Debate Crossfire Pro Ballot

8/7/2019 Debate Crossfire Pro Ballot

1/6

Debate Crossfire: Pro Ballot

1) Iran is not a threat to Israels Existence- According to New York Times, (Gale Oposing Viewpoints), Israels weapons capabilities

greatly exceed those of Iran.

2) Irans Nuclear Weapons Program is a Myth- According to a report last week by David Albright and Christina Walrond of the Institute for Science

and International Security Irans problems in it scentrifuge programme are greater than

expectedIran is unlikely to deploy enough gas centrifuges to make enriched uranium forcommercial nuclear power reactors (Irans state nuclear goal) for a long time, if ever, particularly if

UN sanctions remain force.,

- Thus, ISIS is saying Iran cannot make usuable fuel for the nuclear power plant it is building, andGibbs is saying Iran lacks the capability to make fuel rods for its research reactor.

- ISIS insists that Iran may still be able to build a bomb. Yet, to do that, Iran would have to divertnearly all of its low-enriched uranium at Natanz to a new cascade ofcentrifuges, enrich that to 90percent, then explode a nuclear device

- Should Iran do that, however it would have burned up all its bomb-grade uranium and lack enoughlow-enriched uranium for a second test. And Tehran would be facing a stunned and shaken Israel

with hundreds of nukes and an America with thousands, without a single nuke of its own.

3) Is Iran Bluffing?- Which brings us to the declaration by Ahmadinejad on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution

which produced this headline in the New YorkTimes: Iran Boasts of Capacity to Make Bomb Fuel

- Here is what Hmadinejad said in full, When we say that we dont build nuiclear bombs, it meansthat we wont do so because we dont believe in having itThe Iranian nation is brave enough that

if one day, we wanted to build nuclear bombs, we would announce it publicly without being afraidof you.l

4) North Koreas Efforts to End its Nuclear Weapons Program Are Inadequate- The Bush administration has suggested it will try to verify the contents of the declaration during the

forty-five day period it takes for North Korea to be officially removed from the list of state sponsors

of terroris, but experts say the verification will likely take months to complete.

- Experts hav e long argued that the North Korean regime intends to use the denuclearization processto gain political and economic benefits, buty does not have any intention of giving up its nuclearprogram completely.

- According to Council on Foreign Relations, President Bush says, We cant ignore North Korea, wecant force it to give up its nukes

5) North Korea Threatens International Security- Even though it has the 13th largest economy in the world and a strong military, South Korea has

much to fear from its dangerous northern neighbor, which is armed with weapons of massdestruction probably including nuclear weapons.

Military experts say the North KORean military is far inferior to Soiuth Korean and American forcesand therefore is not a serious threat. They rightly note that while North Korea has military force of

more than 1 million, most of its conventional weapons and equipment were designed in the 1950sand 1960s making them old, hard to maintain and prone to breakdowns. BUT FAR FROM BEING

A REASON TO RELAX, THIS SITUATION MAY IN FACT BETHE FOUNDATION FORTHECURRENT GRAVETHREATAGAINST SOUTH KOREA. IT WAS THE BASIS FORA

DECISION MDEABOUT 20 YEARS AGO Y NORTH KOREATHAT IS COULD NOTCOMPETE WITHTHE MODERNIZING SOUTH KOREAN U.S. MILITARY FORCES, AND

THAT IT WOULD INSTEAD EMPHAZIZE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. Against South Korean and American battlefield forces, North Korea has emphasized artillerty with

cemical weapons, and built a huge arsenal of each


2/6

against the nearby South Korea capital Seoul, and the ground force reserves behing the battlefield,North Korea has emphazed long rane artilergy chemical weapons, and special forces with biological

weapons.

Against rear area and off-peninsula targets, North Korea has emphasized ballistic missiles withchemical weapons and special forces with biological weapons, and the development of nuclearweapons.

one battery of North Korean 240-mm multiple rocket launchers fired into Seoul can deliver roughlya ton ofchemical weapons, which, according to various accounts, could kill or injure thousands ortens of thousands. North Korea has many such batteries.

In addition, North Korean special forces teams might each spray several kilograms of anthrax inSeoul, leaving tens to hundreds of thousands of people infected, many of whom would die unlessproperly treated.

A North Korean nuclear weapon fired into Seoul might cause damage similar to that of the nuclearweapon detonated on Hiroshima [Japan] in World War II, which left some 70,000 dead and 75,000injured.

It is generally believed that if North Korea has only one or two nuclear weapons, the regime willlikely withhold them unless it faces certain defeat and destruction. But if it builds five or 10 nuclear

weapons, as it may soon do, it may be inclined to use some against South Korea early in the conflictto demonstrate its power and rapidly achieve some military objectives. It might also sell some of

these weapons to terrorists who could try to use them against the United States or its allies.

North Korea is a police state led by a dictator who has a specific strategyand an often-statedintentto conquer South Korea. Believing anything else is an illusion, and the latest generation ofSouth Koreans does that at their periland at the peril of the other nations in Northeast Asia, which

would all suffer from such a war.

While this grave risk might be healed by the eventual peaceful reunification of the two Koreas, it isunlikely that will happen as long as [North Korea's leader] Kim Jong Il's preferred method of"diplomacy" involves threatening South Korea and some of his other neighbors with weapons of

mass destruction.

6) China is behind the North Korean Threat Beijing must press Pyongyang to accept Washington's offer. As North Korea's ally for more than

50 years, China has the most direct means of exerting influence. North Korea depends on China

for up to 90 percent of its oil and for much of its food aid. Additional North Korean nuclear and missile tests could also expand Pyongyang's nuclear-strike

capability beyond South Korea and Japan to US territory. North Korean intransigence also

threatens major elements of [U.S. president] Barack Obama's global nuclear security agenda,providing political fodder to critics who oppose a nuclear test ban, fissile material cutoff, and the

prospect of deep reductions in US and Russian nuclear arsenals. North Korean defianceundermines nuclear nonproliferation norms just as the world prepares for a vital review

conference for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Anne Applebaum, "Shadow Boxing in Pyongyang," Washington Post, June 2, 2009, Opinion.

Reproduced by permission of the author.


3/6

"North Korea is a puppet state, and the Chinese are the puppeteers." China controls North Korea's government and its policies. Therefore, she says, North

Korean nuclear tests, and its other belligerent actions, are part of deliberate Chinese policy.

Applebaum suggests that China is using North Korea to test American resolve without

endangering U.S.-Chinese relations. China is the one country that actually has influence over North Korea. Not only is China the only

country to maintain frequent diplomatic and security contacts with North Korea, but China could,if it wanted to, topple the North Korean regime tomorrow. China could cut off North Korea's oil.

China could shut the border to trade. Or China could take the opposite tactic and open the border:Refugees would flee and the regime would crumble, much as East Germany did 20 years ago. To

put it differently, China has more influence over the North Korean regime than all of the otherU.N. Security Council members put together, but it does not use this influence to stop

Pyongyang's [North Korea's capital] nuclear program. Instead, it has maintained trade relations,kept the oil flowing, built up its border fences and paid lip service to the international efforts to

block the North Korean nuclear program (the Chinese claimed to have learned about the recentnuclear test an hour in advance, which no one believes), all while hunkering down to watch what

happens.

China has ambitions to replace the United States as the dominant power in East Asia. For proof,look no further than the money the Chinese have spent lately on expanding their navy, which now

includes at least 70 submarines, 10 of which are thought to be nuclear. By contrast, the United Stateshas between 70 and 80 submarines deployed at any given moment, but they patrol the whole world,

not just Asian waters. The Chinese are also now designing aircraft carriers and reportedly now havelong-range, anti-ship ballistic missilesthe better to destroy our aircraft carriersas well.

Why would they control North Korea?y Despite the risks, though, there are good reasons for the Chinese to prod [North Korean leader]

Kim Jong Il to keep those missiles coming. By permitting North Korea to rattle its sabers, the

Chinese can monitor President Obama's reaction to a military threatwithout having to

deploy a threat themselves.T

heycan see how serious the new

Ameri

can administration isabout controlling the spread of nuclear weaponswithout having to risk sanctions or

international condemnation of their own nuclear industry. They can distract and disturb the

new administrationwithout harming Chinese American economic relations, which arecrucial to their own regime's stability. And if the game goes badly, they can call it off

altogether. North Korea is a puppet state, and the Chinese are the puppeteers. They could endthis farce tomorrow. If they haven't done so yet, there must be a reason.

7) Negotiating with North Korea has encouraged its negative actions two much more serious sticking points can be expected to emerge. First, they will not want to

reveal the full extent of their nuclear weapons programmemost importantly their uraniumenrichment activitiesas required under the February agreement. Second, they will make further

progressconditional on the resumption of the [4.5 billion] dollars light water rea

ctor proje

ctbegun during the [Bill] Clinton administration.

It is safe to assume that diplomacy is unlikely to end the North Korean nuclear weaponsthreat for the foreseeable future.

North Korea's nuclear test and UN sanctions have brought relations between the U.S. and NorthKorea to their lowest point since President [George W.] Bush took office.

8) Aggressive U.S. Policies will increase North Korean threat Robert Parry, "Bush's Tough-Talkin' Korean Bungle," Consortium News, October 10, 2006.

"Instead ofcowering before [President] Bush and his Doctrine [of preemptive war],North Korea pressed ahead with its nuclear program."


4/6

In early October 2002, U.S. diplomats confronted Pyongyang with this evidence and weresurprised when North Korean leaders admitted that they were working on building nuclear

weapons. Despite North Korea's public warnings seven months earlier, official Washington wasstunned. Many analysts puzzled over what might have caused Pyongyang to violate its earlier

promises about suspending its nuclear program and then admit to it. Bush formally canceled the1994 agreement.

For its part, North Korea issued a press release at the United Nations on Oct. 25, 2002,explaining its reasoning. The statement cited both Bush's "axis of evil" rhetoric and the

administration's decision to target North Korea for a possible preemptive nuclear strike. "Thiswas a clear declaration of war against the D.P.R.K. as it totally nullified" the 1994 agreement,

the North Korean statement read. "Nobody would be so nave as to think that the D.P.R.K.would sit idle under such a situation.... The D.P.R.K., which values sovereignty more than life,

was left with no other proper answer to the U.S. behaving so arrogantly and impertinently." Aggressive rhetoric toward North Korea has decreased international security, argues Robert Parry in

the following viewpoint. North Korea was not intimidated when the George W. Bush administrationlisted North Korea as a potential target for nuclear weapons, Parry claims. Indeed, North Korea

responded by building its own nuclear weapons, he maintains. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, inspired bythe Bush Doctrine of preemptive war, further reinforced North Korea's belief that it needed to protect

itself by becoming a nuclear power.

9) A U.S. Attack will no destroy North Koreas Nuclear Capabilities. A U.S. strike on North Korean nuclear targets will not eliminate North Korea's nuclear

production capacity. Precision bombing could hit Yongbyon, North Korea, the location

of one of the country's nuclear reactors as well as a plutonium reprocessing facilitywithout causing much radioactive fallout. However, the United States does not know the

site of North Korea's clandestine uranium-enrichment program. Furthermore, it ispossible that North Korea has built other undetected plutonium reprocessing facilities

beyond Yongbyon. It is therefore impossible for the U.S. military to denuclearize NorthKorea without occupying the country.

The locations of North Koreas nuclear facilities are unknown.y But the larger problem is not that Yongbyon can't be bombed for safety reasons; it's

that North Korea contains other nuclear sites that the United States can't bombbecause we don't know where they are. Since the United States last considered airstrikes, in 1994, our knowledge of North Korea's nuclear landscape has greatly

deteriorated. Indeed, the current crisis started in October 2002, when theadministration disclosed for the first time its knowledge of North Korea's clandestine

uranium-enrichment program. Though it might be more than a year before thisprogram yields enough material for a bomb, our knowledge of the program is so

uncertain that we cannot discount the possibility that it will be successful sooner. And,unlike the reprocessing at Yongbyon, the location of the uranium program is entirely

unknown. Our evidence of North Korea's enrichment program is its purchasing of

centrifuge equipment and associated materials, not satellite imagery of an enrichment

plant. The problem is much like in Iraq, where the world can rightly insist that[dictator SaddamHussein] has chemical weapons without being able to point

inspectors to their locations.

y And hidden enrichment activity is not our only blind spot. In Disarming Strangers, Leon V.Sigal recounts that the possible presence of undetected plutonium-reprocessing facilities

beyond Yongbyon was a crucial point of debate among American military planners in 1994.Today, North Korea is even more likely than in 1994 to have covert reprocessing facilities,

potentially making a strike on Yongbyon even less comprehensive and, thus, less useful.Like enrichment plants, reprocessing facilities require little physical space or electricity to

operate and are therefore very hard to detect. We have minimal ability to monitor theirconstruction above ground, and the North Koreans, master tunnelers, may well have built


5/6

underground, making detection all but impossible. In theory, plutonium reprocessing can bedetected by mechanically sniffing for krypton-85, a gas produced by reprocessing. But

emissions from Japan's and China's legitimate reprocessing facilities could drown out thosefrom a covert North Korean program. During the 1994 crisis, some within the Clinton

administration tried to rectify this by pushing for the emplacement of at least a dozenkrypton-85 detectors inside North Korea. But such intrusive verification was deemed by

American negotiators to be too offensive to the North Koreans, and the detector idea wasscrapped, meaning that today the same uncertainty overcovert facilities persists.

10)North Korea is a terrorist threat John Larkin, Donald Macintyre, and Nick Papadopoulos are reporters forTime International. It is no secret that North Korea is selling missiles abroad. At least half a dozen countries,

including Pakistan, Libya, and Syria, are known to have bought the missiles.However,

U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned that North Korea, in its desperation toprop up its failing economy, is also selling nuclear weapons technology to rogue states.

The United States seeks to uncover and stop the proliferation of North Koreanweaponryperhaps even through a naval and aerial blockade of North Korea. This

strategy, however, is risky because North Korea has threatened to attack South Korea ifeconomic sanctions are imposed. In addition, international maritime law makes it

extremely difficult to stop ships on the high seas. Weapons trade is also hard to stop

because it is impossible to tell whether "dual-use" material will be used for weapons orpeaceful purposes. The success of the strategy will ultimately depend on the cooperationof North Korea's two traditional allies: China and Russia.

11)North Korea is a serious military threat The Defense Department holds that the DPRK, despite its poverty, maintains a large

military force including ballistic missiles and possible nuclear weapons. It concludes thatNorth Korea remains a major threat not only to South Korea, but to regional stability andUnited States security.

The North Korean Armed Forces today are the fifth largest in the world. The ground forces,numbering one million active duty soldiers, provide the bulk of the North's offensive war-fighting

capability and are the world's third largest army. They are supported by an air force of over 1,600aircraft and a navy of more than 800 ships. Over 6 million reserves augment the active duty

personnel. Seventy percent of their active force, to include 700,000 troops, 8,000 artillery systems,and 2,000 tanks, is garrisoned within 100 miles of the Demilitarized Zone. Much of this force is

protected by underground facilities, including over four thousand underground facilities in the forward area alone. From theircurrent locations these forces can attack with minimal preparations.

North Korea fields an artillery force of over 12,000 self-propelled and towed weapon systems.Without moving any artillery pieces, the North could sustain up to 500,000 rounds an hour against[U.S.South Korean] Combined Forces Command defenses for several hours. The artillery force

includes 500 long-range systems deployed over the past decade. The proximity of these long-range

systems to the Demilitarized Zone threatens all of Seoul with devastating attacks.

Realizing they cannot match Combined Forces Command's technologically advanced war-fightingcapabilities, the North's leadership focuses on developing asymmetrical capabilities such as ballistic

missiles, special operations forces, and weapons of mass destruction designed to preclude allianceforce options and offset ourconventional military superiority.

North Korea's Special Operations Forces are the largest in the world. They consist of over 100,000elite personnel and are significant force multipliers providing the capability to simultaneously attackboth our forward and rear forces.


6/6

North Korea possesses weapons of mass destruction. A large number of North Koreanchemical weapons threaten both our military forces and civilian population centers. We

assess North Korea is self-sufficient in the production ofchemical components for firstgeneration chemical agents

John M. Swomley is professor emeritus of social ethics at the St. Paul School ofTheology in Missouri and the executive director of the American Committee on Korea.

In the following viewpoint, he argues that U.S. government agencies, including theDefense Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have misled the American

people into believing that North Korea is a supremely dangerous military enemy. Theextent of North Korea's threat has been exaggerated in order to justifyAmerican military

spending as well as U.S. control over South Korea, he contends. Swomley blames theUnited States for diplomatically isolating North Korea and staging war exercises in South

Korea to prevent the two countries from improving relations with each other.

12)You wrote an article recentlyabout North Korea's strategy of attracting foreign investment.Are any countries interested in investing in North Korea?

[T]he North Koreans have declared that they want to separate the issue of denuclearization from the possibility of

diplomatic normalization, and in fact what they are doing is pushing the idea of discussing a peace treaty between the

United States and North Korea.

It's not clear who would invest. There may be some Chinese companies that might have some interest, but generally

speaking, even though the North Koreans appear to be getting the formal language in their new regulations right, they

haven't proven that the regulations themselves are worth the paper they're printed on, in terms of their willingness to

honor those regulations. The currency revaluation further reduced the credibility of the government. So the task of

attracting foreign investment in North Korea is likely to be an extraordinarily difficult task. The one area where they might

find some success is in allowing shipping rights in the far northeastern part of the country, the port of Rajin-Sonbong,

essentially to China and Russia. That northeastern port is ice-free year round, and the Chinese northeastern provinces are

essentially land-locked.

So goods could come into North Korea and ship by rail or truck to China.

Exactly, and it would represent a great improvement for the Chinese goods distributors or for foreign goods to arrive in

China through that northern port.

U.S.-North Korea: Stalemate

Interviewee:Scott A. Snyder, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewer:Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org

March 16, 2010www.cfr.org

Documents

Debate Crossfire Pro Ballot