Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Canadian JTF Adv. – 1AC – Quebec Scenario (2/3)

model is an exercise in what Joseph Nye has termed soft power, whereby a country “may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness.”84Jennifer Welsh has written that simply being a bilingual, federal state should be regarded as a core element of Canadian foreign policy.85 But there is a domestic agenda at work as well. As the prestige of the Canadian model is enhanced abroad, so too is its prestige at home. This convergence of the domestic and the international is best summed up by the phrase used by a leading Canadian bookseller to promote Canadian literature, “The World Needs More Canada” – the marketing pitch being that the international reputation of Canadian authors is an additional reason for Canadians to value that work.
Quebec secession destroys U.S. leadership

Lamont, ‘94 (Lansing, Time Correspondent, Breakup, p. 229)

Most assuredly, the United States would lose a valued ally in an increasingly turbulent world, would see the North American partnership weakened and future relations with Canada cast in doubt. The United States would also confront to its north a prickly new nation of Quebec with dubious allegiances and an uncertain course. Canada's dissolution, if it comes, would not present the same dangers it might have twenty years ago when the separatists first came to power in Quebec. Then, the loss of a united Canada would have been a strategic blow to the Western alliance as it sought to maintain a solid front against Soviet expansion. The end of the Cold War has reduced the military dangers of a northern breakup, just as free trade has mitigated the economic perils. But the rupture of Canada would still put at risk many of America's commercial and continental defense arrangements, while entailing substantial costs to its export economy and foreign policy . Canada's reliability as our closest NATO and North American stalwart would be the first big casualty. No superpower like America can give full focus to, and effectively exercise, its worldwide leadership responsibilities with insecurity or turmoil in its backyard. Over the long term, a wounded Canada would act less boldly and swiftly in North America 's interests, and would take fewer risks in the international arena. U.S. designs in the hemisphere-for more dependable security structures in Central America arid the Caribbean, say, or for more durable democracies in the southern cone- would be that much more difficult to accomplish without Canada's committed support. A fractured Canada would gradually lose its international Boy Scout image, which U.S. diplomats have found immeasurably helpful. When America has wished some other power to take the lead on initiatives where U.S. credibility was weak, it has frequently used Canada as a stalking horse because, as one U.S. diplomat put it, 'They can do things that we can't."

Impact to US leadership

Canadian JTF Adv. – 1AC – Quebec Scenario (3/3)

Quebec secession destroys NORAD.

Lamont, 1994 (Lansing, Time Correspondent and President of American Trust for the British Library, Breakup, p. 236)

America's foremost concern, however, would be the impact of a diminished Canada on continental security, the fact that Washington regards uninhibited access to Canadian territory, airspace, and waters as critical to U.S. defense. An independent, territorially sensitive Quebec could seriously complicate continental security arrangements affecting the use of its airspace, landing, and refueling privileges, the status of NORAD francophone units in Quebec, and the free flow of international shipping through the Quebec end of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The disbanding and relocation to Canada of its Armed Forces based in Quebec, for instance, would cause considerable disarray in Canada's operational effectiveness and its ability to meet its NORAD obligation s. A compromised tripartite NORAD command, including Quebec, would hardly appeal to the Pentagon, but remains a distinct possibility. Of graver import would be the will and capability of Canada itself to continue supporting the North American defense structure. With its ongoing debt crisis, its traditional aversion to U.S. military initiatives, and the fading of the Soviet threat, Canada might reduce even further its NORAD and NATO commitments .

NORAD prevents accidental launch
CIMBALA, ’99 (STEPHEN J, professor of political science at the Pennsylvania State University Delaware County Campus, ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY, Vol. 25, No. 4)

A second requirement for the avoidance of accidental/inadvertent war is the validity of warning and attack assessment. Leaders must have confidence that they can distinguish between false and true warnings of attack. They must also expect, once received valid warning of attack, that they will have time to respond appropriately. U.S. nuclear warning and attack assessment evolved during the Cold War into a tightly coupled system of warning sensors, analysis and fusion centers, communications links, commanders, and command posts. The nerve center of U.S. Cold War warning and assessment was NORAD, located in an underground and hardened shelter complex at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Even after the Cold War, NORAD is the chef d'oeuvre of the elaborate U.S. warning system for surprise attack.
An accidental launch causes retaliatory strikes and extinction within half an hour

The American Prospect, 2/26/01 (Newspaper, Lexis)JFS

The bitter disputes over national missile defense (NMD) have obscured a related but dramatically more urgent issue of national security: the 4,800 nuclear warheads -- weapons with a combined destructive power nearly 100,000 times greater than the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima -- currently on "hair-trigger" alert. Hair-trigger alert means this: The missiles carrying those warheads are armed and fueled at all times. Two thousand or so of these warheads are on the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) targeted by Russia at the United States; 1,800 are on the ICBMs targeted by the United States at Russia; and approximately 1,000 are on the submarine-based missiles targeted by the two nations at each other. These missiles would launch on receipt of three computer-delivered messages. Launch crews -- on duty every second of every day -- are under orders to send the messages on receipt of a single computer-delivered command. In no more than two minutes, if all went according to plan, Russia or the United States could launch missiles at predetermined targets: Washington or New York; Moscow or St. Petersburg. The early-warning systems on which the launch crews rely would detect the other side's missiles within tens of seconds, causing the intended -- or accidental -- enemy to mount retaliatory strikes. "Within a half-hour, there could be a nuclear war that would extinguish all of us," explains Bruce Blair. "It would be, basically, a nuclear war by checklist, by rote."