Is Nuclear Deterrence Worth the Cost?

One of the most central negative arguments suggests that the possession of nuclear weapons acts as a deterrent against full-scale nuclear war. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) postulates that if a nation launches a nuclear assault on another nation in possession of nuclear weapons, the attacked nation possesses second-strike capabilities that allow it to annihilate the attacking nation. Therefore, no nation has an incentive to launch nuclear weapons at another nation. A strategic affirmative strategy would include offense against the deterrence argument, so the negative cannot go for the risk of offense.

A major affirmative advantage would be proxy wars. Proxy wars are characterized as having one or more third parties supporting opposing sides of a war through personnel, training, and military equipment, instead of engaging in direct combat. This means that when nations turn away from nuclear weapons due to MAD, conventional warfare becomes the alternative. Even if nations do not use nuclear weapons, the intent to assert dominance, gain territorial advantages, and resources remains. There is plenty of uniqueness literature for this contention, as proxy conflict and global instability have been on the rise in 2025.  The Stability-Instability Paradox highlights the inverse relationship between conventional war and nuclear war: as the likelihood of nuclear conflict declines, the risk of conventional war increases. Historical and present examples of proxy conflicts include the Yemeni War, Syria War, Ukraine war, Korean War, Vietnam War, and Afghan War.  Take the Yemeni War as an example: Iran was backed by Russia and China, while Saudi Arabia was backed by the US. First-world nations were advancing their own strategic interests while outsourcing violence towards nations where populations lack the democratic control to stop them.  The most direct impacts are millions of lives lost, violations of human rights, refugees, famine, and disease, which would tie into the majority of frameworks. 

The way the negative will try to frame the clash of deterrence versus proxy conflict is by weighing the magnitude and arguing that preventing global nuclear war saves more human lives than proxy conflict. However, recall that the resolution is a question of whether possession of nuclear weapons is moral or immoral. Therefore, this idea that nukes “save humanity from the bigger evil” is flawed and immoral because it justifies any amount of individual suffering as long as it saves “more lives.” This same logic would justify the possession of nuclear weapons, which would also justify slavery, genocide, and torture if that meant saving the world from extinction (Proxy conflicts have directly led to slavery, genocide, and torture in the past). Following the previous line of reasoning, the most strategic framework for the proxy wars contention would be mitigating structural violence that seeks to minimize harms upon minority groups. Ultimately, if the affirmative proves that nuclear weapons do not merely coexist with proxy wars but structurally produce them, then the immorality of possession is undeniable.

Read more here:

• Slavery, Genocide and the Politics of Outrage, Hisham Aïdi 

• The Horror in Northern Iraq, US Holocaust Memorial Museum 

• The Escalating Stakes of Proxy Wars, Juan J. Quiroz