The position papers are to be three typed double-spaced pages in length—no more,

The position papers are to be three typed double-spaced pages in length—no more,
no less. Your essay must have a good title, and you should include a separate title page
with your name. Of course, the assigned topics will always cry out for a far longer
treatment, so the whole point is to compress as much solid argument and
information into this short space as possible. Think of a New York Times or Wall
Street Journal opinion piece: Brief but every word counts. My advice would be to
start by writing a longer piece and then winnow it down to its very core. If you
haven’t already, be sure to watch my D2L lecture on How to Write a Good Short
Essay. Some reminders:
• There should be absolutely no fluff. No sentences like, “This is a very
interesting question and one that people have been debating for thousands of
years.” No statements of the obvious or trivial: “Nuclear weapons are very
dangerous weapons.”
• Rather, your very first sentence or two should lay out your thesis
clearly, directly, and forcefully. Then you might briefly expand and explain
the thesis—e.g., it is based on three sub arguments, or explain why the
obvious counterarguments are wrong, etc.—before turning quickly to the
body of the argument.
• Your argument must be supported by concrete specific evidence from
the book using parenthetical citations: (Ellsberg, p. 34).
• Since the essay is so short, you should not use direct quotes from the
material except in extraordinary circumstances. Most of your evidence
should be paraphrased so as to compress longer arguments into a small
space.
The grading rubric is:
1) Does the essay have a clearly stated insightful, interesting, and debatable thesis
presented in a well-organized introductory paragraph that effectively explains the
importance of the thesis and briefly suggests why it is correct? Does the first
paragraph avoid fluff and unnecessary verbiage?
• Excellent: 36-40 points
• Good: 32-36 points
• Acceptable: 28-32 points
• Poor: 24-28 points
• Unacceptable: 20-24 points
2) Does the body of the essay provide adequate concrete and specific evidence
derived from the assigned reading in a way that reflects a broader understanding of
the material? Is the evidence properly and briefly cited using parenthetical
citations?: (Bracken, p. 12). Does the essay effectively identify and defuse any
obvious contrary evidence and arguments? Does the body avoid fluff and
unnecessary verbiage? Does it minimize use of direct quotes? Does it use all the
space available to you effectively?
• Same as above
3) Is the essay well-written and organized in such a way that suggests considerable
effort at revision and polishing? Does the essay use correct grammatical language
and have few or no careless typos, misspellings, etc.? Is the essay tightly written so
as to avoid fluff and unnecessary verbiage?
• Excellent: 18-20 points
• Good: 16-20 points
• Acceptable: 14-16 points
• Poor: 12-14 points
• Unacceptable: 10-12 points
The prompt is:
Starting with the assigned material from Ellsberg, consider both his
explanation of the unique dangers posed by nuclear weapons and his
suggestions for how these dangers might be minimized. Using this as a
framework, analyze the arguments and evidence in the Fussell, Kolbert, and
Schlosser readings to develop your own thesis and arguments responding to
this question: On balance, does the historical evidence thus far suggest that
humans are likely to succeed in avoiding a large-scale nuclear exchange in the
next fifty years?
Note that your thesis and essay should be based primarily on the only truly
concrete information we have to answer this question: The nature and history
of nuclear weapons and delivery systems thus far. You should avoid speculation
that is not backed up by concrete historical evidence. The fifty-year time span
is obviously somewhat arbitrary, but you should assume that the basic global
dynamics since the start of World War II will not be fundamentally changed.
Thus any effective plan for managing nuclear risk would, for example, have to
consider the possibility of another major global war akin to World War II, the
advent of a some sort of new “cold war,” and so on.
There is, of course, no right or wrong answer to these questions. Rather, you
will be graded on your knowledge of and ability to make effective use of the
assigned material to develop a well-argued and well-evidenced thesis that
clearly answers the prompt.
please follow the promo I have given you a rough draft that needs to be rewritten and finalized. Use as much evidence as possible from what I provided you and cite specific and correct page numbers. Please also change any citations in the draft that are incorrect. this pice was written by an AI source so please also make sure that all traces of AI writing have been erased so that is effectively answers the prompt with lots of evidence for your strong argument. make sure the thesis is in the first line of the introduction and that the introduction is very short and to the point.