Note: I'm publishing this list before the analysis is complete, to spur your thinking. More coming soon!
Let's recall the resolution:
Resolved: States ought not possess nuclear weapons.
Often I like to separate V/C pairs into advocacies--those that trend Aff or Neg. However, it seems that many of the arguments cut both ways, as you'll see below. So we'll go straight to the pairs.
V: Human Life
C: Reducing / Deterring Conflict; Preventing Extinction; Environmental Protection; Utilitarianism
C: Fulfilling obligations to the future
V: Justice or Morality
C: Just War Theory
V: Justice or Morality or Gov't Legitimacy
C: The Social Contract
The key to this kind of case is strongly establishing the moral obligations of states. Since the resolution concerns "ought," which, in a philosophical context, is most commonly defined in moral terms, and since the agent of action appears to be states, the Aff or Neg can argue from a contractarian perspective: that the only rules that bind states, morally speaking, are those of the Social Contract. Which one? Well... that's where it gets interesting. A Hobbesian will definitely argue differently than a Rawlsian.
C: Reducing state power
V: National Security
C: Deterring Conflict; Preserving the balance of power; maintaining military dominance
The Negative can concede that a world without nuclear weapons is better than one with: but that is not our world, and never will be; Disarmament is a utopian dream, and a dangerous one at that. So, if states must protect their citizens--a key argument that the Negative might want to get the Aff to concede to in CX--then they must fend off potential nuclear (or conventional) attackers. And besides, possession doesn't require use.
But it risks use, the Aff will counter, and raises the stakes of any potential conflict. Add to that the risk of accidents, theft, and the instability of collapsing nuclear regimes (the rise of a nuclear black market, say, after the fall of Communism), and it just might be that national security is better served through conventional weaponry.
Besides, the costs of developing / purchasing and maintaining nuclear weapons means that proliferation is necessarily limited. Furthermore, with international cooperation / enforcement regimes, IF states made a concerted effort to eliminate nukes, it could be done.
Lastly, National Security as a value might be troublesome: any nation that values security above all risks becoming a police state.
V: Peace or Human Life or Morality
C: Reducing "Warism" / Promoting Peace / Pacifism / Disarmament
Warism is "the uncritical presumption that war is morally justifiable, even morally required," according to Duane Cady (whose newly revised text on the subject I'll be reading as soon as I can get a copy through the local college library--hopefully as soon as it's published). A state that possesses nuclear weapons is itself possessed by warist thinking, which will inevitably promote conflict.
V: Prudence or Security
C: Political Realism / Military Realism