CRITIQUE PROLIFERATION IMAGE

The images which one associates with security policies have a lot to do with what those policies are and how they operate. David Mutimer has suggested that we have several such images in regards to WMD.

THE VARIOUS "IMAGES" WHICH ARE USED TO FRAME WEAPONS SYSTEMS ARE LISTED AND EXPLAINED -- THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE NOW DOMINATES

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 51-52

The various technologies now included in the weapons proliferation agenda-nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and excessive and destabilizing accumulations of conventional arms-have been imagined in very different ways throughout the twentieth century. Nuclear weapons have been framed in terms of at least four images: "deterrence ," "disarmament," "arms control," and, of course, "proliferation." Chemical and biological weapons, although at times framed within the practices produced by these four images, have also been framed in terms of a "taboo." Finally, conventional weapons (a framing in itself and one that requires weapons of mass destruction for its meaning) have additionally been framed by a "commercial" image, as industrial products traded in markets. These varied images, which constituted their particular weapons as such and were embedded in a set of practices that contained those weapons, provided a rich set of interpretive resources on which policymakers and others could draw in constructing a new security agenda following the Cold War. I argue that one of these images-the "proliferation" image-came to dominate that construction, but the new "proliferation" image draws on these resources in interesting ways to create a particular security problem in the contemporary world.

When the affirmative views their policy through a "proliferation image" they doom us to counterproductive policies and also prevent us from abolishing nuclear weapons through the "disarmament image," which is a much more productive approach.

This argument serves as a net-benefit for the Nuclear Abolition Counterplan.

EXPLANATION OF THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE CONCEPT

THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE WE USE CREATES OUR WMD POLICIES

LINK: FOCUS ON PROLIFERATION ENTRENCHES THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE

LINK: FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY ENTRENCHES THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE

IMPACT: USE OF THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE IS WHAT CREATES THE PROBLEMS OF WMD

IMPACT: USE OF THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE IS WHAT CREATED CRISIS IN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

IMPACT: USE OF THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE CREATES ENEMIES AND OPPONENTS

SOLVENCY: WE CAN CONTEST AND REPLACE THE PROLIFERATION IMAGE

NUCLEAR PROBLEM IS CREATED BY DISCOURSE, INCLUDING DEBATE DISCOURSE