Isaac+and+Lauren

= = =---1AC---= =Plan Text=


 * Plan: The United States federal government should implement a phased withdrawal of its ground troops in the Republic of Korea. **

=Contention 1 is Korea War=

[], JMP) USUALLY, there is a familiar cycle to Korea crises.  Like a street gang showing off its power to run amok in a well-heeled neighborhood, __the North Koreans launch a missile over Japan or set off a nuclear test or stage an attack__ — as strong evidence indicates they did in March, when a South Korean warship was torpedoed. Expressions of outrage follow. So do vows that this time, the North Koreans will pay a steep price.  In time, though, the United States and North Korea’s neighbors — China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — remind one another that they have nothing to gain from a prolonged confrontation, much less a war. Gradually, sanctions get watered down. Negotiations reconvene. Soon the North hints it can be enticed or bribed into giving up a slice of its nuclear program. Eventually, the cycle repeats. __The White House betting is that the latest crisis, stemming from the March attack, will also abate without much escalation. But there is more than a tinge of doubt. The big risk __, as always, __ is ** what happens if the North Korea ns make a major miscalculation. **__ (It wouldn’t be their first. Sixty years ago, Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, thought the West wouldn’t fight when he invaded the South. The result was the Korean War.) What’s more, __ the dynamic does feel ** different from recent crises. The ** South has a hardline government whose first instinct was to cut off aid to the North, not offer it new bribes. At the same time, the North is going through a murky, ill-understood succession crisis. __ And President Obama has made it clear he intends to break the old cycle. “We’re out of the inducements game,” one senior administration official, who would not discuss internal policy discussions on the record, said last week. “For 15 years at least, the North Koreans have been in the extortion business, and the U.S. has largely played along. That’s over.” That may change the North’s behavior, but it could backfire. __“There’s an argument that in these circumstances, the North Korea ns may perceive that their ** best strategy is to escalate ** ,” says__ Joel __Wit, a former State Department official who__ now runs a Web site that __follows North Korean diplomacy.__ __The encouraging thought is the history of cooler heads prevailing in every crisis since the Korean War.__ There was no retaliation after a 1968 raid on South Korea’s presidential palace; or when the North seized the American spy ship Pueblo days later; or in 1983 when much of the South Korean cabinet was killed in a bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma; or in 1987 when a South Korean airliner was blown up by North Korean agents, killing all 115 people on board. So what if this time is different? __Here are five situations in which good sense might not prevail.__ An Incident at Sea Ever since an armistice ended the Korean War, the two sides have argued over — and from time to time skirmished over — the precise location of the “Northern Limit Line,” which divides their territorial waters. That was where the naval patrol ship Cheonan was sunk in March. So __first on the Obama administration’s list of concerns is another incident at sea that might turn into a ** prolonged firefight **. Any heavy engagement could draw in the __ __U __ nited __S __ tates, South Korea’s chief ally, which is responsible for taking command if a major conflict breaks out. __What worries some officials is the chance of an ** intelligence failure **in which the West misreads North Korea’s willingness and ability to escalate.__ The failure would not be unprecedented. Until a five-nation investigation concluded that the Cheonan had been torpedoed, South Korea and its allies did not think the North’s mini-submarine fleet was powerful enough to sink a fully armed South Korean warship. Shelling the DMZ American and South Korean war planners still work each day to refine how they would react if North Korea’s 1.2 million-man army poured over the Demilitarized Zone, 1950s-style. Few really expect that to happen — the South Koreans build and sell expensive condos between Seoul and the DMZ — but that doesn’t mean the planning is unjustified. __ In one retaliatory measure __ last week, __ South Korea threatened to resume propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers at the DMZ.__ In past years, such blaring denunciations, of Kim Jong-il’s economic failures, were heard only by North Korean guards and the wildlife that now occupies the no-man’s land. Still, __ the threat was enough to drive the North’s leadership to threaten to shell the loudspeakers. That, in turn, could lead to tit-for-tat exchanges of fire, and to a threat from the North to fire on Seoul__, which is within easy reach of mortars. If that happened, thousands could die in frenzied flight from the city, and investors in South Korea’s economy would almost certainly panic. American officials believe the South is now rethinking the wisdom of turning on the loudspeakers. A Power Struggle or Coup __Ask American intelligence analysts what could escalate this or a future crisis, and they name a 27-year-old Kim Jong-un__, the youngest of Kim Jong-il’s three sons, and the father’s choice to succeed him. Little is known about him, but his main qualifications for the job may be that he is considered less corrupt or despised than his two older brothers. __One senior American intelligence official described the succession crisis this way: “We ** can’t think of a bigger nightmare ** than a third generation of the Kim family” running the country with an iron hand __, throwing opponents into the country’s gulags, and mismanaging an economy that leaves millions starving. It is possible that on the issue of succession, many in the North Korean elite, including in the military, agree with the American intelligence official. According to some reports, they view Kim Jong-un as untested, and perhaps unworthy. __“ We’re seeing considerable signs of stress inside the North Korean system,”__ another official reported. __And that ** raises the possibility ** ** of more provocations — and potential miscalculations — ahead. **__ One line of analysis is that the younger Kim has to put a few notches in his belt by ordering some attacks on the South, the way his father once built up a little credibility. __Another possibility is that internal fighting over the succession could bring wide-scale violence inside North Korea, tempting outside powers to intervene to stop the bloodshed.__ Curiously, when Kim Jong-il took the train to China a few weeks ago, his heir apparent did not travel with him. Some experts read that as a sign that the Kim dynasty might fear a coup if both were out of the country — or that it might not be wise to put father and son on the same track at the same time, because accidents do happen. An Internal Collapse __America’s most enduring North Korea strategy isn’t a strategy at all; it’s a prayer for the country’s collapse.__ Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy hoped for it. Dick Cheney tried to speed it. The regime has survived them all. But __ could the North collapse in the midst of the power struggle? Sure.__ And that is the one scenario that most terrifies the Chinese. It also explains why they keep pumping money into a neighbor they can barely stand. __ For China, a collapse would mean a flood of millions of ____ hungry refugees __ (who couldn’t flee south; there they are blocked by the minefield of the DMZ); __ it would also mean the possibility of having South Korea’s military, and its American allies, nervously contending with the Chinese over who would occupy the territory of a fallen regime in order to stabilize the territory __. China is deeply interested in North Korea’s minerals; the South Koreans may be as interested in North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal. A Nuclear Provocation __With tensions high, American spy satellites are looking for evidence that the North Koreans are getting ready to test another nuclear weapon__ — just as they did in 2006 and 2009 — or shoot off some more long-range missiles. It is a sure way to grab headlines and rattle the neighborhood. In the past, such tests have ratcheted up tension, and could do so again. But they are not the Obama administration’s biggest worry. As one of Mr. Obama’s top aides said months ago, there is reason to hope that the North will shoot off “a nuclear test every week,” since they are thought to have enough fuel for only eight to twelve. __Far more worrisome would be a decision by Pyongyang to export its nuclear tech nology and a failure by Americans to notice.__ For years, American intelligence agencies missed evidence that the North was building a reactor in the Syrian desert, near the Iraq border. The Israelis found it, and wiped it out in an air attack in 2007. Now, the search is on to find out if other countries are buying up North Korean technology or, worse yet, bomb fuel. (There are worries about Myanmar.) In short, __the biggest worry is that North Korea could decide that teaching others how to build nuclear weapons would be the fastest, stealthiest way to defy a new American president__ who has declared that stopping proliferation is Job No. 1. __It is unclear whether the American intelligence community would pick up the signals that it missed in Syria. And if it did, ** a crisis might not be contained in the Korean Peninsula; it could spread to the Middle East or Southeast Asia, or wherever else North Korea found its customers. **__
 * The status quo is __different__ than the past – the chance of global escalation is now possible. **
 * Sanger, 10 ** (5/28/10, David E. Sanger, NY Times, “In the Koreas, Five Possible Ways to War,”

On the other hand, __there is a real danger of this war of words escalating into a shooting war.__ With well over a million Korean troops facing each other across the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South, along with 29,000 U.S. troops in the South, and North Korea now armed with nuclear weapons, the consequences of a renewed Korean War would be catastrophic for the Korean peninsula and the entire Northeast Asia region. __ The Cheonan incident has reinforced U.S.- South Korean and U.S.-Japanese cooperation in deterring the North. But ** deterrence can look like provocation from the other side, and in such a tense ** ** and volatile environment, a slight miscalculation can lead to disaster. ** Anger and outrage may be understandable, but cooler heads must prevail. Millions of lives are at stake. Rather than lead to deepening confrontation, this tragedy may be an opportunity to re-engage North Korea in talks__ to scale back and ultimately eliminate its nuclear program, and to promote security and economic cooperation with its neighbors. North Korea has never admitted to acts of terrorism in the past, and we cannot expect it to acknowledge responsibility and apologize for the sinking of the Cheonan as a precondition for such talks. Instead, the international community should take advantage of Kim Jong Il's stated willingness to return to multilateral negotiations, suspended since 2008, as a way of reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula. It is time to end the Korean War, not start it anew. It is __ the lack of obvious motive for this unprovoked attack that has most rattled nerves. The order almost certainly came direct from the ailing “Dear Leader__ ”, who was later seen promoting the military unit that carried out the attack. But if Kim’s purpose was to impress the North’s immiserated citizenry by giving the South a bloody nose, it sits ill with Pyongyang’s official denial of all responsibility. __If it was pique__, as seems more likely, __at the South’s near-destruction last year of a North Korean warship that had violated the tense maritime boundary, ** so destructive and unlawful a riposte is disturbingly suggestive of a regime that, reckoning it has nothing to lose, could make still greater miscalculations in the future. **__ The sunshine policy was designed to ensure that North Korea never quite reached this danger point. ** Kim Jong Un needs to score some political victories to ensuring continued provocations so long as the US is in Korea ** ** Lee, 10 ** (5/27/10, Jean H., writer for the Associated Press, The Associated Press, “Analysis: Attack May Be Tied to NKorean Succession”, http://www.lexisnexis.com) Young, inexperienced and virtually unknown even at home, Kim Jong Un ** needs ** ** at least a few political victories  ** under his belt if he is to succeed his father as leader of communist North Korea. The sinking of a South Korean warship may well have provided Kim Jong Il's 20-something son and rumored heir with a victory that would bolster his support within the communist country's military, a million-man force in need of a boost after a November sea battle left one North Korean sailor dead. North Korea has vehemently denied involvement in the torpedo attack that sank the Cheonan near the Koreas' sea border in March, killing 46 sailors in one of the boldest attacks on the South since the Korean War of the 1950s. The timing might seem inexplicable: After a year of intransigence, North Korea seemed willing and ready to return to nuclear disarmament talks. But North Korea has never seen violence and negotiation as incompatible, and domestic issues a succession movement and military discontent may be more urgent than foreign policy. North Korea's leaders tightly control information and thrive on myths and lies. However, they cannot hide that the nation is in turmoil, struggling to build its shattered economy and to feed its 24 million people. The number of defectors is rising, and the encroachment of the outside world, through videos and films smuggled from China, has shown citizens what lies beyond the so-called Hermit Kingdom's borders. Kim Jong Il, now 68, is ailing. North Korea has never confirmed that he suffered a stroke in 2008, but his sudden weight loss last year and the persistent paralysis that has left him with a slight limp was visible during his rare trip to China last month. None of his three sons has had the benefit of the more than a decade of grooming Kim had by the time he took over after his father Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, and the regime says it is determined to usher in a "stronger, prosperous" era in 2012, the centenary of the patriarch's birth. Any change in leadership has the potential to be traumatic and tumultuous. A bold attack would be a quick way to muster support and favor in a country where one in 20 citizens is in the military. North Korea has attacked the South a number of times, despite the 1953 truce that ended the devastating Korean War. South Korea has never retaliated militarily, mindful of the toll another war would have on the Korean peninsula. The North's deadliest attack was a bomb smuggled aboard a Korean Air flight, which was decimated over the Andaman Sea in 1987, killing 115 people on board. A North Korean agent captured in connection with that plot said the mastermind was Kim Jong Il, then a few years shy of taking over as leader. Pyongyang has never admitted to any of the post-truce attacks and may have counted on little proof being uncovered when it sent a submarine loaded with a torpedo into the choppy Yellow Sea on March 26. But the distinctively North Korean script scrawled on the inside of a torpedo fragment found during the investigation, among other evidence, was a damning fingerprint. The Cheonan was a symbolic target: The 1,200-ton frigate was involved in a 1999 skirmish between the two Koreas that the South claims killed as many as 30 North Koreans. North Korea disputes the western sea border drawn by U.N. at the close of the Korean War, and those waters have been the site of two other bloody battles since 1999: a firefight in 2002 that killed six South Koreans, and a clash just last November that Seoul says killed a North Korean sailor. The North Korean navy was ripe for revenge. And defectors say it may have needed a boost, since even relatively well-fed military leaders in a regime built around a "military-first" policy had been going hungry in recent years. Not long after the November skirmish, the regime enacted sweeping currency reforms. North Koreans were ordered to exchange a limited amount of bills for a new currency, and to turn the rest over to the government a move that effectively wiped out any personal savings. The reforms were a disaster. There were reports of riots and unrest previously a rarity in totalitarian North Korea. If it was a move to showcase the young, Swiss-educated son's economic acumen, it was a miscalculation. The submarine attack, however, was a stealth move. North Korea's outdated arsenal cannot match South Korea's state-of-the-art systems, but the slow-moving sub somehow went undetected by Seoul's sophisticated radars. Regardless of who ordered the attack, credit for it may have been circulated among top military commanders to build support for the fledging heir apparent, already reportedly dubbed the "Brilliant Comrade." To the broader public, the North characterizes blame for the attack as a smear campaign instigated by the South. And that suits the regime's purposes just fine. There's nothing like a mortal enemy to rally the masses in North Korea, a reclusive state built on the philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance. Washington and Seoul are leading the effort to haul Pyongyang back before the U.N. Security Council for more sanctions or, at the very least, censure. Even that may play right into the Brilliant Comrade's political plans. In the past, the North has used its position as the bad boy of the nuclear world to behave even more badly. Missile tests in 2006 were followed by a nuclear test, its first. And last year, Security Council condemnation was followed just a month later by the regime's second atomic test. International criticism could provide the North with the opening to carry out a third test that would move the regime closer to its goal of perfecting an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a long-range missile. It would be another accomplishment for North Koreans to celebrate, and another achievement for the son to claim. It remains to be seen if and when Kim Jong Il will present his youngest son, a figure so enigmatic that his birthday, age and even his face remain a mystery, to the public as his heir-apparent. The annual gathering of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament came and went in April without any sign of either the elder Kim, known as the Dear Leader, or the Brilliant Comrade. A rare extraordinary session has been scheduled for June 7. If the precocious prodigal son did indeed plot the attack that plunged inter-Korean relations to their lowest point in a decade and sent world leaders into a huddle on how to avert war, he may finally have a reason to make his political debut. The international community is increasingly aware that cooperative diplomacy is the most productive way to tackle the multiple, interconnected global challenges facing humanity, not least of which is the increasing proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. __Korea and Northeast Asia are instances where risks of nuclear proliferation and actual nuclear use arguably have increased in recent years.__ This negative trend is a product of continued US nuclear threat projection against the DPRK as part of a general program of coercive diplomacy in this region, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, the breakdown in the Chinese-hosted Six Party Talks towards the end of the Bush Administration, regional concerns over China’s increasing military power, and concerns within some quarters in regional states (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) about whether US extended deterrence (“nuclear umbrella”) afforded under bilateral security treaties can be relied upon for protection. __The consequences of failing to address the proliferation threat posed by the North Korea developments, and related political and economic issues, are serious__, not only for the Northeast Asian region but __for the whole international community.__ At worst, __there is the ** possibility of nuclear attack  **__ 1, __whether by **  intention, miscalculation, or  ** **  merely accident   ** , leading to the resumption of Korean War hostilities .__ On the Korean Peninsula itself, key population centres are well within short or medium range missiles. The whole of Japan is likely to come within North Korean missile range. Pyongyang has a population of over 2 million, Seoul (close to the North Korean border) 11 million, and Tokyo over 20 million. ** __ Even a limited nuclear exchange would result in a holocaust of unprecedented proportions .__ ** But the catastrophe within the region would not be the only outcome. New research indicates that even a limited nuclear war in the region would rearrange our global climate far more quickly than global warming. Westberg draws attention to new studies modelling the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange involving approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized 15 kt bombs2 (by comparison it should be noted that the United States currently deploys warheads in the range 100 to 477 kt, that is, individual warheads equivalent in yield to a range of 6 to 32 Hiroshimas). __The studies indicate that the soot from the fires produced would lead to a decrease in global temperature by 1.25 degrees__ Celsius for a period of 6-8 years.3 In Westberg’s view: That is not global winter, but __the nuclear darkness will cause a deeper drop in temperature than at any time during the last 1000 years. __ The temperature over the continents would decrease substantially more than the global average. A decrease in rainfall over the continents would also follow… __The period of nuclear darkness will cause much greater decrease in grain production than 5% and it will continue for many years...hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger __ …To make matters even worse, __such amounts of smoke injected into the stratosphere would cause a huge reduction in the Earth’s protective ozone .__ 4 These, of course, are not the only consequences. __Reactors might also be targeted, causing further mayhem and downwind radiation effects, superimposed on a smoking, radiating ruin left by nuclear next-use__. Millions of refugees would flee the affected regions. __The direct impacts, and the follow-on impacts on the global economy via ecological and food insecurity, could ** make the present global financial crisis pale by comparison  **.__ How the great powers, especially the nuclear weapons states respond to such a crisis, and in particular, whether nuclear weapons are used in response to nuclear first-use, could make or break the global non proliferation and disarmament regimes. __There could be many unanticipated impacts on regional and global security relationships__ 5, __ with ** subsequent nuclear breakout ** and geopolitical turbulence, including possible loss-of-control over fissile material or warheads in the chaos of nuclear war, and ** aftermath chain-reaction ** ** affects involving other potential proliferant states. **__ The Korean nuclear proliferation issue is not just a regional threat but a global one that warrants priority consideration from the international community. This report examines North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities in the context of its military doctrine and national objectives. It is based on open source literature, interviews and unpublished documents made available to Crisis Group. Companion reports published simultaneously assess the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and what the policy response of the international community should be to its recent nuclear and missile testing.[1] North Korea’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles pose serious risks to security. __ Pyongyang ’s nuclear capabilities are the greatest threat, but it also possesses a ** large stockpile of chemical weapons ** and is suspected of maintaining a bio logical weapons program.__ The Six-Party T alks (China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.) had been underway since August 2003 with the objective of ending the North’s nuclear ambitions, before Pyongyang announced its withdrawal in April 2009, but __there is no direct mechanism for dealing with its chemical weapons and possible biological weapons. The North Korean leadership is very unlikely to surrender its WMD ** unless there is significant change in the ** ** political and security environments. **__ The Six-Party Talks pro­duced a “Statement of Principles” in September 2005 that included a commitment to establish a permanent peace mechanism in North East Asia, but the structure and nature of such a cooperative security arrangement is subject to interpretation, negotiation and implementation. Views among the parties differ, and no permanent peace can be established unless North Korea abandons all its WMD programs. The diplomatic tasks are daunting, and diplomacy could fail. If North Korea refuses to engage in arms control and to rid itself of WMD, the international community must be prepared to deal with a wide range of threats, including those posed by Pyongyang’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities. __Unclassified estimates of the chemical weapons__ (CW) __arsenal are imprecise, but ** the consensus ** is that the __ Korean People’s Army __( KPA ) possesses 2,500- 5,000 tons ,__ including mustard, phosgene, blood agents, sarin, tabun and V-agents (persistent nerve agents). __The stockpile__ does not appear to be increasing but __is ** already sufficient  ** to inflict massive civilian casualties on South Korea.__ The North’s CW can be delivered with long-range artillery, multiple rocket launchers, FROGs (free rocket over ground), ballistic missiles, aircraft and naval vessels. North Korean military doctrine emphasises quick offensive strikes to break through enemy defences in order to achieve national military objectives before the U.S. can intervene effectively on behalf of its South Korean ally. However, __ the North’s conventional military capabilities are declining against those of its potential foes, so the leadership is likely to rely on asymmetric capabilities for its national security objectives. This strategy poses a significant danger because it risks ** deliberate, accidental or unauthorised WMD attacks ** ** or incidents. **__ ** They would perceive CBW use as the only way to win ** __ The ensuing buildup of US forces in Korea could __ reverse any remaining North Korean advances into the South, and __ unleash offensive operations into the North. North Korea does not require long-range missiles with nuclear, chemical, or bio logical warheads to devastate Seoul or to make a land grab across the DMZ. Such weapons are needed to deter or defeat an America n counteroffensive into North Korea.__ Pyongyang has the ability to start a new Korean War, but not to survive one. North Korea has about 500 long-range artillery tubes within range of Seoul, double the levels of a the mid-1990s. Seoul is within range of the 170mm Koksan gun and two hundred 240mm multiple-rocket launchers. __The proximity of these long-range systems to the Demilitarized Zone threatens all of Seoul with devastating attacks__. Most of the rest of North Korea's artillery pieces are old and have limited range. 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 Combined Forces Command defenses for several hours .__ Immediately following 9-11, an anthrax attack originating from letters containing anthrax spores infected 22 people, killing five. After almost six years, the case has not been solved. __Intelligence analysts and academics report that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague, and botulism toxin and conducted extensive research on smallpox, typhoid and cholera .__ A world-renowned bioweapons expert has confirmed that Syria has weapons grade smallpox resistant to all current vaccines developed under the cover of legitimate veterinary research on camelpox, a very closely related virus. The researcher further reports that Syria is suspected of testing the pathogen on prison populations and possibly in the Sudan. Although there are close to 50 organisms that could be used offensively, rogue nations have concentrated their bioweapons development efforts on smallpox, anthrax, plague, botulinum, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers. With the exception of smallpox, which is exclusively a human host disease, all of the other pathogens lend themselves to animal testing as they are zoonotic, or can be transmitted to humans by other species. __ Bio logical weapons are among the most dangerous in the world today and can be engineered and disseminated to achieve a ** more deadly result than a nuclear attack. **__ Whereas the explosion of a nuclear bomb would cause massive death in a specific location, __a biological attack with smallpox could infect multitudes of people across the globe. With incubation periods of up to 17 days, human disseminators could unwittingly cause widespread exposure before diagnosable symptoms indicate an infection and appropriate quarantine procedures are in place.__ Unlike any other type of weapon, __bioweapons__ such as smallpox __can replicate and infect a chain of people over an indeterminate amount of time from a single undetectable point of release. According to__ science writer and author of The Hot Zone, Richard __Preston, "If you took a gram of smallpox __, which is highly contagious and lethal, and __for which there's no vaccine available globally now, and released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that ** the virus would go global in six weeks  **__ as people moved from city to city...... __the death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions.....**  in scale , that's like a nuclear war." **__** [  ** 1]  __More so than chemical and nuclear research, bioweapons development programs lend themselves to ** stealth development **.__ They are difficult to detect, can be conducted alongside legimate research on countermeasures, sheltered in animal research facilities within sophisticated pharmaceutical corporations, disguised as part of routine medical university studies, or be a component of dual use technology development. Detection is primarily through available intelligence information and location-specific biosensors that test for the presence of pathogens. __Biological weapons have many appealing qualities for warfare and their effects can be engineered and customized from a boutique of possibilities.__ Offensive pathogens are inexpensive compared to conventional weapons and small quantities can produce disproportionate damage. They have unlimited lethal potential as carriers and can continue to infect more people over time. ** __ Bioweapons are easy to dispense __ ** __through a variety of delivery systems from a missile, an aerosol or a food product.__ They can be placed into a state of dormancy to be activated at a later stage allowing for ease of storage. __ Pathogens are not immediately detectable or identifiable due to varying incubation periods__ and can be rapidly deployed, activated and impossible to trace. The technology to develop biological agents is widely available for legitimate purposes and large quantities can be developed within days. __ Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered bio logical weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. __ Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. __While a "nuclear winter ____ ," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Bio logical weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily __ , as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. __ There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. __ The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. __ With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. __ Potentially worse than that, __ bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. __ AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE. Ironically, the Bush administration has just changed the U.S. nuclear doctrine to allow nuclear retaliation against threats upon allies by conventional weapons. The past doctrine allowed such use only as a last resort when our nation’s survival was at stake. Will the new policy also allow easier use of US bioweapons? How slippery is this slope? Against this tendency can be posed a rational alternative policy. __ To preclude possibilities of human extinction, "patriotism" needs to be redefined to make humanity’s survival primary and absolute. __ Even if we lose our cherished freedom, our sovereignty, our government or our Constitution, where there is life, there is hope. What good is anything else if humanity is extinguished? This concept should be promoted to the center of national debate.. For example, for sake of argument, suppose the ancient Israelites developed defensive bioweapons of mass destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt. Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped everybody out? As bad as slavery is, extinction is worse. Our generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view. __ We __ truly __ hold in our hands the precious gift of all future life. __ Empires may come and go, but who are the honored custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate competitors? Strategic brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe that national sovereignty is more important than survival of the species? Now that extinction is possible, our slogan should be "Where there is life, there is hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion, no political system can be placed above human survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and vengeance of a fight must not blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of all crimes. (Barry, Director of the USAF Counterproliferation Center at Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Future Conflict Studies at the U.S. Air War College., Future War and Counterproliferation, 72-73 As a result, today, in the minds of many, the only legitimate use of U.S. nuclear weapons would be in response to a direct nuclear attack on the United States, its forces, its allies, or its vital interests.13 A U.S. nuclear response to much less severe attacks likely would be seen as severely disproportionate to the provocation, even if chemical or biological attacks were launched. However, __ if enemy __ CBW __ attacks __ were directed against important target~ in the American homeland, or if they __ caused horrific numbers of U.S. and allied casualties in the field, it might well be that U.S. public opinion then woul.d sanction a U.S. nuclear retaliatory response. In that case, an aroused American public might demand harsh nuclear retribution. __
 * The U.S. response to bolster deterrence will just increase provocations and make miscalculation more likely **
 * Armstrong, 10 – ** Professor of history and director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University.. (Charles, 5/26/10, CNN, “The Korean War never ended” [] )
 * North Korea might decide that it has nothing to lose in the status quo – making more miscalculations likely **
 * Righter, 10 ** – Worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review and Newsweek in Asia, as development and diplomatic correspondent of The Sunday Times. (Rosemary, 5/25/10, Times Online, “It’s risky, but this time North Korea must pay” [] )
 * This will go nuclear – Even a limited exchange will cause extincton **
 * Hayes & Hamel-Green, 10 ** – *Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, AND ** Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development act Victoria University (1/5/10, Executive Dean at Victoria, “The Path Not Taken, the Way Still Open: Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia,” [])
 * Perceived threat of US forces will force North Korea to resort to CBW use **
 * ICG, 09 ** (6/18/09, International Crisis Group, “North Korea’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Programs,” [], JMP)
 * Globalsecurity.org 2010 ** (“OPLAN 5027 Major Theater War – West,” April 27, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oplan-5027.htm)
 * Spreads globally **
 * Levy, 07 ** (6-8-07, Janet Ellen, The American Thinking, “The Threat of Bioweapons,” [], JMP)
 * Extinction **
 * Ochs 02 ** – MA in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers University and Naturalist at Grand Teton National Park [Richard, “BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS MUST BE ABOLISHED IMMEDIATELY,” Jun 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html]
 * And, CBW use would result in US nuclear retaliation **
 * SCHNEIDER 1997 **

__Absolute and all-encompassing, the prohibition sets all nuclear weapons apart as unique, regardless of size or power. Nuclear explosives – both large and small – are equally i llegitimate, and the latter remain so despite the existence of seemingly ‘legitimate’ conventional explosives of greater destructive power __. The distinction stems in part from widely held but rarely questioned perceptions of nuclear arms as ‘different.’ __Nuclear weapons are distinct simply because they are perceived to be distinct __. The distinction also has roots in legal reasoning and diplomacy. __Traditions__ and conventions are crucial to the conduct of social relations. Once established, they __render behaviour predictable, help to co-ordinate actor expectations, and offer a gauge of intentions. If they are not held to be inviolate, these functions become more difficult. Transgression at any level threatens to erode shared understandings and expectations – increasing uncertainty and the inevitable costs __ and requirements __of coping with it. One violation makes subsequent, perhaps more serious, actions of the same type easier to contemplate and thus more likely. Thus, any breach of the nuclear threshold threatens more than one isolated act of destruction : it sets a precedent signalling potential chaos, which may well include the prospect of more destruction to come__.
 * That destroys the nuclear taboo—this makes worldwide nuclear wars inevitable **
 * GIZEWSKI 1996 ** (Peter, Senior Associate, Peace and Conflict Studies Programme, University of Toronto, International Journal, Summer, p. 400)

Proceeding against the advice of my cardiologist, I must concede that for once, Ron Paul is actually on to something. __ The ground component of U.S. F orces K orea__, which costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year to maintain , __ is an __ equally __ unaffordable political liability on the South Korean street. We should withdraw it.__ Every Saturday night off-post brawl is a headline in the muck-raking Korean press, for which the American soldier is inevitably blamed, and for which angry mobs perpetually demand renegotiations of the Status of Force Agreement to give Korea’s not-even-remotely-fair judicial system more jurisdiction over American soldiers. __The South Korean people do not appreciate__ the security __our soldiers__ provide. The way some of them treat our soldiers ought to be a national scandal. Many off-post businesses don’t even let Americans through their front doors. ** __ The degree of anti-Americanism in South Korea is sufficient to be a significant force protection issue in the event of hostilities. __ ** South Korea does not have our back. South Korea made much of the fact that it sent 3,000 soldiers to Iraq, where they sat behind concrete barriers in a secure Kurdish area of Iraq, protected by peshmerga, making no military contribution and taking no combat casualties. Their contribution to the effort in Afghanistan has been negligible, which is more than can be said of their contribution to the Taliban (previous President Roh Moo Hyun reportedly paid them a ransom of up to $20 million in 2007 to free South Korean hostages who took it upon themselves to charter a shiny new bus to bring Christianity to Kandahar). South Korea has been an equally unsteady ally against China. __The American security blanket has fostered a state of national adolescence by the South Korean public.__ Too many of them (some polls suggest most) see America as a barrier to reunification with their ethnic kindred in the North. Maybe nothing short of a North Korean attack on the South can encourage more sober thinking by South Koreans about their own security, but I suspect a greater sense of self-reliance and even vulnerability might. During my service in Korea, as U.S. taxpayers subsidized South Korea’s defense, South Korea subsidized Kim Jong Il’s potential offense with billions of dollars in hard currency that sustained the very threat against which we were ostensibly helping to defend. South Korea never made North Korea’s disarmament a condition of this aid. Instead, that aid effectively undermined U.S. and U.N. sanctions meant to force North Korea to disarm. What does South Korea have to show for this colossal outlay now. __Because South Korea, now__ one the world’s wealthiest nations, __expects__ up to 600,000 __American soldiers to__ arrive __protect it__ from any security contingency, __successive South Korean governments actually cut their nation’s defense rather than modernizing it and building an effective independent defense.__ Consequently, South Korea still has a 1970-vintage force structure, designed around a 1970-vintage threat, equipped with 1970-vintage weapons. This is partly the legacy of ten years of leftist administrations, but it’s also the legacy of military welfare that allowed South Korea to defer upgrading its equipment, building a professional volunteer army, and organizing an effective reserve force to deal with security contingencies. Worst of all, __South Korea diverted billions of dollars that should have been spent on modernizing its military into regime-sustaining aid to Kim Jong Il__, to be used, as far as anyone knows, for nukes, missiles, artillery, and pretty much everything but infant formula. To this day, South Korea continues to resist accepting operational control over its own forces in the event of war. The U.S. Army presence in Korea is an anachronism, defending against the extinct threat of a conventional North Korean invasion. __The far greater danger is that if Kim Jong Il assesses our current president as weak, he will choose more limited or less conventional means to strike at our soldiers and their families.__ Given the reported presence of Taliban operatives in Seoul, he might even plausibly deny responsibility for an attack. Thus, while I don’t go so far as to accept the Princess Bride Doctrine (”never get involved in a land war in Asia”), __ I do not believe it is wise for us to have our forces within easy artillery range of Kim Jong Il, such that he may freely choose the time, place, and manner of our involvement__ I offer two qualifications here. First, __this is not to suggest that we unilaterally abrogate the alliance with South Korea. ** Our air and naval installations in Korea provide useful power-projection capability  ** and are far more secure __, ironically, than our many scattered and isolated Army posts. I can imagine any number of contingencies for which we’d want to have the ability to move people and supplies into South Korea in a hurry. Second, this is not to suggest that Ron Paul is not an anti-Semitic crypto-racist advocate of a thoughtlessly escapist foreign policy, and broadly speaking, an imbecile. This is just one occasion in which he inadvertently, in the fashion of a stopped clock, aligns with the correct result.
 * Withdrawing __ground troops__ solves. **
 * Stanton, 10 ** – U.S. Army Judge Advocate in Korea from 98-02 and practicing attorney in Washington, D.C. (4/12/10, Joshua, The New Ledger, “It's Time for the U.S. Army to Leave Korea,” [], JMP)

=Contention 2 is Asian Regionalism=

“First Among Equals,” [], JMP)  It’s the job of military planners to plot future contingencies, which is why the U.S. Joint Forces Command looked ahead in its newly published Joint Operating Environment 2008. __Despite obvious foreign threats, America’s destiny continues to remain largely in its own hands.__ No other country could draft such a report with such a perspective. The Europeans, constrained by the European Union and their memories of World War II, must cast a wary eye towards Russia and have little military means to influence events much beyond Africa. For all of its pretensions of power, Moscow is economically dependent on Europe and fearful of an expanding China; Russia’s military revival consists of the ability to beat up small neighbors on its border. Countries like Australia, South Korea and Japan are not without resources, but they are able to influence their regions, no more. Brazil is likely to become the dominant player in South America, but global clout is far away. India and China are emerging powers, but remain well behind Russia and especially the United States. Every other nation would have to start its operational analysis with America, which alone possesses the ability to intervene decisively in every region. The main challenge facing the United States will be becoming more like other nations. That is, __over time other states will grow economically relative to America. That will allow them to improve and expand their militaries.__ Washington will long remain first among equals, the most powerful single global player. But __eventually it will no longer be able to impose its will on any nation in any circumstance.__ That doesn’t mean the United States will be threatened. Other countries won’t be able to defeat America or force it to terms. But the outcomes of ever more international controversies will become less certain. __Other governments will be more willing in more instances to say no to Washington. Especially China. __ Much will change in the coming years, but as the JOE 2008 observes, The Sino-American relationship represents one of the great strategic question marks of the next twenty-five years. Regardless of the outcome—cooperative or coercive, or both—China will become increasingly important in the considerations and strategic perceptions of joint force commanders. What kind of a power is Beijing likely to become? Chinese policymakers emphasize that they plan a “peaceful rise,” but their ambitions loom large. Argues JOE 2008, while the People’s Republic of China doesn’t “emphasize the future strictly in military terms,” __the Chinese do calculate “that eventually their growing strength will allow them to dominate Asia and the Western Pacific.” More ominously, argues the Joint Forces Command, “ The Chinese are working hard to ensure that if there is a military confrontation with the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __sometime in the future, they will be ready.” __ Yet this assessment is far less threatening than it sounds. The PRC is not capable (nor close to being capable) of threatening vital U.S. interests—conquering American territory, threatening our liberties and constitutional system, cutting off U.S. trade with the rest of the world, dominating Eurasia and turning that rich resource base against America. After all, the United States has the world’s most sophisticated and powerful nuclear arsenal; China’s intercontinental delivery capabilities are quite limited. America has eleven carrier groups while Beijing has none. Washington is allied with most every other industrialized state and a gaggle of the PRC’s neighbors. China is surrounded by nations with which it has been at war in recent decades: Russia, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India. Indeed, today Beijing must concentrate on defending itself. In pointing to the PRC’s investment in submarines, the JOE 2008 acknowledges: “The emphasis on nuclear submarines and an increasingly global Navy in particular, underlines worries that the U.S. Navy possesses the ability to shut down China’s energy imports of oil—80% of which go through the straits of Malacca.” The Chinese government is focused on preventing American intervention against it in its own neighborhood, not on contesting U.S. dominance elsewhere in the world, let alone in North America. __Washington almost certainly will be unable to thwart Beijing, at least at acceptable cost. China needs spend only a fraction of America’s military outlays to develop a deterrent capability __ —nuclear sufficiency to forestall nuclear coercion, submarine and missile forces to sink U.S. carriers, and anti-satellite and cyber-warfare weapons to blind and disrupt American forces. Washington could ill afford to intervene in East Asia against the PRC so equipped. Such a military is well within China’s reach. Notes JOE 2008: “by conservative calculations it is easily possible that by the 2030s China could modernize its military to reach a level of approximately one quarter of current U.S. capabilities without any significant impact on its economy.” Thus, absent the unlikely economic and social collapse of China, __in not too many years Beijing will able to enforce its “no” to America .__ Washington must reconsider its response. U.S. taxpayers already spend as much as everyone else on earth on the military. It’s a needless burden, since promiscuous intervention overseas does not make Americans safer. __To maintain today’s overwhelming edge over progressively more powerful militaries in China, Russia, India and other states would require disproportionately larger military outlays in the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates. ** __ It’s a game Washington cannot win .__ ** A better alternative would be to more carefully delineate vital interests, while treating lesser issues as matters for diplomacy rather than military action. Equally important, __the American government should inform its allies that their security is in the first instance their responsibility.__ Washington should act as an offshore balancer to prevent domination of Eurasia by a hostile hegemon. But __the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __should not attempt to coercively micro-manage regional relations.__ __ Stepping back today would ** reduce pressure on Beijing to engage in a sustained arms buildup ** ** to limit U.S. intervention ** in the future. If the PRC nevertheless moved forward, its neighbors could take note and respond accordingly. Encouraging China to keep its rise peaceful is in everyone’s interest.__ Despite the many challenges facing U.S. policy, America retains an extraordinarily advantageous position in today’s global order. __ Eventually, the __ __U __ nited __S __ tates __ is likely to fall to merely first among many—the globe’s leading state, but no longer the hyper- or unipower, as America has been called. ** The sooner Washington begins preparing for this new role, the smoother will be the transition. **__
 * Asian multipolarity is inevitable, but the plan is critical to ease the transition solving our impacts **
 * Bandow, 09 ** – Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Reagan (1/12/09, Doug,

__ Although the United States says its forces __ in Korea __ are meant to deter __ another __invasion__ by the North, __ Pyongyang sees them as a genuine security threat, __ particularly __because the technological superiority__ of U.S. and South Korean aircraft __leaves North Korea vulnerable to a preemptive strike.__ On his return from Pyongyang in September 1999, __ Perry was asked why North Korea is seeking to develop long-range ballistic missiles. "I believe their primary reason ... is deterrence __," he replied. "Whom would they be deterring? __T hey would be deterring the United States. We do not think of ourselves as a threat to North Korea, but __ I truly believe that __ they consider us a threat __ to them." President Clinton called off his projected trip to North Korea in January largely because he could not pin down a missile agreement in advance. In negotiations during and after Albright's visit, Pyongyang offered to discuss the terms for freezing the development of its long-range Taepodong missile, which would be able to reach the United States if some major technical problems were resolved.' But it balked at the U.S. demand that it end the production and deployment of its existing medium-range Nodong missile, which already can reach Japan and U.S. bases there. North Korea is seriously concerned that Japan might develop nuclear weapons and wants to retain the Nodong both to maximize its leverage in dealing with Tokyo and to deter any future U.S. military involvement in Korea. In contrast to the Nodong, the Taepodong is an expendable bargaining chip, since making it operational would require money and foreign help that Pyongyang does not have. North Korea has offered to discuss the pullback of its forward-- deployed conventional forces at the 38th parallel and the complete dismantling of its missile and nuclear capabilities-but only if the United States agrees to a peace treaty ending the Korean War, followed by wide-- ranging arms control negotiations in which the redeployment of U. S. and South Korean forces and possible U.S. withdrawals would also be considered. __If the United States were willing to reconsider__ the nature and role of __its forces in Korea, the North might __ well __ accept a continuing __ U.S. __ ground presence for a transitional period __ of a decade or more. So far, however, the United States has refused to entertain such proposals for change. Pentagon officials contend that U.S. forces are needed in Korea more than ever, not only to counter the threat of North Korean aggression but also to help stabilize Northeast Asia. But __the North is no longer likely to attempt a forcible reunification__, as it did in 1950. __Its former allies__ Russia and China __oppose such an adventure and are now playing the role of honest brokers__ between the North and the South. Moreover, the North's __economic difficulties have__ severely __eroded its military__ readiness and its ability to sustain a protracted war. Pyongyang's forward deployments of tanks and artillery are intended to help deter a U.S. preemptive strike, not to prepare for another invasion. As for the rationale that U.S. forces help "stabilize" Northeast Asia, the Pentagon's __plans to use Korea as a base for military operations elsewhere in Asia could well aggravate regional tensions. Beijing has __ already __ warned __ that __ it would oppose __ the presence of U.S. __ forces in Korea __ after reunification, __ expressing __ particular __ concern __ that __ they might be used to conduct operations in Taiwan. __
 * China and Korea want us out—gradual withdrawal allows us to maintain deterrence and set up a structure for deterrence after we leave. **
 * Harrison 2001 ** –professor of Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, at the George Washington University, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, lectures at the National Defense University, the National War College, and the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (Selig, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, Issue 2, “Time to leave Korea?”, ProQuest, WEA)

Charles A. Kupchan, Political Science Quarterly, 00323195, Summer 2003 , Vol. 118, Issue 2 “The Rise of Europe, America's Changing Internationalism, and the End of U.S. Primacy” Database: Academic Search Premier As this new century progresses, unipolarity will give way to a world of multiple centers of power. As this transition proceeds, American grand strategy should focus on making both Europe and East Asia less reliant on U.S. power, while at the same time working with major states in both regions to promote collective management of the global system. The ultimate vision that should guide U.S. grand strategy is the construction of a concert-like directorate of the major powers in North America, Europe, and East Asia. These major powers would together manage developments and regulate  relations both within and among their respective regions. They would also coordinate efforts in the battle against terrorism, a struggle that will require patience and steady cooperation among many different nations. Regional centers of power also have the potential to facilitate the gradual incorporation of developing nations into global flows of trade, information, and values. Strong and vibrant re gional centers, for reasons of both proximity and culture,  often have the strongest incentives to promote  prosperity and stability in their immediate peripheries. North America might, therefore, focus on Latin America; Europe on Russia, the Middle East, and Africa; and East Asia on South Asia and Southeast Asia. Mustering the political will and the foresight to pursue this vision will be a formidable task. The United States will need to begin ceding influence and autonomy to regions that have grown all too comfortable with American primacy. Neither American leaders, long accustomed to calling the shots, nor leaders in Europe and East Asia, long accustomed to passing the buck, will find the transition an easy one. But it is far wiser and safer to get ahead of the curve and shape structural change by design than to find unipolarity giving way to a chaotic multipolarity by default. It will take a decade, if not two, for a new international system to evolve. But the decisions   taken  <span style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt;">by the U  nited <span style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt;">S  tates early in the twenty-first century <span style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt;">will play a critical role in determining whether multipolarity reemerges peacefully or brings with it  the competitive jockeying that has so frequently been the precursor to <span style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border-width: initial; font-size: 10pt;"> great power war  in the past .[*]
 * US policies can make withdrawal smooth. **

** Bandow, 09 ** – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to Reagan (2/24/09, Doug, “Balancing Beijing,” EBSCO, JMP) So Washington should exhibit humility about its ability to force change. As Secretary Clinton observed, “We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere” with cooperation on other issues. Ultimately a positive relationship with Beijing is more likely to lead to a more liberal China. The result is not foreordained, but as always engagement offers the better bet. The United States shouldn’t hesitate to promote its ideals, but it must recognize its limits in enforcing them. Washington also should look on benignly as the PRC expands its commercial and diplomatic ties around the world. Even a sober military analyst like Tom Ricks of the Washington Post recently warned: “I am not sure what China is up to in Africa. But I have the nagging thought that we will figure it out in 15 years and be sorry.” Yet the United States and Soviet Union spent most of the cold war sparring for influence in the Third World to little meaningful effect. Money was spent and lives were lost, but in the end it didn’t much matter who was numero uno in Vientiane, Kinshasa, Luanda or Managua. It matters even less today. As my Cato colleague Ben Friedman puts it, “There is little that China can do in Africa to make it stronger or to damage U.S. interests.” If Beijing wishes to invest heavily in places with little geopolitical heft, why should the United States object? Even more important, Washington needs to back away from any kind of arms race with the PRC. The latest Pentagon Joint Operating Environment 2008 ominously declared that while Beijing doesn’t “emphasize the future strictly in military terms,” the Chinese do calculate “that eventually their growing strength will allow them to dominate Asia and the Western Pacific.” The annual Pentagon assessment of PRC military spending appears to show Beijing’s conscious effort to build a force capable of deterring American intervention against China in East Asia. As a result, Aaron Friedberg, until recently Vice President Cheney’s chief foreign-policy adviser, worries that the balance of power “is beginning to shift in way that, under the wrong set of circumstances, could ** increase the risk of miscalculation and conflict ** .” Yet the question is, what balance of power? Beijing poses no threat to America’s homeland or even Pacific possessions and will not do so for decades, if ever. The United States possesses a far stronger military to start—eleven carrier groups to none, for instance—spends five or more times as much as the PRC on defense (excluding the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq) and is allied with most important industrial states in Asia and Europe. There is no Chinese threat or potential threat to America. At issue is relative influence in East Asia and the security of Washington’s friends in that region. Yet ** the PRC so far has been assertive rather than aggressive and those nations **, particularly Japan and South Korea, could do much more individually and collectively for regional security. Washington should not hesitate to sell arms to friendly states, including Taiwan, despite Chinese protests, but should leave them with responsibility for their own defense. Of course, a policy of continued restraint by Beijing will make it far easier for the United States to back away. In any case, there is little that Washington can do, at least at acceptable cost, to maintain U.S. dominance along China’s borders , as the PRC —whose economy already ranks number two or three, depending on the measure, in the world—continues to grow. Washington would have to devote an ever larger amount of resources to the military, in the midst of economic crisis, to ensure its ability to overcome far more limited Chinese capabilities. Even then, Beijing is unlikely to forever accept U.S. hegemony. ** Confrontation if not conflict would be likely. ** The better option would be to** temper America’s geopolitical pretensions ** and accept a more influential PRC in its own region. China will grow in power, irrespective of Washington’s wishes. America’s chief objective should be to ensure that this rise is peaceful, as Beijing has promised. U.S.-China diplomatic relations passed the thirty-year mark last fall. The relationship has survived great challenges and is likely to face even greater ones in the future. But despite inevitable differences between the two nations, much depends upon strengthening their ties. The twenty-first century will turn out far differently—and positively—if America and the PRC prove willing to accommodate each other’s economic and geopolitical ambitions. ** Only a __clear sign__ of U.S. withdrawal can motivate __sustainable__ regional security cooperation  ** ** Carpenter and Bandow 4  ** -** * ** Vice President of Defense and Foreign Studies at the Cato Institute, AND ** Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute **  (  ** Ted Galen Carpenter, 12/2004, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations With North and South Korea, pg 160-161)DR The security treaties with the United States and the U.S. troop presence allow the diversion of financial resources to domestic priorities. And relying on the U nited S tates for security ** avoids painful debates about what kind of policy those countries need to pursue. ** The U.S. security blanket is entirely too comfortable for Washington’s clients. ** Without a decisive move by the United States ** to take away that security blanket by a certain date, changes in the security posture of South Korea and Japan will be very slow to occur. Second, the United States should encourage the various nations of East Asia to take greater responsibility for the security and stability of their region. In ** limited and at times hesitant ways ** that process is taking place even without U.S. encouragement. ASEAN has begun to address security issues, most notably taking an interest in the disorders in Indonesia that threatened to spiral out of control in the late 1990s and that continue to pose a problem. Australia assumed a leadership role in helping to resolve the East Timor crisis. It was revealing that Canberra became more proactive after the United States declined to send peacekeeping troops or otherwise become deeply involved in that situation. 37 According to the conventional wisdom that U.S. leadership is imperative lest allies and client states despair and fail to deal with regional security problems, Australia’s actions suggest just the opposite. ** When countries in a region facing a security problem cannot offload that problem onto the U nited S tates, they take action to contain a crisis and defend their own interests. ** More recently, Australia has developed a more defined and robust regional strategy. In a June 2003 speech, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stated that Australia would not necessarily turn to the United Nations before acting in crises that could affect its security. Instead, Canberra was prepared to join— and sometimes even lead— coalitions of the willing to address urgent regional challenges. Downer spoke as Australia prepared to send 2,000 police officers and supporting military personnel to the Solomon Islands, which had experienced such an epidemic of violence and corruption that it verged on being a failed state. Earlier, Prime Minister John Howard had told Australian lawmakers that having failed states in its neighborhood threatened Australia’s interests, because such states could become havens for criminals and political extremists. 38 Perhaps most revealing, the Australian government plans to double its defense spending over the next three years with the intent of becoming a much more serious military player. 39 Third, Washington should indicate to Tokyo that it no longer objects to Japan’s assuming a more active political and military posture in East Asia. Quite the contrary, U.S. officials ought to adopt the position that, as the principal indigenous great power, Japan will be expected to help stabilize East Asia, contribute to the resolution of disputes, and contain disruptive or expansionist threats that might emerge. Washington also should use its diplomatic influence to encourage political and security cooperation between Japan and its neighbors, but U.S. policymakers must not let East Asian apprehension about a more assertive Japan dictate American policy and keep the United States in its role as regional policeman. It is reasonable to explore with Tokyo avenues of cooperation in those areas where there is a sufficient convergence of interests. That cooperation should not, however, take the form of a new alliance. Proposals to reform and strengthen the alliance are unwise. 40 They will perpetuate Japan’s unhealthy dependence on the United States even as they arouse China’s suspicions of a U.S.–Japanese attempt to contain the People’s Republic. An ongoing security dialogue and occasional joint military exercises would be more appropriate than a formal alliance for East Asia’s security needs in the twenty-first century. Elaborate, formal treaty commitments are a bad idea in general. They are excessively rigid and can lock the United States into commitments that may make sense under one set of conditions but become ill-advised or even counterproductive when conditions change. Beyond that general objection, a U.S.–Japanese alliance would be likely to create special problems in the future. Such an alliance would provide tangible evidence to those in the People’s Republic who contend that Washington is intent on adopting a containment policy directed against China. 41 The United States should retain the ability to work with Japan and other powers if Beijing’s ambitions threaten to lead to Chinese dominance of the region, but Washington must be wary of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. An informal security relationship with Japan would preserve the flexibility to block China’s hegemony, if that danger emerges, without needlessly antagonizing Beijing. ** America still can have a potent power projection capability with a reduced military presence based in Guam and other U.S. territories in the central and west-central Pacific. **
 * Withdrawal motivates China develop its soft power and work with other countries in the region. **

Still, does an American presence dampen geopolitical rivalries and arms races? __Washington’s role as de facto security guarantor might discourage allied states from doing more for their own defense, but that is a dubious benefit since the belief that the __ __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __ will intervene ** encourages countries to be more belligerent in any disputes with other nations. ** __ Moreover, __ America’s presence virtually forces Beijing to upgrade its military __, lest it remain permanently vulnerable to foreign coercion. __That is the worst dynamic possible—weakening friendly nations and keeping them permanently dependent on Washington, while convincing China that only a sustained military buildup will enable it to deter U.S. intervention. America’s interests would be best served by the development of a regional balance of power, in which friendly nations act to protect their own interests and constrain the PRC.__ In 1950 the ROK would have been swallowed had the United States not intervened. __In the early succeeding years South Korea could not have defended itself. But those days are long over.__ __So it is with other countries in the region. Japan is the second-ranking economic power on earth. Australia has taken an active military role in Southeast Asia and the south Pacific __. Vietnam has developed a friendly relationship with the United States. India’s political influence and military forces now reach into Southeast Asia. All of this makes for a more-complicated world, but also almost certainly a safer one for America. Yet Washington is locked in the past. __We are told that U.S. troops must remain in South Korea to defend that nation from ever-diminishing threats, ** threats which the ROK is capable of handling **. As the world changes, so should American security commitments and military deployments. Much of Washington’s global security structure is outdated. Nowhere is that more obvious than on the Korean peninsula__. The only way to create a “twenty-first century strategic alliance” with the South is to end today’s outmoded twentieth-century alliance.
 * Withdrawal encourages a regional balance of power—including countries like Japan, China, Australia, Vietnam, India, South Korea, and North Korea. **
 * Bandow, 08 ** – Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and former special assistant to Reagan (6/9/2008, Doug, “Ending the U.S.-Korea Alliance,” [], JMP)

=Scenario 1: China War=

At the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States established bilateral military alliances in the Asia-Pacific intended to contain Soviet and Chinese communist expansion in the region. __ US security strategy now focuses largely on combating terrorism and denying weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue states. It is a strategy that cannot be implemented with geographic mutual defense treaties formed to address conventional military threats.__ Furthermore, the United States has demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq that it is prepared to pursue its global security interests unilaterally, even at the risk of its political relations with traditional alliance partners. __ What happened over Iraq between the __ __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __ and its European allies could equally happen between the __ __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __ and its Asian allies over__ Taiwan or __North Korea with serious consequences for the interests of countries in that region. East Asian powers need to develop a collective security strategy for the region that ** does not rely ** on the __ __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">S __ tates’ __participation.__ Prudence suggests that East Asian countries need to take the opportunity offered by the recently inaugurated East Asian Summit (EAS) to begin the process of developing an East Asian community as the first step toward the realization of an East Asian Union. This will occur only if led by a strong, proactive Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China is now the world’s second-largest economy, almost two-thirds as large as the United States in terms of domestic purchasing power. In 2005 China overtook Japan to become the world’s third-largest exporter of goods and services. In 2004 it was the third-largest trading partner with ASEAN; the second largest with Japan, Australia, and India; and the largest with the Republic of Korea. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has estimated that in 2004, in purchasing power parity dollar terms, China’s military expenditure was US$161.1 billion, the second highest in the world. The Pentagon has estimated that in 2005 China’s military expenditure was two to three times larger than its official figure of US$29.9 billion. China’s growing economic and military strength along with the United States’ preoccupation with its new security agenda has made some East Asian countries increasingly apprehensive. __Particularly since September 11, bilateral military alliances have become less relevant to US security interests, and the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __will likely reduce its military presence in the East Asian region.__ Parts of Asia believe that Chinese hegemonic aspirations for East Asia could emerge if the United States were to disengage from the region. Fear of China and the possibility that it harbors hegemonic aspirations were among the factors that led to the creation of ASEAN in 1967 and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993. Engaging China in an East Asian union in the future would ensure it will pay a high price in loss of trade and investment if it acts against the interests of the union’s other members. Prospects for an East Asian Community In December 2005 ASEAN hosted an inaugural East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The summit involved the 10 ASEAN countries; the ASEAN+3 countries of China, Japan, and South Korea; as well as Australia, New Zealand, and India. The summit declaration of December 14, 2005, described the meeting as a forum for “dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues of common interest and concern with the aim of promoting peace, stability and economic prosperity in East Asia.” The declaration also noted that the summit could “play a significant role in community building in this region.” ASEAN would work “in partnership with the other participants of the East Asian Summit,” but ASEAN was to retain leadership, preventing control of East Asian community building by either the ASEAN+3 countries, which China could dominate, or the 16 EAS countries, which some felt could steer the EAS toward what would be an unwelcome “Western” agenda. It remains to be seen whether an East Asian community can emerge under ASEAN leadership. ASEAN is an association: it is not a strong regional institution with common interests and objectives. It reflects the diversity of its membership, which has traditionally preferred an unstructured organization, a consensus approach to decision making, and avoidance of controversial issues or intervention in the affairs of its members. The ASEAN Way under Challenge ASEAN’s ways, however, may be changing. Since the late 1990s ASEAN’s non-intervention principle has come under challenge. In 1997 ASEAN was faced with an Asian economic crisis triggered by currency speculators and in 1997 to 1998 with a regional pollution haze problem caused by illegal land-clearance fires in Indonesia. ASEAN’s ineffectiveness in these crises brought internal scrutiny to bear on ASEAN’s policy of non-intervention in domestic affairs. As a result, since 1999 ASEAN foreign ministers have discussed these and other transnational problems—illegal migration, terrorism, and the drug trade—that call for collective responses. They have also considered allowing ASEAN to oversee electoral and governance processes within member states. In 1999 a number of ASEAN countries defied the long-standing ASEAN position that East Timor was an internal matter for Indonesia and sent peace-keeping forces to the island to help quell the violence instigated there by anti-independence militia backed by Indonesian armed forces. In 2005 ASEAN placed public pressure on the government of Myanmar to allow an ASEAN delegation to visit Myanmar and assess what progress had been made in human rights and democratization. With the aid of the United States and European Union, ASEAN also persuaded Myanmar to relinquish its role as ASEAN chair. ASEAN’s actions in the 1990s suggest increased sensitivity to the negative effects of individual member nations on the organization’s international standing as well as the beginning of openness toward intervention in the domestic affairs of its members. Toward Realization At its December 2005 summit, ASEAN agreed to institute an ASEAN Charter by 2020 to provide what Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi has called a “mini-constitution,” a document that will establish an institutional framework for ASEAN as well as a legal identity recognized by the United Nations. The older members—Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—want ASEAN to become something more than an association. Institutionally strong and mostly democratic, they might more readily welcome a rules-governed organization similar to the European Union. Others with institutionally weak, authoritarian governments, such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, are wary of placing their domestic policies under greater international scrutiny and favor the status quo. If the former nations prevail it will augur well for the realization of an East Asian community with the potential to evolve into an East Asian Union. __ An East Asian community __ composed of the 16 EAS participants would represent more than 60 percent of the world’s population and possess a combined GDP greater than the European Union. It __ could provide significantly increased trade benefits to its members, help dampen Sino-Japanese rivalry, ease the present tensions in the region over Japan’s Pacific War, encourage more cooperative attitudes toward the issue of natural resource exploitation in East Asia, promote engagement over containment, and ** prevent domination of the region by any major power **. __ The determining factor will be ASEAN’s ability to provide the leadership necessary to create a strong, independent East Asian Union.
 * U.S. alliance relationships are unsustainable – Asian powers should develop a regional security strategy that __does not__ rely on the U.S. – solves WMD terrorism, tame China, prevents Sino-Japan conflict, Japan imperialism, solve resource conflicts and stop major power domination **
 * Francis, 06 ** – former Australian Ambassador to Croatia and fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University from 05-06 (Fall 2006, Neil, Harvard International Review, “For an East Asian Union: Rethinking Asia's Cold War Alliances,” [], JMP)

NO NORMAL DIPLOMACY The U.S. finds itself in an unenviable situation: one in which it has no military options, yet normal diplomacy is futile. Diplomacy of the sort being pressed upon the U.S. by South Korea amounts to paying North Koreans for acting temporarily less scary until the next occasion for extortion. I have argued that the only way to solve the problem is to transcend it: to think not like a diplomat, who is paid to manage, but like a statesman, who is paid to transform basic circumstances. I proposed last October that the major powers — the U.S., Japan, Russia, and China — unite to condition aid to North Korea in such a way as ultimately to undermine North Korean sovereignty. This proposal stood at least a chance of getting at the real source of the problem, which is the nature of the North Korean regime; and it could provide benefits to all the major powers that they could not otherwise achieve for themselves. I also acknowledged its drawbacks: that North Korea would not easily allow itself to be managed into oblivion and might lash out (which might happen anyway); and that the degree of cooperation we required, especially from China, might not be forthcoming. China has in fact proved recalcitrant, but not irremediably so. Indeed, __ the Chinese __ seem to appreciate the gravity of the present situation, and __ may still be prepared to cooperate with the U.S. if we persist in our efforts.__ The reason is that the Chinese may ultimately put their own national interest above habit. The key Chinese interest is that Korea not be nuclearized, because that presupposes a nuclear Japan. China also prefers, however, for perfectly understandable Realpolitik reasons, that Korea not be unified. China has been a free rider on U.S. policy and power for years to achieve both of these interests, and has never been forced to choose between the two. Now that choice is looming: China's reliance on U.S. policy to prevent the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula is proving ill-founded. Meanwhile, as a result of North Korean proliferation, the U.S. has an interest in bringing about a unified non-nuclear Korea in which some redefined U.S. military presence underwrites the peninsula's non-nuclear status. If forced to choose between a) a nuclear North Korea and b) a unified Korea under Seoul's aegis whose non-nuclear status is underwritten by the U.S., China would be slightly crazy not to choose the latter. But it will not so choose until the choice becomes inevitable. A secondary Chinese interest, often cited, is Beijing's fear of chaos on its border. But unless one assumes that North Korea can be reformed successfully, a proposition for which there is no evidence, waiting will only make things worse from the Chinese perspective. The more time the North Korean regime has both to fail and to build nuclear weapons, the more likely its eventual collapse will be maximally calamitous. China's policy today amounts to propping up an influence-resistant and disaster-prone regime — seething with refugees ready to pour across the Chinese border by the hundreds of thousands. Concert with the U.S., Japan, and Russia, on the other hand, would give China far more influence over what may happen in North Korea, and help to manage it. If the Chinese leadership sees its choices for what they really are, why would it choose a course of minimal influence and maximum ultimate peril? SENDING OUT FOR CHINESE And so we come to thoughts the administration may or may not have allowed itself to think, about how the U.S. can achieve the cooperation it needs to solve the North Korean problem. In other words, how can we bring other powers, particularly China, to the point of serious decisions that will lead them to join with the United States? Charles Krauthammer recently suggested using the "Japan card" for this purpose — in other words, telling the Chinese that their failure to help us isolate North Korea would make the U.S. receptive to Japanese nuclear-weapons development. The U.S. need not say a word to Beijing about this, however; the Chinese understand the stakes better than we do. Besides, we have a far more dramatic option — the explanation of which requires a brief preface. __It made sense for the U.S. to risk war on the Korean peninsula between__ 19 __53 and the end of the Cold War__, for Korea was bound up in a larger struggle. We could not opt out of any major theater in that struggle without the risk of losing all. But __it no longer makes sense to run such risks.__ What larger stakes since 1991 have justified the costs and dangers of keeping 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, the overburdening of the U.S.-South Korean relationship, and the tensions caused to the U.S.-Japanese alliance? None that is readily apparent in the cold light of U.S. interests. __The division of Korea puts U.S. interests at risk more than it does those of any other major regional power__ (we have troops there; we — not China or Russia or Japan — face directly a nuclearizing adversary), and for the sake of the lowest stakes. __Think about what the U.S. might suffer if war broke out in Korea __, and about what we would gain from its not breaking out. We would suffer thousands of dead GIs, the probable ascription of responsibility for the razing of Seoul (and maybe Tokyo), and __maybe ** accidental conflict with China. ** What do we gain from the status quo? ** Perpetual diplomatic heartburn with Japan  ** and others__, and the privilege of fruitlessly negotiating with Pyongyang. In short, the end of the Cold War dramatically changed the balance of risks and rewards in U.S. Korea policy, and should have led us to adjust our stance. But U.S. policymakers conducted business as usual, only responding to North Korean threats and never themselves taking the lead to solve the underlying problem. __We should have managed the transition to South Korea's responsibility for its own security__, while at the same time joining with other regional powers to limit North Korea's trouble-making potential. Had we started early enough, before North Korea had nukes, we would have had far more robust military options to enforce a muscular diplomacy than we do today. Better late than never, however; we still need to rethink the Korea problem down to its roots. When we do, we immediately see our other option: ** __ Announce our intention to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Korea. Lots of South Koreans would be delighted. More important, such an announcement would force China and the other parties to the problem to face reality. __ ** __South Koreans, having to defend themselves, will either see the illusions of their own policy or suffer the consequences of maintaining it.__ But it's their country, and, frankly, their potential misfortune no longer matters to us as much as it did during the Cold War. __If North Korea becomes a six-or-more-weapon nuclear power, we will be far away, ** with deterrence reasonably intact, ** and with a decent if imperfect ability to prevent North Korea from exporting fissile materials and missiles.__ China, however, cannot relocate. __If we profess an intention to leave, Beijing will then have to choose between a nuclear North Korea and Japan__ (and maybe South Korea, too) __on its doorstep, or joining with the U.S. and others to manage the containment, and ultimately the withering away, of the North Korean state. ** Until it is faced with such a choice, Beijing will temporize and try to fob off the problem on Washington, hoping as before to free-ride on us ** for an outcome that benefits China more than it benefits the U.S. That's reality, and the Chinese need to face it. We can help them do so.__ Possible Futures of a Confrontation between China, Taiwan and the United States of America ”, []]
 * Multilateralism solves US-China War **
 * Garfinkle, 03 ** – taught American foreign policy and Middle East politics at the University of Pennsylvania and is editor of The National Interest (1/27/03, Adam, National Review, “Checking Kim,” [], JMP)
 * Conflict with China will escalate to global nuclear war **
 * Hunkovic, 09 **– American Military University [Lee J, 2009, “The Chinese-Taiwanese Conflict

__ A war between China, Taiwan and the U nited S tates has the potential ** to escalate into a nuclear ** ** conflict and a third world war **__, therefore, __ many countries __ other than the primary actors __ could be affected by such a conflict, including Japan, both Koreas, Russia, Australia, India and Great __ __Britain__ __, if they were drawn into the war, as well as all other countries in the world that participate in the global economy, in which the U__nited __S__tates __and China are the__ two __most dominant__ members. __If China were__ able __to__ successfully __annex Taiwan__, __the possibility exists that they could then plan to attack Japan and begin a policy of aggressive expansionism__ in East and Southeast Asia, as well as the Pacific and even into India, __which could in__ __turn create an international standoff and deployment of military forces to contain the threat__. In any case, __if China and the U__ nited __S__ tates engage __in a full-scale conflict, there are few countries in the world that will not be__ economically and/or militarily __affected__ by it. However, China, Taiwan and United States are the primary actors in this scenario, whose actions will determine its eventual outcome, therefore, other countries will not be considered in this study.

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Thus the U.S. reliance on Okinawa. Lieutenant General Keith Stalder, the Marine Corps Pacific commander, said the island deployment is "the perfect model" for the alliance's objectives of "deterring, defending and defeating potential adversaries." For years __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">the most obvious target of the American forces was North Korea __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">, with the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) expected to reinforce the Republic of Korea in the event of war. __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Yet the ROK is both financially and manpower rich __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">. More recently some Americans have talked about deploying the MEF to seize Pyongyang's nuclear weapons in the event of a North Korean collapse. __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Alas, so far the North has proved to be surprisingly resilient __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">, so the Marines might wait a long time to undertake this mission. __<span style="background: yellow; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-highlight: yellow;">Checking China is next on the potential Okinawa mission list. However, no one expects the United States to launch a ground invasion of the People's Republic of China __<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> irrespective of the future course of events. Thus, __<span style="background: yellow; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-highlight: yellow;">the MEF wouldn't be very useful in any conflict __<span style="background: yellow; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-highlight: yellow;">. __<span style="background: yellow; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-highlight: yellow;">In any case, a stronger Japanese military ____<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> — which already possesses potent capabilities — would be a far better mechanism for encouraging responsible Chinese development. __
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Only South Korean withdrawal solves—US troops in Japan are not perceived, and can’t launch attacks. **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Bandow, 2010, senior fellow at the Cato Institute **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> [Doug, May 12, “Japan Can Defend Itself,” available at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11804, accessed on 7/14/2010]

=Scenario 2: Territorial disputes=

__ A stronger ** regional security organization ** in East Asia could play a role in quelling terrorism __ by violent extremists. Since terrorism is a transnational problem, __the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __relies on international cooperation to counter it. Without close multilateral cooperation, there are simply too many nooks and crannies for violent extremists to exploit .__ 101 Currently, most of that cooperation is bilateral or between the United States and its traditional allies. While the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN + 3, for example, have addressed the issue of terrorism, neither has conducted joint counter-terrorism exercises as has the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Neither organization as a group, moreover, has joined U.S. initiatives aimed at North Korean nuclear weapons (e.g., the Proliferation Security Initiative). Meanwhile, __tensions continue across the Taiwan Strait, and disputes over territory and drilling rights have flared up between China and Japan and between Japan and South Korea .__ (For the United States, __ there is a growing possibility of nationalist territorial conflicts between two or more U.S. allies.__ 102) The North Korean nuclear issue remains unresolved; North Korea has conducted tests of ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapon; and the oppressive military rule in Burma/Myanmar continues. __Added to these concerns are__ several regional issues: __ diseases __ (such as avian flu, SARS, and AIDS), __ environmental degradation, disaster mitigation and prevention, high seas piracy, and weapons prolif eration__. Memories of the 1997-99 Asian financial crisis still haunt policy makers in Asian countries. These are some of the major U.S. interests and issues as the United States proceeds with its policy toward a regional architecture in East Asia. Since this policy is aimed at the long-term structure of East Asian nations, it can be separated, somewhat, from current pressing problems. A metric by which any architecture can be evaluated, however, is how well it contributes to a resolution of problems as they now exist or will exist in the future. <span style="background: yellow; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow;"> __<span style="background: yellow; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow;">MAKING THESE flash-points all the more volatile has been a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of China's weapons ____ acquisitions. __ An Asian arms race of sorts was already gathering steam in the post-cold-war era, driven by national rivalries and the understandable desire of newly rich nation-states to upgrade their capacities; but the Chinese build-up has intensified it. In part a payoff to the military for its role at Tiananmen Square in 1989, China's current build-up is part and parcel of the regime's major shift since that time away from domestic liberalization and international openness toward repression and irredentism. Today China buys weapons from European states and Israel, but most importantly from Russia. The latest multibillion-dollar deal includes two Sovremenny-class destroyers equipped with the much-feared SS-N-22 cruise missile, capable of defeating the Aegis anti-missile defenses of the U.S. Navy and thus sinking American aircraft carriers. This is in addition to the Su-27 fighter aircraft, quiet Kilo-class submarines, and other force-projection and deterrent technologies. In turn, the Asian states are buying or developing their own advanced aircraft, missiles, and submarines--and considering nuclear options. __ The sort of unintended escalation which started two world wars could arise from any of the conflicts around China's periphery. It nearly did so __ in March 1996, when China, in a blatant act of intimidation, fired ballistic missiles __<span style="background: yellow; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow;">in the Taiwan Straits. It could arise from a Chinese-Vietnamese confrontation __, particularly if the Vietnamese should score some unexpected military successes against the Chinese, as they did in 1979, and if the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which they are now a member, should tip in the direction of Hanoi. __<span style="background: yellow; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow;">It could flare up from the smoldering insurgencies among Tibetans __, Muslims, or Mongolians living inside China. __ Chains of alliance or interest, perhaps not clearly understood until the moment of crisis itself**, could easily draw in neighboring states-- ** Russia, or India, or Japan--or the  __ __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: yellow; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-highlight: yellow; padding: 0in;">S __ tates.
 * Multilateralism key to solve terrorism, territorial disputes, disease, environmental degradation, and maritime security **
 * Nanto, 08 ** – Specialist in Industry and Trade Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division for Congressional Research Services (1/4, “East Asian Regional Architecture: New Economic and Security Arrangements and U.S. Policy,” www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33653.pdf)
 * Territorial disputes draw in great powers **
 * Waldron, 97 ** – professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard (March 1997, Arthur, Commentary, “How Not to Deal with China,” EBSCO)

=Scenario 3 - Overstretch=

<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Korea is the lynchpin of US overstretch – withdrawal provides needed resources—the war on terror means there’s overstretch now, and that solves Korean anti-americanism. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">CUMMINGS 2004 <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(Colonel John Cummings, US Army War College, “Should the U.S. Continue to Maintain Forces in South Korea?” May 3, <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">[] ) Calum <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt;">Neither Richard Halloran’s diplomatic options nor the blatantly militant pre-emption options should be entertained. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> __ There is a __ more __viable option: a unilateral withdraw of United States ground forces from South Korea. The current administration’s commitment to the global war on terrorism, with subsequent military deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, has caused considerable strain on the United States Military’s finite resources.__ __Service components, scrambling to meet the increased operational tempo of the current environment, have yet to realize the implications on retention and sustaining a quality force. Withdrawal of forces from South Korea would enable the United States to realize an infrastructure cost savings while continuing to meet the guidance in the National Security __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt;">Strategy and regional policy objectives that are inherent in forward basing of troops. It will also make available more forces for the administration’s global war on terrorism. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> __ Additionally, the removal of American forces from South Korea would alleviate political unrest associated with the increasing anti-American sentiment among South Koreans .__ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt;">Moving the headquarters from Seoul to the south will do little to stem the tide of growing anti-American sentiment. The source of anti-American feelings resides with the large amount of ground forces that operate and train on Korean soil, not the location of the headquarters. __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Since South Korea has a large standing ground force, the presence of United States ground forces in South Korea is militarily inconsequential __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt;">The real threat from North Korea is their policy to develop nuclear weapons. U.S. ground forces are unnecessary to deter or defend against nuclear weapons. Additionally, the presence of US forces on South Korean soil is a major source of anti-American sentiment among the Korean population. This hostility cause political unrest on the peninsula. United States’ diplomatic efforts to end the North Korean nuclear weapon crisis are at odds with the South Korean diplomatic policy. The divergent views of the North Korean threat and diplomatic policies to alleviate it are causing friction between South Korea and the United States <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. __To maintain our influence in South Korea, the U.S. needs to narrow the gap between our divergent perceptions.__ __ As a global power with global interests, the United States must be able to deal with challenges in multiple regions of the world simultaneously. If the Army were ordered to send significant forces to another crisis today, its only option would be to deploy units at readiness levels far below what operational plans would require __. As stated rather blandly in one Defense Department presentation, __ the Army "continues to accept risk" in its ability to respond to crises __ on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere. __ The absence of a credible, sizable strategic reserve increases the risk that potential adversaries will be tempted to challenge the United States. Although the United States can still deploy air, naval, and other more specialized assets to deter or respond to aggression, the visible overextension of our ground forces could weaken our ability to deter aggression __. If the policy remains the same ( __keeping troops in South Korea__ ) __there are associated economical and financial risks. The rising cost in support of the Global War on Terror is placing a burden on the U.S. economy .__ According to the CRS Report for Congress, the estimated cost of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (assuming gradual withdrawal) between FY2006 and FY2010 could total approximately $570 billion by the end of 2010.22 There are two options to help ease the financial cost. One option would be to “do nothing” and continue to support the GWOT without any fiscal worries. Another option would be to rethink other strategies that would help ease the current burden. Simply put, __it is not feasible to sustain a permanent U.S. force in South Korea while supporting the current war on terror. Additionally, keeping troops in the region could result in personnel backlash. There are a number of Asians which view the presence of troops as “foreigners with weapons on home turf”. __ In fact, there is evidence that there is already a growing dissention of American presence in South Korea. According to Moon, “It is the growth of civil society that has opened the floodgates of dissatisfaction with the American presence in Korea”23 Simply put, the longer the U.S. remains in South Korea, could lead to dissention among the Koreans that would eventually lead to future backlash towards current National Security Policy. Throughout all these efforts, whose success is by no means guaranteed and certainly not any time soon, __ the United States and others will have to persist in fighting what is, in fact, quite accurately called “ the war on terrorism .”__ Now and probably for the coming decades, organized terrorist groups will seek to strike at the United States, and at modernity itself, when and where they can. __This war will not and cannot be the totality of America ’s worldwide strategy. It can be only a piece of it. But given the high stakes, it must be prosecuted ruthlessly, effectively, and for as long as the threat persists. This will sometimes require military interventions when, as in Afghanistan, states either cannot or will not deny the terrorists a base.__ That aspect of the “war on terror” is certainly not going away. __ One need only contemplate the American popular response should a terrorist group explode a nuclear weapon on American soil. No president of any party or ideological coloration will be able to resist the demands of the American people for retaliation and revenge, and not only against the terrorists but against any nation that aided or harbored them.__ Nor, one suspects, will the American people disapprove when a president takes preemptive action to forestall such a possibility — assuming the action is not bungled. __ The United States will not have many eager partners in this fight .__ For although in the struggle between modernization and tradition, the United States, Russia, China, Europe, and the other great powers are roughly on the same side, the things that divide them from each other — the competing national ambitions and ideological differences — will inevitably blunt their ability or their willingness to cooperate in the military aspects of a fight against radical Islamic terrorism. Europeans have been and will continue to be less than enthusiastic about what they emphatically do not call “the war on terror.” And it will be tempting for Russian and Chinese leaders to enjoy the spectacle of the United States bogged down in a fight with al Qaeda and other violent Islamist groups in the Middle East, just as it is tempting to let American power in that region be checked by a nuclear-armed Iran. Unfortunately, the willingness of the autocrats in Moscow and Beijing to run interference for their fellow autocrats in Pyongyang, Tehran, and Khartoum increases the chance that the connection between terrorists and nuclear weapons will eventually be made.
 * Overstretch cripples American military power **
 * PERRY AND FLOURNOY 2006 ** (William, professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, was U.S. secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, Michele, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction, National Defense, May)
 * And, Withdrawal is necessary to free up financial resources to sustain the war on terror **
 * Espiritu, 06 ** – Commander, U.S. Navy (3/15/06, Commander Emilson M. Espiritu, “The Eagle Heads Home: Rethinking National Security Policy for The Asia-Pacific Region,” [], JMP)
 * That solves nuclear terrorism—that causes draw-in, and only the US can solve. **
 * Kagan, 07 ** – Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund (Robert, “End of Dreams, Return of History,” Hoover Institution, No. 144, August/September, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6136)

Lynch, 08 - <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">U.S. Army Col onel <span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">,   military fellow at the Brookings Institution, military special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan (June 2008, Thomas, “Afghan Dilemmas: Staying in Power,” The American Interest Online WX)
 * Increasing troops now allows a stable transition later. **

__First__, in Afghanistan __the U__ nited __S__ tates __should follow through on the May__ 23, 20 __05 joint U.S.-Afghan declaration of partnership in principle, and conclude either a s__ tatus __o__ f __f__ orces __a__ greement __or a robust and detailed defense cooperation agreement. This__ bilateral __agreement must cover a long-term period__, and it should be announced with great fanfare as America’s commitment to Afghanistan’s independent future as a sovereign, democratic state. In addition, the agreement should be worded so as to safeguard Pakistan’s sovereignty and security along existing borders. __It should offer formal, U.S.-mediated discussions between Kabul and Islamabad to resolve the Durand Line boundary__ dispute once the Taliban insurgency is defeated. 1 Backed by an enduring U.S. force presence in Afghanistan, __a formal bilateral security agreement can assure all but the most unreasonable minds in Pakistan’s military that Indian intrigue or rogue security threats will not confront Islamabad from Afghanistan. Second, we must lead an effort to re-configure NATO__ force __ postures across Afghanistan__ as soon as possible. Sending an additional 3,000 marines is a good start, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. __ America needs to assume an exclusive operational lead in the counterinsurgency and combat missions __ integral to the struggle against the Taliban, Hizb-i-Islami and the Haqqani jihadi networks __across southern and eastern Afghanistan.__ __This commitment will require the U.S. combat footprint to increase from the two American brigade combat teams currently in Afghanistan to four brigade combat teams__ before the end of this summer. Thus __ the overall U.S. military footprint of some 26,000 troops in Afghanistan as of this past December must grow to about 37,000 before fall and remain at that level for the next two years. Third, NATO’s__ valuable and critical __European military contribution__ to the fight __should remain at current__ (or larger) force __levels, but be focused in Afghanistan’s north and west, where stability and peacekeeping operations dominate.__ NATO partnership in Afghanistan is a crucial part of a viable South Asia security strategy, but we must fit our European partners’ military advantages to proper missions, not try to shove square-peg capabilities into round-holed mission profiles. __Fourth, the U__ nited __S__ tates __must re-establish a permanent, three-star operational military headquarters in Afghanistan__. The headquarters must be empowered to coordinate and harmonize all military policy within NATO’s Afghanistan operations, as well as handle matters of regional stability and confidence-building. __Such a U.S. military headquarters existed in Kabul from__ November 20 __03 to__ May 20 __07, and it__ was this headquarters that __helped coordinate American humanitarian and military assistance for victims of the__ November 20 __05 Pakistani earthquake__ — __a mission that produced a__ significant, albeit temporary, spike in Pakistani and Muslim __goodwill toward America.__ Unfortunately, this headquarters disbanded to help redistribute scarce American military manpower to fill new U.S.-only billets generated within the expanded NATO-ISAF Afghanistan headquarters. __The Afghans would welcome a return of a U.S. military headquarters, and its presence in Kabul would provide a conspicuous symbol of a long-term U.S. military commitment to regional stability and positive engagement across South Asia. Finally, we must assure our Afghan partners that the U.S. government remains committed to completing the task of training and equipping their armed forces __ to be professional and accountable representatives of Afghanistan’s new democratic state. __U.S. support for an Afghan military of more than 50,000 troops has waxed and waned unhelpfully in recent years.__ __American policymakers have too often come across in Kabul as desiring that Afghanistan should have no military greater in size__ __than it can pay for__ from its limited national budget, regardless of whether a force of that size makes any strategic or military sense. Recently, U.S. policy has matured to support an Afghan military slated to grow to about 70,000 by 2009 and 80,000 by 2011. __U.S. policymakers should make it clear that we will support, equip and fund an Afghan force of 80,000 or more if that is what is needed to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and prevail against the Taliban/jihadi insurgency. A__ t the end of the day, __ only a competent, professional and loyal Afghan Army will allow the U.S. military presence to fall from some 37,000 to a post-insurgency, steady-state force of about 6,000 personnel .__ This residual U.S. force will be devoted not to combating insurgency, but to peacekeeping, management of regional security and confidence-building measures, and to continued training, mentoring and cooperation with the Afghan military. = = On the night of March 26 the South Korean 1,200-ton warship Cheonan patrolled the boundary waters between North and South Korea. At 10:45 an explosion near the bow rocked the vessel and sank the Cheonan, taking the lives of 46 crew members with it. Although the investigation is still ongoing, the South Korean Defense Minister has declared that a torpedo is the likeliest source of the blast. __North Korea appears to have destroyed the South Korean warship.__ Normally such an unprovoked attack would start a war, but the Korean peninsula is not a normal place. The Koreans, with their strong sense of nationalism, remain divided along the 38th parallel, with a 2.5 mile “demilitarized zone” between them. Meanwhile approximately 28,000 US troops still help guard the border. An armistice formally ended hostilities in Korea in 1953, but officially the war never ended. No peace treaty was ever signed. One year ago, the North formally and ominously withdrew from the armistice. North Korea, a tiny country with the world’s 4th largest standing army, is the most militarized society in the world. It has a standing army of 1.2 million soldiers, and a peasant militia with as many as 4 million reserves. Some 13,000 artillery pieces, dug into the hills within range of the South Korean capital of Seoul, are poised to obliterate the South’s most important city upon “The Dear Leader’s” command. Some estimates suggest that as many as one million South Koreans could die under such an assault. Then there’s the matter of North Korea’s several nuclear weapons. __ South Korea __, officially the “Republic of Korea,” __has about half as many soldiers as the North, but they are ** better trained and ** ** far better equipped. **__ South Korea is wealthy and technologically advanced. North Korea has half the population and 1/30th the economy of the South. While the rulers of the North live lavishly, famine killed a million people in the 1990s, and the United Nation’s World Food Program is worried that this year may witness the worst food shortages since then. Starving people can be dangerous people. Historically North Korea uses its military, its only strength, as leverage to obtain outside assistance. South Korea today might well be able to ultimately defend itself against the North, but the bloodshed would be horrific. A key factor in any future conflict is Seoul’s location so near the North. Experts suggest (See “Is Kim Jong-il Planning to Occupy Seoul?” ) that a recently revised North Korean military strategy consists of swiftly taking Seoul and holding the city’s millions of people as hostages. All of this begs a couple of important questions. How many more South Korean ships can be torpedoed before the South retaliates, surely starting a larger war? And, what are 28,000 American troops doing in the middle of this Korean powder keg? As the sinking of the Cheonan clearly indicates, the sparks are already flying. __The permanent US military deployment__ in South Korea __is a Cold War anachronism. There is ** absolutely no reason ** that a nation as advanced and prosperous as South Korea cannot defend itself from its pathetically backward northern brothers and sisters.__ A well-known night-time satellite image taken from space shows a brilliant South and a North languishing in the Dark Ages. The US presence creates political dysfunction while it minimally protects South Korea. __ US soldiers on South Korean soil breed resentment. __ Thousands of nationalist South Korean students regularly take to the streets to protest the Americans soldiers in their country and to call for unification between North and South. South Korean and US government policies are often awkwardly out of step with each other, with America often having the far more hawkish posture, as it did during the W. Bush years. __American security guarantees have perhaps sometimes led the government of the South to engage in policies of inappropriate appeasement toward the North .__ __T he threat of South Korea investing in nuclear weapons to counter the North might ,__ for example, __finally ** persuade China to put sufficient pressure of North Korea. ** A South Korea determined to match North Korean nuclear weapons development might paradoxically ** further the goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. **__ __Most crucially__, from an American point of view, __ the US Army is stretched too thin to play much of a role in protecting South Korea .__ As things stand, __ American soldiers are little more than targets for North Korean artillery and missiles. A defense of Seoul,__ its re-conquest, __and forcible regime change in the North are all beyond US military capabilities at this time, given its commitments elsewhere.__ US participation on the ground in a new Korean War would also stress the US federal budget beyond the breaking point. The United States never properly created a new foreign and defense policy when the Cold War ended. Instead, it has generally maintained its Cold War military posture, with bases and commitments strewn throughout the globe, even as new challenges since 911 have called American forces to new missions. __The US military presence in Korea is a Cold War artifact that needs to be brought home before it’s too late.__
 * U.S. presence is useless to deter North Korea – withdrawal will motivate South Korea and China to stabilize and de-nuclearize the peninsula **
 * Erickson, 10 ** – Executive Director of CenterMovement.org (5/6/10, Stephen, “End the Cold War in Korea: Bring American Troops Home Before it’s Too Late,” [], JMP)

=Notes:=
 * 1) ** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If they kick deterrence  **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—In the status quo, deterrence checks all conflicts means there's no impact to the aff's disads, only a risk of the aff's impacts since deterrence collapse in the long-run is inevitable, the plan's key to survive the collapse
 * 2) ** Uniqueness **—Heg collapse inevitable, it’s just a question of whether we can survive the transition
 * 3) ** Time frame **:
 * 4) The status quo is __different__ than the past – the chance of global escalation is possible now –intelligence failure, prolif, NK aggression, and US involvement, could all spiral into a major global conflagration. That’s Sanger.
 * 5) Succession crisis IL: Kim Jong IL needs political victories, otherwise he will continue to flex his military muscles, collapse of the regime inevitable, but the longer we wait the more devastating the consequences.
 * 6) Righter—NK has nothing to lose – means miscalculation will happen.
 * 7) Multi-polarity is inevitable, but the plan is critical to ease the transition solving our impacts, Bandow,
 * 8) ** Deterrence DA **
 * 9) N/U: U.S. presence is useless to deter North Korea. Bandow 10.
 * 10) Chinese involvement is key to stabilize Korea – prevents violent collapse, military response by South Korea, North Korea nuclearization and allied proliferation, Bandow
 * 11) Withdrawing ground troops solves – stops North Korea from probing U.S. weakness to draw our forces into a wider conflict. Air and naval installations will maintain power projection capabilities. Stanton, 10
 * 12) If we don’t withdraw, American hegemony in Asia ensures involvement in possibly nuclear war with North Korea. Layne 06.
 * 13) Troops in South Korea will be moved to Iraq or Afghanistan—this withdrawal would solve South Korean deterrence and the war on terrorism. Brookes 06/24
 * 14) Air, navy, and special forces, can still be used to solve deterrence. Perry and Flournoy 06.
 * 15) ** Escalation: **
 * 16) U.S. presence makes provocations inevitable and guarantees our draw in. Bandow
 * 17) Territorial disputes draw in great powers, Waldron.
 * 18) The status quo is different than the past – the chance of global escalation is possible now –intelligence failure, prolif, NK aggression, and US involvement, could all spiral into a major global conflagration. That’s Sanger.
 * 19) ** Ground troops key **
 * 20) Withdrawing ground troops solves – stops North Korea from probing U.S. weakness to draw our forces into a wider conflict. Air and naval installations will maintain power projection capabilities. Stanton
 * 21) Only a clear sign of U.S. withdrawal can motivate sustainable regional security cooperation. Carpenter and Bandow 4
 * 22) ** ROK Econ **
 * 23) Unification solves the South Korean economy, Noland 01.
 * 24) ** Alliance DA **
 * 25) Korea is the lynchpin of US overstretch – withdrawal provides needed resources—the war on terror means there’s overstretch now, and that solves Korean anti-americanism. CUMMINGS 2004