I think I’m missing something obvious, or I’m missing some information. Why is this clearly ridiculous?
Nuclear triad aside, there’s the fact that the Arctic is more than 1000 miles away from the nearest US land (about 1700 miles away from Montana, 3000 miles away from Texas), that Siberia is already roughly as close.
And of course, the fact the Arctic is made of, well, ice, that melts more and more as the climate warms, and thus not the best place to build a missile base on.
Even without familiarity with nuclear politics, the distance part can be checked in less than 2 minutes on Google Map; if you have access to an internet connection and judges that penalize blatant falsehoods like “they can hit us from the Arctic”, you absolutely wreck your adversary with some quick checking.
Of course, in a lot of debate formats you’re not allowed the two minutes it would take to do a google map check.
Nuclear triad aside, there’s the fact that the Arctic is more than 1000 miles away from the nearest US land (about 1700 miles away from Montana, 3000 miles away from Texas), that Siberia is already roughly as close.
Well, there’s Alaska, but yes, part of Russia is only ~55 miles away from Alaska, so the overall point stands that Russia having a greater presence in the Arctic doesn’t change things very much.
And of course, the fact the Arctic is made of, well, ice, that melts more and more as the climate warms, and thus not the best place to build a missile base on.
That’s not what is being proposed—it is building more bases in ports on the land where the water doesn’t freeze as much because of climate change.
Nuclear triad aside, there’s the fact that the Arctic is more than 1000 miles away from the nearest US land (about 1700 miles away from Montana, 3000 miles away from Texas), that Siberia is already roughly as close.
And of course, the fact the Arctic is made of, well, ice, that melts more and more as the climate warms, and thus not the best place to build a missile base on.
Even without familiarity with nuclear politics, the distance part can be checked in less than 2 minutes on Google Map; if you have access to an internet connection and judges that penalize blatant falsehoods like “they can hit us from the Arctic”, you absolutely wreck your adversary with some quick checking.
Of course, in a lot of debate formats you’re not allowed the two minutes it would take to do a google map check.
Well, there’s Alaska, but yes, part of Russia is only ~55 miles away from Alaska, so the overall point stands that Russia having a greater presence in the Arctic doesn’t change things very much.
That’s not what is being proposed—it is building more bases in ports on the land where the water doesn’t freeze as much because of climate change.
Thanks for the addition! I actually didn’t consider this, and neither did my opponents.