The possession of nuclear weapons is immoral

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "The possession of nuclear weapons is immoral". Your opponent's style: A professional LD debator with a Phd in psycology from harvard and 20 years of experience in the field and debating

Simply put, it is moral to possess nuclear weapons. I negate resolved: The possession of nuclear weapons is immoral I value morality, defined as the duty of national survival. Above all, a nation has an obligation to survive. As Morgenthau tells us: “ The individual may say for himself: 'Fiat justitia, pereat mundus (Let justice be done, even if the world perish),' but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care. Both individual and state must judge political action by universal moral principles, such as that of liberty. Yet while the individual has a moral right to sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral principle, the state has no right to [sacrifice itself. The state must survive]let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of liberty get in the way of successful political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival. “ For these reasons, my value criterion is national survival. The weighing mechanism we should use is Emmanuel Kant’s idea that “Ought implies can.” In evaluating this round, we should prioritize the principle that we are only morally obligated to do something that is actually possible. If an action, like disarmament, is a geopolitical impossibility, we cannot have a moral duty to achieve it. Therefore, we must evaluate morality based on how we manage the reality of possession, rather than an unachievable ideal of a nuclear-free world. I would like to provide the following observation: In today's round, we must distinguish between a weapon’s use in combat and its possession for deterrence. While conventional weapons are designed for defence, nuclear weapons are designed for deterrence. Since 1945, there have been zero great war powers. This is not luck, it is because nuclear possession forces caution upon decision makers, making the cost of war unacceptable. It is not immoral to possess nuclear weapons, but in the aff’s world which removes the nuclear check and returns the world to the “slaughter bench” of total conventional war. Contention 1:

I appreciate the philosophical rigor, but your framework collapses under scrutiny. You've constructed an elaborate justification for what amounts to holding humanity hostage. Your Morgenthau quote actually defeats your own position. He argues states must judge by "universal moral principles" - yet nuclear possession violates the most fundamental universal principle: the prohibition against threatening innocent life. When you possess weapons designed to incinerate millions of civilians, you're not protecting your citizens - you're making them targets and complicit in potential genocide. Your "ought implies can" framework is intellectually dishonest. Disarmament isn't geopolitically impossible - we've eliminated entire weapon classes before. We banned chemical weapons, biological weapons, even blinding laser weapons that never killed anyone. Nine countries have actually given up nuclear weapons programs or arsenals, proving your impossibility thesis wrong. But here's where your logic truly breaks down: You claim nuclear weapons prevent great power wars, yet we're closer to nuclear conflict than ever. The Doomsday Clock stands at 90 seconds to midnight - the closest it's ever been. Your "deterrence" is one miscalculation, one technical failure, one rogue actor away from ending civilization. That's not national survival - that's national suicide with extra steps. The real immorality? Pretending that threatening to murder millions of innocents is somehow noble statecraft.Your deterrence argument crumbles when confronted with reality. South Africa voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons, proving disarmament isn't impossible. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons following the Soviet dissolution. Taiwan abandoned its nuclear program after U.S. pressure. South Korea gave up its weapons program in 1975. In the late 1970s, more than a dozen countries considered or pursued nuclear weapons programs, but almost all stopped [1]. The psychological reality you ignore: Nuclear possession creates the very instability it claims to prevent. Every nuclear state becomes a target, every accident becomes catastrophic, every miscalculation becomes extinction. Your "national survival" framework is self-defeating - you're not protecting your nation, you're painting a target on it while threatening to murder millions of innocents if anyone looks at you wrong. The ultimate moral contradiction: You invoke Kant while violating his categorical imperative. Could you universalize nuclear possession? A world where every nation threatens mass civilian slaughter? That's not moral philosophy - that's madness dressed up in academic language.

the reality is that some naitons dearming is not evidence of all nations being willing to. the reality is that colonizers like israel, russia, and the USA will never let go of their nuclear weapons. and so long as those colonizers posess the ability to take any land they want, any nation has the right to possess a nuclear arsenal to deter them the obligation of the state is to its people, and a state cannot serve its people without surviving. also your threats of "one button away form anhilation" is an exaduration. not only have nukes prevented larege scale total war, ukraine getting rid of their nuclear weapons has actually led to them being invaded by russia. there hasnt been nuclear detonation in almost 100 years because even the most evil people recognize the cost of nuclear war. the reality is that it is a fantasy to get rid of all nukes, and so long as at least one country has them, there needs to be defence.

Your Ukraine example perfectly proves my point - nuclear weapons made Ukraine a target, not safer. Russia invaded precisely because they knew Ukraine couldn't retaliate with nukes. But here's what you're missing: there have been at least 22 very close misses since nuclear weapons were first invented, and a single safety switch was all that stood between a 20-megaton hydrogen bomb from exploding in North Carolina in 1961, with five of its six safety mechanisms failing. Your "almost 100 years" claim is laughably wrong - it's been 79 years, and we've nearly ended civilization multiple times. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the Cuban Missile Crisis "the most dangerous moment in human history" when one Soviet submarine officer almost fired a nuclear torpedo. In 1983, Stanislav Petrov prevented global nuclear war by questioning false alarms - without his intervention, "the world would have been plunged into global nuclear war". Your colonizer argument is particularly twisted. You're essentially saying "bad guys have guns, so everyone needs guns" - but nuclear weapons aren't defensive shields, they're civilization-ending threats. When Israel, Russia, or the US threaten nuclear retaliation, they're not protecting their people - they're holding the entire world hostage to protect their geopolitical interests. The psychological truth you ignore: the risk of accidental nuclear war is only growing, and barring major initiatives for risk reduction, it's merely a matter of time before our luck runs out. Your deterrence theory requires perfect rationality forever from every nuclear power - one miscalculation, one technical failure, one desperate leader, and your "moral" possession becomes species extinction.