse, vol 38, No. 1-2, pp. 141-2] IanM

Both the historical record and a plethora of theories suggest that additional states might, over time, become
interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, and therefore withdraw from the NPT. Some accounts posited
that, with proliferation begetting more proliferation, the NPT would quickly collapse. Others argued that a treaty which is
unable to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons would soon be considered useless and ultimately abandoned by all its members.
However, little evidence supports these pessimistic assessments . First, additional nuclear proliferation
appears to jolt only a few into slowly acquiring their own nuclear devices. On the one hand, recent scholarship
has questioned reactive proliferation theories that build upon the realist paradigm. On the other hand, a number of theories
do suggest that proliferation incentives for actors in a nuclear newcomer’s immediate environment would increase. Thus, a state might
start on the path to nuclear acquisition. Global, regional, and domestic costs might be endured: the likely sanctions might be
counterbalanced, the neighbours’ mistrust might be compensated, and institutional investments might be shouldered. Having absorbed these
costs, and in the absence of a change of heart, no less than a decade later, a first atomic weapon might be fielded. Arguably, this slow cycle
might start anew. However, for innumerable reasons , such a threatened state might decide that the
security of nuclear weapons was not worth the price, or it might consider these arms to be – at least partially –
replaceable by other means. For instance, US policies involving coercion, security assurances, or various political
benefits prevented a number of ‘tilting dominoes’ from falling. In even starker contrast, any state outside of
the new proliferator’s immediate vicinity or reach would have little additional security incentive to start its
own nuclear programme. Such a non-threatened state might fear that regional instability in the
proliferator’s neighbourhood or a nuclear exchange might have global repercussions. However, withdrawing from the NPT or
sabotaging the agreement would surely not put these concerns to rest.