Thesis:  Currently the safety of every man, women, and child on the face of the planet is challenged by the threat of increasing terrorist activity, and WMD proliferation.  Both of these problems are the direct result of American policy toward Russia.  The world needs a policy shift, towards a comprehensive strategy to stop nuclear war, so we propose foreign policy be changed as follows:

OBSERVATION I.  THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR CAN BE DIMINISHED

SUBPOINT A. ELF Radio would diminish the chance of accidental war. 

Atlas '96.  (Terry Atlas, staff writer Washington Bureau, April 17, 1996)

Blair, who has studied Russian nuclear weapons doctrine, said the addition of a reliable extremely low frequency system could help reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war.  "They have always lacked confidence in their ability to communicate with submarines after an attack and therefore, for over a decade, they have relied on the quick launch of their missiles," he said. "They are trying to move away from this doctrine of rapid reaction to one of pure second strike." 

SUBPOINT B.  DE-ALERTING SOLVES

Bruce W. Nelan (foreign policy writer) May 19, 1997 VOL. 149 # 20; Time; Nuclear Disarray

Such concerns have revived the worldwide call, even from some very senior generals and admirals, to abolish nuclear weapons. But a large part of the risk could be eliminated by the less radical step of "de-alerting" the forces, taking them off their hair-trigger posture. Since there is no political reason to think war is around the corner, why not make it impossible to fire the missiles without a great deal of time-consuming preparation?

SUBPOINT C.  MONEY SOLVES

little 1. Equipment maintenance  

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

With these kinds of high-risk strategies, a government needs to have the tightest, most reliable command-and-control system that money can buy. That is not what Russia has today, and the Russians admit it. Defense Minister Igor Rodionov says the problem is obvious.  The system is built on electronics, which must be carefully maintained and regularly replaced. But last year the forces received, by Rodionov's estimate, only 10.5% of the funds needed to do that. The result, he predicts, is that "we may lose the entire system." The links between radars and headquarters, the computer management of missiles and the physical security of the warheads could all break down.

little 2. Personel Salary

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

What might they not? Last week the Federal Security Service officially confirmed that it had arrested a colonel in the SRF who had been collecting classified information on the missile forces and was planning to try to sell it to someone at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. The next such officer might be willing to sell
not just secrets but a warhead--or the plutonium to make one. "The missile forces must be fed," says Robert Bykov, a retired colonel of the SRF. "If those who guard Russia's nuclear weapons go hungry, we might face some terrifying consequences."

OBSERVATION II.  STATUS QUO NOT SOLVING
A.  SQ Doesn't Support De-Alerting

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

These ideas have not caught on. Defense Secretary Cohen ducks the issue. Others, like former
Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, seem to think de-alerting would distract people from the campaign to abolish the weapons altogether.

B. Russian Nuclear Safety Declining

Bruce G. Blair (Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies) Sept 29, 1996; Washington Post; Who's got the button: The slightly shaky control of Russia's nuclear weapons.

Third, while Russia's nuclear arsenal will continue to shrink, the Kremlin will retain strategic submarine forces and increase its force of mobile land-based ballistic missiles.  This realignment (sought by U.S. arms negotiators) tends to undermine operational safety because safeguards on mobile forces on land and sea are inferior to those on rockets housed in silos.  In a political crisis these safeguards might degrade further, as the Russian military plans to distribute the codes to middle-level commanders in the field. 

PLAN
The United States will substantially change its foreign policy towards Russia:  
SPECIFICALLY;
1. The U.S. will build an Elf Radio System, then make it a gift to the Russian Military.
2. The U.S. will de-alert its missile force, under the provisions of a treaty to be drafted with Russia, enumerating a protocol for both nations to follow in de-alerting or partial disarming.  This treaty will allow both sides to maintain (In a de-alerted status) nuclear weapons in sufficient quantities so as to provide reasonable defense capabilities.
3. The U.S. will provide funds as necessary to provide adequate maintenance & payroll for the Russian Nuclear Force.
4. Funding & Enforcement will principally be through the CIA & NSA, with burdens transferred otherwise as dictated by necessity & confidentiality.
Through this plan, the Affirmative Team sees the following advantages:

Advantage 1. Nuclear Proliferation (Terrorism & Nuclear Civil War)
A. NUCLEAR PROLIF RISK EXISTS 

LITTLE 1. NUCLEAR CIVIL WAR

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

The potential is there for some form of nuke napping--grabbing weapons for ransom or nuclear blackmail, or sales to rogue states or terrorists, or unauthorized launches by renegade commanders.  Some Russians even fret about a nuclear civil war. If a region in Siberia were to declare its independence, a retired senior officer in Moscow speculates, "the entire missile force in the area might cut itself off from the chain of command and control and get reprogrammed to be able to launch at will."

LITTLE 2. NUCLEAR TERRORISM

Ivan Eland(Cato Institute:Director of Defense Studies)May 5, 1998; Cato Policy Analysis No. 306: Protecting the homeland.

Attacks by terrorist groups could now be catastrophic for the American homeland. Terrorists can obtain the technology for weapons of mass terror and will have fewer qualms about using them to cause massive   casualties. The assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs maintains that such catastrophic attacks are almost certain to occur. It will be extremely difficult to deter, prevent, detect, or mitigate them. 

B.  Proliferation Caused By Under-funding

Upon implementation of this plan, the scenario outlined in Observation I, Sub-Point C shall allow Russia's military, which is floundering, to grow, & to keep a risk of a Broken Arrow scenario at minimal.

C. We Solve

By properly funding Russian Nuclear personnel and equipment, we stop proliferation.

Advantage II. Accidental War

A.  Risk of Accidental War Exists

BRUCE W. NELAN (foreign policy writer) MAY 19, 1997 VOL. 149 NO. 20; TIME; Nuclear Disarray

It may still be near the brink, despite the end of the cold war and the dismantling of thousands of warheads, because the people and the machines that control Russia's nuclear arsenal are being neglected. Like the rest of the armed forces, the soldiers in the Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF) are largely unpaid, unfed and unhappy. The delicate computer networks at the heart of the nuclear force are not being maintained properly, and the safeguards that prevent accidental or unauthorized launches are fraying.

B.  De-Targeting Doesn't End Risk

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

Bill Clinton likes to point out that Russian missiles are no longer aimed at targets in the U.S. It is true that both sides agreed in 1994 to switch the missiles away from their cold war assignments, but it isn't true that this step moved the world a safe distance back from Armageddon.  The missiles' computer memories retain those targets, and they can be restored very quickly.  "It is just a matter of a couple of minutes," says a Defense Ministry official in Moscow. And if a missile is launched without a selected target--even if by accident--it reverts to the original one.

C. We Solve

little 1. As Observation 1, Sub-Points A & B say de-alerting & radio system end risk.

little 2.By providing both Elf radio & nuclear de-alerting. We solve.

Advantage III. Psychological

A.  We prevent Russian Suicides

little 1. Poorly paid Russian Nuke forces killing themselves.

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

Equipment is vital, but in any military unit the people are equally important, and they are breaking down too. The soldiers of the SNF, members of an elite warrior class, are being reduced to misery and poverty. They are paid very little--$180 a month for a submarine commander--when they are paid at all. Last year some of them, along with their families, threatened to block the Trans-Siberian railway if they were not paid. Others kill themselves; the suicide rate in the SNF is reportedly the highest in the armed forces.

little 2.By paying them, we prevent suicide.

--------------
Look forward to a Nationalism advantage soon to come.

Extensions:
Justification to circumvent congress:
Congress Lacks Knowledge Of Foreign Policy Issues Which Lead To Bad Decisions
 
Longworth, 4-11-98   (R.C.  Chicago Tribune Staff Writer.)

Manzullo, in his third term on the International Relations Committee, concedes that Congress has this power. He also concedes that his qualifications for exercising this power are"none."    Manzullo says he studied international relations at American University in Washington in the 1960s, "but I never used my degree."  One-third of all members of the House don't even hold passports, and most are clearly more responsive to whatever interest groups command votes back home than to the overall national interest.
The result has been a string of congressionally generated moves that, given the overwhelming U.S. power, have a major impact somewhere around the globe.  The list is long. Regardless of whether the moves are right or wrong, each has taken the power to frame foreign policy and given it to Congress, especially the House of Representatives, whose members are elected to represent narrow constituencies, not the nation as a whole.  
For instance: Congress has blocked Clinton's efforts to pay America's back dues to the United Nations and to provide more crisis funding to the International Monetary Fund, often by tying these measures to the abortion issue. One congressman, Christopher Smith, a fervently anti-abortion Republican from New Jersey, has blocked one White House initiative after another by linking them to the abortion issue to the point that even House Speaker Newt Gingrich has criticized his single-mindedness.  Smith virtually controls foreign policy in the House, according to Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Everything (in Congress concerning foreign policy) has ground to a halt because of this issue."  Each issue is driven more by a special interest, usually ethnic or economic, rather than overall national policy.

Sig/Harms/Adv I&II Extensions
RENEGADE COMMANDERS HAVE LAUNCH CAPABILITY

(Nelan, 5/19/97)

The CIA also reported that the famous code briefcases are not what they seem.  They allow the President or the Defense Minister or the Chief of the General Staff to authorize a nuclear attack, but the actual ability to launch missiles lies much further down the line of command, even in regional command posts and submarines, which, says the CIA report, "have the technical ability to launch without authorization by political leaders or the General Staff."

TERRORIST ATTACK INTRINSIC TO STATUS QUO; GREATEST THREAT TO NAT'L SECURITY

(Eland, 5/5/1998)

Deborah Lee, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, put it even more strongly: "Doubts about the timing and location of possible terrorist attacks sit uneasily alongside the almost certain possibility that attacks against the U.S. homeland will eventually occur. Counter-terrorism specialists define the problem not as a question of if but of when and where such attacks will take place."(16) Because terrorist use of WMD is difficult to deter, prevent, or ameliorate and is potentially catastrophic in most cases, it is the greatest threat to U.S. national security today and will likely remain so in the foreseeable future. 

America threatened by Washington's meddling.

(Eland, 5/5/1998)

Although there are other important drawbacks to a policy of unnecessary overseas military adventurism--for example, lives of military personnel lost and billions of taxpayer dollars wasted--the policy can be catastrophically counterproductive, given the rising terrorist threat. The vulnerability of the American homeland to retaliation for Washington's meddling is severe--and growing. 

SOLVENCY--BACKING OFF US NUKES SOLVES

(Blair, 9/29/1996)

Our daily nuclear posture is deeply implicated in the problem because it poses a steadily increasing threat to Russia's strategic forces and to the organization that commands and controls them. Russian military planners are looking at a steep decline in the combat readiness of Russia's least vulnerable forces - submarines at sea and mobile land missiles in the field. This presents them with a harsh fact: If Russia faced a foreign missile attack and if their current strategic forces were not launched promptly on warning, then only a very small fraction of their arsenal - and possibly none - would be able to retaliate after absorbing the attack. Compounding Russia's problems are the new D-5 missiles on U.S. Trident submarines, whose accuracy and short flight times reinforce Russian reliance on quick launch. 

American Military Superiority and Interventionist foreign policy = nuke war.

(Eland, 5/5/1998)

America's military superiority cannot shield us completely from this threat.  Indeed, a paradox of the new strategic environment is that American military superiority actually increases the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical attack against us by creating incentives for adversaries to challenge us asymmetrically. These weapons may be used as tools of terrorism against the American people. (2) Although America's military superiority contributes to the increased likelihood of a terrorist attack by nuclear, biological, or chemical means--or even an attack against U.S. information systems or other critical infrastructure--it is the interventionist U.S. foreign policy that our military carries out that is the real culprit. That point was acknowledged in the Defense Science Board study for the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology.  As part of its global superpower position, the United States is called upon frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the world. America's position in the world invites attack simply because of its presence. Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against the United States drives the use of transnational actors.
