Iowa Debate SS

2008

Counterforce DA
Counterforce DA............................................................................................................................1
Strategy Sheet.................................................................................................................................2
Counterforce Shell.........................................................................................................................3
Counterforce Shell.........................................................................................................................4
NPR.................................................................................................................................................5
Counterforce Links ICC bans nuclear targeting.....................................................................6
Counterforce Links ICC bans................................................................................................... 7
Counterforce Links ICC bans................................................................................................... 8
AT Targeting civilians bad............................................................................................................ 9
Obama needs to change counterforce........................................................................................10
Countervalue key to force reduction..........................................................................................11
Counterforce Russian buildup.............................................................................................. 12
China modernization..............................................................................................................13
Counterforce escalation......................................................................................................... 14
Accidental nuclear war escalates................................................................................................15
Internal Link Counterforce/Cvalue........................................................................................16

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Strategy Sheet
A few definitional things from wikipedia In nuclear warfare, enemy targets are divided into two types:
counterforce and countervalue. A counterforce target is an element of the military infrastructure, usually either
specific weapons or the bases which support them. A counterforce strike is an attack which targets these elements
whilst leaving the civilian infrastructure the countervalue targets as undamaged as possible. Countervalue refers
to the targeting of an opponent's cities and civilian populations.

The thesis of the argument is that in order to change force structures Obama will need to switch to countervalue to
make cuts because you cant maintain a counterforce posture with lower force levels.

The ICC explicitly bans the targeting of civilian populations, etc etc.

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Counterforce Shell

The Nuclear Posture Review is a key test of Obamas pledge to cut nuclear weapons
stockpiles.
Japan Economic Newswire April 24, 2009 U.S. to start work on full review of nuclear policy Lexis
The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday it will start work on a comprehensive review of its nuclear
policy following President Barack Obama's recent call for a nuclear-free world. An update of the Nuclear
Posture Review report, the first in eight years, will be submitted to Congress with a broader defense plan,
called the Quadrennial Defense Review, early next year. It will be the first test of Obama's promise to work
for total eradication of nuclear weapons. But it is unclear whether the NPR can set numerical targets for reducing U.S. nuclear
warheads. The NPR establishes the nation's nuclear deterrence posture , policies and strategies for the next five to 10
years . It will be carried out with the U.S. departments of energy and state. The purpose of the NPR is to "provide a basis
for the negotiation" with Russia of a follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty aimed at
limiting the threat from the world's largest nuclear arsenals. The NPR is also expected to touch on strengthening the
global nuclear nonproliferation regime in consideration of Iran's and North Korea's nuclear development.

Incorporation of the ICCs ban on targeting civilians would necessitate the use of
counterforce targeting by banning alternative countervalue targeting.
Hans M. Kristensen September 2005 Arms Control Today The Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons: New Doctrine
Falls Short of Bush Pledge
The new nuclear doctrines deepening of the commitment to regional targeting beyond nuclear facilities, and
lowering the bar for when nuclear weapons could be usedeven pre-emptivelyraise important questions
about nuclear targeting and international law. During the editing process of the new nuclear doctrine, a debate was triggered
among the different commands over which term to use for different types of targeting. Of particular concern was the legal
status of countervalue targeting, a targeting methodology that was included in the 1995 nuclear doctrine:
Countervalue targeting strategy directs the destruction or neutralization of selected enemy military and
military-related activities, such as industries, resources, and/or institutions that contribute to the enemys
ability to wage war. In general, weapons required to implement this strategy need not be as numerous or accurate as those required
to implement a counterforce targeting strategy, because countervalue targets generally tend to be softer and unprotected in relation to
counterforce targets.[6] During the editing of the new doctrine, STRATCOM declared that it had decided that countervalue
targeting violates the Law of Armed Conflict. The command therefore suggested changing countervalue to critical infrastructure
targeting. In explaining its decision, STRATCOM stated: Many operational law attorneys do not believe
countervalue targeting is a lawful justification for employment of force, much less nuclear force .
Countervalue philosophy makes no distinction between purely civilian activities and military related activities and could be used to
justify deliberate attacks on civilians and non-military portions of a nations economy. It therefore cannot meet the military necessity
prong of the Law of Armed Conflict. Countervalue targeting also undermines one of the values that underlies Law of
Armed Conflictthe reduction of civilian suffering and to foster the ability to maintain the peace after the
conflict ends. For example, under the countervalue target philosophy, the attack on the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 could be
justified.[7] Other military commands did not agree with the name change. The argument from European Command was that
countervalue should not be changed to critical infrastructure because countervalue has an institutionalized and broadly understood
meaning in the academic literature on nuclear warfare and in international security studies in general. If in doubt on this point,
European Command argued, insert the word countervalue in any electronic search engine and note how many hits appear that are
directly relevant to nuclear policy.[8] In the end, the commands could not agree and the term critical infrastructure
targeting was withdrawn to end the discussion. Yet, the term countervalue also disappeared and is no
longer included in the new nuclear doctrine. The issue was dropped, although targeting appears to continue,
and simply changing the terminology obviously does not change the illegal targeting itself.

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Counterforce Shell
Continued counterforce nuclear posture makes negotiated cuts with Russia impossible, it
create the necessity of Russian launch on warning, the probability of accidental launch is
high.
Ivan Oelrich, 4-13-9 Ending Nuclear Counterforce http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/04/ending-nuclear-
counterforce.php
One of our recommendations is to specifically, and explicitly abandon the counterforce mission. It is worthwhile to
think through the consequences of giving up that mission because I think that will be one of the highest political hurdles. We can
imagine that, during some future crisis, perhaps even a conventional war with Russia, the Russians are about to
use their central nuclear forces to somehow affect the outcome of the crisis. Perhaps the Russians would hope to
shock the United States by attacking an American city. The United States is now keeping the option of attacking first, to try to destroy as
much of the Russian forces on the ground as possible to reduce the damage that they could inflict on Americans. What our report argues
is that we should abandon that mission. Superficially, this seems not to make sense. Why should we remove that option from the
president? How can it be advantageous to unilaterally give up the capability to perhaps save millions of American lives? Giving up
this capability will, however, improve the security of the United States, for three reasons. First, the
circumstances under which the president will use this capability are extremely unlikely. The consequences of even
a blunted Russian nuclear attack will be, by far, the greatest disaster in American history. So the president will have to make a choice
between the certainty of having a nuclear warcertain because he would start itand the potential risk of being attacked first by the
Russians. We believe that the combination of, on the one hand, the high confidence in the military intelligence
needed to know with certainty that the Russians are going to attack combined with, on the other hand, the
utter lack of confidence in whatever other military and diplomatic options remain, will be so rare that the
president is unlikely to ever use the capability. Even so, if the benefits could be potentially huge, then even if they are very
unlikely, there perhaps is some overall advantage. But benefits always have to be compared to costs. And there are costs.
Countering this latent, potential, hypothetical benefit, the United States and the world run risks every day.
The Russians, and the Chinese, know that their forces are vulnerable. The Russians can try to counter this
with tactical measures, such as launching on warning of a U.S. attack, which substantially increases the
likelihood of launching upon a false alarm. They might also predelegate launch authority to lower levels of authority during a
crisis. And US capability affects their forces structures. U.S. military and intelligence leaders have stated in
Congressional testimony that they believe a major motivation for Chinese modernization and their moving to
mobile systems is their sense of vulnerability to U.S. first strike. If the Russians believe they need X
weapons for an effective deterrent and believe that a U.S. first strike will be, say, 90% effective, then they
need to start with 10 times X weapons to have the deterrent force survive that they think they need. So every
day, by maintaining this capability that will probably never be used, creates new dangers that go on, day-by-day and, now,
decade-after-decade. Finally, now that negotiations with the Russians are back on the table, it will far easier to
negotiate limits on Russian weapons if the United States gives up the ability to carry out a first strike . If the
Russians think they need X weapons as a deterrent force and have 10 times X because United States is targeting them, then giving up the
ability to target the weapons and getting a 90% negotiated reduction in Russian weapons clearly works to the U.S. security advantage .
By giving up a first strike capability the United States will increase the likelihood that it can negotiate down
to a level that it would have otherwise hoped to get to through a first strike.

Launch on warning postures lead to accidental nuclear war

Agence France Presse -- English April 29, 1998

Although both the United States and Russia agreed in 1994 not to aim nuclear missiles at each other, a
nuclear missile could still be
launched quickly, and some systems are designed to automatically "launch on warning," the researchers said. "There
have been numerous 'broken arrows' (major nuclear-weapons accidents) in the past, including at least five instances of US
missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear devices flying over or crashing in or near the territories of other nations," the
study said. The authors said that any nuclear arsenal is susceptible to an accident , and this could affect any of the
declared nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China -- or undeclared powers including
Israel, India and Pakistan.

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NPR
The nuclear posture review is under consideration now it set US nuclear posture for the
next 10 years, actions now are critical to determining nuclear force structures.
Gerry Gilmore 04.23.2009 Pentagon Begins New Quadrennial Defense Review, Nuclear Posture Review
Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs http://www.dvidshub.net/?
script=news/news_show.php&id=32793
Pentagon officials on April 23 kicked off the Defense Department's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review and
Nuclear Posture Review processes to determine what types of capabilities will be required to maintain U.S.
national security now and in the coming years , senior officials said. "The QDR takes a long-term, strategic view of the
Department of Defense and will explore ways to balance achieving success in current conflicts with preparing for long-term challenges,"
Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III stated in a Defense Department news release issued on April 23. The QDR "will also look
at ways to institutionalize irregular warfare capabilities while maintaining the United States' existing strategic and technological edge in
traditional warfare," Lynn said in the release. The NPR establishes the nation's nuclear deterrence posture, policies
and strategies for the next five to 10 years. It will be conducted in consultation with the U.S. departments of
Energy and State. Both reviews will be conducted over the summer into fall, officials said. Final reports from
both reviews will be provided to Congress early next year . Recommendations provided by the 2010 QDR and NPR will be
employed in developing the Pentagon's fiscal year 2011 budget. The QDR is performed every four years; previous QDRs were
conducted in 1997, 2001, and 2006. The most-recent NPR was completed in 2002. Other senior defense officials on April 23 briefed
reporters on QDR and NPR issues and procedures at a Pentagon news conference. The 2010 QDR, a senior defense civilian
official told reporters, will delve into questions such as, "What's the world going to look like? What are the
challenges going to look like? What are the military missions going to look like?" in the near- and long-term .
Then, the civilian official continued, the QDR and NPR reports will identify the types of capabilities required to deter potential threats to
U.S. national security. "Throughout the QDR processes, we will be seeking to capture and institutionalize the lessons we've learned
from Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere," the civilian defense official said, "and we're going to seek to further adapt our forces and
capabilities to asymmetric and irregular forms of warfare." The 2010 QDR and NPR will employ a "whole-of-
government" approach, the civilian official said, noting that other U.S. government agencies, allies, as well as
nongovernmental agencies and "think-tanks," would be consulted during the process. The 2010 NPR will reflect
the Obama administration's pledge to confront global nuclear weapons proliferation, the senior civilian defense official said.
Consequently, the civilian official said, the United States will seek talks with the Russians to further reduce both countries' nuclear-
weapons arsenals by reaching a follow-on agreement to replace the strategic arms reduction treaty of 1993, known as START II. " In
the NPR, we'll be seeking to ensure that our nuclear policies help deter our enemies, reassure our allies and
also further our nonproliferation agenda," the senior civilian official said.

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Counterforce Links ICC bans nuclear targeting

The French tried to exclude nuclear weapons posture they failed. Submitting to the
jurisdiction of the court means banning targeting of civilians.
John Burroughs July 5, 2000 The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy The French "Interpretative
Declaration" Regarding Nuclear Weapons http://www.lcnp.org/global/french.htm

In ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on June 9, 2000, France included an
"Interpretative Declaration" which among other things stated as follows: 2. The provisions of article 8 of
the Statute, in particular paragraph 2 (b) thereof, relate solely to conventional weapons and can neither regulate
nor prohibit the possible use of nuclear weapons nor impair the other rules of international law applicable to other weapons
necessary to the exercise by France of its inherent right of self-defence .... [Emphasis added; for full text of the ''Declaration" and the
original, see attachment.] There is nothing in the Statute which supports this "interpretation". Nor, s o far as the Lawyers'
Committee on Nuclear Policy is aware, is there anything (except perhaps from France itself) in the negotiating history of the
Statute which supports this "interpretation". The fact that nuclear weapons were not included among those
weapons whose use was expressly criminalized (expanding bullets, poison, poisonous and analogous materials, Art. 8(2)(b)(xvii),
(xviii), and (xix)) has no bearing on whether the other provisions of Article 8 apply. That a weapon was proposed for
but not included on the list of prohibited weapons - whether landmine, blinding laser weapon, depleted uranium munition, or
nuclear weapon - does not mean, for example, that it can be used to attack civilians, civilian objects, undefended
towns, religious buildings, hospitals, combatants who have surrendered, medical units displaying Geneva Convention emblems, or UN
peacekeeping personnel, all protected by various provisions of Article 8(2)(b), or that it can be used to carry out an attack
causing disproportionate damage to civilian society or the environment (Art. 8(2)(b)(iv)). It should go without saying that
humanitarian law applies to nuclear weapons just as it does to all other weapons. The International Court of
Justice observed that the conclusion that humanitarian law did not apply to nuclear weapons "would be
incompatible with the intrinsically humanitarian character of the legal principles in question which permeates the
entire law of armed conflict and applies to all forms of warfare and to all kinds of weapons, those of the past,
those of the present and those of the future." Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (Advisory Opinion of 8 July
1996), para. 86, emphasis added. The ICJ also noted that "[n]one of the statements made before the Court in any way advocated a freedom to
use nuclear weapons without regard to humanitarian constraints" and quoted statements of three nuclear weapon states (Russia, the United
Kingdom, and the United States) affirming that law governing the conduct of armed conflict applies to nuclear weapons.
Para. 86. One of the cardinal principles identified by the ICJ as applying to nuclear weapons, the principle of
distinction protecting the civilian population and civilian objects (para. 78, also para. 95), is reflected in the
Rome Statute prohibitions of attacking civilians or civilian objects (Art. 8(2)(b)(i) and (ii)).

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Counterforce Links ICC bans

The ICC would ban a countervalue targeting posture.

Turkish Daily News November 1, 2002 PICK UP THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN? WMD AND NBC Lexis
With the above historical record of the Anglo-American deployment of all the known types of weapons of mass destruction: biological,
chemical and nuclear, over the last two centuries and, no doubt, if the past record is any guide, into the future, it comes as no
surprise to read Part IV, Section IX of the new National Security Strategy of the U.S., published in the TDN
Oct. 7, 2002, concerning the official American attitude to the International Criminal Court established by the
international community to try, amongst others, war criminals. It reads: "We will take the actions necessary to
ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by
the potential for investigations, inquiry or prosecution by the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction
does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept." I thought that a country that refused to bow to international
law was a "rogue state" or in the incumbent US Presidents Texan vocabulary, "an outlaw state". But then, given the American
propensity, in pursuit of American goals, to deploy weapons of mass destruction targeting the civilian
populations of other nations, one well understands the need for the present American administration to place
Americans beyond the reach of international law and justice when it comes to war crimes.

The ICC can prosecute targeting of nuclear weapons at civilians.

Duncan Currie LL.B. (Hons.) LL.M. 3 March, 2003 T he Legality of Contemplated Tactics and Weapons in Iraq
'Shock and Awe' as a War Crime: International Criminal Liability Arising from Contemplated Tactics and Weapons
which may be used in an Attack on Iraq
There are reports that the United States may use earth penetrating nuclear weapons or 'bunker busters' in Iraq84 and defense analyst
William M. Arkin has reported a decision to examine possible roles for nuclear weapons in any war with Iraq.85 Donald Rumsfeld
in
testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee did not rule out nuclear weapons as an option for
responding to attacks from weapons of mass destruction,86 and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has stated that
"should Saddam Hussein have any thought that he would use a weapon of mass destruction, he should anticipate that the United States
will use whatever means necessary to protect us and the world from a holocaust.87 The United Kingdom has similarly declined to rule
out the use of nuclear weapons.88 A 'bunker busting' nuclear weapon would have to penetrate 230ft deep before exploding to avoid
widespread contamination from an intense and deadly radioactive fallout.89 The ICJ in its Advisory Opinion on the legality
of the threat or use of nuclear weapons90 held that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be
contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and
rules of humanitarian law.91 The use of nuclear weapons would be illegal on a number of grounds, including
that it would be indiscriminate in its effects, disproportionate in that the effects would be of an order of
magnitude greater than any attack predicating the nuclear response and unnecessary, in the sense that
conventional weapons are available.92 The use would also contravene assurances of non-use against non-nuclear States made
by the United States in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.93 Nor would the use fall into the one category on which the ICJ could not
reach a conclusion, being whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-
defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake. It is unlikely to be the case that the very survival of the United States or
the United Kingdom will be at stake. The use of tactical nuclear weapons94 is likely to constitute a war crime in a number of respects: it
would be indiscriminate, in that in its force and radioactive fallout could constitute an indiscriminate attack with the knowledge that such
attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.95 The use could give rise to liability
for war crimes under the ICC in that it could constitute intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge
that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-
term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the
concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.96

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Counterforce Links ICC bans

ICC would prosecute targeting of civilians.
U.S. SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA) and PIERRE-RICHARD PROSPER, 2001 AMBASSADOR-
AT-LARGE, WAR CRIMES ISSUES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY (D-
VT) HOLDS HEARING ON MILITARY TRIBUNALS FDCH Political Transcripts December 4, 2001
SPECTER: Let me ask you one further question which is tangential, but what I'd like to have your views on. As we set forth rules
for military tribunals, this may have an impact on war crimes tribunals generally as to where we may be
heading for an international criminal court, although the United States has not signed on. We haven't had ratification by the
Senate or on the war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia. The war crimes tribunal was the key prosecutor Carla Del Ponte
investigated General Wesley Clark on the complaint of Russia and Yugoslavia for possible war crimes and
the issues under investigation involve whether NATO had targeted civilians or whether NATO as commanding officer
General Clark had been at fault in carelessly targeting, which endangered civilians. If that kind of a standard is to be employed, making
it a fact question for the prosecutor, it seems to me that U.S. military personnel all the way up to four star General Clark would be at risk
on a war crimes tribunal, given very, very broad discretion and making it highly unlikely that the United States would or perhaps should
ever join an international criminal court. Do you have an opinion or a judgment on that range of discretion for a prosecutor of
international tribunals? PROSPER: Senator, that is one of the issues of concern for the administration regarding the
ICC, the International Criminal Court and that is the fact that you have or may have a prosecutor that is
answerable to no one and will launch off an investigation that could be political investigations and not based
in fact or based in law. There is no check to the process.

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AT Targeting civilians bad

Counterforce would kill just as many civilians, its just a question of what is targeted.
Hans M. Kristensen Robert S. Norris Ivan and Oelrich April 2009 From Counterforce to Minimal
Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons Occasional Paper No. 7
FEDERATION of AMERICAN SCIENTISTS & THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Hans M.
Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists Robert S. Norris is
a senior research associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council nuclear program and director of the Nuclear
Weapons Databook project. Ivan Oelrich is vice president for Strategic Security Programs at the Federation of
American Scientists
Under our proposal for a minimal deterrence policy, the United States would break with Cold War nuclear planning and explicitly
abandon counterforce targeting. Targets for nuclear weapons have historically been divided into two broad
categories: countervalue and counterforce. Countervalue targets included industry, civilian infrastructure, and
other assets valued by a society including, obviously, the lives of its citizens . At the beginning of the nuclear era when
nuclear weapons were few, cities were the targets of strategic bombers. This was a straightforward progression of the strategic bombing
practices of World War II that included saturation bombing and fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities. When early, inaccurate
ballistic missiles could not hit targets smaller than a city, cities became the primary targets of nuclear-armed missiles by default. As
technologies and missile accuracies improved, the targeting of the enemys nuclear forces, such as ICBM silos and command, control
and communication facilities, came to predominate. A key turning point was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamaras speech at the
University of Michigan in February 1962 where he said: The U.S. has come to the conclusion that to the extent feasible, basic military
strategy in a general nuclear war should be approached in much the same way that the more conventional military operations have been
regarded in the past. That is to say, principal military objectives, in the event of a nuclear war stemming from a major attack on the
Alliance, should be the destruction of the enemys military force, not of his civilian population. This shift to attacking the
Soviets ability to use their own military power, called counterforce targeting, did not result in any
meaningful reduction in civilian casualties, but it did lead to an expensive and dangerous arms race between
the United States and the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of PD-59 and NSDD-13,28 what constituted deterrence had reached
grotesque proportions, with the apparent definition being the ability to destroy a heavily protected Soviet leadership, to effectively target
Soviet nuclear forces, and retain command and control of U.S. nuclear forces during a protracted nuclear war. While the new war
goals seemed to focus on military targets instead of population, in fact, the war plans included attack on political leadership, command
centers, transportation hubs, defense industry, and other targets that were in the heart of all major cities. Technically, hitting the
Kremlinor for that matter, the White Housewould be considered counterforce targeting (because it is a
national leadership center) but when the weapon is a nuclear bomb with a force of several hundred thousand
tons of TNT and many such bombs would be directed against key targets, the surrounding population is
killed just as certainly as if it were the primary target. In practice, counterforce targeting would have killed
many tens of millions of people. Counterforce versus countervalue was a distinction without a practical
difference as far as the civilian populations were concerned.

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Obama needs to change counterforce

Hans M. Kristensen Robert S. Norris Ivan and Oelrich April 2009 From Counterforce to Minimal
Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons Occasional Paper No. 7
FEDERATION of AMERICAN SCIENTISTS & THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Hans M.
Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists Robert S. Norris is
a senior research associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council nuclear program and director of the Nuclear
Weapons Databook project. Ivan Oelrich is vice president for Strategic Security Programs at the Federation of
American Scientists

This report argues that, as long as

the United States continues these nuclear missions unjustifiably held over from
the Cold War, nuclear weapons will contribute more to the nations and the worlds insecurity than they
contribute to their security. And without those Cold War justifications, there is only one job left for nuclear
weapons: to deter the use of nuclear weapons. For much of the Cold War at least from the early 1960s the dominant
mission for U.S. strategic weapons has been counterforce, that is, the attack of military, mostly nuclear,
targets and the enemys leadership. The requirements for the counterforce mission perpetuate the most
dangerous characteristics of nuclear forces, with weapons kept at high levels of alert, ready to launch upon warning of an
enemy attack, and able to preemptively attack enemy forces. This mission is no longer needed but it still exists because
the current core policy guidance and directives that are issued to the combatant commanders are little
different from their Cold War predecessors. General Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), recently
took issue with President Obamas characterization of U.S. nuclear weapons being on hair-trigger alert but made our case for us by
saying, The alert postures that we are in today are appropriate, given our strategy and guidance and policy. [Emphasis added.] That is
exactly right and, therefore, if President Obama wants General Chilton to do something different, he will have to
provide the commander of U.S. nuclear forces with different guidance and directives .

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Countervalue key to force reduction

Hans M. Kristensen Robert S. Norris Ivan and Oelrich April 2009 From Counterforce to Minimal
Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons Occasional Paper No. 7
FEDERATION of AMERICAN SCIENTISTS & THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Hans M.
Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists Robert S. Norris is
a senior research associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council nuclear program and director of the Nuclear
Weapons Databook project. Ivan Oelrich is vice president for Strategic Security Programs at the Federation of
American Scientists

This report examines in greater detail the next steps toward zero: how to reduce down to levels where the
numbers of weapons might start to make a difference in meeting the core nuclear deterrent mission that will
apply during the (possibly extended) transition to a nuclear weapons-free world. Our approach is somewhat different
from most other studies. We do not start with a discussion of numerical goals for nuclear weapon arsenals. Advocates of a more robust
nuclear posture argue that, with dramatically reduced nuclear arsenals, the United States military will not be able to fulfill this or that
mission assigned to nuclear weapons. That is precisely the point; to move with any sincerity and effectiveness toward a
nuclear weapons-free world, nuclear weapons must shed almost all of their current missions. Going forward,
nuclear weapons should not be assigned any mission for which they are less than indispensable. That is why
we believe that the focus ought to begin with a discussion of nuclear missions. As missions for nuclear
weapons are, one-byone, stripped away, the logic of reducing their numbers will be inescapable .

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Counterforce Russian buildup

Counterforce guarantees that Russia has to maintain large stockpile sizes.
Hans M. Kristensen Robert S. Norris Ivan and Oelrich April 2009 From Counterforce to Minimal
Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons Occasional Paper No. 7
FEDERATION of AMERICAN SCIENTISTS & THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Hans M.
Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists Robert S. Norris is
a senior research associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council nuclear program and director of the Nuclear
Weapons Databook project. Ivan Oelrich is vice president for Strategic Security Programs at the Federation of
American Scientists

The counterforce capabilities of the United States also affect Russian and Chinese force structure decisions.
Because a large fraction of U.S. forces is on invulnerable submarines, the Russians have no hope of a
disarming first strike against the United States. The Russians must be resigned to a retaliatory attack (or at best a very limited
counterforce attack) so part of the Russian calculation of an adequate force structure is to have enough weapons
after an American first strike to still retaliate with forces adequate to deter . Thus, if the Russians judge that
some minimum number of weapons is adequate for retaliation and further calculate that a U.S. first strike
attack would be, say, 90 percent effective, then they must maintain ten times more weapons than they would
judge would be needed for effective retaliation. While the United States may benefit in one case by blunting the effectiveness
of the Russian attack on the United States, precisely that capability is part of what motivates the Russian force that needs to be
destroyed; that is, maintaining a counterforce capability for the rare possibility that it might reduce damage to the
United States creates an ongoing, day-by-day increase in the threat to the United States.

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China modernization
Counterforce posture forces China to modernize its nuclear arsenal and MIRV their
missiles.
Hans M. Kristensen Robert S. Norris Ivan and Oelrich April 2009 From Counterforce to Minimal
Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons Occasional Paper No. 7
FEDERATION of AMERICAN SCIENTISTS & THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL Hans M.
Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists Robert S. Norris is
a senior research associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council nuclear program and director of the Nuclear
Weapons Databook project. Ivan Oelrich is vice president for Strategic Security Programs at the Federation of
American Scientists

The U.S. Intelligence Community has repeatedly stated that U.S.

counterforce capabilities have triggered Chinese nuclear
modernizations, developments that are now seen as strategic challenges to U.S. national security and
constraining its options in the Pacific. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in 1999 that, China feels [its
nuclear] deterrent is at risk over the next decade because of U.S. targeting capabilities, missile accuracy, and
potential ballistic missile defenses. Beijing is, therefore, modernizing and expanding its missile force to
restore its deterrent value. 24 CIAs Robert Walpole echoed this assessment in 2002 when he told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that the Chinese effort to deploy mobile long-range missiles as an alternative to silo-based missiles got underway because
China became concerned about the survivability of its silos when the U.S. deployed the Trident II-D5
because you could hit those silos. 25 Most recently, in March 2009, the Director of U.S. National Intelligence, Dennis Blair,
stated before the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is modernizing its strategic forces in order to address
concerns about the survivability of those systems in the face of foreign, particularly U.S., advances in
strategic reconnaissance, precision strike, and missile defenses. 26 A calculation of U.S. security must
compare the long term, on-going risks that are triggered by maintaining U.S. counterforce capabilities with
the possible, but highly unlikely, advantage of launching a first strike counterforce attack. We believe that the
net security benefit of maintaining a counterforce first strike capability is uncertain at best and is more than
likely strongly negative. If the United States abandons its counterforce capability under a minimal deterrence
policy, changes in Russian and Chinese arsenal size and deployment could result. The Russians could make
some immediate changes in response. For example, since they are as worried about responding disastrously to a false warning
of attack as the United States is, they could adjust their threshold for launch to reflect their altered perception of the threat. China,
likewise, might, if the United States and Russia relaxed their postures, be less inclined to modify its nuclear
doctrine, a concern stated repeatedly by the Pentagon.27

MIRVS RESULT IN ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR WAR

WILLIAM PERRY October, 17 1996 (FMR SECRETARY OF DEFENSE REMARKS OF U.S. SECRETARY
OF DEFENSE WILLIAM PERRY TO THE DUMA PARLIAMENT MEMBERS
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/offdocs/dd961017.htm)

And there is another way START II seizes the opportunity to reduce the nuclear threat: by reducing the
numbers of weapons on both sides it reduces the chance of a launch by accident or miscalculation. This is
particularly true of MIRV ICBMs -- the ICBMs with up to 10 warheads on each missile. MIRV ICBMs are at
the same time valuable and vulnerable: valuable, and therefore, an inviting target, because they have 10
warheads; vulnerable because it takes only one or two attacking warheads to destroy all 10 of the warheads.
Because they are both valuable and vulnerable, they tend to be kept on a "hair trigger," which protects them,
but increases the danger of a launch by miscalculation. The only way to get rid of this danger is to get rid of
MIRVed ICBM weapons. START II gives Russia and the United States the opportunity to do this together.

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Counterforce escalation
Counterforce makes conventional war more likely and more likely to escalate.
Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter 2005 Counterforce Revisited Assessing the Nuclear Posture Reviews New
Missions International Security, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall 2005), Charles L. Glaser is Professor and Deputy Dean of the
Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. Steve Fetter is Professor and
Dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

We have found at most a very limited set of scenarios in which nuclear counterforce missions might increase U.S. security. Nuclear
counterforce would provide the promised benefitsfor deterrence, damage limitation, and U.S. foreign
policyin only a tiny fraction of potential conflict scenarios because the United States has a highly effective
deterrent without these missions; because most types of counterforce targets can be destroyed by U.S. conventional weapons;
and because nuclear weapons cannot destroy some critical targets. In addition, these missions could bring a variety of costs. Relying
on nuclear counterforce capabilities to restore leeway to U.S. foreign policy is risky because a United States
that bargains harder because it has a damage limitation capability could also be more likely to be attacked
with nuclear weapons by a determined adversary. In addition, a doctrine that emphasizes nuclear counterforce
options could increase the probability that the United States would unnecessarily escalate a conventional
conflictpreempting when in fact the adversary was not going to attackand heighten the probability that
an adversary would accidentally use nuclear weapons during a crisis. Moreover, pursuing additional nuclear
counterforce capabilities would hurt the U.S. ability to maintain and strengthen the nonproliferation regime .
Actually using nuclear weapons would bring additional costs, shattering the nuclear taboo and damaging the United States international
reputation. These costs lead us to conclude that the United States should not rely on nuclear counterforce to
reduce the constraining effects of nuclear proliferation on its foreign policy.

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Accidental nuclear war escalates

A SINGLE ACCIDENTAL LAUNCH WILL TRIGGER FULL SCALE NUCLEAR WAR

PR NEWSWIRE, APRIL 29 1998

An 'accidental' nuclear attack would create a public health disaster of an unprecedented scale, according to more than 70
articles and speeches on the subject, cited by the authors and written by leading nuclear war experts, public health officials, international
peace organizations, and legislators. Furthermore, retired General Lee Butler, Commander from 1991-1994 of all U.S.
Strategic Forces under former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, has warned that from his
experience in many "war games" it is plausible that such an attack could provoke a nuclear counterattack that
could trigger full-scale nuclear war with billions of casualties worldwide.

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Internal Link Counterforce/Cvalue

John Batchelor February 1, 2009 The Bomb Now http://johnbatchelorshow.com/jb/2009/02/the-bomb-

now/
Younger spent his life's work at Los Alamos in R&D, and is now a Woodrow Wilson fellow. He aimed to write a book that could be
acceptable to the censors (because of his security classification) and can be read by everyone. Nuclear proliferation is the most
threatening news these days, with the Pakistan and North Korea proliferators selling the technology of enrichment and bomb-making
and warhead building to rogue states such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and reportedly Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and
more (South Africa and Myanmar are not excluded). However the challenge I learned from Steve Younger was not the rogues, since
they build crude and derivative bombs, but rather the superstates of America and Russia and China and how they think about their
weapons. The two categories of targets for superstates are called countervalue and counterforce. These
categories are divided into soft targets, hard targets, and superhard targets. The US, according to Steve
Younger, only has counterforce targetting. A counterforce soft target would be an Army base of an Air Force base, which is
best attacked with multiple small weapons rather than one large bang. A counterforce hard target would be a bunker unde a government
building, siuch as the facilities said to be under the White House or the Pentagon. A superhard target is rare, and when I
brought up what I'd heard about a city built under the Ural mountains, Steve said he could not speak to it. At
the same time, our adversaries the Russians are said to have countervalue targetting, which is a remnant of the Cold War (right, the
Russian nuclear weapon museum in Moscow ). Soft countervalue targets are cities and ports and rivers. Hard
countervalue targets are Washington buildings and other government centers. What this means today, with
thousands of weapons in both camps still in place, is that America can wipe out Russia's ability to destroy our
cities, and that Russia is defenseless from an American strike, whether it comes first or last. Our nukes are
for a scenario that does not now exist. At the same, our nukes are not for a problem that does exist, which is
the rogues (or the PRC) launching false flag operations.

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