1NC – Off

Interpretation: The affirmative may not specify regions within the West Asia-North
Africa region to reduce military presence in.
“Region” excludes subsets.
Dictionary [Dictionary.com; No Date; https://www.dictionary.com/browse/region /] brett TDI
1. an extensive, continuous part of a surface, space, or body:a region of the earth.
2. Usually regions. the vast or indefinite entirety of a space or area, or something compared to
one:
In means throughout.
Words and Phrases, 08 [Volume 28, p. 204-215] TDI
—Reynolds v. Larkins, 14 P. 114, 10 Colo. 126 Colo. 1887. In the act of 1861 providing that justices of
the peace shall have jurisdiction “in” their respective counties to hear and determine all complaints,
etc., the word “in” should be construed to mean “throughout” such counties.

Violation---they spec Turkey.

LIMITS and GROUND---removing singular bases, arms sales, and operations require
different case negs, making the topic functionally unlimited and eliminating scope of
link to core disadvantages.
Merelli ’15 [Annalisa; April 2; internally citing David Vine, associated professor of anthropology;
Quartz, “These are all the countries where the U.S. has a military presence,”
http://qz.com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where-the-us-has-a-military-presence/; TDI]

In his forthcoming book Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, David Vine, associate professor
of anthropology at American University details the difficulties of assessing the US military presence abroad. He writes:
according to the most recent publicized count, the U.S. military currently still occupies 686 “base sites” outside the fifty states and
Washington, DC.

While 686 base sites is quite a figure in its own right, that tally strangely excludes many well-known U.S. bases, like those in Kosovo, Kuwait,
and Qatar. Less surprisingly, the
Pentagon’s count also excludes secret (or secretive) American bases, like those
reported in Israel and Saudi Arabia. There are so many bases, the Pentagon itself doesn’t even know the
true total.

That is not the only issue—even

a definitive count of bases would include a wide range of facilities. “Base” itself
is an umbrella term that includes locations referred to as “post,” “station,” “camp,” or “fort” by different military
bodies. Vine explains:

bases come in all sizes and shapes, from massive sites in Germany and Japan to small radar facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico. […] Even military
resorts and recreation areas in places like Tuscany and Seoul are bases of a kind; worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.

The map below represents US military bases abroad, according to the official BSR, and from independent research conducted by Vine (and
Quartz) using verified news reports as well as cross-referencing information with Google Maps. This map does not take into account NATO
bases, including a rumored base in Turkmenistan and a base in Algeria, reported by Wikileaks to be a suspected US base.

Image for article titled These are all the countries where the US has a military presence
Most of the countries appear to have a small concentration of US bases (below 10). That’s compared to Germany’s 179, Puerto Rico’s 37, or
Italy’s 58. The largest military footprint remains in countries that the US invaded in WWII, while its presence in areas of more recent contention,
such as the Middle East, is somewhat reduced, at least in terms of bases.

It has been noted by commentators before that not all the bases are of significant size. However, given the information available it’s hard to
truly gauge the size of the different installation. Vine writes:

The Pentagon says that it has just 64 “active major installations” overseas and that most of its base sites are “small installations or locations.”
But it defines “small” as having a reported value of up to $915 million. In other words, small can be not so small.

The information about troops abroad, too, isn’t completely clear, which makes it difficult to know the
true extent of the American military footprint. IHS Jane’s armed forces analyst Dylan Lehrke told Quartz that it’s hard to even
settle on the definition of military presence—for the government, that means bases or deployed troops, although it would seem acceptable to
include other forms of presence:

Surely one could say that the US has a military presence in Syria at the moment. They may not have bases and troops on the ground but we
should include the warplanes in the sky. The US military arguably has more presence in Syria than it does in Germany […]. To take this idea
further, it would also be rational to say the US has a military presence wherever it uses unmanned aerial vehicles to strike targets.

All the countries that have some sort of American military presence—from one military attaché to the
troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan—essentially results in highlighting pretty much the entire world
(Russia included, where the DoD reports having 24 military personnel).

TVA solves---read your aff as an advantage.

Topicality comes first because any 1NC abuse was premised on the fact that the 1AC
was abusive, AND 1NC is reactive making abuse self-inflicted.
Competing interpretations---it’s the only objective mechanism to resolve disputes,
causes a race to the top of the best interpretations, and reasonability invites judge
intervention.
No RVIs---it’s illogical to vote aff because they were fair, it means no one ever wants
to check real abuse, and incentivizes the 1AR to go all-in on a 1NC shell which skews
the 2NR.
DTD---topicality indicts the plan.
 1NC – Off
The affirmative must only defend reducing military presence in countries located
within the West Asia-North Africa region.
West Asia excludes Israel, Turkey, and Iran.
Rasheed 18 [Adil Rasheed; research fellow at MP-IDSA, former researcher at The Emirates Center
for Strategic Studies and Research; 9/4/2018; Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and
Analyses; "What is the difference between ‘West Asia’ and ‘Middle East’ from the Indian perspective?";
https://idsa.in/askanexpert/west-asia-and-middle-east-from-the-indian-perspective] pT+lydia

West Asia refers to countries west of Afghanistan to the westernmost part of Asia and with the
exception of Israel, Turkey and Iran. The region has predominantly Arab-Muslim population.

Vote NEG for Limits and Ground---Their interp is country of the week affs that gut neg
generics like deterrence and assurance. There are over twenty state affs, hundreds of
different permutations of states, all with different geopolitical situations that require
specific neg answers which is an untenable research burden.
 1NC – Off
NATO unity is high.
Bekkevold 9/11 [Jo Inge Bekkevold, senior China fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense
Studies and former Norwegian diplomat, 9-11-2023, "NATO’s Remarkable Revival," Foreign Policy,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/11/nato-alliance-us-europe-russia-geopolitics-china-military-
deterrence/] [accessed 12-15-2023] lydia+pT

When NATO celebrates its 75th anniversary at its Washington summit next year, it will do so from a position of
unity and strength. This is a remarkable turnaround from only a few years ago, when trans-Atlantic ties were clouded
by mutual suspicion and uncertainty about the bloc’s future. The first large-scale war of aggression in Europe since World War II has
reinvigorated the alliance, which now
has more member states and greater geographic cohesion than ever
before. NATO’s renaissance comes just in time—it may soon face an entirely new geopolitical landscape that will once again test its cohesion
and adaptability.

There are four main reasons for NATO’s comeback as an enhanced and more coherent alliance.

The most important and obvious factor is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which returned NATO to its roots: deterring a
Kremlin bent on expansion. It also motivated Finland to abandon its long-standing neutrality and join the alliance, with Sweden
expected to join soon as well. The addition of these two Nordic countries will substantially enhance NATO’s position in Northern Europe.
Russia’s aggression has also prompted NATO members to markedly increase their 2023 defense expenditures, with more member states on
track to fulfill the bloc’s guideline of spending a minimum of 2 percent of GDP on defense, long a bone of contention between Washington and
its European allies. Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has strengthened the U.S. military presence and
engagement in Europe.

A second factor behind NATO’s resurgence is the rise of China, with NATO turning into the primary forum for a closer
trans-Atlantic security dialogue on China. After the United States announced its rebalance to Asia in 2011, it took the European
Union and NATO roughly another decade to categorize China’s rise as a security challenge. NATO’s new Strategic Concept, adopted at the
Madrid summit in 2022, identifies China as a challenge to its members’ interests, values, and security. Since then, NATO has been strengthening
dialogue and cooperation with its partners in the Indo-Pacific region, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

Third, new technologies and interdependencies have broadened NATO’s agenda to cover cyberdefense and disruptive technologies. Economic
dependencies on China and Russia have prompted the alliance to launch new initiatives such as the NATO-EU Task Force on Resilience of Critical
Infrastructure.

Fourth, the election of U.S. President Joe Biden enabled smoother cooperation between the United States and its
allies than had been the case during the Trump administration. This is as much a factor of policies as of trust: According to a June 2021 Pew
Research Center survey, the transition from Donald Trump to Biden dramatically improved Washington’s international image, especially among
key allies and partners.

Of course, in an era of intensified great-power rivalry, the strengthening of military cooperation is not unique to the Euro-Atlantic West. In Asia,
China’s rise has led several countries to reinforce their bilateral security agreements with the United States, including Japan and the Philippines.
Minilateral formats—such as the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security pact and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad—
include efforts to deepen military ties. In August, a historic summit among the leaders of Japan, South Korea, and the United States may be the
basis for another such grouping; South Korea could potentially join the Quad as well. China and Russia, in turn, are increasingly closing ranks.

But in terms of scope and depth of cooperation as well as its longevity, NATO has no parallel anywhere. Military
alliances, established to address an immediate threat or balance the rise of a regional hegemon, are often dissolved when the external
security environment changes. NATO, however, not only survived the collapse of the Soviet Union but also proved adept at
adjusting to the post-Cold War era by taking on nontraditional security challenges (such as terrorism and piracy), conducting military operations
other than war, and engaging in out-of-area operations.

NATO’s success and endurance stand in sharp relief to the frailty and collapse of a similar military alliance formed during the Cold War: the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Using NATO as a model, SEATO was established in 1954 to prevent communism from gaining
ground in Southeast Asia. Comprising Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States,
SEATO was not a particularly coherent organization, whether in geographic or political terms. Thus, as soon as the security environment in Asia
shifted as a result of the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War and U.S.-China rapprochement, members began to withdraw from the bloc. In 1977, it was
dissolved.

B61s are key---anything less loses Ukraine.

Zak 22 [Dan Zak, reporter for the Washington Post,3-25-2022, "Meet the nuke the U.S. keeps in
Europe, waiting to not be used," Washington Post,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/25/nuclear-weapon-b61-russia/] [accessed 12-15-
2023] lydia+pT
Near steep vineyards of riesling grapes, in an underground vault at an air force base in western Germany, sits an American nuclear bomb. More
than one of them, actually. Each bomb is about the length of two refrigerators laid down end to end and as heavy as the average adult male
musk ox. The bombs are slender and pointy and a little more than a foot wide. Experts estimate that there are about 100
such bombs stored among five NATO countries, ready to be loaded on jets and dropped by the United States and its allies —
old-school style, parachute and all — toward an enemy target. One version of this bomb can carry the explosive equivalent of 11 Hiroshimas.

The bomb’s family name is B61. Over the past half-century, in various modifications, B61s have been sent to Europe to deter Russia and
reassure the NATO alliance, and they remain there for those reasons. Scenarios for their detonation seem far-fetched — but perhaps
not as far-fetched as they seemed a month ago. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggers another round of anxiety about World War III, the B61
remains the only U.S. nuclear weapons system based in Europe, a forward-deployed reassurance for NATO at a time when
Russian President Vladimir Putin is rattling his own nuclear saber.

The B61 is loaded with meaning. It embodies the paradox, inertia, specter, bargain and cost of nuclear weapons,
especially at a moment like this.

Is it ammunition for a hot war or an artifact of a cold one? Both? Neither?

“The political value of these weapons is immense,” says Franklin C. Miller, who was President George W. Bush’s senior director for
defense policy and arms control, referring to the B61s. “NATO
governments view them as a major political commitment
— the visible, touchable, tangible side of our extended deterrent.”

“I remember a chief of staff of the Air Force who asked me if we could get rid of our nuclear weapons in Europe,” says Andy Weber, who was
assistant defense secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs under President Barack Obama. “There’s no military value to
our nuclear weapons in Europe. Zero. They’re there for purely political reasons.”
The B61 is nevertheless a bomb. It serves a purpose sitting in a vault because it would serve a purpose if dropped from a plane.

“It provides the alliance with a nuclear response — that’s its military value,” says retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, supreme allied
commander of NATO from 2013 to 2016 and now chair of the Frontier Europe Initiative for the Middle East Institute.

How might a B61 be used? During an escalating hypothetical conflict between NATO and Russia, a single nuclear warning shot from Russia into
Poland could invite an allied nuclear response: a B61 dropped on a military site in Kaliningrad, for example. This in turn could prompt a Russian
escalation, and then — if things continue down that path — all-out nuclear war with the United States, resulting in at least 91.5 million
casualties worldwide, according to a 2019 simulation from Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. At that point, we
could confront levels of horror that have been confined to theory and fiction for 77 years. If, for example, an 800-kiloton Russian
intercontinental ballistic missile detonated 1.8 miles above the White House, there could be half a million fatalities and people might endure
third-degree burns from Silver Spring, Md., to Alexandria, Va., according to Nukemap, a modeling website created by nuclear-weapons historian
Alex Wellerstein.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said on March 14 that “the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the
realm of possibility,” referring to Putin’s decision to put his nuclear forces on alert.

Appearing Tuesday on CNN, a spokesman for Putin refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, particularly if the Kremlin perceives an
“existential threat” to Russia.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan noted Tuesday during a White House press conference that it was Putin who, early on, “raised the
specter of the potential use of nuclear weapons."
“It is something we do have to be concerned about,” Sullivan said. "Based on our current analysis, we have not changed our nuclear posture to
date. But we are constantly monitoring for that potential contingency.”

What could rouse the B61s from their underground slumber? The classic scenario, Miller says, involves NATO being unable to halt a Russian
invasion using its nonnuclear defenses. But the United States has a variety of other, smarter options than the B61 in its nuclear and nonnuclear
arsenals. Even in an escalation scenario, the 50-year-old deterrent we keep in the ground might stay there.

“I suppose you could fairly ask me, ‘If we were starting fresh, would we need those weapons there?’” Miller says of the B61s. “The answer
might be no. But we’re not starting fresh, and these weapons have a long history.”

The B61 was birthed in the years after the Cuban missile crisis because the Air Force was interested in the possibility of dropping nukes from
low-flying aircraft at high speeds, according to the second volume of Chuck Hansen’s “Swords of Armageddon.” The B61 could be used as a
“tactical” or “nonstrategic” nuke on a battlefield, against a forward military target, as opposed to a “strategic” obliterating strike, behind enemy
lines, on a seat of government or city.

In the late summer of 1969, scientists and military commanders gathered in Los Alamos, N.M., the birthplace of the atomic bomb, for a three-
day symposium on tactical nuclear weapons. It had been almost a quarter-century since World War II ended with a pair of nuclear attacks on
Japan and two decades since the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which by then had grown to 15 countries.

The tactical nuclear program in Europe “remains the single most unifying element in NATO,” Gen. David A.
Burchinal, then-deputy head of U.S. European Command, said in his remarks. “We must launch a determined program in weapons
developments and weapons improvement to meet our present and future requirements,” he said. “We cannot rest on the laurels of 20 years of
relative calm in NATO Europe.”

Sustained support for Ukraine checks multiple scenarios for nuke war---nuclear
blackmail, prolif, Russian aggression and Taiwan
Timothy Snyder 2/8, Levin Professor of History at Yale University, permanent fellow at the Institute for
Human Sciences in Vienna, D.Phil in Modern History from the University of Oxford, “Nuclear war!” Feb 8
2023, https://snyder.substack.com/p/nuclear-war
So, deep breath. Russia has an interest in anxiety; media has an interest in anxiety; your body can get locked in anxiety. Getting over that is the
hard part. Once we do, the strategic thinking is the easy part. It starts in the real world. Russia invaded Ukraine. That happened. We cannot
transport ourselves back to the world of 2021. (Even if we somehow could, we would just be in a world where Russia was about to invade
Ukraine...). Operating within a world where the invasion happened, the soundest nuclear policy is to help Ukraine win a
conventional war. This is for four reasons.

First, it would be a disaster for everyone if Russian nuclear blackmail succeeded. If any nuclear state can coerce
others by references to its nuclear stockpile, then foreign policy of any kind becomes impossible, non-nuclear states will always have to yield,
If Russian nuclear blackmail succeeds, we can expect not only more Russian nuclear
and nuclear states will run the world.
blackmail, but also nuclear
blackmail from other nuclear powers. We can also expect that other countries will
build nuclear weapons to resist future blackmail. And so support of Ukraine decreases the chances of nuclear war
by showing that nuclear blackmail does not work.

Second, global nuclear proliferation should be prevented. The risk of nuclear war has a mathematical
character. The more countries have nuclear weapons, the more likely it becomes that they will be used.
Russian policy pushes in the direction of nuclear proliferation. Ukraine actually gave up its nuclear
weapons. Then Russia invaded, in 2014 and again in 2022. The lesson for non-nuclear states is that they will
need nuclear weapons to deter Russian invasion, or invasion by any nuclear power. The way to prevent that
conclusion is for Ukraine to win a conventional war. And so support of Ukraine reduces the chances of nuclear
war by reducing the likelihood of nuclear proliferation.

Third, the European scenario for nuclear confrontation should be made as unlikely as possible. That scenario is a large
war between Russia and NATO, in which there would be nuclear powers on both sides. In its Soviet and then its later Russian variant,
this vision has haunted the minds of Americans and Europeans for decades. Thanks to Ukrainian resistance, such a war is far less likely than it
has been. The forces Russia might have used in an attack on a NATO member are being destroyed in Ukraine. Even
in the scenario where Russia somehow does mount an offensive against a NATO state, any temptation to use nuclear weapons in response has
been reduced by the knowledge that Russia can be defeated in a conventional war. And so support of Ukraine reduces the
chance of nuclear war making the European scenario less likely.

Fourth, the Asian scenario for nuclear confrontation should be made as unlikely as possible. In the last couple of
decades, the possibility of a Sino-American confrontation over Taiwan has dominated discussions in
Washington. Americans have been frustrated and frightened by what they take to be the inevitability of the confrontation. The idea that
some other country might deflect it was never part of the debate. But that is happening. By resisting Russia, Ukrainians have
forced Beijing to recognize that offensive operations are risky and can end badly. Beijing has by no means
lost interest in Taiwan, but it is safe to say that any drastic move has been delayed, at least for a few years.
And these are an important few years. A year ago, when Russia invaded, the conventional wisdom was still that China was a rising power. In
the broader American thinking about all this, this was the essence pf the problem: a rising power (China) must confront a declining power (the
U.S.). Now it is much less clear that China is a rising power. The Ukrainians have delayed the most dangerous scenario; and in doing so, they
might have gotten us through the most dangerous moment. Notably, they have done all this without confronting China. And so support of
Ukraine reduces the chance of nuclear war by making the Asian scenario much less likely.

If we want to reduce the risk of global nuclear war, then we should arm Ukrainians. Doing so reduces the appeal of
nuclear blackmail, the risk of nuclear proliferation, and the likelihood of the scenarios.