Tournament:  | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge:
PLAN: The United States federal government should issue an executive order to substantially reduce restrictions on nuclear energy production by declaring nuclear weapons as available for down-blending.

Contention One: The Explosion

Even if nuclear weapons are held with the intention to create security, the reality is that they create a security paradox; where the U.S. will always end up creating more conflict and hostility in order to end conflict

Lebovic, 07  Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Lebovic, James. Rethinking the Security Dilemma Ken Booth British International Relations theorist. Former E H Carr Professor of the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.and Nicholas J. Wheeler Feb 28, 2007 http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2160/1924/1/security%20studies%20chapter%2010,%20Wheeler.pdf

"The security dilemma is a two-level strategic predicament in relations between states... a situation has developed which we call the security paradox. (reprinted from Booth and Wheeler 2008: 4–5)."

Because of the apparent need to act within the security paradox, we ignore the hypocrisies; creating an ontological mindset that makes infinite violence inevitable by being under the guise of “truth” in politics

Burke 07 Prof on Int’l Relations, University of New South Wales)
(Anthony, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Theory and Event, 10:2, MUSE)

"What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend...as necessary policy responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic."

This security paradox and ontological damnation is a continuation of metaphysical pure war – this reorganizes human reality around the locus of military conflict, leaving us lost worshipping within the cult of nuclear security

James 07 (Lecturer @ University of Cambridge)
(Ian, Paul Virilio, pg. 79-80)

"This state of total peace is closely connected to what, in subsequent works,..a ‘military-scientific messianism’ which underpins the global order of security based on nuclear weapons. "

The realist conception of politics enables a techno-scientific view which will culminate in extinction; practicality should no longer represent our interests
David Campbell \Michael Dillon, “The end of philosophy and the end of international relations,” The Political Subject of Violence, 1993, pp. 17-18

"To broach this task anew, however, we have briefly to re-visit again an aspect...whose unprecedented finitudes now define the horizon of life in novel ways."

Deterrence and nuclear weapons create the ultimate will-to-power which is the root cause to war in itself. This power gives society a false sense of security against an invisible enemy, 

Zizek 05 (http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/give-iranian-nukes-a-chance/)

"Every power structure has to rely on an underlying implicit threat...the victim himself (an evil millionaire) turns out to be the real criminal." 

This Will-to-Power and construction of threats distorts reality and causes us to focus on future images of destruction and fear instead of the affirmation of life itself 

Der Derian 93  (James, “The value of security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard,” in The Political Subject of Violence, pp. 102-105)

"The desire for security is manifested as a collective resentment of difference...end of Daybreak in a series of rhetorical questions:"
 

Contention Two: The Fallout

Only the President can remove the HEU restriction

Stockton, 2010 http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/reports/nuclear-security-safety/downblending-heu/nss-nwc-20100914.html#Intro Peter Stockton, Senior Investigator, has thirty years of experience investigating waste and fraud throughout the federal government. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Stockton served as Special Assistant to Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson as his personal troubleshooter on physical and cyber security in the nuclear weapons complex. Prior to that, for twenty-two years, Mr. Stockton was the senior investigator on the House Energy and Power and the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittees of the Energy and Commerce Committee. During the 1970s, he investigated most of the major defense contractors and oil companies, the diversion of bomb-grade uranium to Israel, and the death of Karen Silkwood. In the 1980's and early 1990's, he investigated the security and effectiveness of the nuclear weapons production program and defense contractor fraud.

Another step the U.S. could take to genuinely modernize our nuclear weapons complex is to declare as surplus the HEU that is no longer needed for defense needs and to downblend it. This is an area where the President must take the lead: only the President has the authority to designate an amount of HEU surplus to defense needs, thus making it available for downblending.

Using the Federal Government is the necessary first step to achieve a nuclear-weapons free U.S. and to re-evaluate security rhetoric; presidential order is key

Mendelson 08
Former CDI Senior Associate,  (Jack, The Defense Monitor, p. 5, November/December 2008)

"While nuclear arms are often hyped as fundamental to U.S. security...impact negations to give up the nuclear option, and should be disavowed." 

It is possible for humanity to make this ontological shift and evolve in matters of security rhetoric 

Schell 07 Jonathan Schell, “The Nation’s” peace and disarmament correspondent, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute  and NY Times Journalist , Johnathan Schell: THE Fate of the Earth Bush Years, Tom Engelhardt Interview, Dec. 05, 2007, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/05/nuclear_weapons/

"The abolition of these weapons has always been presented as hopelessly utopian...prevent the bomb from ever returning to our midst."

Ontology must come first--- our decisions have no meaning if they are not framed by human finitude.  Treating death as a mere event to be avoided reduces our ability to choose 

Dillon 1996 Michael, professor Politics and International Relations at the University of Lancaster, The Politics of Security, pp. 82-84

"Whereas tragic denial is willful blindness to this conflict...and a being-with-others in unassimilable Otherness."

The ontological shift is possible and allows for us to see being as something that is developing and becoming, instead of being defined and diluted into nothing but calculation

Burke 07 (Prof on Int’l Relations, University of New South Wales) (Anthony, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Theory and Event, 10:2, MUSE)

"I was motivated to begin the larger project from which...it drives out every other possibility of revealing."

It is possible to transcend the security dilemma even in a world of uncertainty, inter European relations provide example

Lebovic, 07  Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Lebovic, James. Rethinking the Security Dilemma Ken Booth British International Relations theorist. Former E H Carr Professor of the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.and Nicholas J. Wheeler Feb 28, 2007 http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2160/1924/1/security%20studies%20chapter%2010,%20Wheeler.pdf

"Despite the generally limited success of much transcender thinking...the ambiguous symbolism of weapons has become irrelevant."