***1NC SBMD-Schurz- Some stuff in this 1ile may apply to Harlan SBMD, but Im sure core file answers

will take care of their aff, and Neg off case.

Missile Defense Topicality 1NC Development Is Peaceful

A) Interpretation: The word development in the resolution means the project must be peaceful. HWANG, 6
[Chin Young, Policy and International Relations Division at Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Space Activities in KoreaHistory, Current Programs and Future Plans, Space Policy, vol. 22, n. 3] Space development in Korea has several characteristics. First, space development activities are initiated by a scientific research institute, KARI, and a university, KAIST SaTRec, for peaceful purposes. Most development projects have been proposed by research institutes, not government decision makers. Second, most satellite missions are multipurpose. Since space development has not been initiated by the top levels of government, funding has to be sought by research institutes and MOST. In order to get enough funds, missions must be able to meet various requirements of related ministries. At the same time, each space development project has to justify its feasibility in terms of an economic costbenefit analysis. Third, Korean space activities have been focused on hardwaredevelopment of satellites and launch vehiclesrather than on the development of a full vision and the missions that would accompany this. The national space development plan reflects these characteristics, even though it contains some mention of space science and manned missions to the ISS through the international cooperation program.

B) Violation: The plan creates an offensive weapon system, which is not a peaceful satellite program. C) Topicality is a reason to vote Negative: 1) Unidirectionality Development is the key narrowing term in the resolution so it must be given a precise, unidirectional meaning. Allowing it to mean anything would make every plan topical and hurt clash and research-based education because the plan could have built-in link turns to generic disadvantages. 2) Legal Context Only definitions coded in law should count because they are most predictable for a policymaker. Anyone can write a generic definition, but government-based definitions are more precise and come out of warranted debates.

1NC Cap K Space exploration is merely an outlet for the state to expand its capitalist grip infinite wars will be fought over new resources also their advantages are made up and/or inevitable in capitalism Dickens 9 *Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex
(Peter, The Cosmos as Capitalisms Outside, The Sociological Review, 57: 6682, dml)

The imminent conquest of outer space raises the question of outside and inside yet again. Capitalism now has the cosmos in its sights, an outside which can be privately or publicly owned, made into a commodity, an entity for which nations and private companies can compete. As such the cosmos is a possible site of armed hostilities. This means, contra Hardt and Negri, that there is an outside after all, one into which the competitive market can now expand indefinitely. A new kind of imperialism is therefore underway,
albeit not one attempting to conquer and exploit people outside since there are no consumers or labour power to exploit in other parts of the solar system. Ferrying wealthy tourists into the cosmos is a first and perhaps most spectacular part of this process of capital's cosmic expansion. Especially important in the longer term is making outer space into a source

of resources and materials. These will in due course be incorporated into production-processes, most of which will be still firmly lodged on earth. Access to outer space is, potentially at least, access to an infinite outside array of resources. These apparently have the distinct advantage of not being owned or used by any preexisting society and not requiring military force by an imperializing power gaining access to these resources. Bringing this outside zone into capitalism may at first seem beneficial to everyone. But this scenario is almost certainly not so trouble-free as may at first seem. On the one hand, the investment of capital into outer space would be a huge diversion from the investments needed to address many urgent inequalities and crises on Earth. On the other hand, this same access is in practice likely to be conducted by a range of competing imperial powers.
on earth. But old-style imperialist, more particularly inter-imperialist,

Hardt and Negri (2000) tell us that the history of imperializing wars is over. This may or may not be the case as regards imperialism

wars seem more likely than ever, as growing and competing power-blocs (the USA and China are currently amongst the most likely protagonists) compete for resources on earth and outer space. Such, in rather general terms, is the prospect for a future, galactic, imperialism between competing powers. But what are the relations, processes and mechanisms underlying this new phenomenon ? How should we understand the regional rivalries and ideologies involved and the likely implications of competing empires attempting to incorporate not only their share of resources on earth but on global
society's outside? Social crises, outer spatial fixes and galactic imperialism Explanatory primacy is given here to economic mechanisms driving this humanization of the universe. In the same way that they have driven imperializing societies in the past to expand their economic bases into their outsides, the social relations of capitalism and the processes of

capital-accumulation are driving the new kind of outer space imperialisms. Such is the starting-point of

this paper (See alsoDickens and Ormrod, 2007). It is a position based on the work of the contemporary Marxist geographer David Harvey (2003) and his notion of spatial fixes. Capitalism continually constructs what he calls outer transformations. In the context of the over-accumulation of capital in the primary circuit of industrial capital, fresh geographic zones are constantly

sought out which have not yet been fully invested in or, in the case of outer space, not yet been invested in at all. Outer spatial fixes are investments in outer space intended to solve capitalism's many crises . At
one level they may be simply described as crises of economic profitability. But economic can cover a wide array of issues such as crises of resource-availability and potential social and political upheavals resulting from resource-shortages. Furthermore, there

is certainly no guarantee that these investments will actually fix these underlying economic, political and social crises. The fix may well be of a temporary, sticking-plaster, variety.

Capitalism necessarily turns to space militarization as a guarantor of its expansion via dispossession of foreign landsthis perpetuates the very interventionist mindset they hope to prevent

Dickens and Ormrod 7 - *Peter, Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex and **James, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton (Cosmic Society: Towards a sociology of the universe, pg 77-79, IWren)

In this chapter we turn our attention to trying to theorize the broader social significance of the increased use of outer space for military purposes. We argue that understanding

contemporary warfare also means turning to the material processes underling imperialism and accumulation by dispossession. These processes are social and economic, but they are also concerned with politics. Guarantees are required to ensure that capital investments are to be worthwhile. This in turn requires systems of property rights and protection of the kind that can only be supplied by government. Protection can take many forms, but the bottom line is military force. This in turn depends on the militarization of outer space, which has a central role in establishing and maintaining the new form of imperialism, both on Earth and in space. This is attempted by war at a distance, which in principle does not entail the costly and politically unattractive idea of sending troops to foreign countries . This type of war relies on satellites and their capacity for enabling instantaneous response to perceived enemies. But, as recent events have shown, success for this new type of imperialism and its military handmaiden is in practice by no means
guaranteed.

No value to life in capitalism. Sancho, 11 chair of the Annual World Conferences on the Science of Duality
[Louis Sancho; Fukyshima: Dying for Japan Inc.; published 3/29/2011; http://www.cerntruth.com/?p=257 ] Jay

I know you dont believe me. I know you think and believe the experts of the system. This is what you have learned. Those are your memes to keep you happy. And that is right. It is what it is expected of you. Especially if you are a Japanese living close to the death zone. Because the

world you live in is NOT a world in which life has an infinite value. You live in the Financial-MilitaryIndustrial Complex (called in newspeak the Free market, the FMI system in complexity), a perfectly organized system that we complexity
theorists study scientifically as an evolving organic system, whose functions, equations, evolution and purpose is crystal clear to us though all this might be hidden to you. So if you want to keep happy, dont worry and dont read. Probably mankind is beyond salvation. And yet there is a certain beauty in knowing the truth, in being free at least in your mind, even if you are prisoner on the iron jail the FMI complex has built for all of us. Before II world war, the FMI complex was more obvious. The Matrix of fictions and marketing built today to appease the sheeple was not yet in place. Men had not been devolved into a short attention-span, visual neopaleolithic and ego-centric, anthropomorphic belief on our self-centered position in the Universe. But now the FMI system controls our information, so we believe what it tells us. There is no confabulation theory here, but emergence, a concept of systems sciences that discharges full responsibility in the individuals and yet creates the same effect. We

humans have become completely dependent on machines organic systems of metal, more complex than we are, to which we transfer our form and evolve to reach higher degrees of energy and information to exist and what is far worse, our beliefs have adapted to them subconsciously since the Bronze age in which we discovered the power of weapons. There was an age that has resurfaced from time to time in religions of love and social, ecological movements in which people were aware that metal, weapons that kill our body, gold that hypnotize our mind and today machines that make us increasingly obsolete were dual fruits of the tree of science, some good some bad, and by not
distinguishing and pruning the bad fruits, such as the nuclear industry, in a free market where all goes, in an economic ecosystem in which weapons could predate on man, we would become extinct. All this wisdom was lost and soon selfish egocentric tribes that relied on weapons to impose their power (Indo-Europeans) or money to hypnotize and slave people (cananeans), came on top of all societies. And for 5000 years they built a matrix of ideological, self-centered fictions which now are common-sense, the ultimate beliefs. Those are the ideologies that sustain the Financial-MilitaryIndustrial complex in which we live. They justify all the wrong paths with the same self-centered, myopic, short-span, individualist egotism that

corporations, nations, nuclear scientists, bankers you name it show in everyday behavior. Yet behind those selfish memes of metal imprinted in our mind, there is still a natural genetic, biological program of love for nature, natural food, clean air, social love the genetic program of human evolution. And so a great deal of newspeak takes place within the Financial-Military-Industrial Complex and the die-hard believers that worship with messianic zeal the evolution of weapons, machines and money as the future of mankind, to

appease and convince people that the FMI system cares for us, that corporations serve us, that nations are the supreme meaning of our existence. And this duality between a brain-washed mankind who adores the wrong memes and a newspeak of caring is specially present in Japan;
a nation founded by iron-horse warriors coming from Korea, who became samurais and emperors (but this cannot be said, Japanese are kept in a state of neoteny, with infantile myths and self-restrain, and worship their traditions, the jail of their mind; displaying an extreme aggressive-passive behavior to people who might offend their sensibilities) and imprinted the happy peasants of the sun-god with an absolute slavery to the master. This samurai today rules japan and its corporations that manufacture machines with a submissive population that likes more their robots than the foreigners, because it

has become lobotomized to a point in which so much restrain of otherwise natural feelings and inner emotions, makes them in external behavior closer to their robots than to human beings. How this is possible is obvious: today the imprinting of our mind
with the ideologies that make us love the FMI complex that is killing gaia starts at 3, when you are put in front of a TV. From then on, the nervous system of simultaneous indoctrination will imprint your brain with mass-media propaganda and the 3 ideologies that make of its 3 networks, the idols of mankind. The financial system has an ideology called capitalism that tells us money is NOT just a system of metal-information (evolved from gold, the most informative atom of the Universe into e-money, data in a computer), but the invisible hand of go(l)d, the meaning of it all, and its values must be respected. To explain you really the meaning of economics I would need an entire web-blog on complex economics which I have, so I will not insist on it. But the

FMI complex is an evolving system independent of man, which merely constructs it. So it has its own organization and goals. It has a global, digital brain called the world stock-market and a type of
citizen called the corporation; but in system sciences I prefer to call it by its biological function so we shall call corporations company-mothers of machines. 90% of the stock-market is dedicated to re=produce those machines, feed them with energy, provide them with information and within that scheme, we

humans have only 2 functions: to work=reproduce those machines and to test=consume them. Every time we work, we reproduce a machine or a part of it, every time we consume it we test it and vitalize it. Because the FMI system is an evolving ecosystem of machines that is terraforming the Earth and substituting us, the super-organism of history as we substituted our fathers, the organism of life. That simple chain is the world you live in, evolving unrelentlessly: Gaia->History->The Metal-Earth (FMI complex). And only if you are aware of that arrow of
evolution we have set in motion, and we back with the 3 ideologies of mechanism (machines are the future of man, not organic systems of metal that substitute and make obsolete human beings), capitalism (money is the language of god, not a language whose values are different from those of words and give zero value to life and maximal value to machines and weapons) and nationalism (the idea that we are different races according to a piece of cloth, called a flag, so we must not love each other and evolve together as members of the same species, but use weapons to come up on top), we can interpret the world as it is, including Fukushima.

Alt vote negative to reject the flawed methodology of the affirmative.

The alternative is the only way out we need to analyze the flaws in the system to find the preconditions for movements away from capitalism and its inevitable collapse this is key to develop a real political strategy to counter their harms Carroll 10 *founding director of the Social Justice Studies Program at the University of Victoria
(William, Crisis, movements, counter-hegemony: in search of the new, Interface 2:2, 168-198, dml)

In the most general terms and at the highest level of abstraction, the

question of counter-hegemony evokes the dialectic of bringing the new into existence, against the sedimented practices and relations that, as Marx (1852) wrote, weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Yet it is from existing practices and relations that the

new is fabricated, which is to say that the future is already contained as potential within the present. Fermenting in the process of the real itself is what Ernst Bloch called the concrete forward dream: anticipating elements are a
component of reality itself (1986:197). Counter-hegemony, as distinct from defensive forms of subaltern resistance, strives to shape those anticipating elements, so that they may become lasting features of social life. For

counter-hegemony, the challenge is to seek out in the present the preconditions for a post-capitalist future and to develop political strategy based on an analysis of those immanent possibilities (Ollman 2003). Gramsci captured this dialectic with the metaphor of welding the present to the future: How can the present be welded to the future, so that while satisfying the urgent necessities of the one we may work effectively to create and anticipate the other (1977: 65)? The new is no mere fashion, the latter being a preferred trope of modernity (Blumer 1969), closely integrated with consumercapitalist accumulation strategies, and thus with reproducing the status quo. Often the new reworks the old, with radical effects. Viewed dialectically, the new preserves yet transforms extant reality, as in the incorporation of indigenous ways as alternatives to neoliberal practices that have grown decidedly old (cf. Bahn 2009). This dialectic between what already exists and what might be constructed out of that is integral to any project of purposeful socio-political change. Movements, as Melucci (1989) has emphasized, are laboratories for social invention. They are
carriers of the new means and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships that Williams (1977: 123) identified with cultural emergence; emergent publics that create possibilities for a more democratic way of life (Angus 2001). Movements

succeed in creating change when political and cultural opportunity structures open up (Tarrow 1998). But which movements, which practices and which alignments of movements and practices, in short which new combinations (Dyer-Witheford 2001) might already carry the new and under what contemporary conditions might they have efficacy? These are more concrete questions of counter-hegemony. Theorists of agency and structure note that, although social structures are sustained solely through the practices that reproduce them, such practices, precisely because they are structurally reproductive, do not produce much that is new; only transformative practices have that capacity (Bhaskar 1989; Fraser 1995). Indeed, a well-established hegemonic structure naturalizes social cleavages and contradictions, securing

PPWT CP Or Plitics DA
CP Text: The United States president should sign and the United States Senate should ratify The Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space. The US should sign the PPWT- predictability, international relations, and miscalc Vasiliev 8 [Victor, political counselor for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 4/1/08,
The Draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the threat or use of force against outer space objects, http://www.unidir.org/pdf/articles/pdf-art2822.pdf] AS

So, why do we need a PPWT? First, because without such a treaty it would be difcult to predict the development of the strategic situation in outer space and on Earth due to the global operating range of space weapons. It would be impossible to claim that space weapons were not targeted at a given nation. Moreover, space weapons will enable actors to discreetly tamper with outer space objects and disable them. Second, because the international situation would be seriously destabilized due to a possibility of unexpected, sudden use of space weapons. This alone could provoke pre-emptive acts against space weapons and, consequently, the spiral of an arms race. Third, because space weapons, unlike weapons of mass destruction, may be applied selectively and discriminately, they could become real-use weapons. Fourth, because the placement of weapons in outer space would arouse suspicions and tensions in international relations and destroy the current climate of mutual condence and cooperation in exploration of outer space. Fifth, because attaining monopoly of space weapons would be an illusionary goal, all kind of symmetrical and asymmetrical responses would inevitably follow, which in substance would constitute a new arms race, which is exactly what humankind wants to avoid. Solves China and Russia weaponization they pushed the treaty, and they arent lying
Englehart 8 Alex B Englehart, contributor to the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal at the University of Washington School of Law Jan 2008 Common Ground In The Sky: Extending The 1967 Outer Space Treaty To Reconcile US and Chinese Security Interests Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal ProQuest Asian

Business and Reference pg. 133 <http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=1429810431&Fmt=7&clientId=4347&RQT=309&VName=PQD>/

/DoeS
China and Russia have been pushing very hard in recent years for negotiations on the space weapons issue, and they have given the United States no reason to doubt their sincerity. The 2002 working paper jointly submitted by the two countries to the Conference on Disarmament called "not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying any kinds of weapons, not to install such weapons on celestial bodies, or not to station such weapons in outer space in any other manner" and "not to resort to the threat or use of force against outer space objects."151 This language was too broad and sweeping, because instead of proposing to ban only the specific types of offensive weapons currently being planned for deployment in the next few decadeskinetic kill vehicles and lasersit simply proposes to ban "all types of weapons." China and Russia almost certainly understood that such a comprehensive ban on all space weapons would be unacceptable to the United States, which has already invested heavily in various types of military support satellites152 that could arguably fall within such a broad prohibition. China and Russia mainly want to avoid the major impending threats posed by kinetic kill vehicles and space-based lasersthey are not nearly as concerned about U.S. military

support satellites.153 It is therefore very likely that this general language was intended only to be a starting point for negotiations, and not by any means the "final offer" from the two countries. A ban on "all types of weapons" is a complete non-starter to
the United States because it has already invested significantly in various military support satellites that could technically fall within that language, and it would be unwilling to turn back the clock in favor of its potential adversaries. But banning only kinetic kill vehicles and space-based laser weapons (and ASATs) through the amendment to Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty proposed above would be a very different matter. If the language in the amended treaty is made sufficiently clear so that only these weapons, and not any other types of satellites, are banned, the United States is much more likely to at least come to the table and discuss amending the Treaty.

Line-Item 1NC
A. Uniqueness - Line-Item veto has bipartisan support in the senate Wolverton 2/14/2012, Joe, House Passes Line-Item Veto; Senate Support Grows, The
New American, http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/10857-house-passesline-item-veto-senate-support-grows With passage of H.R. 3521, a companion version of the bill will now be deliberated by the Senate. In what should come as no surprise, S. 102 (the Senate version of the House bill) benefits from bipartisan support. The measure is cosponsored by familiar friends of an allpowerful executive: Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the Republican side and Tom Carper (DDel.) for the Democratic Party. There are currently 43 cosponsors signed onto the proposal.

B. INSERT SPECIFIC LINK C. Impact - Line item veto would control deficits Kasperowicz, The Hill, 2/8/12
Pete, Line-item veto bill splits Republicans on Budget, Appropriations committees, http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/209487-line-item-veto-bill-splits-republicans-onbudget-appropriations-committees Another Republican on the Budget Committee, Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), countered that the bill is needed because the control Congress is supposed to be exercising over spending has not been evident. "Spending has run rampant in Washington, and it's because 'no' is not a word that Congress is used to when it comes to spending," Ribble said. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), also on Budget, agreed that the bill would be helpful because many of the bills Congress passes in haste could stand a second look.

D. Further Government spending kills the economy Edwards 7/26 (Chris Edwards, July 26 2011, writer for CATO institute- excerpt from his
senate testimony, How Government Spending Harms the Economy, http://freemarketalternative.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-government-spending-harmseconomy.html) "There is renewed talk in Washington about further spending measures to try and stimulate the flagging economy. Yet now more than two years after passage of the $821 billion stimulus package in 2009, it seems pretty clear that that effort was a very expensive Keynesian policy failure.9 Note that the total Keynesian stimulus of recent years has been much larger than just the 2009 stimulus bill. In Keynesian theory, the total amount of deficit spending is the amount of demand-side stimulus. We've had deficit spending of $459 billion in fiscal 2008, $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009, $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010, and $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2011. Yet despite that enormous deficit-spending stimulus, U.S. unemployment remains stuck at high levels and the recovery is very sluggish compared to prior recoveries. Indeed, the current recovery appears to be slower than any since World War II by various measures.10 Obama administration

economists had claimed that the Keynesian "multipliers" from government spending are large, meaning that spending would give a big boost to GDP. But other macroeconomists have found that Keynesian multipliers are actually quite small, meaning that added government spending mainly just displaces private-sector activities.11Stanford University Professor John Taylor took a detailed look at GDP data over recent years, and he found little evidence of any benefits from the 2009 stimulus bill.12 Any "sugar high" to the economy from recent increases in government spending was apparently very small and short-lived. The reality is that Washington is very poor at trying to micromanagement short-term economic performance. Its failed stimulus actions of recent years have just put the nation further into debt, which has harmed our long-term prosperity. Harvard University's Robert Barro calculated that any short term benefit that the 2009 stimulus bill may have provided from small spending multipliers is greatly outweighed by the future damage caused by higher taxes and debt.13 Let's take a look at how federal spending damages the economy over the long-run. Federal spending is financed by the extraction of resources from current and future taxpayers. The resources consumed by the government cannot be used to produce goods in the private marketplace. For example, the engineers needed to build a $10 billion government high-speed rail line are taken away from building other products in the economy. The $10 billion rail line creates government-connected jobs, but it also kills at least $10 billion worth of private jobs. Indeed, the private sector would actually lose more than $10 billion in this example. That is because government spending and taxing creates "deadweight losses," which result from distortions to working, investment, and other activities. The CBO says that deadweight loss estimates "range from 20 cents to 60 cents over and above the revenue raised."14 Harvard University's Martin Feldstein thinks that deadweight losses "may exceed one dollar per dollar of revenue raised, making the cost of incremental governmental spending more than two dollars for each dollar of government spending."15 Thus, a $10 billion high-speed rail line would cost the private economy $20 billion or more. The government uses a "leaky bucket" when it tries to help the economy. Former Chairman of the Council of Economics Advisors, Michael Boskin, explains: "The cost to the economy of each additional tax dollar is about $1.40 to $1.50. Now that tax dollar ... is put into a bucket. Some of it leaks out in overhead, waste, and so on. In a well-managed program, the government may spend 80 or 90 cents of that dollar on achieving its goals. Inefficient programs would be much lower, $.30 or $.40 on the dollar."16 Texas A&M Professor Edgar Browning comes to similar conclusions about the magnitude of the government's leaky bucket: "It costs taxpayers $3 to provide a benefit worth $1 to recipients."17 The larger the government grows, the leakier the bucket becomes. On the revenue side, tax distortions rise rapidly as marginal tax rates rise.18 On the spending side, funding is allocated to activities with ever lower returns as the government expands. Figure 3 illustrates the consequences of the leaky bucket. On the left-hand side, tax rates are low and the government initially delivers useful public goods such as crime reduction. Those activities create high returns, so per-capita incomes initially rise as the government grows. As the government expands further, it engages in less productive activities. The marginal return from government spending falls and then turns negative. On the right-hand side of the figure, average incomes fall as the government expands. Government in the United States at more than 40 percent of GDP is almost certainly on the right-hand side of this figure. In a 2008 book on federal fiscal policy, Professor Browning concludes that today's welfare state reduces GDP or average U.S. incomes by about 25 percent.19 That would place us substantially to the right in Figure 3, and it suggests that major federal spending cuts would increase U.S. incomes over time. Federal spending is soaring, and government debt is piling up at more than a trillion dollars a year. Official projections show rivers of red ink for years to come unless policymakers enact major budget reforms. Unless spending is cut, the United States is headed for economic ruin. I've proposed a detailed plan at www.DownsizingGovernment.org to cut spending on entitlements, defense, and discretionary spending over 10 years to balance the budget.20

E. Economic decline will cause nuclear conflict Royal 10 (Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction U.S. Department of
Defense, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215) Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the

frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

1NC Harms HegemonyHeg doesnt Solve War

Empirically, heg doesnt solve conflict Hachigan and Sutphen 08 (Nina, Senior Fellow at American Progress, and Monica, Deputy White House
Chief of Staff, The Next American Century, p168-9) In practice, the strategy of primacy failed to deliver. While the fact of being the worlds only superpower has substantial benefits, a national security strategy based on suing and retaining primacy has not made America more secure. Americas military might has not been the answer to terrorism, disease, climate change, or proliferation. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea have become more dangerous in the last seven years, not less. Worse than being ineffective with transnational threats and smaller powers, a strategy of maintaining primacy is counterproductive when it comes to pivotal powers. If America makes primacy the main goal of its national security strategy, then why shouldnt the pivotal powers do the same? A goal of primacy signals that sheer strength is most critical to security. American cannot trumpet its desire to dominate the world military and then question why China is modernizing its military.

U.S. hegemonic decline does not cause conflict or result in a power vacuum empirically proven Fettweis 10 (Chris Fettweis, assistant professor of political science @ Tulane, April 2010, Threat and Anxiety in
US Foreign Policy Survival Vol 52 Isue 2) One potential explanation for the growth of global peace can be dismissed fairly quickly: US actions do not seem to have contributed much. The limited evidence suggests that there is little reason to believe in the stabilising power of the US hegemon, and that there is no relation between the relative level of American activism and international stability. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its

defence spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defence in real terms than it had in 1990, a 25% reduction.29 To internationalists, defence hawks and other believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible 'peace dividend' endangered both national and global security. 'No serious analyst of American military capabilities', argued neo-conservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1996, 'doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America's responsibilities to itself and to world peace'.30 And yet the verdict from the 1990s is fairly plain: the world grew more peaceful
while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable US military, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums; no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races; no regional balancing occurred once the stabilising presence of the US military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in US military capabilities. Most of all, the United States was no less safe. The incidence and

magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military spending under President Bill Clinton, and kept declining as the George W. Bush administration ramped the spending back up. Complex statistical analysis is unnecessary to reach the conclusion that world peace and US military expenditure are unrelated.

Dont buy their heg declining arguments its just cyclical belief Nye 11 (Joseph Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean of the Kennedy School
@ Harvard, 5/5/11, American Power after Bin Laden http://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/nye94/English ACC 7/28/11) Despite these differences, Americans are prone to cycles of belief in decline. The Founding Fathers worried about comparisons to the decline of the Roman republic. Moreover, cultural pessimism is very American, extending back to the countrys Puritan roots. As Charles Dickens observed a century and a half ago, if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, [America] always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is in an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise. More recently, polls showed widespread belief in decline after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, then again during the Nixon-era economic shocks in the 1970s, and after Ronald Reagans budget deficits in the 1980s. At the end of that decade, Americans believed the
country was in decline; yet, within a decade, they believed that the US was the sole superpower. Now many have gone back to believing in decline. Cycles of declinism tell us more about American psychology than about underlying shifts in power resources . Some observers, such as the Harvard

historian Niall Ferguson, believe that debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policy makers and citizens. Ferguson believes that a doubling of public debt in the coming decade cannot erode US strength on its own, but that it could weaken a long-assumed faith in Americas ability to weather any crisis.

Heg is high and sustainable the US remains unmatched in material capabilities

Ikenberry et al 09 (G John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at
Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, William Wohlforth, Daniel Webster Professor of Government @ Dartmouth, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government @ Dartmouth, January 2009 Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences World Politics 61, pp 1-27) American primacy in the global distribution of capabilities is one of the most salient features of the contemporary international system. The end of the cold war did not return the world to multipolarity. Instead the United Statesalready materially preeminentbecame more so. We currently live in a one superpower world, a circumstance unprecedented in the modern era. No other great power
has enjoyed such advantages in material capabilitiesmilitary, economic, technological, and geographical. Other states rival the United States in one area or another, but the multifaceted character of american power places it in a category of its own. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and its

empire, slower economic growth in Japan and Western europe during the 1990s, and americas outsized military spending have all enhanced these disparities. While in most historical eras the distribution of capabilities among major states has tended to be multipolar or bipolarwith several major states of roughly equal size and capabilitythe United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global power. It became a unipolar state.

Hegemony fails at resolving conflicts Maher 10 (Richard Maher, PhD candidate in Political Science @ Brown, The Paradox of American
Unipolarity: Why the United States Will Be Better Off in a Post-Unipolar World, 11/12/2010 Orbis, ScienceDirect) And yet, despite this material preeminence, the United States sees its political and strategic influence diminishing around the world. It is involved in two costly and destructive wars , in Iraq and Afghanistan, where success has been elusive and the end remains out of sight. China has adopted a new assertiveness recently, on everything from U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, currency convertibility, and America's growing debt (which China largely finances). Pakistan, one of America's closest strategic allies, is facing the threat of social and political collapse. Russia is using its vast energy resources to reassert its dominance in what it views as its historical sphere of influence. Negotiations with North Korea and Iran have gone nowhere in dismantling their nuclear programs.
Brazil's growing economic and political influence offer another option for partnership and investment for countries in the Western Hemisphere. And relations with Japan, following the election that brought the opposition Democratic Party into power, are at their frostiest in decades. To many observers, it seems that America's vast power is not translating into America's preferred outcomes. As the United States has come to learn, raw power does not automatically translate into the realization of one's preferences, nor is it necessarily easy to maintain one's predominant position in world politics . There are many costs that come with predominance material, political, and reputational. Vast imbalances of power create apprehension and anxiety in others, in one's friends just as much as in

one's rivals. In this view, it is not necessarily American predominance that produces unease but rather American predominance. Predominance also makes one a tempting target, and a scapegoat for other countries own problems and unrealized ambitions. Many a Third World autocrat has blamed his country's economic and social woes on an ostensible U.S. conspiracy to keep the country fractured, underdeveloped, and subservient to America's own interests. Predominant power likewise breeds envy, resentment, and alienation. How is it possible for one country to be so rich and powerful when so many others are weak, divided, and poor? Legitimacythe perception that one's role and purpose is acceptable and one's power is used justlyis indispensable for maintaining power and influence in world politics. As we witness the emergence (or re-emergence) of great powers in other parts of the world, we realize that American predominance

cannot last forever. It is inevitable that the distribution of power and influence will become more balanced in the future, and that the United States will necessarily see its relative power decline . While

the United States naturally should avoid hastening the end of this current period of American predominance, it should not look upon the next period of global politics and international history with dread or foreboding. It certainly should not seek to maintain its predominance at any cost, devoting unlimited ambition, resources, and prestige to the cause. In fact, contrary to what many have argued about the importance of maintaining its predominance, America's position in the worldboth at home and internationallycould very well be strengthened once its
era of preeminence is over. It is, therefore, necessary for the United States to start thinking about how best to position itself in the post-unipolar world.

1NC Harms [Ballistic Missile Proliferation]

1. Their scenario is exaggerated. The WASHINGTON POST evidence says that lots of countries are developing nuclear power, but is only speculative about which countries might be interested in weapons. Even if every country in this evidence had the bombs, they have no evidence that these countries have missiles that can strike the United States or would want to use weapons offensively. 2. Trends prove that ballistic missile arsenals are getting smaller. CIRINCIONE, 2001
[Joseph, Director, Non-Proliferation Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; The Ballistic Missile Threat; 6/08; http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=737] The number of countries trying or threatening to develop long-range ballistic missiles has not changed greatly in 15 years, and by some indications may be considered smaller than in the past. The nations now attempting to perfect long-range missiles are also smaller, poorer and less technologically advanced than were the nations with missile programs 15 years ago. We now worry primarily about five nations, in addition to Russia and China: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, India and Pakistan. Fifteen years ago, North Korea was not a concern, but India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, South Africa, Iraq, and perhaps Libya were all involved in programs to develop medium- or long-range missiles. Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, and South Africa have since terminated such efforts.21 Libya no longer has a viable development program for medium-range missiles, but is reportedly interested in purchasing Nodongs from North Korea. Israel retains the capability to develop long-range missiles, but is not considered a threat to the United States nor a likely exporter of missile technology.

3. Proliferation is slow enough to prevent conflict because only a few countries are willing to develop weapons. TEPPERMAN, 2009
[Jonathon; assistant managing editor of Newsweek Why Obama should Learn to Love the Bomb 8/29, http://www.newsweek.com/2009/08/28/why-obama-should-learn-to-love-the-bomb.html] The risk of an arms race--with, say, other Persian Gulf states rushing to build a bomb after Iran got one--is a bit harder to dispel. Once again, however, history is instructive. "In 64 years, the most nuclear-weapons states we've ever had is 12," says Waltz [Kenneth emeritus Political Science Professor at University of California and Research Scholar at Columbia]. "Now with North Korea we're at nine. That's not proliferation; that's spread at glacial pace." Nuclear weapons are so controversial and expensive that only countries that deem them absolutely critical to their survival go through the extreme trouble of acquiring them. That's why South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan voluntarily gave theirs up in the early '90s, and why other countries like Brazil and Argentina dropped nascent programs. This doesn't guarantee that one or more of Iran's neighbors--Egypt or Saudi Arabia, say--might not still go for the bomb if Iran manages to build one. But the risks of a rapid spread are low, especially given Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent suggestion that the United States would extend a nuclear umbrella over the region, as Washington has over South Korea and Japan, if Iran does complete a bomb. If one or two Gulf states nonetheless decided to pursue their own weapon, that still might not be so disastrous, given the way that bombs tend to mellow behavior.

1NCTerrorism Frontline
Even if the technology works it doesnt solverequirements exceed launch capabilities and interceptors are easily shot down.
Grego et al 11 (Dr. Laura Grego has a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology, and a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Michigan, Senior Scientist, Global Security Program, Dr. David Wright and, Stephen Young, Space Based Missile Defense http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/spacebased-md-factsheet-5-6-11.pdf //Donnie) A space-based boost-phase defense is intended to intercept attacking missiles during the first few minutes of their flight, while the missiles engines are still burning. To reach attacking missiles during this very short time, SBIs must be stationed in low-altitude orbits. However, in these orbits SBIs move rapidly with respect to the ground and cannot stay over any one location on Earth . To keep at least one interceptor within reach of a given missile launch site at all times therefore requires many SBIs in orbit. A 2003 American Physical Society study showed that many hundreds or thousands of SBIs would be required to provide limited coverage against ballistic missiles launched from areas of concern. This estimate is consistent with the size of the space layer in the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) missile defense system, which was proposed (but not built) by the George H.W. Bush administration in the early 1990s. GPALS called for 1,000 to 5,000 SBIs. Doubling the number of missiles that such a defense could engage would require doubling the size of the entire constellation of SBIs. Moreover, given the technology expected for the next decade, each SBI would weigh up to a ton or more. As a result, deploying such a system would be enormously expensive and actually would exceed U.S. launch capabilities . Additionally, such a system would raise significant issues for crowding and traffic management in space . Yet even if such a large system were built and the technology worked perfectly, it would not provide a reliable defense, for two reasons . First, even if the constellation of hundreds to thousands of interceptors described above were in place, only one or two SBIs would be in position to reach any given launching missile in time to destroy it. Consequently, the defense could be overwhelmed by simultaneously launching multiple missiles from one location. Second, the system could not protect itself from attacks intended to remove interceptors. Because SBIs would be in low-altitude orbits they could easily be detected and tracked from the ground; an adversary would know their current and future locations . As a result, any SBI would be vulnerable to attack by inexpensive short- or medium-range missiles. These missiles would burn out at too low an altitude to be intercepted by the SBI , but they could loft homing ASAT weapons at it. By destroying relatively few SBIs in this way, an attacker could create a gap in the defense through which it subsequently could launch its long-range missiles. In short, a defense based on deploying hundreds or thousands of SBIs at enormous cost could be defeated by a handful of enemy missiles.

Terrorists wouldnt launch nuclear weapons

They would just use suitcase nukes or release the biological agents in envelopesthis is empirically proven by 9/11 and is what their Sid-Ahmed evidence predicts.

The disad turns this advantage. Graham 5 (Thomas, is a former special representative of the president for arms control, nonproliferation, and
disarmament. In this and other senior capacities, he participated in every major arms control and nonproliferation negotiation in which the United States took part from 1970 to 1997. Space Weapons and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War http://www.gsinstitute.org/docs/Graham_Space_ACT_12-05.pdf //Donnie)
To see the path that a space test bed is likely to follow, one need only look at the present ground-based program: the Pentagon claims there is little true difference between a test bed and an operational deployment. Moreover, in space the deployment could be more dramatic. Although the current ground-based configuration envisions a few dozen interceptors, continuous space coverage over a few countries of concern would likely require a very large number of interceptors because a particular interceptor will be above a particular target for only a few minutes a day.

Todays missile defenses provide very little real protection as the United States currently faces no realistic threat of deliberate attack by nuclear-armed long-range missiles. But space weapons could actually be detrimental to U.S. national security. They would increase the perceived vulnerability of early warning systems to attack and cause Russia and perhaps other countries such as China to pursue potentially destabilizing countermeasures, such as advanced anti-satellite weapons. These dangers would be particularly worrisome for those
components that are placed in geosynchronous orbits (GEO). Space objects in GEO are sufficiently far from the Earth (about 36,000 kilometers) so that their speed roughly matches the rotational speed of the Earth and they remain stationary above one location. To be sure, any country that

can place a satellite in these farther orbitsand there are severalcould potentially threaten another countrys satellites there. Yet, it would be easier to do so, and perhaps more importantly, the threat perception would be greater with weapons based in space than with existing ground-based technology. The 15 U.S. early warning satellites are almost entirely in GEO. The three functioning Russian early warning satellites utilize two different orbits. Two of the satellites use a highly elliptical orbit, which ranges from low-Earth orbit (LEO)100 to 2,000 kilometers above the Earth where space objects travel at about 8 kilometers per secondout to GEO. The other satellite is permanently stationed in GEO. Moreover, a space arms competition could hinder the flow of satellite imagery that can

be used to track activities that might reveal programs to develop weapons of mass destruction in countries of concern. For example, activities detected through space-based collection systems can be used to trigger requests for inspections pursuant to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (implicitly) or the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (explicitly), should that treaty be brought into force. It is important
in this respect to recall that the suspicions that Israel and South Africa may have conducted an atmospheric nuclear test in 1979 were driven by readout from a U.S. VELA satellite. Similarly, the United States has benefited from the revolution in national

intelligence that began with and is based on photographic reconnaissance satellites and related systems, which has helped bring to an end the worst-case analysis and close calls with nuclear war that existed throughout the Cold War. If a truly peaceful and stable world order is ever achieved, the advent of this technology beginning in the late 1950s will be regarded by future generations as a major historical turning point. These are crucial efforts that must never be allowed to be disrupted, either by space-based weapons or with the relatively simplistic ground-based anti-satellite weapon systems that could today be deployed . The
United States has considerable anti-satellite weapons capability. An F-15-based homing vehicle system was successfully tested in the 1980s, and the anti-ballistic missile system currently being deployed in Alaska and California has an inherent anti-satellite capability. Right now, no other country is developing a counterspace system, although the Soviet Union successfully tested a co-orbital anti-satellite system in the 1970s and 1980s and Russia and China are believed to be capable of doing so. Notably, 28 countries have ballistic missiles that can reach LEO satellites, and all have the technical capability to develop a LEO anti-satellite system by modifying these missiles.

The plan doesnt solve in time

Their evidence says terrorists will acquire nuclear weapons within two yearsthats way before an effective network of interceptors can be developed and deployed.

No nuclear terrorismno ability to build their own, cant steal fissile material, and cant buy from corrupt insiders. Mueller 10 John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University. Calming Our Nuclear
Jitters. Issues in Science and Technology. 1/1/2010. Vol.26,Iss.2;p.58-66. Academic Search Premiere. In contrast to these predictions, terrorist groups seem to have exhibited only limited desire and even less progress in going atomic. This may be because, after brief exploration of the possible routes, they, unlike generations of alarmists, have discovered that the tremendous effort required is scarcely likely to be successful . The most plausible route for terrorists, according to most experts, would be to manufacture an atomic device themselves from purloined fissile material (plutonium or, more likely, highly enriched uranium). This task, however, remains a daunting one, requiring that a considerable series of difficult hurdles be conquered and in sequence. Outright armed theft of fissile material is exceedingly unlikely not only because of the resistance of guards, but because chase would be immediate. A more promising approach would be to corrupt insiders to smuggle out the required substances . However, this requires the terrorists to pay off a host of greedy confederates, including brokers and moneytransmitters, any one of whom could turn on them or, either out of guile or incompetence, furnish them with stuff that is useless. Insiders might also consider the possibility that once the heist was accomplished, the terrorists would, as analyst Brian
Jenkins none too delicately puts it, have every incentive to cover their trail, beginning with eliminating their confederates.

Too many hurdles. Chapman 8 Steve Chapman, The Implausibility of Nuclear Terror, The Baltimore Sun, Feb. 11, 2008, LN
But remember: After 9/11, we all thought more attacks were a certainty. Yet al-Qaida and its ideological kin have proved unable to mount a second strike. Given their inability to do something simple - say, shoot up a shopping mall or set off a truck bomb - it's reasonable to ask whether they have a chance at something much more ambitious . Far from being plausible, argued Ohio State University professor John Mueller in a recent presentation at the University of Chicago, "the likelihood that a terrorist group will come up with an atomic bomb seems to be vanishingly small ." The events required to make that happen consist of a multitude of Herculean tasks. First, a terrorist group has to get a bomb or fissile material, perhaps from

Russia's inventory of decommissioned warheads. If that were easy, one would have already gone missing. Besides, those devices are probably no longer a danger, because weapons that are not scrupulously maintained (as those have not been) quickly become what one expert calls "radioactive scrap metal." If terrorists were able to steal a Pakistani bomb, they would still have

defeat the arming codes and other safeguards designed to prevent unauthorized use. As for Iran, no nuclear state has ever given a bomb to an ally - for reasons even the Iranians can grasp. Stealing some 100 pounds of bomb fuel would require help from rogue individuals inside some government who are prepared to jeopardize their lives. The terrorists, notes Mr. Mueller, would then have to spirit it "hundreds of miles out of the country over unfamiliar terrain, and probably while being pursued by security forces." Then comes the task of building a bomb. It's not something you can gin up with spare parts and power tools in your garage. It requires millions of dollars, a haven and advanced equipment - plus people with specialized skills, lots of time and a willingness to die for the cause . And if al-Qaida could make a prototype, another obstacle would
to emerge: There is no guarantee it would work, and there is no way to test it. Assuming the jihadists vault over those Himalayas, they would have to deliver the weapon onto American soil. Sure, drug smugglers bring in contraband all the time - but seeking their help would confront the plotters with possible exposure or extortion. This, like every other step in the entire process, means expanding the circle of people who know what's going on, multiplying the chance someone will blab, back out or screw up. Mr. Mueller recalls that after the Irish Republican Army failed in an attempt to blow up British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, it said, "We only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always." Al-Qaida, he says,

For it to carry out a nuclear attack, everything has to go right. For us to escape, only one thing has to go wrong. That has heartening implications. If Osama bin Laden embarks on the project, he has only a minuscule chance of seeing it bear fruit. Given the formidable odds, he probably won't bother. None of this means we
faces a very different challenge:

should stop trying to minimize the risk by securing nuclear stockpiles, monitoring terrorist communications and improving port screening. But it offers good reason to think that in this war, it appears, the worst eventuality is one that will never happen.

Solvency
Collisions destroy missile defense and would need 100,000 interceptors to solve Grego '11
(Laura Grego, staff scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists in DC, "Space-Based Missile Defense: Still a Bad Idea", 6/2/11, http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/6105337195/space-based-missile-defense-still-a-bad-idea// ASpomer) While $8 million is small money in this context, as Rep. Sanchez rebutted, space-based interceptors are big money. This has been established repeatedly in studies by, for example, the American Physics Society and the Congressional Budget Office, both in 2004, which show that hundreds to thousands of orbiting interceptors would be needed to provide global coverage against one or two ballistic missiles. For the foreseeable future, each of these hundreds to thousands of
orbiting interceptors would require a mass of many hundreds of kilograms, larger than an Iridium communications satellite at launch. A deployed system would be enormously expensive and challenge the U.S. launch capability. It is unlikely to ever be deployed, and in todays constrained budgetary environment, it is exceedingly unlikely to even be considered seriously. Aside from the cost, a deployed system would raise significant issues for low-earth orbit crowding and space traffic management. Currently, fewer than 500 active satellites are in low earth orbits (less than about 1700 km at perigee), yet the current system managing traffic in space was unable to predict or prevent a collision between two intact satellites in 2009. (The US Air Force has stepped up its game in this

respect, but tripling the number of satellites that need to be closely monitored is not a trivial upgrade.) Why not just put up a few interceptors? A little protection is better than none, right? The answer is a resounding no. A space-based interceptor would only be in the right place to be able to intercept a given ICBM intermittently: space-based interceptors need to keep circling Earth to stay in orbit. Because space-based interceptors (like all satellites) orbit predictably and are readily
observable from the ground, a single interceptor is like a single police officer who is charged with protecting a neighborhood from mischief but required never to deviate from the precise timing of her route. She would be only a minor nuisance to determined troublemakers, who would find it

easy to do what they pleased without getting caught. In the same way that the neighborhood wouldnt be protected until a full coterie of officers could cover the territory, space-based
missile defense would be completely ineffective until a full system was deployed. Until then, the attacker could always choose her time and place to coincide with the absence of a usable interceptor. Spacebased missile defense is worse off than that, actually. In fact, even if a full system were deployed

and the technology worked perfectly, an attacker could easily create such an absence by using a cheaper short- or medium-range missile either to draw out the space-based interceptor or to destroy it. Increasing

the missile defenses robustness by doubling the number of ground-based missiles such a defense could engage? This would require doubling the size of the entire interceptor constellation. Thus, this defense based on deploying hundreds to thousands of space-based interceptors
can always be defeated by a handful of enemy missiles.