Strath Haven DP – Lexington – Octas
1AC
1AC – Advantage 1
Advantage 1: Readiness.
There’s a military crisis now due to shortage and lack of proficiency --- risks readiness.
Woody 18 (Christopher Woody is a reporter and editor at Business Insider, 3-14-2018, “The US military is facing a 'real war for talent' —
but some valuable recruits could be scared away”, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-war-for-talent-struggle-toattract-immigrants-2018-3, accessed 10-28-2018)
US military branch chiefs on Monday emphasized the importance of servicemembers to their forces'
operations. They also stressed they would be competing for the most qualified members of a small pool
of applicants. In recent months, changes in immigration policy have added more uncertainty to the lives
of non-citizen servicemembers and their families, which may affect recruiting in the future. The Army, Navy,
and Air Force are all facing increased difficulties attracting servicemembers, but shifting US immigration policies may make the military a less
appealing option for some of the most sought-after recruits. "At the end of the day, people are what makes everything work, and we really
have to focus on this. Going forward we're all going to have a real war for talent," Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said
Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sitting alongside Army Secretary Mark Esper and Air Force Secretary Heather
Wilson. "The three of us up here fish from the same pool, and we're all going to be looking for more people to do more things in a more
intelligent manner," Spencer said. Senior military officials
have emphasized increased recruiting and growing the
size of their forces as key components of improving readiness. Wilson said in September that the Air Force was "too
small for what's being asked of us." Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in October that he had believed for "quite some time" that the
Army needed to add more soldiers. "We
need to grow in order to meet the demands that the nation expects at
the readiness levels it expects," Milley said. Recruiting has been a stumbling block for the armed services. Last year, the
Army — which is seeking 80,000 troops in 2018, 11,000 more than were sought in 2017 — started
accepting less-qualified troops, offering heftier bonuses, and granting more waivers for previously
disqualifying things, like marijuana use and, in some cases, histories of mental illness. The Army was adamant
that it was not lowering its standards — rather it was changing the level of authority at which decisions about waivers for some standards were
being made. Recruiting
efforts have also been complicated by a robust US economy. While the Pentagon
has met its recruiting targets in recent years, low unemployment rates, common during the past few
years, are seen as a hindrance. "When the unemployment rate goes down — as it has been — military enlistment goes down as
well," Beth Asch, a military-manpower researcher at Rand Corp, told Bloomberg. "There's a positive relationship." To drum up interest, the
Army has added hundreds of recruiters who are increasing efforts to win over high-school principals and teachers — referred to as
"influencers," according to Bloomberg. Further complicating matters
is the shrinking pool of qualified recruits.
Almost 75% of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for the military due to obesity or
other health problems, criminal histories, or a lack of education, according to government data seen by
Politico. Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has expressed openness to fitness waivers for
otherwise-qualified recruits. "Depending upon what article you read, the number of potential applicants that would successfully qualify for our
services range somewhere from 25% to 30%. That's it," Spencer said at the CSIS event. "So it's going to be a war for talent." "But people are
going to have to come number one," he added, "and we're going to have to figure out a way to adopt and adapt and keep those people that we
have." However, recent
reports indicate that US immigration policy is now making life harder for some
people already in the military to stay in uniform — and, for some of their dependents, in the country.
Immigrants are key to military readiness --- laundry list.
Barry 13 (Catherine N. Barry is a writer for the Center for American Progress, 11-8-2013, “New Americans in Our Nation’s Military“, Center
for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2013/11/08/79116/new-americans-in-our-nationsmilitary/, accessed 8-15-2018)
The Department of Defense has taken special notice of immigrants and their potential to meet U.S.
military personnel needs while also helping to maintain high-quality force standards. In 2010, the DOD
unveiled its support for the DREAM Act (see text box), integrating it into their 2010-2012 strategic plan to aid in military recruitment. That same
year, the
DOD also highlighted the noncitizen immigrant population in their annual “Population
Representation in the Military Services” report. Their report outlined noncitizen population size and
eligibility-to-serve criteria, such as being a legal permanent resident, having a high school degree, and English proficiency. Aside from
the sheer number of people that would qualify—1.2 million noncitizens in the prime recruiting ages of 18 to 29 that meet this criteria—DOD
recognizes that noncitizens also possess skills that are pivotal to future military strategy and military success. Unique skills The U.S. military
environment shifted greatly after 9/11, with the prolonged involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and greater cooperation with allies in the
region. The
dearth of military and civilian leadership possessing language and cultural competencies
appropriate to these regions created a vacuum that hampered military success and critical on-theground coalition-building capacity. Recognizing the unique and essential linguistic and cultural diversity
of immigrants born and socialized in cultures of strategic military interest, policymakers and military
leaders actively sought to engage immigrants from these and other regions projected to be of national
interest now and in the future. Secretary Panetta, in an August 10, 2011, memo on “Language Skills, Regional Expertise, and Cultural
Capabilities in the Department of Defense (DoD),” underscored the importance of these skills: Language, regional and cultural
skills … are critical to mission readiness in today’s dynamic global environment. Our forces must have
the ability to effectively communicate with and understand the cultures of coalition forces, international
partners, and local populations. Lower attrition Not only do immigrant service members contribute to linguistic and cultural
capabilities, but noncitizens are less likely than U.S. citizens to drop out of military service. Leaving the
military before completing a tour of duty, also known as attrition, is a historical and costly problem for
the armed forces. Recruiting, training, transporting, clothing, feeding, and paying enlistees is expensive, so each time an individual drops
out of service, he or she must be replaced at additional expense. Noncitizens are less likely to drop out than U.S. citizens
at each standardly measured point in time—after 3 months, 36 months, or 48 months of service. Noncitizens
consistently maintain approximately half the dropout level as U.S. citizens. After three months of service, for
example, only 4 percent of noncitizen recruits versus 8.2 percent of U.S. citizens have dropped out of service; at 48 months, 18.2 percent of
noncitizens versus 31.9 percent of U.S. citizens have dropped out. Lower
attrition rates translate into cost savings for the
military. And because noncitizens account for 4 percent of all first-term recruits across military
branches, these cost savings are significant. Outstanding service Immigrant service members also perform
well on the battlefield. The Congressional Medal of Honor award is the highest military decoration bestowed upon a living or deceased
service member, and 20 percent of all award recipients have been immigrant service members. The courageous—and often fatal—
actions to assist fellow service members in the face of grave danger demonstrate the great lengths that
immigrant service members will go to uphold their military duties and serve the United States. Take the
story of Navy Cross awardee Marine Sergeant Rafael Peralta. Born in Mexico, Peralta enlisted in the U.S. armed forces after becoming a legal
permanent resident. On November 15, 2004, Peralta, a 25-year-old platoon scout serving in Fallujah, Iraq, was shot during a firefight during a
house search and fell to the ground, wounded. When his fellow marines entered the room where he lay, the suspected terrorists threw a
grenade close to Peralta. Peralta grabbed the grenade and pressed it to his body, absorbing its deadly blast, and saving the lives of six fellow
marines. In a letter to his 14-year-old brother before his death, Peralta clearly expressed his motivations for serving and his love for his adopted
country: “I’m proud to be a Marine, a U.S. Marine, and to defend and protect the freedom and Constitution of America. You should be proud of
being an American citizen.” Expedited citizenship The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 endows the president with the authority to
expedite citizenship for immigrant U.S. military service members. Although green card holders must wait five years before they can apply for
naturalization, those who enlist in the armed forces are eligible to apply for expedited citizenship. During
peaceful periods unmarked by hostilities, noncitizen service members must wait only three years to be eligible to apply for citizenship. During
periods of armed conflict, they are eligible to apply for citizenship after much shorter periods of time. In 2002, for example, President Bush
signed an executive order declaring that noncitizens who served in the military since September 11, 2001, were eligible to apply for citizenship
During the post-9/11 period, the U.S. military instituted programs
targeted at recruiting immigrants, but these service members frequently experienced roadblocks and
delays when they applied for citizenship. Immigrant service members who engaged in overseas missions to protect U.S. interests
after only one day of active-duty service.
were prohibited from becoming U.S. citizens—even if all requirements were met—because they could not fulfill the naturalization requisite to
be physically present in the United States to complete the process. In 2004, the government lifted the residence and physical presence
restrictions, allowing thousands of immigrant service members to apply and receive citizenship while serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany,
Korea, and other foreign countries. Application fees were eliminated and every military installation was required to appoint a designated point
of contact to help noncitizen service members complete and file naturalization paperwork, further removing obstacles in obtaining U.S.
Between 2009 and 2013, all military service branches, with the exception of the Coast Guard,
have further facilitated the citizenship process by working with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services, or USCIS, to establish the “Naturalization at Basic Training Initiative.” This initiative allows
noncitizen enlistees to be naturalized when they graduate from boot camp if they meet requisite
criteria, which include possession of good moral character, English language knowledge, knowledge of U.S. government and history, and an
citizenship.
Oath of Allegiance to the U.S. Constitution. All aspects of the naturalization process, including capturing biometrics, the naturalization
interview, and administration of the Oath of Allegiance, are conducted by the USCIS on the military base. Overall,
these initiatives
have proven successful and popular among service members. Between September 2002 and June 2013, 89,095
noncitizen members of the U.S. armed forces became U.S. citizens, with 10,719 of these naturalizations occurring at USCIS naturalization
ceremonies in 28 countries, including Afghanistan, Djibouti, El Salvador, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, and South Korea. In
addition, noncitizen service members who served honorably during periods of hostility, and who died because of injury or disease resulting
from their military service, are eligible to receive posthumous citizenship if their next-of-kin apply within a designated timeframe. USCIS data
show that posthumous citizenship was awarded to 138 noncitizens between 2001 and 2012. Special programs targeting immigrants and native
language speakers 09L Because of the severe shortage of U.S. military linguists in dialects common to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pressing
need for them after 9/11, the Army launched the 09L program in February 2003 to recruit and train linguists and interpreters. Program planners
observed that training linguists to be soldiers was more cost effective, faster, and efficient than turning soldiers into linguists. Seasoned
linguists possess skills that take years to cultivate, while basic training to become a soldier only requires a matter of weeks. The original 09L
program targeted Arabic, Dari, and Pashto speakers, and immigrants have been crucial to the program’s success: Two-thirds of original program
Because of the
military’s difficulty in recruiting individuals with necessary skills for military readiness, the Department
of Defense piloted the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, or MAVNI, program in 2009 to
allow immigrants who are legally present—such as those on temporary visas, or those with Temporary
Protected Status—but not permanent residents to enlist. (Undocumented immigrants are ineligible under MAVNI.)
recruits were legal permanent residents while one-third were U.S.-born. Military Accessions Vital to National Interest
Initially, the program was limited to recruiting 1,000 individuals with special skills—such as physicians, nurses, and individuals with special
language or cultural skills—890 for the Army, 100 for the Navy, and 10 for the Air Force. The
MAVNI program quickly met its
quotas and was deemed such a success that it is currently being re-piloted between 2012 and 2014,
with a raised recruitment cap of 1,500 individuals a year. Conclusion With ongoing missions and continued
and growing strategic interests in the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa, recruiting
and training military personnel with non-Western linguistic and cultural capabilities is pivotal to
future U.S. military missions. As these capabilities are often rare or unavailable among U.S.-born
citizens, immigrant service members and children of immigrants with language and cultural
competencies have proven to be critical to filling this gap. The military must recruit the best and
brightest individuals that it can attract. By tapping into the pool of immigrants and children of
immigrants—something that would only be amplified by passing immigration reform and allowing all
those who wish to serve the ability to do so—the U.S. military ensures that it will continue to do just that.
Specifically --- cultural competence is key to every aspect of hegemony AND makes it
sustainable.
Fowler 16 (Eric, Culture and Military Effectiveness: How Societal Traits Influence Battle Outcomes, (2016), Old Dominion University,
Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations, Paper 6)
culture matters . Culture is admittedly complex and intangible, making it
difficult to measure or quantify. Regardless, empirical evidence shows that culture manifests concrete effects in combat, at
times determining battlefield outcomes . In particular, four specific cultural traits—Planning Propensity, Risk Aversion,
PRINCIPAL FINDING The principal finding of this study is that
Collective Deference, and Communication Impedance—explain more about the variance in relative combat casualties than material or
institutional factors alone. Perhaps more telling is that although regime type informed these cultural traits, they do not stand in lieu of
western democratic culture is not optimal for battle . In fact, some of the cultural traits that
correlate most highly with democracy work against it in battle. In the broader sense, the point at issue is that although scholars openly
acknowledge culture’s influence in social and economic environments, it is glaringly absent in rigorous
concepts of military power. This absence is both remarkable and unfortunate, as combat is perhaps the most anti-social of social
exchanges, often measuring its toll in transactions of both blood and treasure. Culture’s absence from meaningful definitions
of military power results in world leaders, military commanders, and learned scholars making important
political, operational, and theoretical decisions with only partial information. Without accounting for culture in
operational definitions of military power, conceptual models are underspecified, exaggerating the effects of those
factors commonly included—personnel quantity, equipment quality, economic development, and regime type. Put plainly, decisiondemocracy. In other words,
makers cannot accurately assess the martial capabilities and capacity of enemy states without accounting for culture. This lack of perspectiv
fully reverse military spending cuts and fully fund the military e means national leaders very likely overestimate the
military capability of some states, seeing threats where none exists, while concurrently underestimating the capacity in others, ignoring threats
that truly matter. The inability to assess military power informs not only the way leaders perceive wouldbe challengers but also how they view
allies. Who your friends are matters in battle, and how helpful they can be in a crisis depends largely on accurate measurements of their
capacity for and capability in combat. Without culture, appraisals
of allied military power suffer from the same
overestimation and underestimation errors found in enemy assessments. As before, decisionmakers cannot
accurately assess the martial capabilities and capacity of allied states without accounting for culture.
Consequently, national leaders may be asking too much of some allies, presuming they have capacity beyond their means while concurrently
asking too little from others, leaving untapped potential in the offing. Alliances represent another mechanism through which culture influences
military power. This time the effect manifests, not within a culture, but between them. Insofar as cultural traits influence the combative
behaviors of individuals in a group, they also influence the cooperative behaviors between groups as well. Dynamic interpersonal relationships
tend to benefit from a mixture of similarities and differences among participants. A conceptual equilibrium exists in the place where differences
improve divergent thinking without creating dissent and similarities unify purpose without devolving into groupthink. The critical component to
finding a balance between difference and similarity, thereby maximizing cultural interoperability, is improved cross-cultural awareness. Such
awareness enables national leaders to identify exploitable seams and vulnerabilities in partner relationships, both in allied institutions and in
adversary ones as well. It is important to note that inadequate
concepts of military power foster not only poor cultural
awareness of others but also poor cultural self-awareness. Without accounting for culture appropriately in self-estimates,
national leaders may overestimate their relative military capability, leading to policies based on unfounded optimism—a common precursor to
war. More specifically, if policy-makers erroneously assess their military power as their most or only capable element of national power, the
then resulting policy will likely reflect an undue burden on the military establishment to exert political will in the international system. For each
of these, the opposite also holds true. Without accounting for culture appropriately in self-estimates, states may underestimate their military
might, pursuing policies based upon unfounded pessimism. Such policies will likely reflect a reluctance to flex military muscle or support
initiatives that require martial contribution.Considering what is at stake, ignorance
regarding the ways cultural traits
influence combat essentially represents negligence by national leaders and their military commanders—
an overlooked opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of the military enterprise through the
cultivation of the military individual . Nations invest incredible amounts of treasure in military training programs during
peacetime to avoid paying terrible amounts of blood during war time. Without an appreciation for the role culture plays in
combat, these training programs tend to focus on the technical skills required to perform battlefield tasks and the
conduct of these tasks in collective exercises. As such, culture remains a largely untapped mechanism through which
decision-makers can deliberately enhance military power . Specifically, states might establish initiatives
that amplify cultural traits beneficial for combat while muting less-desirable traits. Such cultural programs
may enhance existing conditions of superior material resources, but they may also mitigate risk in
areas of the defense enterprise that suffer from inferior material quantity or quality—enabling some to do more
with less. In addition to the very practical ways that culture influences the preparation for and conduct of warfare, it also represents a
fundamental contribution to international relations theory. Broadly speaking, nearly all schools describe state behavior as a conditioned
response to power. Different theories place lesser or greater emphasis on their preferred power mechanism, but military power tends to
appear prominently throughout. The first issue with conventional concepts of military power is that they overlook culture and its influence on
warfare as described above. The second issue is a broader level-of-analysis problem; not the system-state-individual levels made famous by
Kenneth Waltz, but the strategic-operational-tactical levels made famous by Carl von Clausewitz.5 The result is that international relations
theorists tend to presume that all conflict-related causes manifest effects at all conflict-related levels, implying that variations in strategic
activity will automatically permeate all associated operational activities and tactical maneuvers. For this reason, much of the scholarship on the
sources of military effectiveness talks past one another, leaving the field awash with unhelpful discussion instead of productive discourse. This
study’s findings do not necessarily stand in conflict with the other schools of thought on military power so much as help restore a practical
context and logic. For the materialfocused scholar, this
study suggests that a country’s people , not just their military
platforms, are an indispensable resource contributing to military success . In other words, military
power is still a function of the quantity and quality of your tools, but also the qualities of the people
that use them . Therefore, states with militaries of comparable size and composition may manifest different levels of military prowess
because states with increasingly beneficial cultural traits field increasingly effective forces. For the tactically
focused scholar, this study suggests a nation’s culture informs the realm of the possible for both
commanders and soldiers, governing the complexity of operations available to a given force. In other words,
military power is still a function of force employment, but forces cannot successfully execute maneuvers that overwhelm their inherent ability
to function as individuals or as a unit. Therefore, culture
helps account for both the commanders who snatch defeat
from the jaws of otherwise certain victory and the soldiers who snatch victory from the jaws of certain
defeat. For the institutionally focused scholars, this study suggests that military power (at least on the field of battle) is not indicative of a
state’s economy or political institutions. This is not to say that economic strength or regime type have no influence on international conflict or
on national culture—quite to the contrary. Extensive scholarship readily establishes the role both money and politics play in the war initiation
and outcomes. It is also intuitive to expect the political and economic environment within which a society exists will simultaneously reflect and
reinforce a population’s values and beliefs. Instead, these findings do suggest that war and battle, though inexorably linked, are distinct
environments whose outcomes have distinctive causal phenomena. Consequently, the state-level factors of economic and political institutions
manifest their influence more clearly at the broader level of war, establishing the context within which campaigns and battles exist instead of
over-determining their internal actions. For the people-focused scholars, this study suggests that a country’s population, specifically certain
aspects of their national culture, represent the greatest influence on, therefore, the greatest returns on investment for, military success on the
battlefield. These conditions do not suggest that other factors are not important—for it is still a bad idea to bring a knife to a gunfight—but
culturally advantaged forces tend to exact higher tolls from their enemy than materially or
institutionally advantaged ones alone. It is important to note that though the literature on democracy and military effectiveness
provided the theoretical underpinnings for this study, western democracy does not represent the ideal cultural profile
for battlefield success. Western democracies do tend to possess battle-benefitting cultural qualities more often and to greater degrees
than their non-democratic counterparts do, but some cultural traits common to western democracies actually work against them. As such,
measures of democracy may stand in proxy if robust measures of culture are not available; but in doing so, scholars lose their conceptual
linkage to ways in which battlefield behaviors lead to positive or negative outcomes. While culture may not be the sole determinant of
military power, it does appear to be one
of the most influential ones. Perhaps more importantly, accounting for culture
effectively reprioritizes other theoretical determinants, favoring influences more proximal to the fight
over those more distant. This influence means that when military practitioners, defense policy-makers, and international relations
scholars conceptualize military power in battle, they must focus on the state’s relative superiority in military platforms and military people—
with greater deference to the latter than the former. It also means that we may recognize disagreements over distant political institutions and
economic principals as distractions within the context of battle, putting them aside for a different time, place, and purpose—namely
discussions of war. IMPLICATIONS If culture truly matters in battle, then much of the world’s conventional wisdom on what constitutes military
power and how to measure it require reconsideration. The three principle roles that readily employ concepts of military power are the military
commander, the national leader, and the scholar. Although culture maintains a common conceptual focal point for each role, differences in
their perspectives and tools available produce a broad array of implications. Military Implications For the military commander, a
recognition that culture plays a pivotal role in combat means that the mechanisms of battlefield calculus
and force generation must adapt to include new information. The intelligence apparatus that provides timely and
accurate assessments of enemy combat power must develop the skills and methods to discern variations in specific cultural traits and translate
those variations into meaningful descriptions of military capability. The
operations apparatus that provides assessments of
friendly combat power must also develop both an appreciation for how its culture influences capability
and measures for detecting impediments to the full use of cultural advantages . Military commanders also
increasingly find themselves operating under conditions of coalition warfare, requiring broader calculations of combat power—similar
assessments of allied partners; enemy and friendly. In addition to assessing enemy and friendly allied traits in isolation,
military commanders must develop sufficient cross-cultural competency throughout their
organizations to discern the seams created when organizations with disparate cultures cooperate . Such
seams represent both a force protection issue for friendly forces to guard against and a target of opportunity to exploit in enemy forces.
Recognizing that culture plays a role in combat also means that it plays a part before the first boots ever touch ground in the theater of
operations. Military
commanders undergoing the force generation process must incorporate cultural
factors into their assessments of both organizations and individuals. This newfound role for culture means that
military organizations must develop mechanisms to amplify beneficial cultural traits while concurrently
muting detrimental ones. Commanders may use some tools throughout the lifecycle of a soldier’s service to accomplish this, including
recruitment, training, and retention. Meaningful changes to recruitment procedures would screen military candidates for their possession of
Training programs would likewise
incorporate regimens to improve or sustain beneficial cultural traits . Retention programs would likely also include
beneficial cultural traits in addition to their physical and general technical aptitude.
some evaluation of a soldier’s cultural content in decisions on whether to retain their services or allow them to transition back into civilian life.
MAVNI helps Special Operations Forces maintain a worldwide presence --- empirics.
Copenhaver 14 [Colonel Mike Copenhaver, U.S. Army Colonel, 01/03/2014, U.S. Army War College Civilian Research Project, “The
Integration of Minorities into Special Operations: How Cultural Diversity Enhances Operations.”
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a620551.pdf, pg. 3-6, accessed 6/27/2018]
National Security remains one of the nation's highest priorities. As new threats emerge almost daily,
and the Department of Defense (DoD) prepares for significant downsizing, the demand for the
capabilities of Special Operations Forces (SOF) will increase. In order to meet an ever changing and
dynamic global threat, SOF must be prepared to operate in every corner of the world. To best prepare for
future missions, the men and women Special Operations must be trained and ready to meet these missions. A key characteristic of this
preparedness is to ensure that the Special Operations Forces are culturally diverse and organized to operate anywhere around the world. The
integration of minorities into Special Operations Forces can improve interoperability and seamless
transitions into the diverse cultural and ethnic locations where future missions will take U.S. Forces.
The ability to recruit, train and integrate personnel from multi-cultural and diverse ethnic backgrounds
into Special Operations will provide increased combat capability and enable the United States to meet
future national security threats to the nation. The Armed Forces have relied on cultural diversity from
service members for over 200 years. The ability to bring unique skills and capabilities to the fight enhanced operational capability
during several conflicts and peace keeping operations over the course of history. In WWI, Choctaw Indians were used to encode messages sent
by radio between units and commanders across the battlefield. During WWII, a more sophisticated program recruited Navajo Indians to send
and receive coded messages for military operations. The Navajo language, which was unwritten and contained multiple dialects, proved to be
so complex and difficult to speak, that many say the successful capture of Iwo Jima would not have been possible had it not been for the Navajo
code talkers. The Japanese were experts in deciphering codes during the war; however, the ability of the U.S. military to take advantage of the
expertise and language of the Navajo Indians demonstrated how the use of a unique cultural capability significantly enhanced operational
capability and gave the U.S. a clear advantage over their adversary. More recently, during
preparation for the U.S. intervention
in Haiti in 1994, there was a personnel database query completed across all of the Armed Forces to
identify Creole speaking personnel in order to marry up interpreters with key leaders. The invasion turned into
a permissive entry and ultimately a Humanitarian Relief Operation; however, the need for language and cultural expertise
remained a high priority requirement. The services identified a number of personnel with the language
capability to support the operation. This was a prime example of the importance of having unique cultural capability to support an
operation; however, the process DoD used was neither ideal nor met the threshold for a future Tactic, Technique and Procedure (TTP) change.
Ideally, this capability would be a part of the Geographic Combatant Commander's force structure and capability package. A still more recent
example in which cultural diversity programs have enhanced operational capability was the Secretary of Defense's approval of the Military
Accessions Vital to National Interests (MAVNI) program. The MAVNI program was originally conceived in 2007 as a way to expand the pool of
potential recruits for military service. It allows certain non-citizens, who are legally present in the United States without green cards to join the
military and apply immediately for U.S. citizenship without first obtaining lawful permanent residence. United States laws 10 USC Sec. 504 and
8 USC Sec. 1440 outlines the categories of non-citizens who may join the U.S. military. Thousands of non-citizens serve in the military today
doing a variety of different jobs. The
intent of the MAVNI program is to recruit individuals who possess specific
foreign language skills and professional medical skills.3 The MAVNI program provides an avenue
through which the military can bring non-citizens into the ranks to fulfill critical operational
requirements. Special Operations Forces have taken advantage of this program by recruiting personnel
with language capability and diverse ethnic backgrounds in order to support missions in various
geographic locations worldwide. Admiral Eric T. Olson, commander, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM),
testified to Congress in November 2008 that USSOCOM had made great progress in increasing our level of regional
expertise through the recruitment of native heritage speakers. He stated, "as of today, over 100 legal nonpermanent
residents (LNPRs) with special language skills and abilities have joined the Army under a pilot program. Some of these candidates will serve in
special operations 5 units."4 The challenge associated with MAVNI, however, is the cap on the program. Politics
make it unlikely that the cap will be removed, and it can therefore only be used as one element in meeting the overall initiative to diversify SOF.
Similar to other studies and programs, the MAVNI program was approved with an arbitrary cap of 100. It
is understandable that
limitations for bringing non-U.S. citizens into the military needed to be closely managed due to security
and other factors, but the military missed an opportunity to focus recruitment on key operational
shortfalls and specifically target skills, requirements and accessions to support operational capability
rather than numbers.
No alt causes to readiness --- personnel shortages cause a readiness death spiral that
risks nuclear conflict.
Panetta et al. 17 (Bipartisan Policy Center, Task Force on Defense Personnel Co-Chairs: Leon Panetta, Former Secretary of Defense,
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Jim Talent, Former Senator, Member of the National Defense Panel; Jim Jones, Former
National Security Advisor, 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps; General (ret.), U.S. Marine Corps; Kathy Roth-Douquet, Former White House
and Defense Department official, Chief Executive Officer of Blue Star Families; “The Building Blocks of a Ready Military: People, Funding,
Tempo,” Bipartisan Policy Center, January 2017, https://cdn.bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/BPC-Defense-MilitaryReadiness.pdf)
the U.S. military’s state of preparedness has become a central focus
for policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon
Top
defense leaders have sounded the alarm over the current state of military readiness, especially when
speaking about the military’s ability to succeed in a conflict against a near-peer or high-end adversary
Executive Summary As the global security environment becomes more complex and unpredictable,
. Military readiness is the metric commonly used to discuss whether the military is prepared to confront a multitude of threats.
. Before
the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2016, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, “Nothing is more important to us than readiness, which is why it was the highest priority we had in preparing the 2017 defense budget—partly to rebuild full-spectrum readiness after 15
Discussions around readiness
revolve
around resources
and
OPTEMPO
Often missing
is how readiness levels are impacted by the military personnel system People are the heart of a ready
force
Current military
personnel policies exacerbate today’s readiness challenges by amplifying the impact of low funding
and high OPTEMPO to create a recruiting and retention death spiral Low readiness leads to low
morale and vice versa; which is why readiness, once lost, is so difficult to recover. Falling readiness
levels negatively impact recruiting and retention, as service members lose confidence in their ability to
succeed in their missions, which in turn increases the geostrategic risks facing the nation Despite this
relationship between readiness and personnel, there is little attention paid to the system that manages
the people
as the military continues to shrink, current personnel
procedure places ever-higher demand on the smaller number of troops who remain—particularly those
small number of troops who operate at the “tip of the spear” of U.S. combat capability As the Pentagon
tries to mount a concerted readiness recovery
impedes progress
personnel
If
not
fully prepared to face emerging threats, then no amount of money or other incentive will be enough to
recruit and retain the highly talented workforce the military needs to succeed in the future
years of counterinsurgency operations and partly to restore damage done over the last several years that was caused by the effects of sequestration cuts.”1
(whether the military is adequately funded)
operational tempo, or “
levels most often
” (whether the pace of military operations is too high or too low).
from this discussion
.
. The Pentagon explicitly recognizes this truism by housing both personnel and readiness policy in the same office: the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Rea diness. The two concepts are inextricably linked.
.
.
who fight the nation’s wars. The U.S. armed forces face constantly evolving missions, yet the personnel system that serves them is uniform and stagnant. The up-or-out nature of military careers force service members to miss out on key training activities,
while the inflexibility of the system leaves service members and their families particularly vulnerable to budgetary instability. Meanwhile,
.
, the system that manages service-member careers
the defense budget is unlikely to significantly rise, Pentagon leaders should view
. In an era where OPTEMPO demands are unlikely to fall and
reform as the most important opportunity to improve long-term military-readiness levels.
the brave men and women who work for the Defense Department are
. This paper will analyze readiness in
the context of its impact on service members and their families. In early 2017, BPC’s Task Force on Defense Personnel will make recommendations to boost readiness levels by increasing the flexibility of the personnel system and by making military service more attractive to the next
generation of Americans. Understanding Full-Spectrum Readiness Readiness is an amorphous term. Former acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Brad Carson and his senior adviser Morgan Plummer have written that the lack of clarity on th e topic “has left
military ‘readiness’ a notion more mystical than scientific.”2 Perhaps the most authoritative document on military readiness is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Guide to the Chairman’s Readiness System, which says, “One of the major obstacles to ensuring a force is ready is
understanding what readiness really means.”3 The Guide provides a useful answer to this obstacle by stipulating that readiness levels should be tracked against the military’s ability to execute The National Military Strategy. 4 The National Military Strategy is a regularly updated document
that describes the role of the military in advancing U.S. national interests and in supporting the goals of the president’s national security strategy. The most recent National Security Strategy of the United States—a document regularly updated by the White House for Congress—requires
to deter and defeat
missile, cyber, and terrorist attacks, while mitigating the
effects of attacks and natural disasters
illustrates the variety of threats the military must be
prepared to confront. No other military in the world is tasked with the volume of responsibilities, both
at home and abroad, that the U.S. armed forces must be prepared for
the military be “ready
threats to the homeland, including against
potential
.”5 This short statement
. Defense leaders characterize the variety of threats on a continuum, called the “spectrum of
conflict,” which dictates a range of military options (see Figure 1). [ Figure 1. Legacy Spectrum-of-Conflict Model OMITTED ] Since the spectrum of conflict is so broad, a military prepared for one mission may not be ready for a different one. This unfortunate position is where the U.S.
military finds itself today. The legacy spectrum-of-conflict model is no longer accurate for today’s threat environment. A more accurate depiction is illustrated in the “new normal” spectrum of conflict (see Figure 2). This model shows that even in times of relative peace, the U.S. military is
called upon to provide a persistent global presence, which comes at a significant cost. Additionally, over the last 15 years, the military has realized that counterinsurgency campaigns, though lower in intensity, come at a high cost in terms of both lives and dollars. Based on recent
testimony, the military is currently only adequately funded for a small number of the total missions it is responsible for. T his is why the Pentagon’s FY 2017 budget request is focused on restoring “full-spectrum readiness” after discovering readiness deficiencies resulting from “14 years of
Objective evidence of a readiness shortfall is
difficult to find, but that does not mean the shortfall is any less real. For national security reasons, the
Defense Department is reluctant to publicly broadcast the precise state of U.S. military preparedness
counterinsurgency-centric campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.”6 [ Figure 2. New Normal Spectrum-of-Conflict Model OMITTED ] Evidence of Readiness Shortfall
. Even
organizations like the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have a difficult time precisely measuring military-readiness levels. A 2013 GAO report concluded that the Pentagon “sometimes presents detailed readiness data without sufficient
context on how this information relates to or affects the information it provides on … areas, such as equipment, personnel, and training.”7 Even reports designed to communicate readiness levels to policymakers are largely not sufficient to inform resourcing and other strategic decisions.
The Defense Department is required to provide a Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress (QRRC). This classified report is intended to help lawmakers track military-readiness levels and determine if the military is properly funded to meet its mission. The QRRC primarily provides readiness
insight by using two main systems: the Status of Resources and Training System (SORTS) and the Defense Readiness Report System (DRRS). Both systems rely on a combination of objective resource information (for example, personnel, equipment, supply, training) and subjective
commander assessments of unit capability. However, despite the importance of these reports and the long-standing challenge of measuring the military’s overall readiness, SORTS and DRRS are still criticized for lacking insight. A 2013 CBO report found that these quarterly reports lack the
Since detailed
readiness metrics are either nonexistent or classified, and even reports to Congress are incomplete,
outsiders must rely on a combination of analytical methods to develop an accurate assessment of
military-readiness levels. Public testimony from defense leaders provides a first-hand, if sometimes
biased, expert account of military capability. Budgetary inputs provide additional context and present an
objective measurement of changes over time. Other metrics, like retention levels and survey data, can
add additional background and help paint a more complete picture of overall military readiness
Pentagon leaders have repeatedly made public statements plainly stating that the military is
struggling with its overall, full-spectrum readiness levels
These are worrying
admissions and speak to the depth of the problem
information that could best assist Congress, saying, “The QRRC simply does not systematically address many readiness questions, such as the pace of operations and its effect on readiness or morale and psychological well-being.”8
. Military Leaders Are
Worried
. During recent testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford
stated that the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps will not be able to address “their readiness challenges” until 2020, while the Air Force could take until 2028 to be sufficiently ready for their full-spectrum missions.9
. The caps on the defense budget are set to expire in 2022, so for the Air Force at least, the readiness recovery seems to be affected by other factors
in addition to the budget caps mandated by the Budget Control Act (BCA). During posture hearings for the FY 2017 defense budget, service leaders have been nearly unanimous in their assessments of the military’s state of readiness. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, said the Army’s
readiness is “not at a level that is appropriate for what the American people expect to defend them.”10 Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller recently stated that the Marine Corps’ aviation units “are currently unable to meet our training and mission requirements primarily due to
Ready Basic Aircraft shortfalls.”11 While former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh ominously stated, “The average age of our aircraft is at an all-time high, and the size of our force and state of our full-spectrum readiness are at or near all-time lows.”12 Lastly, Navy chief Adm. John
Richardson painted the rosiest picture, saying the Navy is “still digging out” from maintenance and readiness shortfalls.13 G en. Milley has frequently sounded the alarm over the Army’s current state of overall readiness. Since 2001, the Army has dedicated most of its training and
preparation to fighting terrorist networks and counterinsurgency conflicts. Indeed, according to Milley, the Army has “very g ood current capability and capacity to fight the counterterrorist and counterinsurgency fight.”14 However, on a recent trip to Africa, Milley said that against
“higher-end threats, our skills have atrophied over the last 15 years.”15 Furthermore, at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn testified, “Less than one-third of Army forces are at acceptable levels of readiness to conduct sustained
ground combat in a full-spectrum environment.”16 The Air Force is in a similar position when it comes to high-end readiness. Although the Army and Marine Corps boots-on-the-ground deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have steeply declined over the last several years, that has done
little to ease demand on an Air Force tasked with executing large-scale air campaigns over Libya and against ISIS, in addition to maintaining a continuous air presence over Afghanistan. These operations are mostly focused on close air support and tactical air-to-ground attacks. While these
operations are inherently risky, today’s American pilots have enjoyed theater air dominance and have not had to confront enemy air defenses. In an extraordinary statement from a budget document, the FY 2017 Air Force budget request stated, “Though very proficient at current lowend operations, less than 50 percent of Combat Air Forces (CAF) are proficient in other required high-end mission sets.”17 These are worrying trends for a military that has global responsibilities and a full spectrum-of-conflict mission. Troubling Budget Dynamics While the statements of
the
budget merely provides information on readiness inputs, such as funding for flying hours and training
rotations, rather than readiness outputs, such as targeting accuracy and unit performance ratings
Outsiders can see trends and make inferences about the state of the military, but these inferences
should be linked to other data to make accurate assessments of overall readiness levels
top service commanders are certainly alarming, additional analysis is warranted. The annual defense budget provides a glimpse into internal DOD planning and provides a high-level view of the inputs that shape military readiness. It is important to highlight that
.18
. The base defense budget is divided among
five main appropriations: Military Personnel (MILPERS); Operations and Maintenance (O&M); Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E); Procurement; and Military Construction (MILCON). As a general rule, MILPERS and O&M make up roughly two-thirds of the annual
budget, while RDT&E and Procurement make up most of the remainder. MILCON is usually only about 1 percent of the annual budget. Each appropriation has different governing rules, but all can be linked to building military readiness in some way.19 Though each defense appropriation
is implicitly tied to readiness, the O&M budget request is explicitly justified to Congress in terms of its impact on readiness. The 2017 defense budget requested $205.8 billion for the O&M account and justified this by saying, “O&M programs support the Services’ efforts to enhance
readiness by focusing on recovering full-spectrum readiness to meet current demands and to ensure our Joint Force is ready for future contingencies.”20 The O&M account provides funds for the most obvious “readiness-building” activities. For example, in order to prepare pilots for
combat, pilots must fly an adequate number of training hours. For the Army, units are rotated through combat-training centers to train for potential future conflicts and upcoming deployments. The Navy builds readiness through ship-steaming days, depot maintenance, weapon
sustainment, and other training activities. All of these activities are funded from the O&M account. From a funding perspective, one of the best ways to evaluate the military’s overall readiness level is to closely track the O&M budget. [ Figure 3. Funded Army Combat Training-Center
Over the last several years, the funding for each military service’s primary readiness-building
activities has been inconsistent, at best, and heavily cut, at worst
Rotations OMITTED ]
. For the Army, the number of funded combat training-center rotations was cut from 24 in FY 2012, to just
14 in FY 2013 (see Figure 3). These training-center rotations were described by former Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno as “the culminating event of readiness for brigade combat teams.”21 Since 2013, the Army has increased the number of funded training-center rotations but is still only
projecting 19 rotations in FY 2017, which is 21 percent lower than in 2012. If one uses 2012 as a baseline, cumulatively the Army has canceled 28 training-center rotations over the last five years, or more than one full year of training. [ Figure 4. Funded Navy and Marine Corps Flying Hours
OMITTED ] [ Figure 5. Funded Air Force Flying Hours OMITTED ] For the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, flying hours is one of the metrics used to measure readiness for aviation units. Unfortunately for all three branches, flying hours have declined since FY 2012 (see Figure 4 and Figure
5). The problem is particularly pronounced in the Navy and Marine Corps, which have seen a 6 and 19 percent reduction in flying hours, respectively, from FY 2012 to FY 2015. A Marine spokesperson summed up the situation: “We do not have enough ready basic aircraft. … That means
we are not getting enough flight hours, and we aren’t up on our maintenance requirements for those specific aircraft.”22 The Marine Corps has requested an additional $460 million for the next fiscal year to address “readiness shortfalls.”23 While the Air Force has recently experienced a
return to pre-FY-2013 flying-hour levels, it’s particularly notable that the Air Force experienced a 6 percent dip in flying hours from FY 2012 to FY 2013. In 2013, the Air Force temporarily grounded 13 combat squadrons—nearly one-third of active-duty fighter and bomber units— due to a
$591 million cut to the flying-hours program.24 The Army made a similar readiness-harming decision when it canceled major training events for 78 percent of its combat brigades—essentially every unit that was not tapped to deploy.25 Meanwhile, the Navy delayed the planned
These major decisions have long-lasting repercussions: Once
individual readiness levels fall, it can take years for the military to recover
deployment of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group due to sequestration-driven budget cuts.26
. Retention Levels and Survey Data The budget realities of the last several years
have forced the military to downsize overall. Since 2012, the total size of the active force has decreased by nearly 100,000 personnel. The reduction in force has, to some degree, masked any specific retention problems. Over the last year, however, some cracks in retention have begun to
form, most obviously in the case of fighter pilots, who form a key combat capability for the U.S. military. No American service member on the ground has been killed by an enemy aircraft attack since the Korean War in 1953.27 This amazing streak of air dominance has been enabled by
the readiness of American fighter pilots who have sufficient experience and are well-trained for their missions. This capability is in danger now as the result of numerous readiness-related challenges. In August 2016, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said, if current trends continue,
“in just a couple years” the Air Force could be short of approximately 1,000 fighter pilots. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein attributed the main reason for this shortage to readiness, stating, “Pilots who don’t fly, maintainers who don’t maintain, and controllers who don’t control
are not going to stay.”28 Recent Pentagon survey data backs up Goldfein’s assertion. The most recent Status of Forces survey of active-duty personnel states, “Overall, retention, stress in work life, and unit readiness [are] generally worse in 2014 than 2013.” Additionally, only 65 percent
of those surveyed said that “their units were well prepared to perform their wartime mission.”29 This is 3 to 7 percentage points lower than most of the survey results from the preceding ten years. Causes of Readiness Shortfal If measuring the readiness shortfall is a challenge,
determining the cause of the shortfall is comparably easy. Today’s readiness shortfall is primarily caused by a combination of three factors: (1) persistently high OPTEMPO, (2) stagnant or decreasing defense budgets, and (3) an inflexible personnel system. Two of these issues reside
mostly outside of the Pentagon’s purview. Global events largely dictate the military demands that drive OPTEMPO, while the defense budget is a product of the legislative branch and domestic political trends. Therefore, one of the few places where defense leaders can improve long-term
readiness levels is through modernizing a personnel system that has not been renovated since the end of World War II. High OPTEMPO Drains Readiness OPTEMPO, or the pace of military operations, is another factor that can impact military readiness. Though some level of deployment
activity enhances individual and unit readiness by providing opportunities to utilize skills developed in training, excessively high OPTEMPO can actually negatively impact overall readiness by eliminating the opportunity to train for other kinds of missions (see Figure 6).30 The Defense
Science Board spoke to this dynamic, saying, “OPTEMPO intensity levels, if sustained beyond normal for extended periods, can actually reduce the ability of our forces to train for all assigned missions.”31 For example, in 2007, at the peak of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the military focused
the majority of its energy on fighting and winning a counterinsurgency fight. This focus could have distracted the military from its nuclear-deterrent mission, leading to the accidental transportation of nuclear weapons across the country (see Box 1). The wide array of missions that the
U.S. military has engaged in since the sequester cuts in FY 2013 has further exacerbated the demand problem. The following is a condensed list of “major deployments” from the Congressional Research Service: • The war in Afghanistan • The continuing U.S. presence in Iraq • The fight
against ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups • Various movements and operations in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Liberia, Libya, Niger, Poland, Senegal, Somalia, South Korea, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Uganda • The Ebola
epidemic • Various disaster-relief missions • New force presence in Australia • And this is only a list of “major deployments.” The U.S. military has also engaged in numerous non-major deployments since FY 2013. In testimony to the House Subcommittee on Readiness relating to the pace
of military operations, Rear Adm. Jeffrey A. Harley stated, “After years of operating above sustainable levels, we remain challenged to meet the necessary surge capacity in quantity and readiness across a wide array of forces.”32 [ Figure 6. Readiness vs. OPTEMPO Model OMITTED ] The
2007 Air Force Nuclear Weapons Incident The risk of a force that is not ready to execute its assigned missions takes on added danger when it involves nuclear weapons. While the Air Force was consumed with the counterinsurgency fight in the Middle East, it lost focus on its nuclear
responsibilities. This resulted in a highly unsafe event: On August 29, 2007, six nuclear-armed cruise missiles were accidentally loaded onto a B-52 bomber and flown from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The nuclear warheads on the missiles
were supposed to have been removed prior to loading. The error was not discovered until 36 hours later, after the nuclear warheads had been left mostly unguarded while mounted to the aircraft. This incident led to a massive shakeup within the Air Force, with the resignation of the
secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff and with the eventual creation of the Air Force Global Strike Command to oversee all Air Force nuclear operations. The Defense Science Board formed an independent task force to determine the cause of such a lapse in the performance of a
“no-fail” mission. The board retraced the steps that led to the unauthorized relocation of nuclear weapons and determined several areas of lax oversight and failure to follow proper procedures. However, the deeper concern raised by the board was “the perception in the force that
nuclear forces and the nuclear-deterrent mission are increasingly devalued.”33 This perception arose from the frequent transfer of responsibility for nuclear forces following the end of the Cold War. As the nuclear mission became less prominent, the personnel assigned to the mission felt
neglected by the Air Force chain of command, resulting in lower morale and, consequently, lower readiness. The task force highlighted an Air Force report identifying an “urgent need for attention to personnel matters for nuclear-experienced people.”24 A Constrained Budget The
dynamics of the post-BCA defense budget have forced defense leaders to cut readiness funding in order to meet budget caps that have constrained ov erall military spending. The FY 2016 defense budget (including overseas-contingency-operation funding) is approximately $104 billion
smaller in real terms than in FY 2012, the last year before the BCA went into effect (see Figure 7). In FY 2013 alone, the Defense Department had to confront $52 billion in near-instantaneous cuts resulting from sequestration triggered by the BCA.35 Rapidly implemented budget cuts
would be troublesome for most government agencies, but for an organization as complex as the Pentagon, sequestration and the follow-on budget caps present particularly difficult trade-offs that directly impact U.S. national security. Unfortunately, one of the repercussions of the BCA
was a need to delay the training and maintenance that most directly impacts military personnel preparing to respond to future threats [ Figure 7. Defense Budget Cuts Since Sequestration (FY 2017 Constant Dollars) OMITTED ] The year-on-year fluctuations of the various defense budget
accounts show how budget dynamics have intensified the readiness struggle that has impacted the military since BCA-mandated budget caps came into effect. When sequestration struck the Pentagon in 2013, the department cut O&M outlays by approximately 9 percent from the prior
year. Meanwhile, the Procurement, RDT&E, and MILPERS accounts were only cut by a combined average of 6 percent. Of the $53 billion cut by the BCA in FY 2013, roughly 54 percent was taken from the O&M budget, despite O&M consuming only 43 percent of the total defense budget
(see Figure 8). The department was forced to adversely cut O&M funding, even while facing a recognized readiness challenge due to the structure of the defense budget. Pentagon planners had to go where the money was in order to meet the sequestration requirements. While it takes
years to shrink the size of the force and it can actually increase costs to prematurely break acquisition contracts, O&M activities are easier to cut on a shorter time line. [ Figure 8. FY 2013 Sequester Cuts Disproportionately Impacted Readiness OMITTED ] Personnel Systems Exacerbate
Readiness Challenge As dwindling defense dollars force Pentagon leaders to sacrifice readiness-building activities, the inflexibility of current personnel practices exacerbates the readiness struggle. Up-or-out and one-size-fits-all career tracks leave few options to mitigate the negative
impact of readiness shortfalls created by canceled training events. If a service member misses out on a training activity or other critical experience, the current system does not allow for individuals to make up for that missed opportunity. For example, 78 percent of the Army captains who
were combat-unit company commanders in 2013 were forced to miss major training events that are crucial for learning small-unit tactics and leadership.36 Since the personnel system limits company command to only a two-year assignment, there is almost zero opportunity to reschedule
the missed training. The up-or-out promotion system forces the Army to rotate officers on an inflexible timetable in order to ensure that all officers receive comparable experience. Company command is one of the foundational leadership assignments for junior officers. Successful
company commanders often go on to senior leadership roles within the Army, eventually commanding large troop formations when they are promoted to serve as battalion and even brigade commanders. Missed training events at the company level leave an experience gap that could
last the length of an officer’s career. As former Army Deputy Chief of Staff Major Gen. Gary Cheek said, if during a two-year company-command assignment, a captain misses crucial training experiences, “it’s gone forever.”37 The same can be said for crucial assignments in the Navy and
Air Force. As Air Force Secretary James recently wrote, the military, “unlike many private-sector companies, which can fill vacancies by simply tapping an experienced and flexible labor pool, ... the military has to grow its own set of skilled specialties, and that can take years.”38 Today’s
personnel systems artificially limit the military’s ability to adapt its forces to budgetary instability and readiness challenges. The experience and readiness gaps created during the initial years of the BCA will have long-lasting ripple effects. Retention Harmed by Readiness Shortfall Service
members join and stay in the military for numerous reasons. While compensation and quality-of-life are important, the military’s main retention tool is its unique mission. Protecting the nation is a calling, and if the military is forced to shortchange that mission through cuts to readiness
and training, many service members will decide to leave. The current Air Force fighter-pilot shortage is in many ways a product of the consistent readiness struggles of the last several years.39 Dollars spent on readiness-producing activities like flying hours serve a dual purpose: It allows
service members to be better prepared for future conflict, but readiness also acts as an important retention tool. As current Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein recently said: “In my mind, readiness and morale are inextricably linked. Where we have high readiness, we have high
morale. Where we have low readiness, we have our lowest morale.” As a result, in 2013, when the Air Force first started dealing with drastic flying-hour reductions and pilot shortages, then-acting Air Force Secretary Eric Fanning said the main reason pilots are leaving are “flying-hour
issues” because “pilots want to fly.”40 Perhaps the most glaring shortcoming of the one-size-fits-all, up-or-out personnel system is the amount of time it takes to recover from unanticipated setbacks and adversity. The Air Force fighter-pilot shortage will take years to correct. In FY 2016,
the Air Force projected a shortage of 723 fighter pilots. The pilot training system can produce approximately 200 new pilots every year at a cost of about $2.6 million each. Even in the absolute best-case scenario, where no additional pilots leave the Air Force, it would take nearly four
years to get back to full-strength. However, over the last two years, the service has lost an average of about 355 pilots per year.41 Unless major changes are made to how personnel are managed, the Air Force could be facing significant retention challenges for the foreseeable future. The
Unless otherwise
interrupted, low readiness levels create a death spiral that negatively impacts retention, recruiting, and
puts more Americans in danger
Eventually low morale has a negative impact on military
retention levels. As the most experienced and skilled service members decide to hang up their uniforms,
those left behind must carry more of the burden, which places further stress upon an already stressed
force and makes recruiting the next generation even more difficult
adversaries of the U S will
take notice of this readiness death spiral and the level of national security risk will rise, while at the
same time, the military’s ability to respond continues to fall. The precursors to the readiness death spiral
described above are already evident
Readiness Death Spiral While the conversation around readiness is often abstract or theoretical, it is important to remember that for individual service members, the consequence of low readiness is an increased risk of injury or death.
. As decreased defense funding disproportionately impacts readiness accounts, service members have fewer opportunities to train and improve their skills. When critical combat skills atrophy, military
personnel lose confidence in their ability to successfully perform their missions, which erodes unit cohesion and morale.
. Ultimately,
nited
tates
. In January 2016, two Marine Corps CH-53 Super Stallions were conducting a nighttime training mission off the coast of Hawaii. The two aircraft collided and all 12 Marines onboard both
helicopters were killed.42 The official investigation ruled that the accident was caused by pilot error, but the cause of the error could easily be attributed to low readiness levels. According to the investigation report, “By late 2015, Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463 pilots became
increasingly concerned that they were not logging enough flight hours to maintain proficiency.” And at the time of the accident, many of the squadron’s pilots “believed they were not ready for combat, as they felt they would not be able to safely execute certain tasks, like safely landing
the helicopter at night.”43 Further illustrating the readiness death spiral, some of the Marine pilots not involved in the crash, who taxpayers had spent millions to train, were “looking forward to follow-on ground tours because of the lack of flight time.” Unless readiness conditions
change, many of these same pilots might seek future employment outside of the military, which would be an additional loss on top of those who were killed in this accident. While this incident is tragic, it should serve as a loud warning for the military as a whole. Twelve lives were
needlessly lost due in large part to low readiness levels. This accident occurred in training. The consequences of low readiness in a conflict against an adversary would result in many more American service members injured or killed. Geostrategic Risks of Low Readiness
A
military that is incapable of preparing for the full spectrum of conflict is forced to choose what it will
prepare for. History shows that in these cases, military leaders often get it wrong. When a military is
unprepared for a fight, the results can be devastating
The national security
impact of degraded readiness can be categorized in two ways: (1) the military is less prepared for
unanticipated conflict, and (2) the risk of conflict rises
. More American service members are hurt or killed and morale plummets.
. Unfortunately, the readiness challenges currently facing the force are in some ways a repetition of a pattern that has sporadically
affected the U.S. military over its history. Unprepared for the Unanticipated Following the end of the Vietnam War, in the early days of the all-volunteer force, the U.S. military was widely regarded as a “hollow force.”44 Due to a combination of factors, in 1979, six out of ten U.S.-based
Army divisions were classified as “not combat-ready.” Of the four divisions forward-stationed in Europe, which should have had the highest levels of readiness to deter Soviet aggression, one division was classified as not ready.45 These low readiness levels were brought about by
difficulties associated with the post-Vietnam transition to a volunteer military, eroding value of military pay, lack of funding for key training activities, and equipment in disrepair. In short, the post-Vietnam military was ill-prepared to face a variety of threats and essentially incapable of
responding to unforeseen security challenges. The lack of readiness in the late-1970s led to disastrous operations in the early 1980s. Operation Eagle Claw was launched in April 1980 to rescue American hostages held in Iran. The mission failed due to a combination of factors related to
military readiness. For example, the Army lacked helicopter pilots who were sufficiently trained for low-level night flying while the military’s mission planners did not have enough experience with joint special operations to execute the mission successfully. One assessment of Operation
Eagle Claw claimed, “The disaster immediately raised doubts about U.S. military capabilities and the state of readiness of the armed forces.”46 Ultimately, the unsuccessful rescue attempt resulted in eight dead service members and the continued captivity of 52 Americans at the U.S.
Embassy in Tehran. In more recent times, the U.S. military was again caught off guard by the counterinsurgency fight that developed in Iraq in 2004. The Pentagon was clearly well-prepared to defeat the Iraqi military and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime; it took only a few short months
to accomplish both. But the military was not sufficiently ready in terms of both capacity and capability to quell the instability that ensued following the rapid overthrow of the long-standing Iraqi government. Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, describes the U.S.
military’s inability to cope with insurgent operations in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, asserting: “The campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq in the [early 2000s] were the most consequential demonstrations of U.S. military weakness in these areas of all [counterinsurgency]. Throug h
2006, both operations were essentially failing, despite initial impressive successes that seemed to square with visions of a military revolution held by Secretary of Defense [Donald] Rumsfeld and others.”47 As Iraq descended into a sectarian civil war, the Army and Marine Corps troops on
the ground did not have the strategy or skill sets needed to counter the violence. It took nearly three years of deadly fighting before U.S. forces finally adapted to the unique demands of a counterinsurgency campaign. From 2003 to the start of the surge in 2007, 3,309 American service
members were killed before the military was able to turn the tide of the conflict. The “surge,” as Gen. David Petraeus has said, was not just a surge of capacity (boots on the ground) but also a surge of ideas, or military capability.48 This blend of capacity and capability perfectly aligns with
the
rest of the world has clearly taken notice The U.S. armed forces are the world’s only military with a
global presence and responsibility. This means that the global community pays attention when they
see signals of U.S. military instability or unpreparedness
the desired goal of military readiness. Adversaries Taking Advantage As defense and military leaders continue to harp about t he armed forces’ current lack of readiness and as BCA-induced budget caps continue to limit the Defense Department’s institutional flexibility,
.
. Since the BCA became law in 2011 and caps began to impact the defense budget in 2013, policymakers on Capitol Hill, in the
Pentagon, and in the White House have stated that the U.S. military is harmed by the budget cuts. Indeed, President Barack Obama has requested more money than the BCA allowed in every single year since the budget caps took effect. Even the two bipartisan budget agreements that
Based on global events over the last few years, this self-inflicted
harm to U.S. military readiness has been noticed around the world, and U.S. adversaries have taken
advantage
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine Russia’s
actions followed a period of U.S. military withdrawal from Europe
marginally increased defense spending did not provide all the funds that the White House requested.
. In August 2014, roughly one year after the BCA cut defense spending by 8 percent,
.
the
an theater. In May 2013, the last permanently assigned Air Force A-10 attack aircraft was withdrawn
from Europe.49 Less than a year later, the Air Force announced it was seeking to retire the entire fleet of A-10s due to budget constraints. Similarly, in April 2013, the Army removed its last tank brigades from Europe.50 Russia took notice of these major force redistributions, and these
cuts likely played a factor in the timing of the Crimean annexation. Since 2014, the Air Force has redeployed A-10s to the European continent on a rotational basis, while the Army has been “forced to rely on weapons shipped back temporarily or hardware borrowed from allies in the
In the Asia-Pacific region, another U.S. competitor has taken an increasingly active
position in staking out new territorial claims
China declared an
ADIZ in the East China Sea over the disputed Senkaku Islands
served to raise the level of tension in the Asian theater
despite the Obama administration’s announced diplomatic and military “pivot to Asia
The strategic
landscape facing U.S. forces has changed dramatically in the past ten years. It is likely to change just as
dramatically in the next decade
the global security environment as “the
most unpredictable
in 40 years
Full-spectrum readiness cannot be achieved solely through budgetary means, and the global security
environment is unlikely to result in substantially reduced personnel OPTEMPO. To break out of the
readiness death spiral, fundamental reforms to the personnel systems must be pursued
the strengths
and talents of
people are the foundation of the U.S. military’s advantage As long as the systems
that recruit, train, retain, and manage the force can compete for the nation’s best and brightest,
there is no reason to think that America’s military advantage cannot endure. However, if the military
continues on its current path, no amount of money or high-tech weaponry will be enough to maintain
the U.S. military advantage for the long term
expanding effort to deter the latest threats from Russia.”51
in international waters. In November 2013, eight months after the defense-budget sequester,
Identification Zone (
)
Air Defense
.52 An ADIZ is a requirement that, in the interest of national security, all air traffic entering a certain
geographic area identify themselves to government controllers. The declaration of a Chinese ADIZ over disputed territory
. Chinese
leaders took this action
.” After the ADIZ
announcement, the Chinese military has taken to building artificial islands in the international waters of the South China Sea to further China’s territorial claims and provide forward-based airfields for military and other purposes. Conclusion
. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey described
I have seen
.” This complex geostrategic landscape should focus defense leaders’ attention on ensuring that the U.S. military is ready for the full spectrum of threats it could be called upon to respond to.
. Service members must have the ability to
structure a career that meets both the needs of the military and the needs of their personal development. Both outcomes can a nd should be valued by senior military leaders and policymakers. BPC’s Task Force on Defense Personnel recognizes that
the American
.
. The task force will make innovative recommendation to improve these systems and to ensure the U.S. military remains the world’s finest.
That solves great power war --- reject old defense that ignores emerging instability and
compounding risk.
AT: 90s Retrenchment
Brands 18 [Hal, Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a
senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments." American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump." Page 129-133]
Since World War II, the United States has had a military second to none . Since the Cold War, America has
committed to having overwhelming military primacy . The idea, as George W. Bush declared in 2002, that America must
possess “strengths beyond challenge” has featured in every major U.S. strategy document for a quarter century; it has also been reflected in
United States consistently accounted for around 35 to 45
percent of world defense spending and maintained peerless global power-projection capabilities .7
Perhaps more important, U.S. primacy was also unrivaled in key overseas strategic regions — Europe, East Asia,
the Middle East . From thrashing Saddam Hussein’s million-man Iraqi military during Operation Desert Storm, to deploying—with
concrete terms.6 From the early 1990s, for example, the
impunity—two carrier strike groups off Taiwan during the China-Taiwan crisis of 1995– 96, Washington has been able to project military power
superior to anything a regional rival could employ even on its own geopolitical doorstep. This military dominance has constituted the hardpower backbone of an ambitious global strategy. After the Cold War, U.S. policymakers committed to averting a return to the unstable
multipolarity of earlier eras, and to perpetuating the more favorable unipolar order. They
committed to building on the
successes of the postwar era by further advancing liberal political values and an open international
economy, and to suppressing international scourges such as rogue states, nuclear proliferation, and
catastrophic terrorism. And because they recognized that military force remained the ultima ratio regum, they understood the
centrality of military preponderance. Washington would need the military power necessary to
underwrite worldwide alliance commitments. It would have to preserve substantial overmatch versus
any potential great-power rival. It must be able to answer the sharpest challenges to the international system, such as Saddam’s
invasion of Kuwait in 1990 or jihadist extremism after 9/11. Finally, because prevailing global norms generally reflect hard-power realities,
America would need the superiority to assure that its own values remained ascendant. It was impolitic to say that U.S. strategy and the
international order required “strengths beyond challenge,” but it was not at all inaccurate. American primacy, moreover, was eminently
affordable. At the height of the Cold War, the United States spent over 12 percent of GDP on defense. Since the mid-1990s, the number has
usually been between 3 and 4 percent.8 In a historically favorable international environment, Washington could enjoy primacy—and its
geopolitical fruits—on the cheap. Yet U.S. strategy also heeded, at least until recently, the
fact that there was a limit to how
cheaply that primacy could be had. The American military did shrink significantly during the 1990s, but
U.S. officials understood that if Washington cut back too far, its primacy would erode to a point where it
ceased to deliver its geopolitical benefits. Alliances would lose credibility ; the stability of key regions
would be eroded ; rivals would be emboldened ; international crises would go unaddressed . American
primacy was thus like a reasonably priced insurance policy . It required nontrivial expenditures, but protected against far
costlier outcomes.9 Washington paid its insurance premiums for two decades after the Cold War. But more recently American
primacy and strategic solvency have been imperiled. THE DARKENING HORIZON For most of the post–Cold War era, the
international system was— by historical standards—remarkably benign. Dangers existed, and as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
demonstrated, they could manifest with horrific effect. But for two decades after the Soviet collapse, the world was characterized by
remarkably low levels of great-power competition, high levels of security in key theaters such as Europe and East Asia, and the comparative
weakness of those “rogue” actors—Iran, Iraq, North Korea, al-Qaeda—who most aggressively challenged American power. During the 1990s,
some observers even spoke of a “strategic pause,” the idea being that the end of the Cold War had afforded the United States a respite from
the strategic horizon is darkening , due to four factors. First,
great-power military competition is back . The world’s two leading authoritarian powers— China and
Russia —are seeking regional hegemony , contesting global norms such as nonaggression and freedom of
navigation, and developing the military punch to underwrite these ambitions. Notwithstanding severe economic
and demographic problems, Russia has conducted a major military modernization emphasizing nuclear
weapons, high-end conventional capabilities, and rapid-deployment and special operations forces—
and utilized many of these capabilities in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.10 China, meanwhile, has carried out
a buildup of historic proportions, with constant-dollar defense outlays rising from US$26 billion in 1995 to US$226 billion in
2016.11 Ominously, these expenditures have funded development of power-projection and antiaccess/area
denial ( A2/AD) tools necessary to threaten China’s neighbors and complicate U.S. intervention on their
behalf. Washington has grown accustomed to having a generational military lead; Russian and Chinese modernization efforts
are now creating a far more competitive environment. Second, the international outlaws are no longer so
weak. North Korea’s conventional forces have atrophied, but it has amassed a growing nuclear arsenal
and is developing an intercontinental delivery capability that will soon allow it to threaten not just
America’s regional allies but also the continental United States .12 Iran remains a nuclear threshold
normal levels of geopolitical danger and competition. Now, however,
state, one that continues to develop ballistic missiles and A2/AD capabilities while employing sectarian
and proxy forces across the Middle East. The Islamic State, for its part, is headed for defeat, but has
displayed military capabilities unprecedented for any terrorist group, and shown that counterterrorism
will continue to place significant operational demands on U.S. forces whether in this context or in
others. Rogue actors have long preoccupied American planners, but the rogues are now more capable than at any time in decades. Third,
the democratization of technology has allowed more actors to contest American superiority in
dangerous ways. The spread of antisatellite and cyberwarfare capabilities; the proliferation of man-portable
air defense systems and ballistic missiles; the increasing availability of key elements of the precisionstrike complex— these phenomena have had a military leveling effect by giving weaker actors
capabilities which were formerly unique to technologically advanced states. As such technologies
“ proliferate worldwide ,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein commented in 2016, “the technology and
capability gaps between America and our adversaries are closing dangerously fast .”13 Indeed, as these
capabilities spread, fourth-generation systems (such as F-15s and F-16s) may provide decreasing utility against even non-great-power
competitors, and far more fifth-generation capabilities may be needed to perpetuate American overmatch. Finally, the number of challenges
has multiplied. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington faced rogue states and jihadist extremism—but not intense great-power rivalry.
America faced conflicts in the Middle East—but East Asia and Europe were comparatively secure. Now, the
old threats still exist—
but the more permissive conditions have vanished . The United States confronts rogue states, lethal
jihadist organizations, and great-power competition; there are severe challenges in all three Eurasian
theaters. “I don’t recall a time when we have been confronted with a more diverse array of threats,
whether it’s the nation state threats posed by Russia and China and particularly their substantial
nuclear capabilities, or non-nation states of the likes of ISIL, Al Qaida, etc.,” Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper commented in 2016. Trends in the strategic landscape constituted a veritable “litany of doom.”14 The United States thus faces not just
more significant, but also more numerous, challenges to its military dominance than it has for at least a quarter century.
The best studies confirm our impact --- err on the side of a consensus of empirical
research --- we assume every skeptic.
AT: Prolif
Brooks & Wohlforth 16 [William, Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Stephen
Brooks, Ph. D in Political Science from Yale, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. “America Abroad: Why the Sole Superpower Should Not Pull Back from the World” Page
103-108]
Consistency with influential relevant theories lends credence to the expectation that US security
commitments actually can shape the strategic environment as deep engagement presupposes. But it is far
from conclusive. Not all analysts endorse the theories we discussed in chapter 5. These theories make strong assumptions that states generally
act rationally and focus primarily on security. Allowing misperceptions, emotions, domestic politics, desire for status, or concern for honor into
the picture might alter the verdict on the strategy’s net expected effects. And to
model the strategy’s expected effects we
had to simplify things by selecting two mechanisms— assurance and deterrence — and examining their
effects independently, thus missing potentially powerful positive interactions between them. This chapter moves beyond theory to
examine patterns of evidence. If the theoretical arguments about the security effects of deep engagement are right, what sort of evidence
should we see? Two major bodies
of evidence are most important: general empirical findings concerning the strategy’s
key mechanisms and regionally focused research . General Patterns of Evidence Three key questions about US security provision
have received the most extensive analysis. First, do alliances such as those sustained by the United States actually deter war and increase
security? Second, does such security provision actually hinder nuclear proliferation? And third, does limiting proliferation actually increase
security? Deterrence Effectiveness The
determinants of deterrence success and failure have attracted scores of
study tests. Much of the case study work yields a cautionary finding: that deterrence is much harder in
practice than in theory, because standard models assume away the complexities of human psychology and domestic politics that tend
to make some states hard to deter and might cause deterrence policies to backfire. 1 Many quantitative findings, mean- while, are
quantitative and case
mutually contradictory or are clearly not relevant to extended deterrence. But some relevant results
receive broad support:

Alliances generally do have a deterrent effect . In a study spanning nearly two centuries , Johnson
and Leeds found “support for the hypothesis that defensive alliances deter the initiation of
disputes .” They conclude that “defensive alliances lower the probability of international conflict and
are thus a good policy option for states seeking to maintain peace in the world.” Sechser and Fuhrmann
similarly find that formal defense pacts with nuclear states have significant deterrence benefits. 2 3

The overall balance of military forces (including nuclear) between states does not appear to influence
deterrence; the local balance of military forces in the specific theater in which deterrence is
actually practiced, however, is key . 4

Forward- deployed troops enhance the deterrent effect of alliances with overseas allies. 5

Strong mutual interests and ties enhance deterrence. 6

Case studies strongly ratify the theoretical expectation that it is easier to defend a given status
quo than to challenge it forcefully : compellence (sometimes termed “coercion” or “coercive diplomacy”) is
extremely hard.
The most important finding to emerge from this voluminous research is that alliances— especially with nuclear- armed
allies like the United States— actually work in deterring conflict. This is all the more striking in view of the fact that
what scholars call “selection bias” probably works against it . The United States is more inclined to offer— and
protégés to seek— alliance rela- tionships in settings where the probability of military conflicts is higher
than average . The fact that alliances work to deter conflict in precisely the situations where deterrence
is likely to be especially hard is noteworthy. More specifically, these findings buttress the key theoretical implication that if
the United States is interested in deterring military challenges to the status quo in key regions, relying only on
latent military capabilities in the US homeland is likely to be far less effective than having an overseas
military posture . Similarly, they lend support to the general proposition that a forward deterrence posture is strongly
appealing to a status quo power, because defending a given status quo is far cheaper than overturning it,
and, once a favorable status quo is successfully overturned, restoring the status quo ante can be
expected to be fearsomely costly . Recognizing the significance of these findings clearly casts doubt on
the “wait on the sidelines and decide whether to intervene later” approach that is so strongly favored by
retrenchment proponents . The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation Matthew Kroenig highlights a number of reasons why US
policymakers seek to limit the spread of nuclear weapons: “Fear that nuclear proliferation might deter [US leaders] from
using military intervention to pursue their interests, reduce the effectiveness of their coercive
diplomacy, trigger regional instability, undermine their alliance structures, dissipate their strategic
attention, and set off further nuclear proliferation within their sphere of influence.” These are not the only
reasons for concern about nuclear proliferation; also notable are the enhanced prospects of nuclear accidents and
the greater risk of leakage of nuclear material to terrorists . 9 8 Do deep engagement’s security ties serve to
contain the spread of nuclear weapons ? The literature on the causes of proliferation is massive and faces challenges as great as any
in international relations. With few cases to study, severe challenges in gathering evidence about inevitably secretive nuclear programs, and a
large number of factors in play on both the demand and the supply sides,
findings are decidedly mixed. Alliance
relationships are just one piece of this complex puzzle, one that is hard to isolate from all the other factors in play. And
empirical studies face the same selection bias problem just discussed: Nuclear powers are more likely to offer security
guarantees to states confronting a serious threat and thus facing above- average incentives to acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, alliance
guarantees might be offered to states actively considering the nuclear option precisely in order to try to
forestall that decision. Like a strong drug given only to very sick patients, alliances thus may have a powerful effect even if they
sometimes fail to work as hoped. 10
Bearing these challenges in mind, the

most relevant findings that emerge from this literature are :
The most recent statistical analysis of the precise question at issue concludes that “security guarantees
significantly reduce proliferation proclivity among their recipients.” In addition, states with such
guarantees are less likely to export sensitive nuclear material and technology to other nonnuclear
states. 12 11


Case study research underscores that the complexity of motivations for acquiring nuclear
weapons cannot be reduced to security: domestic politics, economic interests, and prestige all matter. 13
Multiple independently conceived and executed recent case studies nonetheless reveal that
security alliances help explain numerous allied decisions not to proliferate even when security
is not always the main driver of leaders’ interest in a nuclear program. As Nuno Monteiro and Alexandre Debs
stress, “States whose security goals are subsumed by their sponsors’ own aims have never
acquired the bomb . … This finding highlights the role of U.S. security commitments in stymieing
nuclear proliferation : U.S. protégés will only seek the bomb if they doubt U.S. protection of their
core security goals.” 15 14


Multiple independently conceived and executed recent case research projects further unpack the
conditions that decrease the likelihood of allied proliferation, centering on the credibility of the
alliance commitment. In addition, in some cases of prevention failure, the alliances allow the patron
to influence the ally’s nuclear program subsequently, decreasing further proliferation risks. 17
Security alliances lower the likelihood of proliferation cascades . To be sure, many predicted
cascades did not occur. But security provision, mainly by the United States, is a key reason why.
The most comprehensive statistical analysis finds that states are more likely to proliferate in
response to neighbors when three conditions are met : (1) there is an intense security rivalry
between the two countries; (2) the prospective proliferating state does not have a security
guarantee from a nuclear- armed patron ; and (3) the potential proliferator has the industrial
and technical capacity to launch an indigenous nuclear program. 18 19 16
In sum, as Monteiro and Debs note, “Despite grave concerns that more states would seek a nuclear deterrent to counter U.S. power
preponderance,” in fact “the
spread of nuclear weapons decelerated with the end of the Cold War in 1989.”
Their research, as well as that of scores of scholars using multiple methods and representing many
contrasting theoretical perspectives , shows that US security guarantees and the counter- proliferation
policy deep engagement allows are a big part of the reason why . 20 The Costs of Nuclear Proliferation General
empirical findings thus lend support to the proposition that security alliances impede nuclear proliferation. But is this a net contributor to global
security? Most practitioners and policy analysts would probably not even bring this up as a question and would automatically answer yes if it
were raised. Yet a small but very prominent group of theorists within the academy reach a different answer: some
of the same realist
precepts that generate the theoretical prediction that retrenchment would increase demand for nuclear
weapons also suggest that proliferation might increase security such that the net effect of retrenchment could be
neutral. Most notably, “ nuclear optimists ” like Kenneth Waltz contend that deterrence essentially solves the
security problem for all nuclear- armed states , largely eliminating the direct use of force among them. It
follows that US retrenchment might generate an initial decrease in security followed by an increase as
insecure states acquire nuclear capabilities , ultimately leaving no net effect on international security. 21
This perspective is countered by “ nuclear pessimists ” such as Scott Sagan. Reaching outside realism to organization theory
and other bodies of social science research, they see major security downsides from new nuclear states. Copious
research produced by Sagan and others casts doubt on the expectation that governments can be relied upon
to create secure and controlled nuclear forces. The more nuclear states there are, the higher the
probability that the organizational, psychological, and civil- military pathologies Sagan identifies will turn
an episode like one of the numerous “near misses” he uncovers into actual nuclear use. As Campbell Craig warns,
“One day a warning system will fail , or an official will panic , or a terrorist attack will be misconstrued,
and the missiles will fly.” 22 23 Looking beyond these kinds of factors, it is notable that powerful reasons to question the
assessment of proliferation optimists also emerge even if one assumes, as they do, that states are
rational and seek only to maximize their security. First, nuclear deterrence can only work by raising the
risk of nuclear war. For deterrence to be credible , there has to be a nonzero chance of nuclear use. If
nuclear use is impossible, deterrence cannot be credible . It follows that every nuclear deterrence
relationship depends on some probability of 24 nuclear use. The more such relationships there are, the
greater the risk of nuclear war . Proliferation therefore increases the chances of nuclear war even in a perfectly rationalist world.
Proliferation optimists cannot logically deny that nuclear spread increases the risk of nuclear war. Their argument must be that the security
gains of nuclear spread outweigh this enhanced risk. Estimating that risk is not simply a matter of pondering the conditions under which leaders
will choose to unleash nuclear war. Rather, as Schelling established, the question is whether states will run the risk of using nuclear weapons.
Nuclear crisis bargaining is about a “competition in risk taking .” Kroenig counts some twenty cases in
which states—including prominently the United States—ran real risks of nuclear war in order to prevail in crises. As
Kroenig notes, “By asking whether states can be deterred or not … proliferation optimists are asking the
wrong question. The right question to ask is: what risk of nuclear war is a specific state willing to run
against a particular opponent in a given crisis ?” The more nuclear- armed states there are, the more the
opportunities for such risk- taking and the greater the probability of nuclear use . 27 26 25
AND --- it’s key to a shift to multi-domain war-fighting --- in the Pacific theater.
Horowitz 17 Michael C. Horowitz--associate professor of political science and associate director of Perry World House at the University
of Pennsylvania. He is also a senior editor of War on the Rocks. “THE FUTURE OF WAR IS FAST APPROACHING IN THE PACIFIC: ARE THE U.S.
MILITARY SERVICES READY?” June 2, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/the-future-of-war-is-fast-approaching-in-the-pacific-are-the-us-military-services-ready/
Is the era of unparalleled U.S. conventional military superiority coming to an end? Many senior U.S.
military leaders are worried. The ongoing general proliferation of precision strike capabilities, crossdomain threats from cyber, space, and beyond, rising operational competence in potential adversaries,
and the anticipation of rapidly diffusing new commercial technology with military relevance is placing
American conventional overmatch at risk. Moreover, this is not just a story about air and naval superiority. As U.S. Army Chief of
Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in October 2016, “[W]e are on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of warfare, and specifically ground
The future conventional battlefield will be more contested than the battlefields U.S. ground
forces have become accustomed to over the last generation. A complex environment featuring
adversaries with the capacity to launch attacks in multiple domains will further require an American
military able to do the same. Thus, senior U.S. military leaders such as Milley and Adm. Harris, as well as a number of
warfare.”
commentators, increasingly
recognize the need for a “multi-domain” approach to the security
environment. What does responding to a multi-domain world mean? Criticisms of the breadth of a multi-domain frame risk missing the
way multi-domain battle is socializing key insights that will aid the U.S. military. Harnessing the capabilities of the future will
place more cognitive demands on the warfighter, as they have to fight and make decisions at machine
speed. This means preparing and training, not just developing new technological widgets, especially
when America’s adversaries will increasingly have their own advanced capabilities. It also means that one role of
technology will be helping relieve that cognitive complexity, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work argues. The prerequisites for
adopting multi-domain battle are thus more human and bureaucratic than anything else. They are about the
willingness of institutions – in this case mostly the Army and Marine Corps – to adapt to an uncertain security environment and keep their edge
over adversaries. The
force development challenge is therefore crucial in determining whether the U.S.
military, and especially its ground forces, get from here to there. End strength, modernization, and readiness
necessary to build the capacity to fight and win wars in the Pacific and
beyond. The FY18 budget submission to Congress, unfortunately, is not enough to overcome the
modernization deficit facing the land forces.
come into budgetary tension, but all are
That prevents East Asian instability.
Brands 15 (Hal Brands is on the faculty at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University The Elliott School of International Affairs
The Washington Quarterly Summer 2015 38:2 pp. 7–28)
The fundamental reason is that both U.S. influence and international stability are thoroughly interwoven with a robust U.S. forward presence. Regarding influence, the protection that Washington has afforded its allies has equally
afforded the United States great sway over those allies’ policies.43 During the Cold War and after, for instance, the United States has used the influence provided by its security posture to veto allies’ pursuit of nuclear weapons, to
obtain more advantageous terms in financial and trade agreements, and even to affect the composition of allied nations’ governments.44 More broadly, it has used its alliances as vehicles for shaping political, security, and
economic agendas in key regions and bilateral relationships, thus giving the United States an outsized voice on a range of important issues. To be clear, this influence has never been as pervasive as U.S. officials might like, or as
some observers might imagine. But by any reasonable standard of comparison, it has nonetheless been remarkable. One can tell a similar story about the relative stability of the post-war order. As even some leading offshore
balancers have acknowledged
, the lack of conflict in regions like Europe in recent decades is not something that has occurred naturally. It has occurred because the “American pacifier” has suppressed precisely the dynamics
that previously fostered geopolitical turmoil. That pacifier has limited arms races and security competitions by providing the protection that allows other countries to under-build their militaries. It has soothed historical rivalries by
affording a climate of security in which powerful countries like Germany and Japan could be revived economically and reintegrated into thriving and fairly cooperative regional orders. It has induced caution in the behavior of allies
and adversaries alike, deterring aggression and dissuading other destabilizing behavior. As John Mearsheimer has noted, the United States “effectively acts as a night watchman,” lending order to an otherwise disorderly and
What would happen if Washington backed away from this role? The most logical answer is that both U.S.
influence and global stability would suffer . With respect to influence, the U nited S tates would effectively be
surrendering the most powerful bargaining chip it has traditionally wielded in dealing with friends and
allies, and jeopardizing the position of leadership it has used to shape bilateral and regional agendas for
decades . The consequences would seem no less damaging where stability is concerned . As offshore balancers have
anarchical environment.45
argued, it may be that U.S. retrenchment would force local powers to spend more on defense, while perhaps assuaging certain points of friction with countries that feel threatened or encircled by U.S. presence. But it equally
removing the American pacifier would liberate the more destabilizing influences that U.S.
policy had previously stifled . Long-dormant security competitions might reawaken as countries armed
themselves more vigorously; historical antagonisms between old rivals might reemerge in the absence
of a robust U.S. presence and the reassurance it provides. Moreover, countries that seek to revise existing
regional orders in their favor—think Russia in Europe , or China in Asia—might indeed applaud U.S. retrenchment, but they might just as
plausibly feel empowered to more assertively press their interests. If the United States has been a kind of Leviathan in key regions, Mearsheimer
stands to reason that
acknowledges, then “take away that Leviathan and there is likely to be big trouble.”46 Scanning the global horizon today, one can easily see where such trouble might arise. In Europe, a revisionist Russia is already destabilizing its
neighbors and contesting the post-Cold War settlement in the region. In the Gulf and broader Middle East, the threat of Iranian ascendancy has stoked region-wide tensions manifesting in proxy wars and hints of an incipient arms
In East Asia, a rising China is challenging the regional
status quo in numerous ways, sounding alarms among its neighbors—many of whom also have
historical grievances against each other. In these circumstances, removing the American pacifier would likely yield
not low-cost stability, but increased conflict and upheaval. That conflict and upheaval, in turn, would be quite damaging to U.S. interests even if it did not
race, even as that region also contends with a severe threat to its stability in the form of the Islamic State.
result in the nightmare scenario of a hostile power dominating a key region. It is hard to imagine, for instance, that increased instability and acrimony would produce the robust multilateral cooperation necessary to deal with
transnational threats from pandemics to piracy. More problematic still might be the economic consequences. As scholars like Michael Mandelbaum have argued, the enormous progress toward global prosperity and integration
that has occurred since World War II (and now the Cold War) has come in the climate of relative stability and security provided largely by the United States.47 One simply cannot confidently predict that this progress would endure
amid escalating geopolitical competition in regions of enormous importance to the world economy. Perhaps the greatest risk that a strategy of offshore balancing would run, of course, is that a key region might not be able to
in East Asia
particularly, the rise and growing assertiveness of China has highlighted the medium- to long-term
danger that a hostile power could in fact gain regional primacy . If China’s economy continues to grow
rapidly, and if Beijing continues to increase military spending by 10 percent or more each year, then its neighbors will ultimately face grave challenges in
containing Chinese power even if they join forces in that endeavor . This possibility, ironically, is one to which leading advocates of retrenchment
maintain its own balance following U.S. retrenchment. That prospect might have seemed far-fetched in the early post-Cold War era, and it remains unlikely in the immediate future. But
have been attuned. “The United States will have to play a key role in countering China,” Mearshimer writes, “because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves.”48 If this is true, however, then
offshore balancing becomes a dangerous and potentially self-defeating strategy . As mentioned above, it could lead
countries like Japan and South Korea to seek nuclear weapons , thereby stoking arms races and elevating
regional tensions. Alternatively, and perhaps more worryingly, it might encourage the scenario that offshore balancers seek to
avoid, by easing China’s ascent to regional hegemony. As Robert Gilpin has written, “Retrenchment by its very nature is
an indication of relative weakness and declining power, and thus retrenchment can have a
deteriorating effect on relations with allies and rivals .”49 In East Asia today, U.S. allies rely on U.S.
reassurance to navigate increasingly fraught relationships with a more assertive China precisely because
they understand that they will have great trouble balancing Beijing on their own . A significant U.S. retrenchment might therefore
tempt these countries to acquiesce to, or bandwagon with, a rising China if they felt that prospects for successful resistance were diminishing as the United States retreated.50 In the same vein, retrenchment would compromise
alliance relationships, basing agreements, and other assets that might help Washington check Chinese power in the first place—and that would allow the United States to surge additional forces into theater in a crisis. In sum, if one
expects that Asian countries will be unable to counter China themselves, then reducing U.S. influence and leverage in the region is a curious policy. Offshore balancing might promise to preserve a stable and advantageous
environment while reducing U.S. burdens. But upon closer analysis, the probable outcomes of the strategy seem more perilous and destabilizing than its proponents acknowledge.
Nuclear escalation.
Cimbala 14 Dr. Stephen J. Cimbala is a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University, “Nuclear Weapons in Asia: Perils
and Prospects,” Military and Strategic Affairs Volume 6, No. 1 March 2014, http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/MASA61Eng%20%284%29_Cimbala.pdf
A five-sided nuclear competition in the Pacific would be linked, in geopolitical deterrence and proliferation space, to the existing nuclear
deterrents of India and Pakistan, and to the emergi ng nuclear weapons status of Iran. An
arc of nuclear instability from Tehran to
place US proliferation strategies into the ash heap of history and call for more drastic military options, not
excluding preemptive war, defenses, and counter-deterrent special operations. In addition, an unrestricted nuclear arms race in
Asia would most likely increase the chance of accidental or inadvertent nuclear war . It would do so because: (a )
some states in the region already have histories of protracted conflict; (b) states may have politically
unreliable or immature command and control systems, especially during a crisis involving a decision for nuclear
first strike or retaliation; (c) unreliable or immature systems might permit a technical malfunction resulting in an
unintended launch, or a deliberate but unauthorized launch, by rogue commanders; (d) faulty intelligence
and warning systems might cause one side to misinterpret the other’s defensive moves to forestall attack as
offensive preparations for attack, thus triggering a mistaken preemption.
Tokyo could
Hegemonic transition wars escalate --- it’s guaranteed.
AT: Data
Yang 18 Yuan Yang 18, Yang Yuan is an Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of World Economy and Politics at the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences. (“Escape both the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and the ‘Churchill Trap’: Finding a Third Type of Great Power Relations under the Bipolar
System,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 193–235, https://doiorg.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1093/cjip/poy002. 03-02-2018.)
China’s rapid rise has prompted a new round of power transition in the international system. Two of
the most frequently asked questions are what will be the outcome of this transition? Does it boil down to peace
or war? These are issues of world concern. Realists perceive rising powers and hegemonic powers as natural rivals
whose interactions invariably end in war,1 and hence fear a looming ‘Thucydides trap’—the risk of a major war erupting
between a rising power and a ruling power in the power transition process. In Graham Allison's view, the ‘Thucydides trap’ is the best lens for
an understanding of Sino-US relations in the 21st century, but it also constitutes a risk that China and the United States must do their utmost to
circumvent.2 Chinese president Xi Jinping personally cited the concept in declaring, ‘We must all cooperate to avoid the “Thucydides Trap”’. To
meet that challenge, Xi proposes ‘a new type of great power relations’.3 There has accordingly been extensive Chinese scholarly research and
theorizing in recent years on avoiding the ‘Thucydides trap’ and building a new type of great power relations.4 Meanwhile, the prospect of
Sino-US security relations, along with the respective security strategies of both countries, is becoming core themes in the international security
studies domain.5 Although the ‘Thucydides trap’ has attracted wide attention in both academic and political circles, my article argues that the
‘Thucydides trap’ overstates the risk of war between China and the United States. In the era of great power peace, the common desire to avoid
A greater challenge facing China and the
United States is the risk that power rivalry and security competition may nudge the two superpowers
towards a long-term confrontation in which they become irreducibly mired, which I call the ‘Churchill
trap’. This would amount to a reprise of mistakes made during the Cold War between the US and the
USSR when, in the absence of destructive warfare between the two powers, the international system
took on the bipolar structure. The foremost task of my article is to find an escape route from the ‘Churchill trap’ and examine its
ramifications. Modern history and the experiences of the Cold War imply just two outcomes of any
interaction between the two strongest actors in the international system. One is a hegemonic transition
through hegemonic war; the other is a long-term confrontation and fierce strategic rivalry reminiscent
of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. If this is the case, then China and the US’s successful
escape from the ‘Thucydides trap’ will swiftly be followed by a fatal fall into the ‘Churchill trap.’
war, especially all-out war, between superpowers prevails in great power politics.
Fortunately, both the ‘old’ history of the ancient East Asian bipolar systems and the recent situation of Sino-US interaction in East Asia suggest
that there is, in addition to hegemonic war and cold war, a third type of great power relationship between the two poles, one I call ‘co-ruling’,
whereby they jointly lead all or most of the small and medium-sized countries in the system, rather than demarcate their ‘spheres of influence’
geographically. The antagonistic and geopolitical colours of the ‘co-ruling’ mode of power politics are less strident than under the ‘dividedruling’ mode. The theoretical and case studies examined in the article imply that the ‘co-ruling’ mode will appear and be sustained at a time
when the two superpowers’ foreign functions are differentiated (i.e. each of the two poles can only meet one of the indispensable needs of
small countries, and the two needs that the two poles can respectively meet are different ones), and when inter-great-power war is no longer a
viable strategic option. The next section analyses why the ‘Churchill trap’ is a more present risk to China and the US than the ‘Thucydides trap’,
and consequently one to which both should pay due heed and take precautions to avoid. The third section theoretically classifies the
domination–subordination relations between great powers and small states under the bipolar structure, on which basis it reveals the formation
mechanism of the co-ruling mode. The fourth section conducts process tracing of four instances of bipolar systems in ancient East Asian and
contemporary history, to demonstrate how such a mechanism operates. The concluding section summarizes the article’s theoretical findings
and makes a projection of future trends in Sino-US relations. The ‘Thucydides Trap’ or the ‘Churchill Trap’? The ‘Thucydides trap’ is in a large
part an induction of historical experiences on great power politics. In the contemporary era, however, there is small risk of all-out war between
a rising power and a hegemonic power. By contrast, the
‘Churchill trap’, whereby the superpowers fall into a long-term
confrontation reminiscent of that between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, presents a
genuine risk and one that should be taken far more seriously. Why is the ‘Thucydides Trap’ Less Relevant? The main
reason why the ‘Thucydides trap’ is the less relevant one is that it is an anachronism, that is to say, a warning that is inconsistent with the
characteristics of the current era. The most prominent change in international politics over recent decades is that of the relative rarity since
1945 of wars between great powers. A
statistical study shows that during the period 1816–1945 the probability of
escalation from a conflict to a war between great powers was 0.346, while from 1946 to 1992 such
probability plummeted to 0.077. The probability of war among all countriess from 1816 to 1945 was
0.296, while from 1946 to 1992 it fell to 0.089.6 These results highlight the diminution of wars between
great powers since 1945. Not just from history but also in light of the foreseeable future, we see scant possibility of full-scale war
between great powers, to the extent that many experts now argue that wars between great powers are a thing of the past.7 There has been
extensive in-depth scholarly research into the reasons why the great powers have not fought since World War II (WWII). The evolution of
international politics is one essential reason. Recurrent and persistent conquests among countries over history have led to a steady increase of
war costs, and the catastrophic repercussions of two world wars, moreover, changed the erstwhile ever-positive view estimation of warfare. In
addition, the industrial revolution contributed to a fundamental transformation of the socio-political and economic structure. All of these
developments were instrumental in bringing about the gradual demise of major wars after 1945.8 Deepened economic interdependence is
another feasible factor. The interconnectedness and interdependence of the global economy since 1945 has significantly diminished the
relative utility of war as a tool for grabbing profits. In addition, due to the exorbitant costs that would be entailed in great powers going to war
against one another, the slightest intimation in any one of their signals of the use of force would set alarm bells ringing for all concerned, a
factor that considerably lowers the probability of a war triggered by asymmetric information.9 The ‘mutual assured destruction’ (MAD) nuclear
deterrent mechanism is, of course, the most widely accepted reason.10 The focus of controversy is whether nuclear deterrence is an
adequate,11 or just a necessary condition for great power peace;12 and whether possession of nuclear weapons can only prevent nuclear wars
and escalations of large-scale conventional wars to nuclear wars,13 or even stop small-scale wars.14 There are undoubtedly various reasons for
the dearth of wars between great powers since WWII, and the most fundamental reason is, unsurprisingly, still controversial. However,
how
scholars explain the phenomenon is one thing, while how they anticipate the prospect of it is another.
That war among great powers will be increasingly rare has been becoming a mainstream consensus in academic circles.15 In this era of no war
among great powers, both the rising power and the ruling power lack the subjective motivation to launch a war against the other, and both
sides have to be subject to various objective conditions that inhibit wars. We cannot be 100% confident that there is zero risk of future war
between China and the US, just as we cannot be 100% sure we won’t die in a car accident tomorrow, but the risk is not sufficiently high to merit
formulating a strategy. In short, the
risk of falling into the ‘Thucydides trap’ is much smaller than what Allison
and others appear to imagine, and should not be the main preventative focus of either China or the
United States. The second reason why the ‘Thucydides trap’ is problematic is that it is a false dichotomy. It simply divides the possible
outcomes of great power politics into ‘either/or’ categories, namely, war or peace. As a warning, the principal content of the ‘Thucydides trap’
is the avoidance of major wars between rising powers and ruling powers. Having
benefited from the lessons of modern
European history, traditional International Relations (IR) theories do not recognize the feasibility of
coexistence of the two poles that the two most powerful countries in the international system
constitute. In their view, when the rising power rises and threatens the hegemonic position of the ruling
power, the outcome is either war waged by the rising power with a view to territorial expansion, or
pre-emptive war that the ruling power launches to defend its hegemony. In short, power transition
through a hegemonic war is the most likely outcome for the two superpowers.16 Owing to the vast and
unbearable cost and negative externalities of wars, especially hegemonic wars, avoiding wars and maintaining peace are naturally people’s
primary goals when talking about and anticipating the prospect of the relationship between rising powers and hegemonic powers.
Nevertheless, the
history of the US–USSR confrontation brings us to the third mode of great power
interaction besides war and peace—that of ‘Cold War’—where the two superpowers do not necessarily
fight to the death, but live under a dangerous peace that grows progressively uneasy due to long-term
confrontation and rivalry between the Eastern and Western camps, to the costly and escalating arms
race, to proxy wars in succession in the Third World, and to the pervasive fear of the shadow of nuclear
war. Such ‘Cold War’ is no less harmful to human beings than any ‘hegemonic war’ such as the
Peloponnesian War.
Even if multipolarity is the result of hegemonic decline, it causes major power conflicts
and extinction.
Blagden 15—PhD at the University of Oxford, the Adrian Research Fellow in International Politics at Darwin College, and a Research
Associate with the Centre for Rising Powers in the Department of Politics and International Studies, both at the University of Cambridge, [David,
“Global multipolarity, European security and implications for UK grand strategy: back to the future, once again” International Affairs 91: 2,
2015, p. 340-342]
***SLOC = Sea Lane of Communication
Third, a
multipolar world of elevated Great Power security competition is likely to be one with
considerable potential for military crises , which could embroil European states —either inadvertently, or
because their vital interests are affected. Whereas under unipolarity, the U nited S tates could pacify all potential major
power conflicts by threatening to defeat one or—if necessary—both sides, that is no longer the case
under multipolarity . Indeed, the difficulty in predicting future international conflict suggests that European grand strategy should at
least partially hedge against embroilment in such as yet unforeseen emergencies. There is considerable potential for military
crises on the borders of NATO , as the events of 2008 and 2014 demonstrate, and any such crisis on Europe’s borders
will be a pressing security concern for European states. Likewise, the Middle East is likely to remain a
focal point of security competition and an arena of potential conflict embroiling European states , given
its proximity to the European periphery, its economic importance to Europe, China and India, continuing
civil wars in Syria and Iraq, the strength of regional revolutionary movements such as Islamic State/ ISIS, and
the presence of several militarily capable regional powers with divergent interests, such as Israel, Iran,
Saudi Arabia and post-revolutionary Egypt. There is also the risk of involvement in military crises
further afield , particularly where key commercial or strategic interests are at stake. For example, threats to
UK interests in the South Atlantic will increase as Latin American development proceeds , especially if
the seabed around the Falkland Islands contains large-scale mineral deposits, and France could face
similar challenges in Africa. Of course, this article cannot hope, and does not aim, to laundry-list all potential future conflict scenarios;
the key point is that in a world of general Great Power tension, the likelihood of serious militarized
crises will increase. The fourth reason why a multipolar global environment may have an impact on the European strategic
environment is that it may increase incentives to acquire nuclear weapons —or at least, not to give them up. There are
excellent reasons to suppose that nuclear weapons favour defence and make interstate conflict between possessors less likely.41 However,
the likelihood of accidental, inadvertent or miscalculated nuclear use rises with the number of nuclear
powers , particularly when that number includes states with weak administrative capacity and political
systems with the potential to be dominated by non-representative militarist or radical factions.42
Multipolar Great Power competition will make many states feel vulnerable, and the best deterrent
against coercion by those strong in conventional weapons is a nuclear arsenal. Likewise, in such a world, states
are more likely to feel that they require a potent means of coercion to promote their interests. That being
the case, a grand multilateral disarmament bargain is unlikely, and non-proliferation efforts may well continue to struggle in the coming years,
with potentially negative consequences for the European security environment. Of course, it can be argued that there has been less nuclear
proliferation than many analysts predicted in the 1950s and 1960s. Conversely, however, Ukraine has recently joined a list of countries,
including Libya and Iraq, whose leaders presumably regretted surrendering the deterrent power of a weapons of mass destruction programme
under the urgings of the major power(s) that subsequently attacked them. If
America’s ability to pacify the globe does wane,
of nuclear-capable states under the US nuclear umbrella that currently choose not to
develop nuclear weapons will feel compelled to revisit that choice (South Korea and Japan being obvious candidates).
moreover, plenty
The fifth and final reason why a multipolar international system could threaten the
European strategic environment connects
to the point made above about potential embroilment in military crises elsewhere in the world. This is
the potential for such crises to have negative impacts upon European states’ SLOCs and associated
critical supply chains (for food, raw materials, energy, industrial inputs and so forth). Europe relies on uninterrupted
flows of imports and exports , mainly via the sea, for economic well-being and strategic viability. European
energy supplies rely heavily on the Middle East and Russia—both potential sources of diplomatic and
strategic tension. The Indian Ocean, the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, and the Straits of Hormuz and
Malacca, meanwhile, are all crucial to European seagoing commerce as well as potential arenas of
maritime Great Power contestation . Yet European states’ maritime capability to provide independent
(non-US) influence over such SLOCs has been hollowed out by progressive waves of naval cuts . Meanwhile,
the South Atlantic will remain an important theatre for the United Kingdom while London sustains its current resolve to retain possession of the
Falklands, and all west European states should consider Russia’s increasing maritime assertiveness in the north-east Atlantic—the single most
crucial SLOC for European powers, both commercially and strategically.
Trump doesn’t thump the global order AND pursuit of hegemony is inevitable.
Bershidsky 18 – Berlin-based journalist and columnist for Bloomberg View, the editorial division of Bloomberg News., (Leonid,
“Trump’s Leadership Isn’t Just About Tantrums”, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-11/g7-summit-trump-s-leadership-isn-tjust-about-tantrums, accessed 7/3/18)
No matter how tempting it is to write off President Trump’s G-7 antics as the capricious acting out of a big, petulant baby, that’s not going to do
the world any good as long as he runs the U.S. Like it or not, Trump
is a world leader trying to position himself between
the points of a triangle: established rules and alliances, selfish U.S. interests and his own personality
traits. It may appear that he’s tossed the rules and alliances out the window – at least that’s how it’s seen in Europe and now also in Canada.
Trump has pulled the U.S. out of one international agreement after another, hit allies with high import quotas and teased the flabbergasted
leaders of the of the other six G-7 nations with outlandish proposals like readmitting Russia to the club or scrapping all tariffs altogether. The
only reason to air these proposals, knowing they won’t be accepted, is to demonstrate a defiant disregard for the world order as we know it, a
disregard that makes serious people suggest Russian President Vladimir Putin has something on Trump and is making him act in this disruptive
way. Trump, however,
hasn’t quite rejected the rules. His tariffs are designed to withstand an attack in the
World Trade Organization because they’re ostensibly dictated by national security, something the WTO
allows. It’s a legal ploy, but it could actually work. He’s gone back on agreements that weren’t ratified by
Congress because he’s had the right to do so. And his persistent demands that North Atlantic Treaty
Organization allies spend 2 percent of their economic output on defense, are meant to uphold rules
which others are not keen to follow despite agreeing to them. In any rules-based setup, some rules are more important than
others at different moments; it’s just that Europe doesn’t like Trump’s priorities. One could also argue that Trump hasn’t so
much undermined U.S. alliances as acted to bring into the open the allies’ dependence on the U.S. and
remind them they shouldn’t take U.S. support for granted. This could end up reshaping the relationships
as more transparently pragmatic and transactional ones than they are today. Trump’s bet is that the
allies, especially Europeans, will opt to rally around the U.S. anyway because they have no other viable
options. Trump is taking a risk to assert an unabashed U.S. hegemony, based more on U.S.
might and pressure than on persuasion and consensus. As Henry Kissinger wrote in his 2014 book, “World Order,” The
essence of such upheavals is that while they are usually underpinned by force, their overriding thrust is psychological. Those under assault are
challenged to defend not only their territory but the basic assumptions of their way of life, their moral right to exist and to act in a manner that,
until the challenge, had been treated as beyond question. The
natural inclination, particularly of leaders from pluralistic
societies, is to engage with the representatives of the revolution, expecting that what they really want is
to negotiate in good faith on the premises of the existing order and arrive at a reasonable solution.
That’s what U.S. allies have been trying to do with Trump; so far, they've refused to believe that the disruption, usually the
province of ambitious outsiders, is coming from the very center of the international order on which they've come to depend. They appear
to believe they can negotiate better outcomes or wait Trump out, but Trump rejects both these
scenarios, telling them, in effect, to submit or fight. And then there are the personal likes and dislikes of Donald Trump the
man. He clearly resents what he must see as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s intellectual condescension, and he treats long-winded, cocky
French President Emmanuel Macron as something of a comic figure. His personal stylistic sympathies appear to lie with leaders who exert
absolute power: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Putin. He’s fascinated by their ability to make instant
decisions; he thinks he can do business with them, rather than with Western leaders always looking over their shoulder to their electorates and
coming at him with all sorts of slow, fussy scenarios and complex proposals. There’s not much for Trump’s partners to like about his approach
to triangulation. He’s unpleasant to deal with, not interested in consensus, often impossible to pin down. But, unlike
previous U.S.
leaders, he provides some clear answers to questions Kissinger asked of the U.S. in his book: What does
the U.S. want to prevent or to achieve – alone if necessary or only as part of an alliance? What will the U.S. do
or not do when pushed by its allies? Trump’s answers are simple. The U.S. will seek an economic advantage no
matter who’s at the other side of the table, it will stretch the rules as much as it can to get it, and no
kind of pressure will divert it from its pursuit of the advantage. These answers, in turn, lead to a question the G-6
leaders and all U.S. allies need to answer: Do they want to be led on these terms or do they have the guts to present an alternative? Leaving
this question unanswered is an option, but only if one believes the U.S. will not re-elect Trump or ever elect another Trump.
1AC – Advantage 2
Advantage 2 --- Horn of Africa
Special Operations are key to mission effectiveness but are being overstretched.
Henningan 17 (W.J. Henningan is a national security correspondent for Time, November 30, 2017, 11-30-2017, "Inside the New
American Way of War," Time, http://time.com/5042700/inside-new-american-way-of-war/, accessed 1-6-2019)
Name a country in the world’s most volatile regions and it is likely that Special Operations forces are deployed there. In
Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere, special operators are launching kill-or-capture raids against known
terrorists. In the war-ravaged Middle East, commandos are training Egyptian and Saudi troops in how to
fight insurgencies. At frigid bases inside former Soviet-bloc nations, they are countering Russian influence operations. In South Korea,
they have added forces to help the military draw up counterstrike plans for an assault by the North Korean army. Trump has been
aggressive in his use of commandos, authorizing terrorist-hunting night raids since his first days in
office, and has loosened constraints on everyone from top generals to field commanders. Over the past 16
years, Special Operations have become the new American way of war. Once mainly used to supplement
the work of conventional troops, the elite units are now the go-to option for policymakers looking to
manage a complicated world. More than just hunter-killers, the U.S.’s best-trained commandos are increasingly military trainers,
nation builders and diplomats. With typical dark humor, members of the Special Operations community joke that they’ve become an “easy
button” for successive Administrations to push–an alternative to sending thousands of conventional military forces to hot spots and risking the
political blowback that comes with it. Just because special operators are an easy option doesn’t mean their use is cost-free. The presence of
U.S. troops in an unstable country can attract those who want to kill Americans and serve as a recruiting tool, experts say. Oversight of those
troops is limited by the fact that the public, and many in Congress, often aren’t aware of the sometimes-classified missions. Most important, it’s
not clear how the deployments fit together in a broader plan to advance U.S. national security. “There is a leadership problem,” says Army
Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who commanded all Special Operations forces in Africa until last June, “because there’s no overarching
strategy.” The
nonstop deployments are taking a heavy toll on the nation’s toughest warriors, raising highlevel concerns that the Special Operations forces are being stretched too thin. The 11 special operators
killed in action this year, for instance, died on missions in four countries. It’s the first time commandos have died in
that many countries in one year since Special Operations Command was established in 1987. Ceaseless deployment cycles have
caused problems at home, driving the Pentagon to create a task force to address drug and alcohol
abuse, family crises and suicide among the ranks. The ops tempo also raises the chances of battlefield
mistakes, or worse. The Pentagon has at least one open investigation into civilian deaths involving U.S. special operators in Somalia, and
another into the alleged murder of a Green Beret at the hands of two Navy SEALs. If the other options are large conventional
troop deployments or a retreat into isolation, experts say, the expanded reliance on special ops may be
necessary. But in May, General Raymond Thomas, commander of Special Operations Command, told Congress that the rate of
deployments was “unsustainable.” Michael Repass, a retired major general who headed Special Operations Command in Europe, is more blunt.
“We’re not frayed at the edges–we’re ripped at the damn seams,” he says. “We have burned through this force.”
Cultural competencies are key to intelligence capabilities --- specifically, the Horn of
Africa.
Stringer 11 (Kevin D. Stringer is an adjunct faculty member at the Joint Special Operations University in Tampa, Florida, and a Fellow at
the Center for the Study of Civil-Military Operations at West Point, 3-3-2011, “Global counterinsurgency and US army expansion: the case for
recruiting foreign troops”, Taylor & Francis, https://www-tandfonlinecom.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2011.546604?scroll=top&needAccess=true, accessed 8-15-2018) jd
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the
US Army rarely possesses the language skills or cultural expertise for
operating in the human and cultural terrain found in the Horn of Africa , Central Asia, the Middle
East, and Afghanistan. Language, cultural understanding, and regional knowledge all mesh in different
yet complementary ways to produce better intelligence, more credible civil–military operations, and
greater insight into the enemy. As the US Joint Forces Command study on the future of war, Joint Operating Environment 2008,
stated, ‘The conduct of war demands a deep understanding of the enemy – his culture, history, geography, religious and ideological
motivations, and particularly the huge differences in his perceptions of the external world.’25 In counterinsurgencies, this understanding can
only come about with organic language, cultural, and regional competencies starting at the unit level. As Clifford F. Porter, Command Historian
for the Defense Language Institute noted: Truly
knowing our enemy requires understanding the culture, politics,
and religion of the terrorists, which in turn requires experts in their language. Two early lessons learned from
Afghanistan are that foreign language skills were absolutely critical for overthrowing the Taliban regime so quickly and that the military does
not have enough foreign language capability … Furthermore, foreign
language capability is not only important for
intelligence gathering and special operations it is essential for understanding how the enemy thinks
from the strategic to the tactical level of war.26 As evidenced by the Russian experience in Chechnya
fighting clan and tribal-based ‘terrorists’, intelligence is a critical success factor in counterinsurgencies.
Not surprisingly, intelligence success in such a war remains the province of bold and determined human beings, not machines.27 Given that
America's global interests and responsibilities still far exceed its human intelligence capabilities, this lack
of language capability has led to a predictable gap in intelligence capability.28 Limited foreign language
capability in intelligence and special operations – as well as other sectors of the government – has already cost
American lives by not understanding the enemy's strategies and tactics.29 Cultural understanding should also not be
underestimated.30 As the highly respected British strategist Colin S. Gray observed, the American way of war has 12 specific characteristics,
one of which is cultural ignorance. He wrote that Americans are not inclined ‘to be respectful of the belief, habits, and behaviors of other
cultures … the American way of war has suffered from the self-inflicted damage caused by a failure to understand the enemy of the day’.31
Retired Israeli General Arie Amit reinforced this view when he told an audience in Washington in March 2002 that the United States would not
prevail against terrorists unless it understood ‘their language, their literature, and their poetry’.32
Two scenarios --1. AQAP --- they’re a national security threat in Yemen.
Drennan 18 (Jimmy Drennan, Center for International Maritime Security Florida Chapter president, 1/30/18, Center for International
Maritime Security, “THE GATE OF TEARS: INTERESTS, OPTIONS, AND STRATEGY IN THE BAB-EL-MANDEB STRAIT,” http://cimsec.org/gate-tearsinterests-options-strategy-bab-el-mandeb-strait/35351, accessed 1-9-2019)
In eastern Yemen, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS-Yemen maintain presence, despite
UAE-led counterterrorism operations, due to lack of effective governance and internal security. Despite
pressure from the West, AQAP remains a threat to the U.S. homeland, and the prominence of ISIS-Yemen
continues to grow as the extremist caliphate is gradually eliminated in Iraq and Syria. Without a doubt, the
U.S. has a vital national interest in supporting its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners in their
counterterrorism efforts and in defense of their borders, but it does not benefit from becoming directly
entangled in the fight.
AQAP growth threatens Yemen --- special operations are key to prevent it.
Cigar 18 (Norman Cigar, Marine Corps University, research fellow, research fellow at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia,
from which he retired as director of regional studies and the Minerva research chair, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies,
June 2018, Joint Special Operations University , “The Enemy is Us: How Allied and U.S. Strategy in Yemen Contributes to AQAP’s Survival,”
https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=42529158, pg 1-2, accessed 1-9-2019]
: U.S. Counterterrorism Interests in Yemen Al-Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula’s
(AQAP) presence in Yemen has long represented a terrorist threat to U.S. interests and has been the
source of a number of successful and failed attacks against U.S. interests, including the attack against the destroyer
USS COLE in 2000, the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa in 2008, the “underwear bombers” in 2009 and 2012, the package bombs shipped by
air in 2010, and the credible terrorist threat that compelled the U.S. government to temporarily withdraw its nonessential diplomatic staff from
Yemen in 2013. AQAP
has continued to try and take the fight abroad, with reports in 2017 of plans to
introduce laptop bombs onto airplanes and encouraging lone wolf attacks in the West, as in a May 2017 video
featuring AQAP leader Qasim al-Raymi (Abu Hurayra al-Sanani) speaking in Arabic with English subtitles.1 Not surprisingly, the United States has
placed a $5 million reward on al-Raymi. Al-Qaeda
has a long history in Yemen, where it has not only played a role
on the local level, but over the years has also been involved in activities in neighboring Saudi Arabia and
Somalia. More recently, AQAP has expanded its influence within Yemen as a result of the upsurge in
internal conflict starting in March 2015. AQAP threatens significant enduring U.S. interests, including
the prevention of direct attacks on the U.S. homeland and states on the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn
of Africa, and, potentially, the freedom of navigation in the busy adjacent sea lanes of communication. New interests 2 JSOU Report 18-4
such as the planned Saudi oil pipeline and terminal on the South Yemeni coast, intended to bypass the risk of the Strait of Hormuz, only add to
the necessity of dealing with the jihadist threat in Yemen.2 Although the U.S. has been working in concert with a Saudi Arabian-led coalition,
and local forces can and do operate against AQAP, their focus of effort has often been directed instead to fighting against the alliance between
Iranian backed Shia Ansar Allah (usually called Houthis by their adversaries) and the deposed former-President Ali Abdullah Saleh along with
other local rivals.3 That is, for any local actor, depending on the time and situation, AQAP may or may not be the main priority that it is for the
United States. A source from Saleh’s party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), encapsulated this truism of Yemeni political life when he
complained in 2012, just after Saleh had been ousted from power, that “the U.S. does not want a real army in Yemen. Instead, they want a
force that can fight al-Qaeda. This is one of Yemen’s goals, but it is not our only priority.”4 Yemen,
and especially the security
threat represented there by AQAP, is likely to remain a focus of interest for the United States well into
the future. And, in particular, Special Operations Forces (SOF), because of their versatility, agility, and
ability to have a disproportionate impact in certain situations, are likely to be the option of choice to
deal with military threats emanating in that country. This monograph is intended to provide planners, commanders, and
instructors in SOF dealing with AQAP now or in the future with background and an analysis of the operational framework, and of the strategic
and operational issues that confront the crafting of successful policy within that country’s challenging social, political, and physical
environment. In particular, understanding
the complexity of AQAP’s place in what is largely a tribal society and
the specific characteristics of Yemen’s political and social dynamics and interactions with its neighbors,
can help military and civilian officials appreciate the opportunities and limitations of U.S. policy and the
impact military actions can have on the situation and how it can contribute to U.S. policy goals. Such
broader awareness is important at all levels of war, whether strategic, operational, or tactical, especially
since fighting a counterinsurgency (COIN) such as against AQAP tactical actions can also have an
impact at higher levels, whether positive or negative.
AQAP resurgence raises the whole AQ network --- leads to outbidding with ISIS and
lone wolf attacks.
Zimmerman 15 (Katherine Zimmerman, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the lead analyst on al-Qa`ida
for AEI's Critical Threats Project, September, 2015, AQAP: A Resurgent Threat, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/v2/wpcontent/uploads/2015/09/CTC-SENTINEL-8-912.pdf, accessed 1-6-2019)
Al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is one of the few beneficiaries of Yemen’s collapse into civil
war. It now governs one of the country’s three major ports and has expanded its operations in Yemen, benefiting from a larger recruiting pool. AQAP’s enlarged safe haven
supports its efforts locally, but also serves as a sanctuary for the external operations cell that previously
has threatened the United States several times. The affiliate remains al-Qa`ida’s greatest direct threat to the United States and it is growing stronger. Al-Qa`ida’s Yemenbased affiliate has been quietly expanding as the country descends further into civil war. It may be one of the few beneficiaries of Yemen’s collapse, other than the Islamic State, which is developing its own Yemeni franchise. AlQa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has taken advantage of the turmoil to try its hand at governance again and build support among Sunni tribes angered by the Huthi takeover of large swaths of the country. Yemen’s civil war
The Yemeni military and security forces, what is left of them, are
no longer fighting AQAP. Those elements that remain are divided and degraded, operating without a
central command, and have no incentive to enter into another fight. The Yemeni state is broken, and local authorities have filled the void.
has secured nearly all of AQAP’s immediate military objectives. The West retreated.
Mediation efforts with Yemeni stakeholders have not yielded much progress on the political front, and even if a new central government emerges, it will have to work hard to rebuild relationships with provincial and local
Finally, there is an active insurgency in Yemen rooted in Sunni communities that provides an
opportunity for AQAP to further establish itself. The conditions are ripe for success, and AQAP is an
adaptive organization. It appears to have learned from strategic errors in 2011 and 2012, which led to a popular uprising against it. The late AQAP emir, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, advised his Algerian
authorities.
counterpart in the summer of 2012 that, based on AQAP’s experiences in Abyan, meeting the people’s basic needs was the first step in governance.1 The group also appears to have copied tactics from al-Qa`ida’s Syrian affiliate,
Jabhat al-Nusra, and has better integrated itself into the population, by using local governance structures for example.2 Additionally, the broad mobilization of Sunnis against Huthis is giving AQAP momentum on which to draw.
AQAP’s gains in Yemen could have disastrous
consequences. AQAP was behind at least four major attempted attacks on U.S. interests outside of
Yemen, and all of those occurred when the group was weaker than it is today. AQAP is also still a key
asset for the global al-Qa`ida network, providing overall leadership guidance, sharing expertise, and
coordinating transnational attacks. AQAP’s growing strength in Yemen could reverberate throughout
the al-Qa`ida network, raising the stakes in the competition between al-Qa`ida and the Islamic State to
lead the global jihadist movement.3 Tapping into Yemen’s Insurgency The Yemeni insurgency began in earnest after the Huthi takeover of the central Yemeni government in January
This condition was not present during the Arab Spring and will only further serve AQAP’s interests.
2015, though many local militias had mobilized months earlier. Yemen’s complex political dynamics influenced the process. Many of those opposed to the Huthis also opposed the central government, but saw the Huthis as an
invading force. These “popular resistance forces” draw from the local population and fight to protect their territory. They are not mobilizing along sectarian lines, but view the conflict in terms of the distribution of power. Despite
the absence of religion as a primary factor, the frontline of the conflict ran through Sunni populations, creating a prime opportunity for AQAP in such places as al-Bayda, Shabwah, and Abyan, especially as AQAP tapped into the
AQAP had already declared the Huthis as an enemy, describing them as heretics taking
orders from Iran, who must be stopped.a By fall 2014, AQAP had expanded its campaign against them. Militants began conducting smaller-scale, disruptive attacks against Huthi
positions and began assassinating Huthi officials. The campaign focused initially on the capital, Sana’a, and also al-Bayda governorate, where AQAP already had some limited support. AQAP conducted
mass-casualty attacks against the Huthis, such as a December 18 twin suicide vehicle-borne improvised
explosive device (SVBIED) strike in the Red Sea port city of al-Hudaydah.4 The dedication of resources to the fight against the Huthis had little
tangible effect on AQAP’s continued campaign against the Yemeni military. AQAP was able to sustain the same level of activity against the
Yemeni military even as it increasingly targeted Huthis. This shows that AQAP had maintained some
sort of reserve capability, and also that it was probably able to add strength over time. AQAP took advantage of the
insurgency’s momentum.
breakdown of Yemeni security forces in January 2015 and attacked now-isolated Yemeni military bases. Between February and April 2015, AQAP attacked the bases of the 19th Infantry Brigade in Shabwah, the 39th Armored
Brigade in Abyan, and the 23rd Mechanized Brigade in Hadramawt.5 AQAP seized weaponry in each attack. These weapons were probably distributed to AQAP forces in Abyan and Shabwah; there is little evidence of them
appearing in al-Bayda. Complex AQAP attacks against the Yemeni military ended in April, when it was evident the Yemeni military had effectively disbanded. AQAP’s primary effort on the ground is against the Huthis, and it is using
this fight to make inroads among other Sunni populations that have mobilized in resistance. It claims to be active on all fronts against the Huthis and to be running training camps for new fighters. Jalal al-Marqishi, an AQAP military
commander who led the fight in 2011 and 2012, characterized AQAP’s presence as both direct and indirect, including training and providing supplies and military advice.6 The group’s recent media releases include training videos
on how to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs), for example.b AQAP appears to be attempting to replicate Jabhat al-Nusra’s success in gaining acceptance by using its military capabilities in service of goals important to local
The alignment of AQAP’s objectives with those of the popular resistance militias created an alliance
where it might not otherwise have existed, especially since AQAP’s ideology is foreign to most Yemenis.
It is within this space that AQAP seems to have been able to expand its base within the insurgency. AQAP is now
interests.
a dominant force in such places as al-Bayda, where its ability to organize military offensives against the Huthis seems to have led local tribal militias to accept the presence of AQAP forces.c AQAP’s presence in al-Bayda is
strategically important because a vital road from Yemen’s capital to the southeast runs through the governorate, providing direct access to central Yemen. AQAP had previously made inroads there, particularly in northwestern alBayda, where some of the local tribes openly supported it in 2012.7 The group has expanded since, building on anti-Huthi sentiments among local tribes. Though some clans were initially neutral to the Huthis’s arrival in al-Bayda,
the deaths of fellow tribesmen began to drive popular resistance against the Huthis, and so AQAP stepped in to take advantage.8 For example, AQAP reportedly formed an alliance with the al-Hamiqan tribe in southeastern alBayda in February 2015 to fight the Huthis.9 AQAP has been careful to limit collateral damage and that has prevented a backlash against the group and allowed it to exploit local anger at the Huthis.d While the tribes may still turn
on AQAP once the common enemy is defeated, opportunities to integrate AQAP’s forces into local militias and personnel into local governance structures may mitigate this risk.
The Saudi-led military
intervention is also creating opportunities for AQAP. In mid-July, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates deployed troops alongside newly trained Yemeni forces in
Aden after a nearly four-month-long air campaign against the Huthis.10 The coalition rolled back Huthi gains in Aden before focusing on Lahij and Abyan. AQAP is among the groups filling the power vacuum behind the coalition’s
advances. AQAP militants briefly seized buildings in Aden on August 22, and residents report AQAP forces are still in the city.e AQAP has also seized buildings in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan, which AQAP held in 2011 and 2012.11
The coalition forces, including the Saudis, Emiratis, and Yemeni militias, are not focused on AQAP’s growing presence behind their frontline. AQAP’s Experiment with Governance in Hadramawt The deterioration of the Yemeni
military has allowed AQAP to develop a safe haven in the country. It has been able to gather resources in areas removed from the frontlines, such as in Yemen’s eastern Hadramawt governorate. AQAP seized control of al-Mukalla,
one of Yemen’s three major port cities, on April 2, 2015.12 But AQAP did not raise the tell-tale black flag immediately.13 Instead, the group took a softer approach. Its forces in al-Mukalla adopted the name, Sons of Hadramawt,
and called for a local council to govern the city. Al-Mukalla-based leaders established the Hadhrami Domestic Council (HDC), a local council of Salafist-leaning individuals responsive to AQAP demands, which took over governance
from the Sons of Hadramawt on April 13.[f] The failure of a powerful anti-government tribal alliance, the Hadramawt Tribal Confederacy (HTC), to re-secure al-Mukalla, first by force and then by negotiation, suggests that AQAP’s
influence is durable.g The HDC runs the local government and administers the city. The Sons of Hadramawt maintain a security presence in the city, but reports from al-Mukalla described AQAP as operating in the shadows rather
than openly, as it did in Abyan governorate during 2011. The Sons of Hadramawt turned over control of al-Mukalla’s infrastructure in the months following the initial seizure, including returning control of the airport.14 It is very
likely that the Sons of Hadramawt is still able to move resources in and out of al-Mukalla’s air and sea ports, which will help AQAP support its efforts in southern and central Yemen. The Sons of Hadramawt police the city, and it
operates a group called the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice that is essentially a religious police force.15 The group enforced a ban on the mild narcotic qat starting in early May, burning what it had
seized in the street, and issued another warning against the drug in early July.16 Violence is used sparingly, but as an example. AQAP publicly executed two men accused of providing the information that led to the death of the
group’s former emir, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, on June 1717 and hung their bodies from a bridge as a warning.18 At the end of July, the Sons of Hadramawt also publicly flogged individuals it claimed had used hashish.19 The group seems
to have cemented its presence in the city. Residents protested against AQAP in late April and early June, but these demonstrations died out.20 Protesters in July cited the uptick in U.S. airstrikes in the area as a grievance and there
were reports of the HDC negotiating AQAP’s withdrawal from the city, yet it remains in control through the Sons of Hadramawt and the HDC.h AQAP may be seeking to expand its control over Hadramawt. There are reports that
Sons of Hadramawt convened a meeting in Shihr city in the district next to al-Mukalla in early August.21 AQAP seized the major infrastructure in the city, including the oil terminal and the seaport, in April, but there had been no
attempt to govern.22At the end of July, however, there were indications that AQAP may have been seeking to re-open the front in Wadi Hadramawt, the HTC’s stronghold, which may be an attempt to secure the oil infrastructure
there. On July 31, AQAP conducted a SVBIED attack targeting the 135th Brigade in al-Qatan, after more than four months of near inactivity[.2]3 A second roadside bomb attack on August 4 injured two soldiers in Sayun,
Hadramawt.24 The resumption of a front in Wadi Hadramawt would probably mobilize the HTC to prevent further gains by AQAP, though the HTC leadership may acquiesce to AQAP in order to avoid further conflict. An Enduring
Threat AQAP’s threat is heightened by its position within al-Qa`ida’s global network.25 There have been a series of reports over the past two years that AQAP is working with al-Qa`ida individuals in Syria to target the United States
or the West and that individuals trained by AQAP’s imaginative bomb-maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, have moved into Syria.26 Al-Asiri is the mastermind behind AQAP’s most innovative and difficult-to-detect bombs, and he continues to
improve his designs.27 AQAP probably maintains a connection to Syria—and therefore the foreign fighters in Syria—through the al-Qa`ida cell operating alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, dubbed the Khorasan Group.28 Significant
attrition within AQAP’s leadership in 2015 has not reduced the threat.i AQAP, like other al-Qa`ida groups, is resilient to attrition. Al-Asiri remains at large and he has replicated his capabilities among apprentices.29 The death of
Nasir al-Wuhayshi, who had been emir since 2007 and had become al-Qa`ida’s global general manager in 2013, did not cause notable shifts in AQAP’s Yemeni operations.30 Qasim al-Raymi, AQAP’s military commander, who had
been at al-Wuhayshi’s side since 2006 and had overseen AQAP’s major transnational attacks, now commands the entire organization and has pledged bay`a (allegiance) to al-Qa`ida emir Ayman al-Zawahiri.31 A potential challenge
for the group, however, will be replacing several leading religious leaders killed in recent drone strikes.j It is not readily apparent who will become that voice for AQAP, which will become a more important issue as the Islamic State
expands in Yemen.32 The emergence of the Islamic State in Yemen increases the pressure on AQAP to sustain its success. The Islamic State’s leadership has openly described their al-Qa`ida counterparts as having abandoned true
jihad and pursuing a failed strategy.k The Islamic State’s continued victories in Iraq and Syria, and its newfound strength in Sirte, Libya may encourage some Yemenis to support the Islamic State over AQAP, as will some Yemeni
Salafist sheikhs declaring support for the Islamic State, such as Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Raymi.[l] An AQAP judge from Ibb, Ma’moun Abdulhamid Hatem, may have facilitated the initial growth of the Islamic State in Yemen. He
publicly supported the group initially and the first major Islamic State suicide attack drew on recruits from Ibb.33 Recruitment by the Islamic State still appears limited though, and the group is restricted to operating as small
cells.34 However, the Islamic State has signaled it may challenge AQAP in al-Bayda, expanding from its current focus on Sana’a.m For the time being, it is unlikely that the Islamic State will overtake AQAP as the predominant
jihadist group in Yemen. AQAP is deepening its own relations with Sunni tribes and remains sensitive to Yemeni tribal `urf (customs), but AQAP must maintain its momentum with an ongoing narrative of victory if it is to prevent the
Islamic State from making further gains. As has been noted, the Islamic State’s rise in the global jihadist movement challenges al-Qa`ida. Al-Qa`ida’s response will probably be to attempt to prove that its strategy—one that uses
attacks against the West to undermine support for governments in Muslim-majority lands—remains successful. As a result, al-Qa`ida is likely under pressure to conduct a spectacular attack against the West in order to demonstrate
its continued relevance. That would almost certainly involve AQAP’s well-developed capabilities, which have been enhanced by its expanded safe haven in Yemen. The persistence of AQAP’s bomb-making capabilities and its
The
leaders of both al-Qa`ida and AQAP have again begun pushing for smaller-scale lone-wolf attacks in
the West.n AQAP first began calling for such attacks, which it calls lone jihad, in July 2010, with the
release of its English-language magazine Inspire and regular statements from the late radical cleric
Anwar al-Awlaki.36 Khaled Batarfi, a senior AQAP commander who was freed from al-Mukalla’s prison when AQAP took control of the city, appeared in an August 4 video that praised the Charlie Hebdo attack in
expertise in transnational attacks underpins the enduring threat from that group. A July 30 statement attributed to al-Asiri noted that AQAP has “chosen war against America” and that “America is first.”35
Paris and the Chattanooga shooter in the United States.37 Batarfi called for Muslims to expand the “jihad uprising,” and cited lone jihad as helping to achieve global goals.
Specifically triggers lone wolf attacks with WMD.
Michael 14 (George Michael 2014, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Westfield State Counterinsurgency and Lone Wolf
Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, Volume 26, Issue 1, accessed 1-5-2019)
As the history of guerilla warfare has demonstrated, one of the most important objectives of an
insurgency is to survive. More often than not, guerilla wars are not won militarily; rather insurgents persist in their struggle until they force a political solution to the
conflict. Historically, the critical factor that enables an insurgency to persist over a long period of time is support from the populace. New technology, however,
allows for smaller and smaller groups to remain viable even without a broad base of support. Chris Anderson of
Wired magazine developed the concept of the ‘‘long tail’’ to explain how in the new business environment with platforms such as Amazon, firms can profit by selling previously hard-to-find
items to a larger number of customers instead of selling only a smaller variety of popular items in large quantities.10 Likewise, as Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker observed in their study War 2.0:
a similar logic applies to extremist and terrorist groups in the sense that it no
longer requires a large popular following to survive over time. A relatively low number of highly
motivated, partly self-recruited, and geographically dispersed followers can share a cause without
broader popular appeal, thus making niche terrorism possible. As a consequence, the critical mass of people necessary to establish a viable
terrorist movement has been drastically lowered.11 Various political, social, and technological developments have contributed
to the miniaturization of terrorist organizations and the increasing frequency of lone wolf terrorism.
Irregular Warfare in the Information Age,
Geopolitically, the dissolution of the Soviet Union drastically changed the security environment within which terrorists operate. During the Cold War, several communist states were covert
supporters of terrorist groups. At the time, supporting terrorism was viewed as furthering the foreign policy objectives of the Soviet bloc.12 In her classic study, The Terror Network, Claire
Sterling maintained that for much of the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the Soviet Union was at the center of a global terrorist apparatus.13 Although critics dismissed Sterling’s
thesis when it was first released, subsequent examinations of the Soviet and East German archives after the collapse of the Red Bloc suggest that she was not far off the mark after all.14
Initially after the Cold War, terrorism went into steep decline in large part because several leading terrorist groups lost material support fromcommunist states.15 With the collapse of Soviet
Communism, the world entered what Charles Krauthammer referred to as the ‘‘unipolar’’ era in which one sole superpower predominates.16 In an era of U.S.-dominated globalization, states
have more to gain by accommodation with the West rather than confrontation. In many parts of the world, the setting is not conducive to large, clandestine groups insofar as many foreign
governments are coordinating their counterterrorism efforts with the U.S. government, as they seek to dismantle terrorist organizations and deny them funding and resources. This trend
Technology has contributed to the miniaturization of terrorism as well. One the one hand, new
surveillance technology has enabled governments to better monitor dissident groups and potential terrorists. On the other hand, the emergence of new
technology has the potential to serve as a force multiplier for terrorists. For example, the Internet allows like-minded activists to
accelerated after 9=11.17
operate on their own initiative without the direction of a formal organization. Enhanced communication capabilities allow for new flexible models of organization that eschew traditional
leadership structures and enable collaboration by disparate parties that are geographically dispersed. Furthermore, the rise of the ‘‘new media’’ has led to a diffusion of soft power around the
world that has increased access to groups and individuals who have traditionally not had much influence in the marketplace of ideas. The new media developed concomitant with the Web 2.0,
which arose after the Dot-com bubble burst in the year 2000. Out of the rubble, a new crop of new Web-based companies and services emerged that offered interactivity and ‘‘user-generated
content.’’ The Web 2.0 encompasses an array of interactive communications facilitated by a rapidly expanding set of platforms, including blogs, Web forums, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
that are linked together in innovative ways.18 The rise of the new media ushered in a new era of communications, which allowed much greater and broader participation from users, not only
we are witnessing the age of the ‘‘superempowered individual,’’ who if adequately armed with a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), could
wreak unprecedented havoc.20 As the leaderless resistance concept gains popularity in terrorist and
extremist subcultures and as our infrastructure becomes more and more interconnected, just a few
determined lone wolves have the potential to cause greater mayhem. These developments mark a major departure from previous
in the spheres of commerce and social networking, but in terrorism and insurgency as well.19 Today,
models of terrorism and insurgency. Thomas X. Hammes elaborated on Lind’s framework in the book The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, in which he defined fourth
generation warfare as an evolved form of insurgency that endeavors to use all available networks—political, social, and military, to convince the enemy’s decision makers that their strategic
goals are unattainable or not worth the cost.21
To be effective, strategy must evolve to reflect the current operational
environment. Like other previous variants of conflict and warfare that preceded it, the salience of leaderless resistance comes about from a confluence of several political, social,
and technological trends. Conceivably, a fifth-generation warfare could take the form of leaderless resistance in which individuals and small cells commit acts of terrorism on their own
Numerous trends are leading to the miniaturization of terrorism,
warfare, and conflict around the world. New Internet platforms allow for faster and more efficient communications of which terrorists can now avail
themselves. Greater interconnectedness also makes infrastructure more vulnerable to disruption as a perturbation could precipitate a cascading effect throughout the system. The
availability of more lethal weapons and dual use technology could lead to deadlier attacks. Finally, although the
initiative with no traditional command-and-control hierarchy.
historical process of globalization has improved the life opportunities of many people, it can be highly disruptive as it upturns relations among citizens, cultures, economies, societies, and
governments. Several factors make leaderless resistance a potentially effective strategy. Although the state’s capacity to monitor is substantial, individuals are still able to operate under the
radar screen and commit violence with little predictability. For instance, having no criminal record other than minor offenses, Anders Behrig Breivik was able to procure firearms and fertilizer
Leaderless resistance can serve as a catalyst spurring
others to move from thought to action. The tactic can produce a demonstration effect in that violence
spawns copycats.23 Extraordinary examples of leaderless resistance serve to recruit new members to the network. Those actions that are unsuccessful are lost or discarded.24
for making his bomb without raising red flags. His attacks seemed to come out of nowhere.22
Lone wolves do not require expensive or sophisticated equipment, as evidenced by the D.C. snipers who used a semi-automatic rifle and a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice to terrorize the area.
Leaderless resistance makes the penetration of terrorist movements difficult because lone wolves work alone and they have no information on other activists. Further, the mass media can
amplify the exploits of lone wolves. Finally, open societies make leaderless resistance easier to carry out because there are numerous soft targets.25 Nevertheless, there are measures that can
be applied to mitigate the risk of lone wolf terrorism.
1AC – Solvency
New restrictions have put MAVNI into legal limbo.
Philipps 18 (Dave Philipps is a national correspondent covering veterans and the military, and is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
national reporting. Since joining the Times in 2014, he has covered the military community from the ground up, focusing largely on the
unintended consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan., 8-9-2018, "Army Suspends Its Purge of Immigrant Recruits," New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/us/mavni-program-army-discharge-immigrants.html) lz
In recent months, dozens
of recruits in the program, known as Military Accessions Vital to National Interests, or
Mavni, have been abruptly discharged from the service, often with little or no explanation. A handful of the
discharged recruits sued in federal court, prompting widespread media coverage of the purge last month. The Army then ordered a halt to the
discharges in a memorandum dated July 20. “Effective immediately, you will suspend processing of all involuntary separation actions,” Marshall
M. Williams, the acting assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, wrote in the order, adding that he should be notified
personally before a determination is made in any discharge case involving a Mavni recruit. The memorandum was made public on Wednesday
as part of a court filing. Recruits in
the program still do not know whether the Army will allow them to complete
their service and get citizenship, or is merely buying time while it rethinks its strategy for forcing them
out. The Army, in a brief statement, said only that it had stopped the discharges “in order to conduct a review of
the administrative separation process.” Beverly Cutler, a retired judge who represents a number of recruits pro bono,
said that the order “may just prolong the agony.” “The Army may go through all of this and still
discharge them at a later time,” Ms. Cutler said. The policy change was ordered less than two weeks after the discharges were
widely reported in the news media, and four days after the Army reversed at least one of the discharges. The recruit in that case had sued,
arguing that he had been denied any chance to appeal his discharge. For decades, the Pentagon’s policy was to allow only citizens and
permanent residents to join the military. The Mavni
program was created during the George W. Bush administration to allow
certain immigrants who were in the country legally but not permanently to enlist and get fast-tracked
citizenship, if they possessed abilities the military needed. The soldiers were recruited mainly for their language skills or
medical training. Many speak strategically important languages like Chinese, Korean or Russian. Many have college
degrees, and some are medical doctors. More than 10,000 troops have joined the military through the program
since it began in 2008, almost all of them serving in the Army. In recent years, though, the Defense Department has
tightened its vetting of immigrant recruits. Now, soldiers joining up to be clerks, mechanics and surgeons face the kinds of
extensive background checks that were formerly conducted for troops who needed top secret clearance. The added layers of scrutiny
include screenings by the C.I.A. and F.B.I., a review of at least a decade’s worth of personal finances, an exhaustive questionnaire
and numerous lengthy interviews. The new requirements made processing each recruit take much longer , and the
backlog of reviews piled up into the thousands. Many recruits have been waiting for years to get the clearances they need to
advance in their military careers, and in some cases, Ms. Cutler said, the process has dragged on so long that screenings done at the beginning
have since expired and must be done over again. Then
the Army started pushing the recruits out. “They were being
discharged even if there was not a security concern, ” she said. “These are often highly skilled individuals, many have
master’s degrees.” In a court filing in July, government lawyers called the Mavni program an “elevated security risk,” and said that some
recruits had provided false information to obtain student visas and that others had friends who were associated with foreign intelligence
organizations. However, a 2017 report by the RAND Corporation found no evidence that the Mavni program had caused any security problems.
The report, which has not been officially released, found that the program’s recruits were generally better educated and performed better than
the average enlisted soldier, and had not been involved in terrorism or espionage. The military
may want to curtail the Mavni
program simply because it has become an administrative headache, clogged with too many regulations,
said Margaret D. Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who helped create the program and is now an immigration lawyer
highly qualified soldiers who are discharged are told that they
failed background checks because they had “foreign ties.” “It’s the height of absurdity,” Ms. Stock said. “ The Army
spends millions to screen foreigners to figure out that they have foreign ties. The real story is that they are looking for some way to
get them out.” A class-action lawsuit filed on Friday in Washington claims that soldiers were discharged “not because of
any misconduct by plaintiffs, but rather because the Army either did not want to expend the resources
necessary to complete the background investigations, or they could not do so.” Xionghou Zhang is one of the soldiers
representing some Mavni soldiers. She said that many
pushed out of the program. He entered the United States from China on a student visa in 2014 and enlisted in 2016. He got a degree in
management, married, had a child and waited to be called to active duty as a logistics specialist. But the Army told him this spring that he was
out, with no way to appeal. “All they told me was, I was unsuitable,” said Mr. Zhang, who lives in Rochester, N.Y. A few days after an article in
The New York Times related his story, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appeared at his door and told him he was going to be
deported. The next hearing in his deportation proceedings is scheduled for October. “I wish I could go back to the Army — this job means a lot
to me,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “I need to provide for my family. And also, the uniform gives me respect — it would be an honor to
serve.” The ICE agents told him he was a flight risk, he said, and made him and his wife wear GPS tracking bracelets around their ankles. “We
never violated the immigration laws,” he said. “It was the Army that broke the contract. But with the bracelets, we feel like criminals. My wife is
very ashamed. When we go out, we wear long pants.”
Thus, the plan: The United States federal government should restore and expand
eligibility, excluding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, for the Military
Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, substantially increase its quota, and
grant legal permanent residence to all qualifying applicants.
Solves backlog and increases immigrant recruitment.
Chen 16 (Alexander Chen, writer at the Roosevelt Institute: a progressive, nonpartisan think tank associated with the broader Roosevelt
Institute National Campus Network, 2016, “Expanding the Scope of the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest,” The Roosevelt
Institute of Columbia University,
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57689b0e197aeab794b8f733/t/57b3e28c15d5db9ad06b3e07/1471406733001/Defense+and+Diplomac
y_Alexander+Chen.pdf, accessed 8-15-2018) ml
Recommended Action The
Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program seeks to match
the military’s interest in attracting skilled recruits with immigrants’ desire to obtain citizenship.
Implemented in a pilot program in 2008, it allows legal non-citizens to apply for citizenship through military service.
Not everyone can apply, though: Applicants must be either be fluent in one of 50 “critical languages” or be
trained in one of several specific medical fields. The languages that are currently included are fairly evenly distributed
geographically, with a slight focus on those spoken in Eastern Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. A notable exception is Spanish; increasing rates
of recruiting among Hispanics mean that the military is not wanting for Spanish speakers. Language
applicants must enlist for at
least four years of active duty, and four years in the reserves. For the Army, MAVNI applicants must also
score at least 50 on the Armed Forces Quali cation Test, com- pared to a minimum score of 31 for citizen
applicants, and are ineligible for waivers.17 During the pilot program, 15,000 applied for 1,000 spots.18 Since then, MAVNI
has expanded to allow 3,000 recruits in the fiscal year ending in 2015, and 5,000 in 2016.19 Non-citizen
soldiers and their spouses have been able to apply for citizenship and undergo an expedited process,
but they must obtain legal residency, or a green card, first. For some troops, that process has taken 10-15 years.20
MAVNI is open to non-citizens without a green card, including refugees, students, and most recently
immigrants who arrived in the US under 16 years of age through the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) policy. Most MAVNI recruits are naturalized in 9-12 weeks, after completing basic
training. Expanding the scope of the MAVNI program would both alleviate problems in
recruiting skilled soldiers and provide highly educated immigrants an expedited path to citizenship.
Statistics collected by the military show that non-citizens in the Army on average score higher on the
entry exam, have a higher retention rate, and 71% possess a college degree. A US citizen with a undergraduate or
advanced degree would need some convincing to enlist rather than find another job, usually through recruitment bonuses. At the same
time, equally qualified foreign nationals are turned away in the thousands due to the quotas in MAVNI.
As the military increasingly prioritizes skill over sheer numbers, MAVNI applicants cannot be wasted.
House bill H.R.3698 would make the program permanent , and is still awaiting the Subcommittee on Immigration and
Border Security’s action.21 In addition to making MAVNI permanent legislation through H.R.3698, the program should be tripled in size to allow
Past applicants have largely been rejected due to quotas rather than a lack of
qualifications. Also, the program should be expanded to include persons in medical school, not just
licensed practitioners. MAVNI is already cost-effective because of the lack of a need for recruiting
bonuses and its higher retention rate.22 Assuming the cost of completing recruits’ education in exchange
15,000 recruits per year.
for reserve service through medical school and a mandatory 4+4 term akin to language applicants would
be an investment in a higher-quality military. Bolstering the military while lowering barriers to immigration, MAVNI could
ostensibly have the potential for bipartisan support. But a similar bill to H.R.3698, H.R.435, died in the last session of
Congress. H.R.435, the Military Enlistment Opportunity Act of 2013, would have facilitated the recruitment of legal two-year residents and
DACA members into the military. House Republicans criticized it in part for the addition of DACA applicants to the program, but this effect is
The overlap between DACA and MAVNI is so slim that only 43 have applied for MAVNI
under DACA since the program’s addition.23 It would be a shame if MAVNI were ultimately scrapped due
to the minor inclusion of DACA. Ultimately, programs like MAVNI can provide an opportunity to address
two of the most pressing issues facing US policymakers today, improving our military’s ability to face
future threats while helping qualified, driven individuals become US citizens.
nearly inconsequential:
Providing [LPR/legal permanent residence] is a key incentive.
Quester 5 (George H. Quester, Professor of Government and Politics at the University of
Maryland. A graduate of Columbia College, "Demographic Trends and Military Recruitment: Surprising Possibilities", Strategic Studies Institute:
US Army College, http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/Articles/05spring/quester.pdf)
Reliance on Immigrant Recruits In the civilian sector, the United States and the countries of Western Europe have had to rely on
immigrants, some of them illegal, to supply needed younger-age labor when domestic birthrates would not have done so. And the same
may again have to be the case in military recruitment, with the past indeed filled with numerous
illustrative examples France continues to make extensive use of its Foreign Legion, and the British Army still employs battalions of
Nepalese Gurkhas. In the American Civil War, the Union Army extensively recruited recent immigrants, most particularly from Ireland and
Germany, allowing them to serve in segregated regiments where all their comrades would be of the same ethnicity, with a great number of
these enlistees not yet being American citizens.11 The
laws of various countries have in the past granted faster-track
access to legal-immigrant status, and to citizenship, for people who enlist in the armed forces, and this
is indeed true in various ways for the United States even today. For any military operation whatsoever,
even the most violent combat, knowledge of relevant foreign languages will be an important asset. Such
linguistic skills are needed for intelligence against an organized army, and particularly for combating
terrorism. And such skills are especially important for peacekeeping operations and state-building. Given
that Americans are notorious for not learning foreign languages in school, a shortage of Arabic-speakers and of speakers of other foreign
languages is almost inevitable, not so much because of birthrates as because of education patterns. The result reinforces the need to consider
recruiting those who have just arrived in the United States, legally or even illegally, and perhaps (where the shortages become extreme enough)
even to consider the establishment of recruiting facilities outside the United States. This is a constraint which will not apply just to the US
armed forces, but will affect, as noted, those of France and Britain, and probably those of Germany and the other NATO allies. In all of these
other countries, birthrates have dropped even more dramatically than in the United States. Recruitment abroad is always a touchy issue, with
West European countries all through the Cold War expressing irritation that the Foreign Legion might have been too aggressive in its recruiting
activities outside of France’s borders. Today’s “brain drain” produces international resentment, when the human capital assets of highly
intelligent and well-trained physicians and engineers come to the United States or other richer countries to do their work, rather than
remaining or returning to practice in their native land. American companies and hospitals sometimes send head-hunters abroad to encourage
highly qualified people to come to the United States instead of staying in their homelands, but even this would not be quite as much of a
violation of sovereignty as having US armed forces recruiters opening up a storefront in some foreign country Nepalese Gurkhas and French
Foreign Legionnaires are recruited for their infantry skills for possible future ground combat, the kind of military service where one has to be
young and in very good physical shape, and most likely still has to be male. If
the United States continues to have a relative
shortage of young men, parallel recruiting needs—possibly to be remedied by going abroad to find the
required people—may emerge. Yet the trend toward technological complexity in combat and a reliance on above-average
intelligence for one’s warriors might produce a shortage as well of computer-capable people willing to serve in the US military, in which case
the turn toward a Foreign Legion-style recruitment abroad might become another form of foreign brain-drain. The
US military, in its
inherent competition with Silicon Valley, might have to offer visas and citizenship as an inducement,
particularly when it can’t match the pay of the private sector, and foreign countries might be just as
upset at the human capital they were losing.
2AC
2AC – AT: Heg Bad
Trump makes pursuit inevitable.
Ryan 18 (Maria Ryan is a lecturer in American History, University of Nottingham, 2-7-2018, “Trump puts defence before diplomacy – and
wants tanks on the streets of Washington”, Conversation, https://theconversation.com/trump-puts-defence-before-diplomacy-and-wantstanks-on-the-streets-of-washington-90642, accessed 8-25-2018) jd
It seems Donald Trump’s visit to France last summer made a big impression on him. Having seen the full pomp of a French military display on
Bastille Day, he has reportedly ordered his military to top it with a rare parade of American forces through the streets of Washington DC. With
North Korea back in the habit of parading its own massive forces through Pyongyang, Trump is keen to
make it clear who’s still the biggest military power on Earth. But this isn’t just another chance for
Trump to show off; it actually matches the explicitly military-first foreign policy his administration has
been drawing up. The Trump administration’s National Defence Strategy, released in late January,
provides the most comprehensive insight yet into the US’s recalibrated global outlook. The strategy is
staunchly global in scope and militaristic in tone: under Donald Trump, the US will seek to aggressively
project power into every region of the world, promoting US leadership in the face of hostile rivals.
Produced every four years by the Department of Defence, the NDS is a means to operationalise the more general National Security
Strategyreleased by the White House. This
latest one paints a stark picture of a hostile world, one in which “interstate strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security”. The
resurgence of “long-term strategic competition” by “revisionist powers” – namely China and Russia –
has created “global disorder” and “a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have
experienced in recent memory”. This is a serious change. At the end of the Cold War, it seemed to some as though great power
competition had come to an end: the world became “unipolar”, with the US as its sole superpower. Its military and economic power seemed
unmatchable, and there was no serious competitor for the foreseeable future. But the NDS makes clear that the Pentagon now recognises that
The post-World War II global order shaped by American power, is, it says,
“weakening”. “China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model”, while “rogue regimes” like Iran and
North Korea threaten US dominance in their respective regions. In this new era of inter-state competition, “America’s
military has no preordained right to victory” – but failure would “result in decreasing US global
influence … and reduced access to markets”. In this environment, the US will seek to “remain the preeminent
military power in the world, ensure the balances of power remain in our favour, and advance an
international order that is most conducive to our security and prosperity”. On the face of it, none of this is
drastically different from the existing norms that govern the way US foreign policy is made. But looked at in
context, it’s a decidedly hawkish turn. It also means the Trump administration has set out its stall as an
internationalist power, not an isolationist one.
the US is in relative decline. Back on top?
2AC – AT: T-LPR
Counter-interp --- legal immigration means the process of obtaining LPR.
Robinson 10 (J. Gregory Robinson Population Division U.S. Census Bureau, “Coverage Of Population In Census 2000 Based On
Demographic Analysis: The History Behind The Numbers,” pg online @ https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/workingpapers/2011/demo/POP-twps0091.pdf)
Legally Admitted Permanent Residents Legally admitted migrants represent the largest of the international legal migration
components (20.33 million in 2000). The DA estimates on legal permanent residents for all years since 1950 are based on administrative
records from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).21 Since 2000, the source has moved to the Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS),
Department of Homeland Security. The I mmigration and
N ationality A ct defines legal immigration as the process by
which a non-citizen of the U nited S tates is granted l egal p ermanent r esidence. Legal immigrants, as
categorized by the INS (and OIS), include new arrivals to the United States admitted by the Department of State
and people in the United States adjusting their migrant status to legal permanent resident through the INS. The
latter category included people who initially arrived as refugees, parolees, temporary migrants, or
without authorization, and subsequently qualified for legal permanent residence either through special provisions such as
the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) or by meeting normal immigration requirements and adjusting status.
There’s literature --- the aff is well studied and predictable.
DoD 15 (Department of Defense ,https://dod.defense.gov/news/mavni-fact-sheet.pdf, accessed 8-27-2018) jd
BACKGROUND Non-citizens
have served in the military since the Revolutionary War. The Lodge Act of 1950
permitted non-citizen Eastern Europeans to enlist between 1950 and 1959. Additionally, the United States
officially began recruiting Filipino nationals into the Navy in the late 1940s, when it signed the Military Bases
Agreement of 1947 allowing U.S. military bases in the Philippines. In total, over 35,000 Filipinos enlisted in the Navy through
the program between 1952 and 1991. Today, about 5,000 legal permanent resident aliens (green card holders) enlist each year.
Law ensures that the sacrifice of non-citizens during a time of national need is met with an opportunity
for early citizenship, to recognize their contribution and sacrifice. In fact, today's service members are
eligible for expedited citizenship under a July 2002 Executive Order and the military services have
worked closely with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to streamline citizenship
processing for service members. Since Sept. 11, 2001, over 109,250 members of the Armed Forces have
attained their citizenship by serving this nation.
2AC – AT: T-Restriction
Counter interpretation --- reduce means to make smaller
Merriam Webster No Date “reduce”, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reduce
a : to draw together or cause to converge : consolidate ·reduce
all the questions to one b (1) : to diminish in size,
amount, extent, or number ·reduce taxes ·reduce the likelihood of war (2) : to decrease the volume and concentrate
the flavor of by boiling ·add the wine and reduce the sauce for two minutes c : to narrow down : restrict ·the Indians were reduced to small
reservations d : to make shorter : abridge
A restriction is a limitation or qualification---it’s NOT a term of art.
Snow 8 G. Murray Snow 08, Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division One, Department A. 04-10-08. “State v. Wagner.” 2008 Ariz. App. Unpub.
LEXIS 613. Lexis.
P10 The term
"restriction" is not defined by the Legislature for the purposes of the DUI statutes. See generally A.R.S. § 28-1301 (2004)
(providing the "[d]efinitions" section of the DUI statutes). In the absence of a statutory definition of a term, we look to
ordinary dictionary definitions and do not construe the word as being a term of art . Lee v. State, 215 Ariz.
540, 544, ¶ 15, 161 P.3d 583, 587 (App. 2007) ("When a statutory term is not explicitly defined, we assume, unless otherwise stated, that the
Legislature intended to accord the word its natural and obvious meaning, which may be discerned from
its dictionary definition ."). P11 The dictionary definition of "restriction" is "[a] limitation or qualification."
Black's Law Dictionary 1341 (8th ed. 1999). In fact, "limited" and "restricted" are considered synonyms . See Webster's II
New Collegiate Dictionary 946 (2001). Under these commonly accepted definitions, Wagner's driving privileges were
"restrict[ed]" when they were "limited" by the ignition interlock requirement . Wagner was not only [*7] statutorily
required to install a n ignition interlock device on all of the vehicles he operated, A.R.S. § 28-1461(A)(1)(b), but he was also prohibited
from driving any vehicle that was not equipped with such a device, regardless whether he owned the vehicle or was under the influence of
intoxicants, A.R.S. § 28-1464(H). These limitations
constituted a restriction on Wagner's privilege to drive, for he was
unable to drive in circumstances which were otherwise available to the general driving population. Thus,
the rules of statutory construction dictate that the term "restriction" includes the ignition interlock device limitation.
Prefer broad constructions of “restriction.”
Public Citizen 11. Nonprofit organization that serves as a corporate watchdog for citizens for 40 years. 2011. “Developing Countries
Urgently Need a Fix for WTO’s Ban on Capital Controls.” http://www.citizen.org/documents/fact-sheet-development-and-capital-controls.pdf
As for the term “restriction,” WTO panels and legal scholars all agree that it should be construed broadly .4
Its meaning, according to such sources, could include measures to prohibit capital flows, to requiring permits for capital transactions, to
measures that tax or increase the cost of such transactions. Accordingly, a
“restrictions.”
wide range of capital controls could constitute
2AC – AT: T-Substantial
Counter interpretation --- substantial means reasonable.
King et al. 95 – Carolyn D. King, E. Grady Jolly, and Harold R. Demoss, Senior Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit, 1995(“MOAFAK KHAWAM, Petitioner, v. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE, Respondent,” United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit, 3-3-1995, Available to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)//BM
In immigration cases, we review "only the decision of the BIA, not that of the IJ." Ogbemudia v. INS, 988 F.2d 595, 598 (5th Cir.
1993). We consider the errors of the IJ only to the extent that they affect the decision of the BIA, which itself conducts a de novo review of the administrative
record. See id. The
BIA's findings of fact, upon which a deportation order is based, must be supported by "reasonable, substantial, and
Supreme Court has defined substantial evidence as
"such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion." American Textile Mfrs. Inst., Inc. v.
probative evidence on the record considered as a whole." 8 U.S.C. § 1105a(a)(4). The
Donovan, 452 U.S. 490, 522, 101 S. Ct. 2478, 69 L. Ed. 2d 185 (1981) (internal quotation omitted); see also INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 112 S. Ct. 812, 815,
817, 117 L. Ed. 2d 38 (stating that to reverse the BIA's determination under the substantial evidence test, "a reasonable factfinder would have to conclude [that the
statutory requisites had been met]."). The
Court has also stated that "the possibility of drawing two inconsistent conclusions
from the evidence does not prevent an administrative agency's finding from being [*6] supported by
substantial evidence." Donovan, 452 U.S. at 523 (internal quotation omitted).
2AC – AT: Parole CP
AND --- parole crushes readiness.
Fletcher 17 – American politician and educator who served two terms in the California State Assembly. He currently serves as a
Professor of Practice in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego., (Nathan, written 2/24/17,
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-utbg-trump-military-deport-fletcher-20170224-story.html#, accessed 7/8/18)
Rez
Imagine you are a member of the United States military deployed on the front lines confronting ISIS or
other terrorist threats. Suddenly you get a desperate phone call from home — Immigration and
Customs Enforcement has arrested your family and they’re facing deportation. Think
it can’t
happen? Think again. Think Trump. The Trump administration’s draconian and hastily drafted
immigration orders rescind a key protection for military families so that now even military spouses and
children can be rounded up and deported. This will weaken our armed forces. It will harm thousands of
military families. And it’s wrong. In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security, at the request of the Defense Department, issue
a policy memorandum aimed at preventing the deportation of spouses, parents and children of active-duty service members through a
program called “Parole in Place.” Put
simply, the program allowed immigration authorities to give the immediate
family of military service members a temporary reprieve from enforcement actions based on their
immigration status. It specifically barred those with criminal convictions from these protections. This was as much about national
security as it was about upholding our commitment to support our troops. The Department of Homeland Security wrote, at the time, that
“military preparedness can potentially be adversely affected if active members of the U.S. armed
forces … worry about the immigration status of their spouses, parents and children.” We need our
service members focused on accomplishing their mission and the safety of each other. RELATED: Trump travel
ban is a bad idea that hurts U.S. Trump right to protect nation with travel ban Clarity needed here, there on Trump’s Mexico strategy When
you deploy to war, your greatest worry is not yourself. You worry about your family left behind. The least
we can promise those willing to give their life for our country is that their immediate family members can remain in that same country. By all
accounts, the policy has worked well. Yet
the Trump administration’s new immigration enforcement policy
eviscerated “Parole in Place” protections. It does not continue a policy that reflects a promise made to recruits who joined the
United States military in the last four years. The new enforcement directive could have easily maintained the protections of this unique
program, as it did a few others. It could have made clear that agents of the U.S. government will not round up and deport the spouses and
children of our active duty service members. Instead, it casually dispenses with exercises of executive discretion based on a “specified class or
category of aliens.” The administration either did not know or did not care that one of these specified classes included military families. That
may be good politics for the red states, but it’s terrible national security policy for the United States, and a slap in the face to thousands of
deployed troops with immigrant roots. We
cannot allow our troops to be consumed with fear and anxiety about
their families while deployed on the front lines. We cannot indiscriminately endanger the family members of the citizens
who sacrifice the most for our nation.
Perm do the counterplan --- not severance and if they restore MAVNI, it’s functionally
plan plus.
Perez 10 (Roberto, Program/Event Coordinator for the Center for Multicultural Affairs, "Discrimination of Hispanic’s in America," 6/4,
http://robertorequim.blogspot.com/2010/06/discrimination-of-hispanics-in-america.html)
Though some of these individuals may be native born and assimilated into mainstream society there is those individuals new to the American
Culture, immigrants. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) there were 12,600,000 legal permanent residents with the
leading country of origin being Mexico with 3,390,000 legal residents. The
D.H.S. defines legal immigration as “all people
who were granted lawful permanent residence; granted asylee status; admitted as refuges; or
admitted as non-immigrants for a temporary stay in the United States” (DHS Office of Immigration, 2009). Then
there are those who enter the US illegally, or as we know them as “illegal’s”. The D.H.S. reported 791,568 apprehensions through the Border
Patrol and of those apprehended individuals from Mexico lead the charts (DHS Office of Immigrations Statistics). Today the immigration topic is
a large controversial conversation with both its pros and cons that is effecting hundreds if not thousands of individuals, families and companies.
Some of the discrimination comes from preconceived notions that illegal’s come from the language gap and put many Hispanic and nonHispanics alike at a disadvantage when trying to assimilate. In an article in the ‘American Journal of Economics and Sociology’ by Jin Haum Park,
states that those immigrants whose English speaking skills are not adequate are put at a earning disadvantage compared to those who know or
are fluent in English.
Parolees aren’t eligible for recruitment which undermines both advantages --- MAVNI
is the only exception.
McLawson 17 – (Greg, Puget Sound Legal, P.C. is a Washington State professional services corporation managed by Greg McLawsen, a
lawyer licensed in Washington State. , written September 11, https://stories.avvo.com/rights/immigration/can-immigrants-serve-us-military-8rules-non-citizen-service.html, accessed 7/8/18) Rez ***edited for gendered language
Yes! Each year about 8,000 non-citizens join the U.S. military. A 2011 study found that roughly 4 percent of those enlisted in active-duty military
service are non-citizens. Generally,
if a person is not a U.S. citizen, he [they] needs to be a green card holder,
i.e., a lawful permanent resident, to join the military. As discussed below, however, there are other ways a non-citizen
could qualify to serve. How do recruiters know about immigration status? When a person wants to enlist in the military, his
[their] name is run through a national immigration database. If the person is determined not
to have status as a citizen or green card holder, he [they] will be turned away. It
is also possible the person could be referred to the immigration authorities. If a person has any concerns about
whether his immigration status is valid, he should talk to an immigration attorney before seeing a recruiter.
Parole itself is not perceived --- AND, if it is, it’s seen as prejudicial.
Basco 9 Kenneth Basco 09. Army major. 10-01-09. “Don't worry, we'll take care of you: immigration of local nationals assisting the United
States in overseas contingency operations.”
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Don%27t+worry%2C+we%27ll+take+care+of+you%3A+immigration+of+local+nationals...-a0212767032
Parole is the discretionary authority of the Attorney General to allow an individual to enter the United States. (47) Although parole may enable
an individual to enter the United States, parole does not confer any immigration status on the individual. (48) Parole simply provides
physical entry into the United States for a fixed period of time. (49) When parole is no longer necessary or when
the fixed period of time has expired, the parolee is expected to return to his home country . (50)
Furthermore, parole is expressly not intended to serve as a way to bypass the normal refugee
resettlement process. An alien cannot be paroled into the United States unless "compelling reasons in the public interest with respect
to that particular alien require that the alien be paroled into the United States rather than be admitted as a refugee." (51) Parole is a
short-term solution with potentially serious long-term drawbacks. Parole can transfer an individual to
the safety of the United States relatively quickly, but it is temporary and parolees may lack adequate
support once they reach the United States . (52) Prudent planning with a long-term view is essential. Two discretionary
theories support admission by parole. (53) Humanitarian parole may be warranted when an "urgent humanitarian reason" exists to support a
foreign national's entry into the United States. Alternatively, significant public benefit parole may be warranted when a "significant public
benefit" may be achieved by bringing an individual to the United States. Judge advocates may draw on both theories when assisting local
nationals in an overseas contingency operation. B. Humanitarian Parole When an "urgent humanitarian reason" exists to justify allowing a
foreign national into the United States, the Department of Homeland Security may authorize the foreign national's entry by humanitarian
parole. (54) For example, aliens with serious medical conditions facing deportation may be released from detention and granted entry into the
United States under the theory of humanitarian parole. (55) Similarly, juveniles in detention may be released to an adult relative for
humanitarian reasons. (56) A typical humanitarian parole in an overseas contingency operation may involve a local national in need of acute
medical care he cannot receive in his own country. (57) Allowing him entry into the United States for medical attention can be strategically
advantageous to deployed units because it may build good will among the local population or generate positive media coverage. (58) C.
Significant Public Benefit Parole Another basis for parole exists when a local national has provided or will provide a significant public benefit to
the United States. (59) For example, law enforcement may arrange parole for key witnesses, necessary for trial, who would not otherwise be
able to enter the United States. (60) In these cases, the sponsoring agency is responsible for all needs of the parolee while he is physically
present in the United States, including his security, travel, food, and lodging. (61) The Department of Defense (DoD) maintains "a small program
to process and staff carefully selected applicants eligible for" significant public benefit parole. (62) Once identified, the cases of selected
applicants are forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security for approval or disapproval. (63) The Firas al-Qaisi case is a typical example
of significant public benefit parole involving the DoD where the parolee has provided a prior benefit to the United States. (64) Al-Qaisi had
developed a reputation as a tough prosecutor in Iraq and was known to have a close relationship with the United States. Subsequently, al-Qaisi
was arrested and tortured by sectarian Iraqi police. (65) The United States intervened to secure his release from Iraqi custody, and he was
initially sent to Baghdad's International Zone for protection. (66) However, the danger to al-Qaisi was so great he could not return home or
even remain in Iraq. (67) With the support of the Commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, General David Petraeus, Firas al-Qaisi and his
pregnant wife were granted significant public benefit parole to the United States. (68) In this case, significant public benefit parole was used to
provide temporary and urgent security to an individual who had provided significant assistance to the United States in the past. The actual
process and procedures for DoD's use of parole are subject to the discretion of the officials processing the application. Nevertheless, as a
general matter, all parole applications require approval "from the nominator's chain of command." (69) Applications also require evidence of
the significant public benefit the individual provided. (70) In many cases, the evidence will include records of the individual's association with
the United States and the "imminent, documented danger" that resulted from that individual's association. (71) Most significantly, when acting
as a sponsor, DoD must appoint an individual located in the United States, affiliated with the DoD, to host the parolee. (72) This person will be
responsible for monitoring the parolee and ensuring that the parolee has a support network in place to provide basic needs, such as shelter,
food, and health care. (73) Identifying an individual willing to assume this responsibility can be one of the most difficult and time-consuming
tasks associated with the parole process. Nevertheless, when the chain of command is supportive, when there is a documented and imminent
threat, and when there is a host in the United States willing to sponsor a parolee, the significant public benefit parole program can be a robust
mechanism for protecting local nationals who have been of assistance to the United States. It is important, however, for the judge advocate to
keep in mind that parole is temporary. (74) Parole
may quickly get an individual to safety, but it is not a long-term
solution. D. Criticism of Parole Very few Iraqi nationals relative to the total number of Iraqi refugees from
the war have been granted parole. (75) Moreover, the " obscure program that bypasses the State Department's
normal immigration procedures" has been subject to criticism . (76) First, parolees are spared the difficult
"multimonth waiting period in a third country like Jordan or Syria" that is typical of the "estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees" who have
fled their country. (77) Bypassing the queue benefits the parolees themselves, but it creates a disparity and an
appearance of unfairness to those not fortunate enough to receive parole. Second, the public benefit to
the United States that the parolees provided may not be clear to the media or the general public. (78) Third, it is arguably
counterproductive to remove Iraqis that are beneficial to the public from their home nation. Their country could use some heroes.
2AC – AT: EB-5 CP
2AC – AT: McConnell DA
Impeachment prevents nuclear war in North Korea, the SCS, and the Middle East.
Schmookler 17 (Andy SCHMOOKLER. 3/26/2017. Award-winning American author, public speaker, social commentator, and radio talk
show host. “Impeachment Delayed is America Imperiled,” Blue Virginia. http://bluevirginia.us/2017/03/impeachment-delayed-americaimperiled.)
The paramount danger here is the threat of war. Threatening clouds hang over the world at present, and the
United States can ill afford to have Donald Trump’s hand on the helm . It is hardly Trump’s fault that the problem
with North Korea is gradually coming to a head: American presidents since the 1990s have been attempting to prevent North Korean weapons
from posing a nuclear threat to our Asian allies and to the United States. The agreements reached have not worked. The hope that the regime
would collapse have not been fulfilled. And over the years, the
North Korean stock of nuclear bombs has increased, and
made great progress toward acquiring the means of delivering atomic weapons to ever more distant targets. Soon,
the American mainland itself may be vulnerable to nuclear attack from a rogue regime and its
psychologically unstable leader. The question of how to deal with North Korea, and with the Chinese government
that props up Kim’s evil regime, poses a challenge as difficult as anything American diplomacy – and the
it has
American military — have faced in a very long time. Literally millions of lives are at stake . And if there
were easy answers, Clinton or Bush or Obama would have come up with them. In such a delicate situation, we cannot afford to have
a man with such an attenuated connection with reality, animated by such primitive passions of dominance and
vengeance, as our commander in chief. Another potential flashpoint concerns the South China Sea. Here, too, Trump is
not responsible for the problem: China, with its rising power, has been asserting sovereignty over waters to which other
nations have legitimate claims, and the Chinese have brushed away the finding by an international
tribunal in the Hague rejecting China’s claims. History has shown that the most dangerous threats to world peace emerge
out of the confrontation between an established hegemon (like the United States) and an ascendant power
(like China). How to navigate toward a rebalancing of the international order that accommodates new
realities in relative power is another major challenge for diplomacy—one that the world disastrously failed
in 1914 and again in 1939. Donald Trump is hardly the man [person] on whom we can safely rely to find our
way through this potential flashpoint for major-power confrontation. And who knows what other areas of
potential conflict may arise while the FBI takes another year or two to complete its investigation? (There
are a few clouds developing in the Middle East, where the Russians have reportedly told Israel that its
“freedom to act” regarding Syria is over. Once before, at the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, a conflict between
Israel and its Arab neighbors led the U.S. and the Soviet Union to escalate their level of nuclear alert
to a level hardly reached hardly at all otherwise during the forty years of the Cold War.) Every day that Donald Trump
is president, America is spinning the chamber in a dangerous game of Russian roulette .
There’s already a credible threat of impeachment --- the only thing Trump has done in
response is tweet about it.
Sherman 17 (Gabriel, special correspondent for Vanity Fair. Most recently, Sherman served as national-affairs editor at New York
magazine, and he is a regular contributor to NBC News and MSNBC. ““YOU CAN’T GO ANY LOWER”: INSIDE THE WEST WING, TRUMP IS
APOPLECTIC AS ALLIES FEAR IMPEACHMENT” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/the-west-wing-trump-is-apoplectic-as-allies-fearimpeachment )
Until now, Robert Mueller has haunted Donald Trump’ s White House as a hovering, mostly unseen menace.
But by securing indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and a surprise guilty plea from foreign policy
adviser George Papadopoulos, Mueller announced loudly that the Russia investigation poses an
existential threat to the president. “Here’s what Manafort’s indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial
dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization,” said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “Trump is at 33 percent in
Gallup. You can’t go any lower.
He’s fucked.” The first charges in the Mueller probe have kindled
talk of what the endgame for Trump looks like, according to conversations with a half-dozen advisers
and friends of the president. For the first time since the investigation began, the prospect of
impeachment is being considered as a realistic outcome and not just a liberal fever dream. According to a
source, advisers in the West Wing are on edge and doing whatever they can not to be ensnared. One person
close to Dina Powell and Gary Cohn said they’re making sure to leave rooms if the subject of Russia comes up. The consensus among the
advisers I spoke to is that Trump faces few good options to thwart Mueller. For one, firing
Mueller would cross a red line,
establishment Republicans to entertain the
possibility of impeachment. “His options are limited, and his instinct is to come out swinging, which
won’t help things,” said a prominent Republican close to the White House. Trump, meanwhile, has reacted to the deteriorating
situation by lashing out on Twitter and venting in private to friends. He’s frustrated that the investigation seems to have
analogous to Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox during Watergate, pushing
no end in sight. “Trump wants to be critical of Mueller,” one person who’s been briefed on Trump’s thinking says. “He thinks it’s unfair criticism.
Clinton hasn’t gotten anything like this. And what about Tony Podesta? Trump is like, When is that going to end?” According to
two sources, Trump has complained to advisers about his legal team for letting the Mueller probe progress this far. Speaking to Steve Bannon
on Tuesday, Trump blamed Jared Kushner for his role in decisions, specifically the firings of Mike Flynn and James Comey,
that led to Mueller’s appointment, according to a source briefed on the call. When Roger Stone recently told Trump that Kushner was giving
him bad political advice, Trump agreed, according to someone familiar with the conversation. “Jared is the worst political adviser in the White
House in modern history,” Nunberg said. “I’m only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media,
and the Senate and Congress.” (The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline.) As Mueller moves to interview West
Wing aides in the coming days, advisers are lobbying for Trump to consider a range of stratagems to neutralize Mueller, from conciliation to a
declaration of all-out war. One Republican explained Trump’s best chance for survival is to get his poll numbers up. Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb has
been advocating the view that playing ball will lead to a quick resolution (Cobb did not respond to a request for comment). But these softpower approaches are being criticized by Trump allies including Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, who both believe establishment Republicans
are waiting for a chance to impeach Trump. “The establishment has proven time and time again they will fuck Trump over,” a Bannon ally told
me. In a series of phone calls with Trump on Monday and Tuesday, Bannon told the president to shake up the legal team by installing an
aggressive lawyer above Cobb, according to two sources briefed on the call. Bannon has also discussed ways to pressure Congress to defund
Mueller’s investigation or limit its scope. “Mueller shouldn’t be allowed to be a clean shot on goal,” a Bannon confidant told me. “He must be
contested and checked. Right now he has unchecked power.” Bannon’s
sense of urgency is being fueled by his belief that
Trump’s hold on power is slipping. The collapse of Obamacare repeal, and the dimming chances that tax
reform will pass soon—many Trump allies are deeply pessimistic about its prospects—have created the
political climate for establishment Republicans to turn on Trump. Two weeks ago, according to a source, Bannon did a
spitball analysis of the Cabinet to see which members would remain loyal to Trump in the event the 25th Amendment were invoked, thereby
triggering a vote to remove the president from office. Bannon recently told people he’s not sure if Trump would survive such a vote. “One thing
Steve wants Trump to do is take this more seriously,” the Bannon confidant told me. “Stop joking around. Stop tweeting.” Roger Stone believes
defunding Mueller isn’t enough. Instead, Stone
wants Trump to call for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary
Clinton’s role in approving the controversial Uranium One deal that’s been a locus of rightwing hysteria
(the transaction involved a Russian state-owned energy firm acquiring a Canadian mining company that controlled a large subset of the
uranium in the United States). It’s
a bit of a bank shot, but as Stone described it, a special prosecutor looking into
Uranium One would also have to investigate the F.B.I.’s role in approving the deal, thereby making
Mueller—who was in charge of the bureau at the time—a target. Stone’s choice for a special prosecutor: Rudy Giuliani law colleague
Marc Mukasey or Fox News pundit Andrew Napolitano. “You would immediately have to inform Mueller, Comey, and [Deputy Attorney
General] Rod Rosenstein that they are under federal investigation,” Stone said. “Trump can’t afford to fire Mueller politically. But this pushes
him aside.”
2AC – Border Wall DA
Shutdown won’t end regardless of the aff---neither side can compromise.
Nather 1-16 (David Nather, 1-16-2019, "This is why the shutdown won't end," Axios, https://www.axios.com/border-wall-trumpgovernment-shutdown-poll--c0cb0431-4590-438a-bf20-9c88d55f5847.html, accessed 1-18-2019) bm
A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows a big part of the reason why the standoff over funding
President Trump's border wall has been so impossible to solve: Republican support for the wall is
higher than at any time since Trump's election, while Democratic support has dwindled to almost nothing.
The big picture: When the divide has gotten this big, it's hard to see how the government shutdown ends .
Although a majority of the public still opposes the wall, Republican support is so high that Trump and
GOP leaders would face a furious backlash if they reopen the government with no wall funding. And Democrats would
face an even stronger backlash if they agree to fund the wall. By the numbers: Overall, 58% of the public opposes
expanding the wall along the border with Mexico, while 40% supports it. And a slight majority — 51% — says funding the wall would be
unacceptable even if that's the only way to end the shutdown. Just 29% say reopening the government without wall funding would be
unacceptable. But a clear majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents — 63% — don't want Trump and the GOP to end the
shutdown without wall funding. And an even stronger majority of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents — 84% — oppose ending the
shutdown by funding the wall. The
are going to food banks.
bottom line: This is why our political system is so broken — and why federal workers
OR---Trump will declare a national emergency---legal authority.
Vespa 1-18 (Matt Vespa, 1-18-2019, "National Emergency? Trump Will Make 'Major Announcement' On Border Crisis Tomorrow
Afternoon," Townhall, https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/01/18/national-emergency-trump-will-make-major-announcement-onborder-crisis-tomorro-n2539299, accessed 1-19-2019) bm
Is it coming tomorrow? House Democrats are still holding the line on denying President Trump his
border wall. The $5 billion proposal led to the current shutdown, now the longest in American history.
Trump wants to at least get part of the border wall built. Democrats are not in a bipartisan mode. They
just retook the House on the overarching promise to fight this White House not work with it. As the two
sides dig in, the crisis at the border is worsening. Yes, we do have a crisis on the southern border. The Washington Post and The New York
Times reported on it. Former President Barack Obama even said there was a crisis. With another migrant horde setting off for the U.S. border,
something has to get done. The
president has been mulling declaring a national emergency to get it done,
which isn’t facially unconstitutional, according to law experts, though how he would collect the funds to build this wall is
another legal can of worms. Whatever the
case, it seems now, with no deal in sight , Trump is preparing
to declare a national emergency. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow around 3 P.M, but the president said that it will be
about the crisis at the border.
No mass extinction---statistically wrong
Stewart Brand 15, environmentalist and founder of the Long Now Foundation and the Revive and Restore project, “Rethinking
extinction,” 4/21/15, https://aeon.co/essays/we-are-not-edging-up-to-a-mass-extinction
[Italics in original]
Medicine is about health. So is conservation. And as with medicine, the
trends for conservation in this century are looking bright .
We are re-enriching some ecosystems we once depleted and slowing the depletion of others. Before I explain
how we are doing that, let me spell out how exaggerated the focus on extinction has become and how it distorts the public
perception of conservation. Many now assume that we are in the midst of a human-caused ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’
to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But we’re not . The five historic mass extinctions eliminated 70 per
cent or more of all species in a relatively short time. That is not going on now . ‘If all currently
threatened species were to go extinct in a few centuries and that rate continued,’ began a recent Nature magazine
introduction to a survey of wildlife losses, ‘ the sixth mass extinction could come in a couple of centuries or a few millennia .’ The
range of dates in that statement reflects profound uncertainty about the current rate of extinction. Estimates vary a
hundred-fold – from 0.01 percent to 1 percent of species being lost per decade. The phrase ‘all currently threatened
species’ comes from the indispensable IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), which maintains the Red List of endangered species.
Its most recent report shows that of the 1.5 million identified species, and 76,199 studied by IUCN scientists, some 23,214 are deemed threatened with extinction.
So, if
all of those went extinct in the next few centuries, and the rate of extinction that killed them kept
right on for hundreds or thousands of years more, then we might be at the beginning of a human-caused
Sixth Mass Extinction. An all-too-standard case of extinction mislabeling occurred this January on the front page of The New York Times Magazine.
‘Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Shows,’ read the headline. But the article by Carl Zimmer described no such thing. Instead it was a relatively goodnews piece pointing out that while much of sea life is in trouble, it is far less so than continental wildlife, and there is time to avoid the mistakes made on land. The
article noted that, in
the centuries since 1500, some 514 species have gone extinct on land but only 15 in the
oceans, and none at all in the past 50 years. The Science paper on which Zimmer was reporting was titled ‘Marine Defaunation: Animal
Loss in the Global Ocean’ by Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues. It stated: ‘Though humans have caused
few global marine extinctions, we have profoundly affected marine wildlife, altering the functioning and provisioning of services in every ocean,’ and it went on to
chronicle the causes of ‘the proliferation of ‘empty reefs’, ‘empty estuaries’, and ‘empty bays’, with an overall decline of marine fishes by 38 per cent.
Extinction is not a helpful way to think about threats to ocean animals because few go extinct there. The
animals are highly mobile in a totally connected vast environment where there is almost always
somewhere to hide, even from industrial-scale hunting. Atlantic cod used to be one of the world’s great fisheries before it collapsed in 1992 from
decades of overfishing. According to Jesse Ausubel, one of the organisers of the recent international Census of Marine Life: ‘The total estimated kilos of cod off Cape
Cod today probably weigh only about 3 per cent of all the cod in 1815.’ (Across the Atlantic in the North Sea, however, cod fishery is recovering, thanks to effective
regulation.) No
extinction.
one really expects cod to go extinct, and yet the Red List describes them as threatened with
2AC – AT: Neoliberalism K
Long term trends are driving sustainable capitalist development – no reason this can’t
continue, their limits to growth arguments are empirically unsupported
Brook et al. 15—professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Tasmania (Barry, with John Asafu-Adjaye, University of
Queensland, Linus Blomqvist, Breakthrough Institute, Stewart Brand, Long Now Foundation, Ruth DeFries, Columbia Univeristy, Erle Ellis,
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Christopher Foreman, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, David Keith, Harvard University
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Martin Lewis, Stanford University, Mark Lynas, Cornell University, Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough
Institute, Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado, Boulder, Rachel Pritzker, Pritzker Innovation Fund, Joyashree Roy, Jadavpur University, Mark
Sagoff, George Mason University, Michael Shellenberger, Breakthrough Institute, Robert Stone, Filmmaker, and Peter Teague, Breakthrough
Institute, “AN ECOMODERNIST MANIFESTO,” http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto/, dml)
Intensifying many human activities
so that they use less land and interfere
less with the natural world is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts.
These socioeconomic and technological processes are central to economic modernization and
environmental protection. Together they allow people to mitigate climate change, to spare nature,
and to alleviate global poverty.
Humanity has flourished over the past two centuries.
Average life expectancy has increased
Humanity has made
extraordinary progress in reducing the incidence and impacts of infectious diseases, and it has become
more resilient to extreme weather and other natural disasters. Violence in all forms has declined
significantly and is probably at the lowest per capita level ever experienced by the human species
human beings have moved from autocratic government toward liberal
democracy characterized by the rule of law and increased freedom.
liberties have spread
worldwide
Historically large numbers of humans
both in percentage and in absolute terms — are free from insecurity, penury, and servitude.
human flourishing has taken a serious toll on natural, nonhuman environments and wildlife.
— particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement —
Although we have to date written separately, our views are increasingly discussed as a whole. We call ourselves ecopragmatists and ecomodernists. We offer this statement to affirm and to clarify
our views and to describe our vision for putting humankind’s extraordinary powers in the service of creating a good Anthropocene. 1.
from 30 to 70 years, resulting in a large and growing population able to live in many different environments.
, the horrors
of the 20th century and present-day terrorism notwithstanding. Globally,
Personal, economic, and political
and are today largely accepted as universal values. Modernization liberates women from traditional gender roles, increasing their control of their fertility.
—
At the same time,
Humans use about half of the
planet’s ice-free land, mostly for pasture, crops, and production forestry. Of the land once covered by forests, 20 percent has been converted to human use. Populations of many mammals, amphibians, and birds have declined by more than 50 percent in the past 40 years alone. More
than 100 species from those groups went extinct in the 20th century, and about 785 since 1500. As we write, only four northern white rhinos are confirmed to exist. Given that humans are completely dependent on the living biosphere, how is it possible that people are doing so much
technologies
have made humans less reliant upon the many ecosystems that once provided their
only sustenance, even as those same ecosystems have often been left deeply damaged. Despite
frequent assertions
of
limits to growth there is
little evidence that human population
and economic expansion will outstrip the capacity to grow food or procure critical material resources in
the foreseeable future
boundaries to consumption are so theoretical as to be
functionally irrelevant
Human civilization can
flourish for
millennia on energy delivered from a closed
cycle
With proper
management, humans are at no risk of lacking sufficient agricultural land for food Given plentiful land
and unlimited energy, substitutes for other material inputs to human well-being can easily be found
There remain
serious long-term environmental threats to human well-being
the evidence is clear that they could cause significant risk of
catastrophic impacts on societies and ecosystems
damage to natural systems without doing more harm to themselves? The role that technology plays in reducing humanity’s dependence on nature explains this paradox. Human
, from those that first enabled agriculture to replace hunting and gathering,
to those that drive today’s globalized economy,
starting in the 1970s
fundamental “
. To the degree to which there are fixed physical
,”
still remarkably
human
, they
. The amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth, for instance, is ultimately finite but represents no meaningful constraint upon human endeavors.
centuries and
uranium or thorium fuel
, or from hydrogen-deuterium fusion.
.
if those
inputs become scarce or expensive.
, however,
, such as anthropogenic climate
change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and ocean acidification. While these risks are difficult to quantify,
today
. Even gradual, non-catastrophic outcomes associated with these threats are likely to result in significant human and economic costs as well as rising
ecological losses. Much of the world’s population still suffers from more-immediate local environmental health risks. Indoor and outdoor air pollution continue to bring premature death and illness to millions annually. Water pollution and water-borne illness due to pollution and
a range of long-term trends are
decoupling of human well-being from environmental impacts.
degradation of watersheds cause similar suffering. 2. Even as human environmental impacts continue to grow in the aggregate,
today
driving significant
Decoupling occurs in both relative and absolute terms. Relative decoupling means that human environmental
impacts rise at a slower rate than overall economic growth. Thus, for each unit of economic output, less environmental impact (e.g., deforestation, defaunation, pollution) results. Overall impacts may still increase, just at a slower rate than would otherwise be the case. Absolute
Decoupling can be driven by both technological
and demographic trends and usually results from a combination of the two growth rate of the
population has already peaked population growth is
down
decoupling occurs when total environmental impacts — impacts in the aggregate — peak and begin to decline, even as the economy continues to grow.
. The
. Today’s
rate
one percent per year,
human
from its high point of 2.1 percent in the 1970s. Fertility rates in countries containing more
than half of the global population are now below replacement level. Population growth today is primarily driven by longer life spans and lower infant mortality, not by rising fertility rates. Given current trends, it is very possible that
human population will peak this century and then start to decline.
the size of the
Trends in population are inextricably linked to other demographic and economic dynamics. For the
first time in human history, over half the global population lives in cities. By 2050, 70 percent are expected to dwell in cities, a number that could rise to 80 percent or more by the century’s end. Cities are characterized by both dense populations and low fertility rates. Cities occupy just 1
cities both drive and symbolize the decoupling of humanity from
nature, performing far better than rural economies in providing efficiently for material needs while
reducing environmental impacts
to 3 percent of the Earth’s surface and yet are home to nearly four billion people. As such,
. The growth of cities along with the economic and ecological benefits that come with them are inseparable from improvements in agricultural productivity. As agriculture has become more land and
labor efficient, rural populations have left the countryside for the cities. Roughly half the US population worked the land in 1880. Today, less than 2 percent does. As human lives have been liberated from hard agricultural labor, enormous hu man resources have been freed up for other
modernization is not possible in a subsistence agrarian
economy
rising harvest yields have for
millennia reduced the amount of land required to feed the average person. The average per-capita use
of land today is vastly lower
Thanks to technological improvements in
agriculture
the amount of land required for growing
declined by onehalf Agricultural intensification
has allowed many parts of the world to experience
net reforestation
Human use of many
other resources is similarly peaking. The amount of water needed
has declined
nitrogen
has declined
significantly
in contradiction to the often-expressed fear of infinite growth colliding with a
finite planet, demand for many material goods may be saturating as societies grow wealthier
endeavors. Cities, as people know them today, could not exist without radical changes in farming. In contrast,
. These improvements have resulted not only in lower labor requirements per unit of agricultural output but also in lower land requirements. This is not a new trend:
than it was 5,000 years ago, despite the fact that modern people enjoy a far richer diet.
, during the half-century starting in the mid-1960s,
.
crops and animal feed for the average person
, along with the move away from the use of wood as fuel,
. About 80 percent of New England is today forested, compared with about 50 percent at the end of the 19th century. Over the past 20 years, the amount of land dedicated to production forest worldwide declined by 50 million hectares,
an area the size of France. The “forest transition” from net deforestation to net reforestation seems to be as resilient a feature of development as the demographic transition that reduces human birth rates as poverty declines.
for the average diet
century. Nitrogen pollution continues to cause eutrophication and large dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico. While the total amount of
by nearly 25 percent over the past half-
pollution is rising, the amount used per unit of production
in developed nations. Indeed,
. Meat consumption, for
instance, has peaked in many wealthy nations and has shifted away from beef toward protein sources that are less land intensive. As demand for material goods is met, developed economies see higher levels of spending directed to materially less-intensive service and knowledge sectors,
these trends mean
that the total human impact on the environment
can peak and decline this
century. By understanding and promoting these emergent processes, humans have the opportunity to
re-wild and re-green the Earth — even as developing countries achieve modern living standards, and
material poverty ends.
early populations with much less advanced technologies had far larger
individual land footprints than societies have today
which account for an increasing share of economic activity. This dynamic might be even more pronounced in today’s developing economies, which may benefit from being late adopters of resource-efficient technologies. Taken together,
, including land-use change, overexploitation, and pollution,
3. The processes of decoupling described above challenge the idea that early human societies lived more lightly on the land than do modern societies. Insofar as past societies had less impact upon the environment, it was
because those societies supported vastly smaller populations. In fact,
human
. Consider that a population of no more than one or two million North Americans hunted most of the continent’s large mammals into extinction in
the late Pleistocene, while burning and clearing forests across the continent in the process. Extensive human transformations of the environment continued throughout the Holocene period: as much as three-quarters of all deforestation globally occurred before the Industrial Revolution.
The technologies that humankind’s ancestors used to meet their needs supported much lower living standards with much higher per-capita impacts on the environment. Absent a massive human die-off, any large-scale attempt at recoupling human societies to nature using these
Ecosystems around the world are threatened today because people overrely on them
it
is the continued dependence of humans on natural environments that is the problem for the
conservation of nature.
modern technologies
offer a real chance of
reducing the totality of human impacts on the biosphere
The modernization
processes
are
double-edged, since they have also degraded the natural
environment
It is also true that large, increasingly affluent urban
populations have placed greater demands upon ecosystems
But those same
technologies have also made it possible for people to secure food, shelter, heat, light, and mobility
through means that are vastly more resource- and land-efficient than at any previous time in human
history. Decoupling
requires the conscious acceleration of emergent decoupling
processes
humanity’s goal
should be to use resources more productively. For example, increasing agricultural yields can reduce
the conversion of forests and grasslands to farms. Humans should seek to liberate the environment from
the economy. Urbanization, agricultural intensification, nuclear power, aquaculture, and desalination
are all processes with a demonstrated potential to reduce human demands on the environment
technologies would result in an unmitigated ecological and human disaster.
: people who depend on firewood and charcoal for fuel cut down and degrade forests; people who eat bush meat for food hunt mammal species to local extirpation. Whether it’s a local indigenous community or a foreign corporation that benefits,
Conversely,
, by using natural ecosystem flows and services more efficiently,
. To embrace these technologies is to find paths to a good Anthropocene.
that have increasingly liberated humanity from nature
, of course,
. Fossil fuels, mechanization and manufacturing, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, electrification and modern transportation and communication technologies, have made larger human populations and greater consumption possible in the first place.
Had technologies not improved since the Dark Ages, no doubt the human population would not have grown much either.
in distant places –– the extraction of natural resources has been globalized.
human well-being from the destruction of nature
. In some cases, the objective is the development of technological substitutes. Reducing deforestation and indoor air pollution requires the substitution of wood and charcoal with modern energy. In other cases,
, allowing more
room for non-human species. Suburbanization, low-yield farming, and many forms of renewable energy production, in contrast, generally require more land and resources and leave less room for nature. These patterns suggest that humans are as likely to spare nature because it is not
needed to meet their needs as they are to spare it for explicit aesthetic and spiritual reasons. The parts of the planet that people have not yet profoundly transformed have mostly been spared because they have not yet found an economic use for them — mountains, deserts, boreal
forests, and other “marginal” lands. Decoupling raises the possibility that societies might achieve peak human impact without intruding much further on relatively untouched areas. Nature unused is nature spared. 4. Plentiful access to modern energy is an essential prerequisite for human
development and for decoupling development from nature. The availability of inexpensive energy allows poor people around the world to stop using forests for fuel. It allows humans to grow more food on less land, thanks to energy-heavy inputs such as fertilizer and tractors. Energy
allows humans to recycle waste water and desalinate sea water in order to spare rivers and aquifers. It allows humans to cheaply recycle metal and plastic rather than to mine and refine these minerals. Looking forward, modern energy may allow the capture of carbon from the
atmosphere to reduce the accumulated carbon that drives global warming. However, for at least the past three centuries, rising energy production globally has been matched by rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Nations have also been slowly decarbonizing — that is,
reducing the carbon intensity of their economies — over that same time period. But they have not been doing so at a rate consistent with keeping cumulative carbon emissions low enough to reliably stay below the international target of less than 2 degrees Centigrade of global warming.
Significant climate mitigation, therefore, will require that humans rapidly accelerate existing processes of decarbonization. There remains much confusion, however, as to how this might be accomplished. In developing countries, rising energy consumption is tightly correlated with rising
incomes and improving living standards. Although the use of many other material resource inputs such as nitrogen, timber, and land are beginning to peak, the centrality of energy in human development and its many uses as a substitute for material and human resources suggest that
energy consumption will continue to rise through much if not all of the 21st century. For that reason, any conflict between climate mitigation and the continuing development process through which billions of people around the world are achieving modern living standards will continue to
be resolved resoundingly in favor of the latter. Climate change and other global ecological challenges are not the most important immediate concerns for the majority of the world's people. Nor should they be. A new coal-fired power station in Bangladesh may bring air pollution and
rising carbon dioxide emissions but will also save lives. For millions living without light and forced to burn dung to cook t heir food, electricity and modern fuels, no matter the source, offer a pathway to a better life, even as they also bring new environmental challenges. Meaningful
climate mitigation is
a technological challenge
even dramatic limits to per capita global
consumption would be insufficient to achieve significant climate mitigation. Absent profound
fundamentally
. By this we mean that
technological change there is no credible path to meaningful climate mitigation
we are aware of no quantified climate mitigation scenario in which technological
change is not responsible for the vast majority of emissions cuts.
. While advocates
differ in the particular mix of technologies they favor,
The specific technological paths that people might take toward climate mitigation remain deeply contested.
Theoretical scenarios for climate mitigation typically reflect their creators’ technological preferences and analytical assumptions while all too often failing to account for the cost, rate, and scale at which low-carbon energy technologies can be deployed. The history of energy transitions,
that there have been consistent patterns associated with the ways that societies move toward
cleaner sources of energy. Substituting higher-quality
fuels for lower-quality
ones is how virtually all societies have decarbonized, and points the way toward accelerated
decarbonization in the future
however, suggests
(i.e., less carbon-intensive, higher-density)
(i.e., more carbon-intensive, lower-
density)
. Transitioning to a world powered by zero-carbon energy sources will require energy technologies that are power dense and capable of scaling to many tens of terawatts to power a growing human
economy. Most forms of renewable energy are, unfortunately, incapable of doing so. The scale of land use and other environmental impac ts necessary to power the world on biofuels or many other renewables are such that we doubt they provide a sound pathway to a zero-carbon lowfootprint future. High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an exception and have the potential to provide many tens of terawatts on a few percent of the Earth’s surface. Present-day solar technologies will require substantial innovation to meet this standard
and the development of cheap energy storage technologies that are capable of dealing with highly variable energy generation at large scales. Nuclear fission today represents the only present-day zero-carbon technology with the demonstrated ability to meet most, if not all, of the energy
demands of a modern economy. However, a variety of social, economic, and institutional challenges make deployment of present-day nuclear technologies at scales necessary to achieve significant climate mitigation unlikely. A new generation of nuclear technologies that are safer and
and nuclear represent the most
plausible pathways
that transition will take time.
During that transition, other energy technologies can provide important social and environmental
benefits
The ethical and pragmatic path toward a just and sustainable global energy economy
requires that human beings transition as rapidly as possible to energy sources that are cheap, clean,
dense, and abundant. Such a path will require sustained public support for the development and
deployment of clean energy technologies
cheaper will likely be necessary for nuclear energy to meet its full potential as a critical climate mitigation technology. In the long run, next-generation
solar
, advanced nuclear fission,
fusion
toward the joint goals of climate stabilization and radical decoupling of humans from nature. If the history of energy transitions is any guide, however,
. Hydroelectric dams, for example, may be a cheap source of low-carbon power for poor nations even though their land and water footprint is relatively large. Fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage can likewise provide substantial environmental benefits over
current fossil or biomass energies.
, both within nations and between them, though international collaboration and competition, and within a broader framework for global modernization and development. 5.
We write this document out of deep love and emotional connection to the natural world. By appreciating, exploring, seeking to understand, and cultivating nature, many people get outside themselves. They connect with their deep evolutionary history. Even when people never
Humans will always materially depend on nature to
some degree. Even if a fully synthetic world were possible, many of us might still choose to continue to
live more coupled with nature than human sustenance and technologies require. What decoupling
offers is the possibility that humanity’s material dependence upon nature might be less destructive.
experience these wild natures directly, they affirm their existence as important for their psychological and spiritual well-being.
The case
for a more active, conscious, and accelerated decoupling to spare nature draws more on spiritual or aesthetic than on material or utilitarian arguments. Current and future generations could survive and prosper materially on a planet with much less biodiversity and wild nature. But this is
not a world we want nor, if humans embrace decoupling processes, need to accept. What we are here calling nature, or even wild nature, encompasses landscapes, seascapes, biomes and ecosystems that have, in more cases than not, been regularly altered by human influences over
centuries and millennia. Conservation science, and the concepts of biodiversity, complexity, and indigeneity are useful, but alone cannot determine which landscapes to preserve, or how. In most cases, there is no single baseline prior to human modification to which nature might be
returned. For example, efforts to restore landscapes to more closely resemble earlier states (“indigeneity”) may involve removing recently arrived species (“invasives”) and thus require a net reduction in local biodiversity. In other circumstances, communities may decide to sacrifice
indigeneity for novelty and biodiversity. Explicit efforts to preserve landscapes for their non-utilitarian value are inevitably anthropogenic choices. For this reason, all conservation efforts are fundamentally anthropogenic. The setting aside of wild nature is no less a human choice, in
service of human preferences, than bulldozing it. Humans will save wild places and landscapes by convincing our fellow citizens that these places, and the creatures that occupy them, are worth protecting. People may choose to have some services — like water purification and flood
protection — provided for by natural systems, such as forested watersheds, reefs, marshes, and wetlands, even if those natural systems are more expensive than simply building water treatment plants, s eawalls, and levees. There will be no one-size-fits-all solution. Environments will be
shaped by different local, historical, and cultural preferences. While we believe that agricultural intensification for land-sparing is key to protecting wild nature, we recognize that many communities will continue to opt for land-sharing, seeking to conserve wildlife within agricultural
landscapes, for example, rather than allowing it to revert to wild nature in the form of grasslands, scrub, and forests. Where decoupling reduces pressure on landscapes and ecosystems to meet basic human needs, landowners, communities, and governments still must decide to what
aesthetic or economic purpose they wish to dedicate those lands. Accelerated decoupling alone will not be enough to ensure more wild nature. There must still be a conservation politics and a wilderness movement to demand more wild nature for aesthetic and spiritual reasons. Along
We affirm the need
and human capacity for accelerated, active, and conscious decoupling. Technological progress is not
inevitable
The long arc of human transformation
of natural environments through technologies began well before there existed anything resembling a
market or a price signal
with decoupling humankind’s material needs from nature, establishing an enduring commitment to preserve wilderness, biodiversity, and a mosaic of beautiful landscapes will require a deeper emotional connection to them. 6.
. Decoupling environmental impacts from economic outputs is not simply a function of market-driven innovation and efficient response to scarcity.
. Thanks to rising demand, scarcity, inspiration, and serendipity, humans have remade the world for millennia. Technological solutions to environmental problems must also be considered within a broader social, economic,
and political context. We think it is counterproductive for nations like Germany and Japan, and states like California, to shutter nuclear power plants, recarbonize their energy sectors, and recouple their economies to fossil fuels and biomass. However, such examples underscore clearly
Too often, modernization is conflated
with capitalism, corporate power, and laissez-faire economic policies. We reject such reductions
modernization is the long-term evolution of social, economic, political, and technological
arrangements in human societies
Modernization
has liberated ever more people from lives of poverty
Greater resource productivity associated with modern socio-technological systems has
allowed human societies to meet human needs with fewer resource inputs and less impact on the
environment. More-productive economies are wealthier economies
Modernizing processes are far from complete, even
in advanced developed economies. Material consumption has only just begun to peak in the wealthiest
that technological choices will not be determined by remote international bodies but rather by national and local institutions and cultures.
, both by its defenders and critics,
. What we refer to
when we speak of
toward vastly improved material well-being, public health, resource productivity, economic integration, shared infrastructure, and personal freedom.
and hard agricultural labor, women from chattel status, children and ethnic minorities from oppression, and societies from ca pricious and
arbitrary governance.
, capable of better meeting human needs while committing more of their economic surplus to non-
economic amenities, including better human health, greater human freedom and opportunity, arts, culture, and the conservation of nature.
societies. Decoupling
will require a sustained commitment to technological progress
and the continuing evolution of social, economic, and political institutions alongside those changes.
Accelerated technological progress will require the active, assertive, and aggressive participation of
private sector entrepreneurs, markets, civil society, and the state
we continue to
embrace a strong public role in addressing environmental problems and accelerating technological
innovation, including research to develop better technologies, subsidies, and other measures to help
bring them to market, and regulations to mitigate environmental hazards
of human welfare from environmental impacts
. While we reject the planning fallacy of the 1950s,
. And international collaboration on technological innovation and technology
transfer is essential in the areas of agriculture and energy.
The state will sabotage the alt.
Schepers 17 (Emily Schepers, veteran civil and immigrant rights activist, doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern
University, September 18, 2017. “Agents provocateurs and the manipulation of the radical left.” https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/agentsprovocateurs-and-the-manipulation-of-the-radical-left/)
Tactics that make us feel good
because they are exhilarating are not necessarily the same as effective tactics . They can, in fact, be precisely the
opposite . History teaches us is that the ruling class, the state and non-state institutions it controls, as well as the right have learned
the political judo whereby the left’s actions may be turned around and used to strengthen the right and
weaken the left. Specifically, we should learn from the history of the agent provocateur, a specialist in
manipulating conflict so as to benefit our enemies. Agents provocateurs are not merely enemy spies
within the people’s movement. The provocateur has an even more sinister mission , which sometimes has deadly results. What
the provocateur frequently provokes is actions that either discredit the left or the people’s movement
in the eyes of large numbers of people, or which entrap the unwary into acts that will allow police to
pounce, accuse activists of plotting violent or other anti-social acts, and then lock them up . Agents
Right now, there is considerable discussion going on about the best way to do all these things.
provocateurs have been known for well over a century, in many countries; the breed was especially rife in tsarist Russia in the late 1800s and
early 1900s. In the United States, agents provocateurs often targeted labor union organizing efforts. Since the end of the Second World War
and the beginning of the Cold War, there
are many accounts of the FBI , other police bodies, the military, and private
right-wing vigilante groups sending agents provocateurs into people’s organizations with the purpose of
dividing, disrupting, and discrediting them and then laying them open to arrest and prosecution, or worse.
More radical than thou In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a great outpouring of grassroots rejection of the policies, domestic and international,
of the Cold War. The
Civil Rights Movement , plus the movement against the Vietnam War, brought millions
into the streets protesting courageously against the many injustices of our society. The Cold Warriors
and the ruling class did not like this, as they saw their interests threatened. So they developed open and covert
strategies for undermining the new radicalism as well as the “old left” (communists and socialists). The idea was to
make sure that the left did not continue to win over the support of the mass of the people of the United
States to progressive and ultimately, revolutionary, socialist ideas. The “new left” tendencies that arose at this time
included many positive features but had some dangerous flaws also. One flaw was that too often, a fetish was made of the absolute right of
anybody involved in an organization to express his or her opinion no matter how divergent from the main goals of the organization, or to
engage in any activity which was “radical” regardless of whether it helped or harmed the cause. This extreme liberalism laid many organizations
open to manipulation of some of their weakest elements by agents provocateurs. There
was also a tendency to compete to
see who was most radical. The competition for revolutionary “cred” was a godsend for agents
provocateurs, who actively encouraged such competition. The lack of connections, especially among campus-based white
radicals, to the working class and its politics exacerbated this trend by eliminating an important reality check. Picking off leaders and
undermining public support There also tended to be a cult of leadership within many radical organizations which put their leaders into a
vulnerable position in which they could be targeted for neutralization so as to undermine the whole movement. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, for
instance, put a huge amount of effort into neutralizing leaders. The
agents provocateurs were deployed in such a way as
to discredit the leaders and their organizations, to create splits in the movement, and in some cases to
provoke violence which would lead to physical elimination of leaders plus a societal repudiation of the
movement. The 1960s campus-based movement against the Vietnam War was a top target for agents provocateurs. There were several at
work, but one, known as “Tommy the Traveler” was particularly memorable. He, too, concentrated on
enticing impressionable young
would-be “ revolutionaries ” to commit acts that would divide the movement while landing them in jail . Hoover,
a crusading anti-communist and paranoid racist, paid particular attention to disrupting the highly-effective African American
people’s movement, often employing agents provocateurs to create friction within and between
liberation organizations. This led to several murders. In 1967, for example, agents provocateurs, especially a certain William O’Neal, described in a Nation article as
“infatuated with weapons,” played a role in the police murder of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton had been suspicious of O’Neal because of his violent talk, but others did not see through
him, with tragic results. O’Neal’s promotion of crackpot violent schemes should have been a giveaway. When O’Neal set up Hampton and Clark for a brutal murder by police acting under the orders of Cook County State’s Attorney
Ed Hanrahan, the perpetrators were able to convince sectors of the public that the Panthers were prone to violence and shot first, which was untrue. Another example was the crime of Cerro Maravilla, in Puerto Rico, on July 25,
1978. An agent provocateur, Alejandro González Malavé, working undercover for the Puerto Rican police, enticed two idealistic young supporters of independence for Puerto Rico into a reckless act that cost them their lives. One
was Carlos Enrique Soto Areví, the son of one of Puerto Rico’s most important literary figures, the novelist Pedro Juan Soto. The second was a self-taught worker, Arnaldo Dario Rosado. Both were on fire with indignation at the
colonialist treatment that Puerto Rico received at the hands of the United States (treatment which continues today). They wanted to demonstrate this indignation in some dramatic way. Their lack of practical political experience
made them easy prey for González Malavé. He persuaded them that a noble act for their homeland would be to destroy some communications towers on the top of a hill called “Cerro Maravilla.” This was supposed to express
solidarity with some imprisoned Puerto Rican independence fighters. The three kidnapped a taxi driver and forced him to drive them up to Cerro Maravilla. But when they arrived, they found they had been led into a police
ambush. As the armed police approached, González Malavé identified himself as an agent, but Soto and Rosado were killed, and the “official” story was put out that they had been shot in a firefight with the cops. The right-wing,
pro-statehood governor at the time, Carlos Romero Barceló, hailed the police as heroes, and the FBI helpfully pitched in to support the Puerto Rican Justice Department with the cover-up. However, the police had left a “loose
end,” namely the taxi driver, who spoke to the press and revealed that in fact González Malavé was a police agent and that the two young men were still alive when he left the place. The police had entrapped the two men, then
murdered them after they surrendered. This became a big scandal, and eventually led to prosecutions and the defeat of Romero Barceló’s party in the next elections. But the use of agents provocateurs to divide and isolate the
agent provocateur tactics surfaced again during the
protests against the Iraq War, and in the “ Occupy ” movement. In each case, glib charismatic strangers
wormed their way into protest organizations, and then entrapped inexperienced young radicals to get
involved in plans, which were sometimes really just talk, to engage in violence. A typical case is that of the
Puerto Rican left has been unrelenting, both before and after that incident. Disrupting today’s movements Such
“Cleveland bomb plot” of 2012. Another is the San Francisco Mission District riot of May 2012, when a mysterious black-clad contingent
hijacked part of a peaceful “Occupy” demonstration and turned it toward random violence. In both cases, the
purpose of the
provocateurs was to discredit the movement in the eyes of the public, which otherwise might have been
receptive to Occupy’s “99 percent versus one percent” message. This kind of manipulation still
continues by all accounts. As before, the purpose is to discredit the movement, divide it, deprive it of allies,
and set up leaders and organizations for repressive action while making sure that this repression will not
produce a wave of public indignation, as happened with the Cerro Maravilla case. The right and the ruling class always try to
portray these people’s movements as violent, because this is the alchemy best suited to turn public opinion against them. This is the main
lesson to be learned from the agent provocateur experiences of the past. In the conditions of our country today, injecting violent
tactics into the mass movement of protest undermines that movement and plays the enemy’s game.
Loose talk about violence can be just as dangerous. This danger is multiplied by the development of online communications and social media—
there are no secrets now. Hijacking other people’s protest actions to “move them to a higher level,” meaning toward violent confrontations, is
really a dirty kind of pseudo-left politics. What is needed now is to build the movement into a great wave of rejection against the reactionary
policies of the ruling class, the right, and the Trump administration and its allies. Let us work on that basis and avoid tactics that undermine it.
1AR
1AR – AT: Heg Bad
1AR – AT: EB-5 CP
1AR – AT: McConnell DA
Democratic control of the House is sufficient to trigger a Judiciary subcommittee that
ramps up investigations---causes new impeachment movement
Osnos 17 (Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, and covers politics and foreign affairs. His recent subjects include
the reconstruction of a train crash that exposed the underside of China’s boom; a group of Chinese tourists on their first trip to Europe; and a
barber who set out to beat the house in Macau. “How Trump Could Get Fired,” The New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired)
Because the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives will almost certainly not initiate the ouster of a Republican President, the
first step in any realistic path to impeachment is for Democrats to gain control of the House. The next
opportunity is the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans have been relatively confident, in part because their redistricting in
2010 tilted the congressional map in their favor. But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican economist and the president of the
right-leaning American Action Forum, believes that the chances of control shifting to the Democrats is greater than
many people in either party realize. “After a party takes the House, the Senate, and the White House,
they typically lose thirty-five seats in the House in the next midterm,” he told me. “Republicans now hold the
House by twenty-three seats, so, as a going proposition, they’re in trouble. They need to do really, really well.”
Unfortunately for the congressional G.O.P., unpopular Presidents sow midterm fiascos. Since 1946, whenever a President has
had an approval rating above fifty per cent, his party has lost an average of fourteen seats in the midterms, according to Gallup; whenever the
rating has been below fifty per cent, the average loss soars to thirty-six seats. Steve Schmidt, the Republican consultant, is concerned that,
in
2018, the Party faces a convergence of vulnerabilities akin to those which pertained during the 2006
midterms, whose outcome George W. Bush characterized as “a thumping.” Schmidt told me, “The last time Republicans lost control of the
House of Representatives, it was on a mix of competency—Iraq and Katrina—and corruption in government, with the Tom DeLay Congress.”
The Trump Administration has a comparable “basic competency issue,” he said. “The constant lying, the lack of
credible statements from the White House, from the President on down to the spokesperson, the amateurishness of the threats to the
members of Congress, the ultimatums, the talk of ‘enemy lists’ and retribution.”
Tom Davis, who twice led Republican congressional-election efforts during fourteen years as a representative from Virginia, believes that his
former colleagues are overly complacent. “These guys need a wake-up call. They’re just living in la-la land,” he said. He pointed out that
regardless of the final outcome of an attempt to impeach—the two-thirds majority in the Senate
remains a high bar to clear—Democratic control of the House would immediately make Trump more
vulnerable to investigations. “If the gavels change hands, it’s a different world. No. 1, all of his public
records, they will go through those with a fine-tooth comb—income taxes, business dealings. At that point, it’s not just
talk—they subpoena it. It gets ugly real fast. He has so far had a pass on all this business stuff, and I don’t know what’s
there, but I’ve got to imagine that it’s not pretty in this environment.”
If Democrats retake the House, the Judiciary Committee could establish a subcommittee to investigate
potential abuses and identify specific grounds for impeachment. The various investigations of Trump already in
process will come into play. In addition to allegations of business conflicts and potential Russian collusion,
Trump is facing dozens of civil proceedings. In a case in federal court, he is accused of urging violence at a
campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky, in March, 2016, where he yelled, referring to a protester, “Get ’em out of here.” In a New York state
court, he is facing a suit brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” who alleges that he sexually
assaulted her in 2007. The constitutional question of whether a President could be impeached for offenses committed before he took
office is unsettled, but, as Clinton’s case showed, civil proceedings contain risks whenever a President testifies under oath.
The GOP will throw him under the bus.
Kilgore 17—5-11-17 (Ed, political columnist for New York magazine, managing editor of the Democratic Strategist, an online magazine.
Former senior fellow at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, contributor to the Washington Monthly and the New Republic. Served as policy
director for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. “The Complicated Politics of Impeachment Are Coming Into Play in Trump’s
Washington” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/the-politics-of-impeachment-come-into-play-in-trumps-d-c.html)
As Matthew Yglesias notes, the Republicans
who control Congress can head off an impeachment crisis by ungumming the path to justice via some investigative entity beyond Donald Trump’s control. But that will
require a break with Trump that most of them do not want to make. If the situation we are in right now gets worse for
the White House, and the rest of 2017 unfolds under the shadow of unresolved allegations about Russian collusion, then serious impeachment
talk will become unavoidable. One
might assume that the talk would go nowhere, since the president’s party
controls the congressional levers that would have to be used to formally begin proceedings. But what
could ensue, though, is the realization that Republicans might privately crave impeachment more than
Democrats. Why? Absent normal legal proceedings and without the safety valve of impeachment, the
only way for an aroused public to hold Trump accountable is by spanking his political party in the 2018
midterms, an election in which the White House party is almost certain to lose ground even in normal conditions. And after that, if
Trump stubbornly resists any independent scrutiny of his past and present behavior, Republicans could
have a nightmarish 2020 cycle in which efforts to retire Trump after one term collide with his hard kernel of GOP grassroots
support, strongest among people who know little and care less about their hero’s compliance with legal and political traditions for presidential
accountability. You
could definitely envision a vicious primary fight followed by a difficult general election. In
those circumstances, how many conventional conservative Republicans would resist the temptation to
fantasize about a deus ex machina procedure that could remove the troublesome Trump and replace him with the extremely
well-known quantity of Mike Pence, perhaps just in time to change the dynamics of 2018 — or certainly
2020 — in the GOP’s favor? Conversely, Democrats might prefer to keep Donald Trump around as long as possible to indelibly stain
the GOP with his misdeeds and his alarming demeanor.
Even if Dems can’t swing enough GOP senators to convict, Trump will resign if the
House impeaches him.
Atkins 18 (David Atkins, President of The Pollux Group, a qualitative research firm, and Washington Monthly correspondent, 3-4-2018,
"At What Point Does Trump Simply Resign?", Washington Monthly, https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/04/at-what-point-does-trumpsimply-resign/, accessed 4-18-2018) ap
These are dark days for the White House. Worse, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The
President is reported to be
isolated and in a foul mood amid utter chaos, lashing out at all and sundry. The Mueller inquiry is taking an increasingly wide
scope and threatening to ensnare his immediate family. His son-in-law has been stripped of his security clearance, his surrogate daughter and
emotional support is leaving the White House, he mistrusts his Chief of Staff and is at war with his own Attorney General. Republicans in
Congress are doing all they can to block inquiries and investigations, but they’ve also let Trump know that they might let the dam break if he
fires Sessions or Rosenstein, so he feels locked in a box from which there is no escape. His policy agenda is in tatters. He is beset by multiple
infidelity and payoff scandals, leaving his marriage so tattered that he jokes about his wife leaving him. His approval ratings are in the toilet, and
Republicans downballot are taking a beating in almost every election leading up to what may be a disastrous midterm for the president’s party.
Trump has been in these dire straits before in his life, make no mistake– and his reaction at every step was to run
from the damage , welsh on his obligations, let fixers handle the mess and never look back. Donald Trump has declared bankruptcy no
less than six times, leaving creditors holding the bag each and every time. His building deals frequently go up in smoke. His fraudulent
“university” went belly up and ended in settlements. He routinely stiffs his subcontractors. Most banks refuse to deal with him, and because he
refuses to release his or his organization’s tax returns, we have no idea if he has the sort of money he claims to have, or is instead deeply in
hock to foreign mafia cartels. Without his father’s money he would be just another two-bit white collar criminal from Queens, either in jail on
tax evasion or running a ponzi scheme. Trump is a classic grifter. And the modus operandi of the grifter is to play the con as long as he can, then
pack up and run when the water gets hot and the bill comes due. It is remarkable that we as a nation allowed such a person to become
president. But nations do make mistakes. The question is what the Grifter-in-Chief will do now. The standard play would be to simply step
away. Even the most narcissistic con artist is rarely fool enough to choose dire consequences over an easy escape route just out of ego alone.
As the walls begin to close in on him, his friends and family, it is difficult to see how he lasts another year in the job, much less three. If he were
a man of greater intelligence and discipline, he could theoretically negotiate subordinates to take the fall for him and right his ship of state. But
Trump lacks the wherewithal and the command of loyalty to accomplish either one. He could try to start a war to escape his predicament, but
it’s not at all clear that Americans would rush to his side as they once did to George W. Bush. An incompetent rush to war might actually
deepen his troubles. He could wait for the 2018 midterms, but leaving office after a Democrat wave election would be a far less pleasant
prospect. He could try to ride out the next three years hobbled and miserable, surfing from scandal to scandal and hoping to somehow survive
both the consequences of the midterms and the Mueller investigation. But by far the easiest play would simply be to step away. The Mueller
investigation hasn’t yet seriously touched Vice President Pence (so far as we know.) Pence could pardon Trump as Ford did Nixon. Trump would
still face state charges, but those would be easier to deal with when not under the intense glare of the White House lights and multiple federal
investigations. Moreover, Trump would still be the darling of the right-wing base, and he could then move on to the grift he reportedly planned
from the beginning of his campaign; losing the presidency only to make money off of impressionable right-wing rubes as their deplorable
standardbearer. The problem, of course, is Trump’s monumental ego. Could his pugilistic self-image bear to accept defeat and take that fateful
helicopter ride away from the White House lawn? There’s the rub. But while his narcissism might be his undoing, the likeliest scenario is that
the grifter in him will win out: he will become increasingly chaotic and dangerous in the days before the end, only to sign some bizarre
executive actions, declare victory on twitter under the premise that he had fulfilled his promise to make America great again, and fly off to MarA-Lago to go golfing and negotiate a new TV channel or Fox News contract. Having dealt with my share of sociopaths and con artists in the past,
my sense is that Trump
will stick it out through the 2018 midterm, hoping against hope for a miracle comeback. But if
Dem ocrat s swarm Congress and statehouses as it currently seems that they may, I doubt Trump plays out the string
past the January 2019 congressional inauguration to watch the investigations and potential
impeachment trials. If I’m wrong and Trump wins re-election in 2020 I’ll ruefully eat crow. But I strongly believe that once a grifter
always a grifter, and a con artist never changes his stripes. Far easier to cut and run than face the music.
Nixon proves.
Cesca 17 Bob Cesca is a regular contributor to Salon.com. He's also the host of "The Bob Cesca" podcast, and a weekly guest on both the
"Stephanie Miller Show" and "Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang." “Forget impeachment: Donald Trump can be driven from office, but
probably not that way,” Salon, 1-31-17, http://www.salon.com/2017/01/31/forget-impeachment-donald-trump-can-be-driven-from-office-butprobably-not-that-way/
Is there another way? Can Trump be removed from office without an impeachment and conviction? Possibly. If you recall your history,
president Richard Nixon
was in the process of being impeached as a consequence of the Watergate
revelations, but that process never reached the House floor for a vote. It was ultimately the GOP
establishment , led by senator Barry Goldwater, who approached Nixon and asked him to step down for the good
of the nation.
The odds of this occurring with Trump seem high. Pre-inauguration catastrophes aside, Trump’s entire first week in office
was largely about his deranged obsessions and vendettas. Not more than several days in, for example, Trump held a closed-door meeting with
congressional leadership and reportedly wasted much of that time ranting about his crowd sizes and a kooky Alex Jones conspiracy theory
about voter fraud. That’s only one of many harrowing stories of Trump’s disturbing behavior inside the White House. Suffice it to say,
members of the congressional leadership have to know about this. They’re witnessing it first hand.
Can he descend further into madness? Sure. He’s a weak, insecure and blindingly delusional man who can’t stop relitigating trivialities like his
crowd (or hand) sizes. There’s
a very real possibility that as his presidency grows increasingly embattled, he’ll
become more isolated and secluded, perhaps locking himself inside a random safe space somewhere in the White House, trapped
in a Mobius loop of obsessions and delusions, poring over cable news while photographs of the inaugural crowds and protest marches litter the
floor — and his Sharpie marker scribblings all around. Basically, this would be Howard Hughes at his worst. Knowing Trump’s behavior so far,
coupled with the reality that he doesn’t seem mentally or physically prepared for the stress and rigors of the presidency, some
version of
the Nixonian endgame seems plausible.
Finally, the other factor here is the condition of the economy. If there’s a recession or a sudden uptick in the unemployment figures, Trump will
likely accuse the numbers of being “fake news.” But Americans
may be less patient with this unlikable, garish cartoon
character whose central campaign promises aren’t panning out. Don’t forget: He repeatedly declared himself to be “the
greatest jobs president God ever created.”
If there's anything shy of that, we’ll see moderate and independent Trump voters jumping ship, leaving only
the dregs and the hotheads to flack for Trump on Fox News. Conversely, however, we shouldn’t ignore the possibility of a military conflict or,
heaven forbid, a major terrorist attack. Both are nightmare scenarios, to be sure — as we know the lives at stake. Politically speaking, there’s
the distinct possibility of a suddenly very popular Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office with virtual
carte blanche from a scared population. Sleep tight.
This is all to suggest that, yes, Trump can be driven from office prematurely. He’s his own worst enemy and he
continues to inadvertently reveal himself as mentally unfit to fulfill the duties of the presidency. But hoping
against hope for a legislative vote to get him out is a red herring.
1AR – AT: Neoliberalism K
Warming is irreversible --- only capitalism solves through CCS and a bridge to
renewables.
Graciela 16 – Professor of Economics and of Statistics at Columbia University and Visiting Professor at Stanford University, and was the
architect of the Kyoto Protocol carbon market (9-1-2016, being interviewed by Marcus Rolle, freelance journalist specializing in environmental
issues and global affairs, “Reversing Climate Change: Interview with Graciela Chichilnisky,”
http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/01/09/2016/reversing-climate-change-interview-graciela-chichilnisky)//cmr
GC: Green capitalism is a new economic system that values the natural resources on which human survival depends. It fosters a harmonious
relationship with our planet, its resources and the many species it harbors. It is a new type of market economics that addresses both equity and
efficiency. Using carbon negative technology™ it helps reduce carbon in the atmosphere while fostering economic development in rich and
developing nations, for example in the U S., EU, China and India. How does this work? In a nutshell Green
Capitalism requires the
creation of global limits or property rights nation by nation for the use of the atmosphere, the bodies of water and
the planet’s biodiversity, and the creation of new markets to trade these rights from which new economic values and a new
concept of economic progress emerges updating GDP as is now generally agreed is needed. Green Capitalism is needed now to
help avert climate change and achieve the goals of the 2015 UN Paris Agreement, which are very ambitious and universally
supported but have no way to be realized within the Agreement itself. The Carbon Market and its CDM play critical roles in the foundation of
Green Capitalism, creating values to redefine GDP. These are needed to remain within the world’s “CO2 budget” and avoid catastrophic climate
change. As I see it, the
building blocks for Green Capitalism are then as follows; (1) Global limits nation by nation in
the use of the planet’s atmosphere, its water bodies and biodiversity - these are global public goods. (2) New global markets to trade
these limits, based on equity and efficiency. These markets are relatives of the Carbon Market and the SO2 market. The new market
create new measures of economic values and update the concept of GDP. (3) Efficient use of Carbon
Negative Technologies to avert catastrophic climate change by providing a smooth transition to clean energy and ensuring economic
prosperity in rich and poor nations. These building blocks have immediate practical implications in reversing climate change and can assist the
ambitious aims of Paris COP21 become a reality. MR: What is the greatest advantage of the new
generation technologies that can
capture CO2 from the air? GC: These technologies build carbon negative power plants, such as Global Thermostat, that clean the
atmosphere of CO2 while producing electricity. Global Thermostat is a firm that is commercializing a technology that takes CO2 out of air and
uses mostly low cost residual heat rather than electricity to drive the capture process, making the entire process of capturing CO2 from the
atmosphere very inexpensive. There is enough residua heat in a coal power plant that it can be used to capture twice as much CO2 as the plant
emits, thus transforming the power plant into a “carbon sink.” For example, a
400 MW coal plant that emits 1 million tons of
CO2 per year can become a carbon sink absorbing a net amount of 1 million tons of CO2 instead. Carbon
capture from air can be done anywhere and at any time, and so inexpensively that the CO2 can be sold
for industrial or commercial uses such as plastics, food and beverages, greenhouses, bio-fertilizers,
building materials and even enhanced oil recovery, all examples of large global markets and profitable opportunities. Carbon
capture is powered mostly by low (85°C) residual heat that is inexpensive, and any source will do. In particular, renewable (solar) technology
can power the process of carbon capture. This can help advance solar technology and make it more cost-efficient. This
means more
energy, more jobs, and it also means economic growth in developing nations, all of this while cleaning
the CO2 in the atmosphere. Carbon negative technologies can literally transform the world economy. MR:
One final question. You distinguish between long-run and short-run strategies in the effort to reverse climate change. Would carbon negative
technologies be part of a short-run strategy? GC: Long-run strategies are quite different from strategies for the short-run. Often
long-run
strategies do not work in the short run and different policies and economic incentives are needed. In the long run
the best climate change policy is to replace fossil fuel sources of energy that by themselves cause 45% of the global emissions, and to plant
trees to restore if possible the natural sources and sinks of CO2. But the
fossil fuel power plant infrastructure is about 87% of
the power plant infrastructure and about $45-55 trillion globally. This infrastructure cannot be replaced
quickly, certainly not in the short time period in which we need to take action to avert
catastrophic climate change . The issue is that CO2 once emitted remains hundreds of years in the
atmosphere and we have emitted so much that unless we actually remove the CO2 that is already
there, we cannot remain long within the carbon budget , which is the concentration of CO2 beyond which we fear
catastrophic climate change. In the short run, therefore, we face significant time pressure . The IPCC indicates in its 2014
5th Assessment Report that we
must actually remove the carbon that is already in the atmosphere and do so in
massive quantities , this century (p. 191 of 5th Assessment Report). This is what I called a carbon negative approach,
which works for the short run. Renewable energy is the long run solution. Renewable energy is too slow for a short run
resolution since replacing a $45-55 trillion power plant infrastructure with renewable plants could take
decades. We need action sooner than that. For the short run we need carbon negative technologies that capture more carbon
than what is emitted. Trees do that and they must be conserved to help preserve biodiversity. Biochar does that. But trees and other
natural sinks are too slow for what we need today. Therefore, negative carbon is needed now as part of a blueprint for
transformation. It must be part of the blueprint for Sustainable Development and its short term manifestation that I call Green
Capitalism , while in the long run renewable sources of energy suffice, including Wind, Biofuels, Nuclear, Geothermal,
and Hydroelectric energy. These are in limited supply and cannot replace fossil fuels. Global energy today is
roughly divided as follows: 87% is fossil, namely natural gas, coal, oil; 10% is nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric, and
less than 1% is solar power — photovoltaic and solar thermal. Nuclear fuel is scarce and nuclear technology is generally considered
dangerous as tragically experienced by the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster in Japan, and it seems unrealistic to seek a solution in the nuclear
direction. Only solar energy can be a long term solution: Less than 1% of the solar energy we receive on earth can be transformed into 10 times
we need a short-term strategy that accelerates long run
renewable energy , or we will defeat long-term goals. In the short term as the IPCC validates, we need carbon
negative technology, carbon removals. The short run is the next 20 or 30 years. There is no time in this period
of time to transform the entire fossil infrastructure — it costs $45-55 trillion (IEA) to replace and it is slow to build. We
the fossil fuel energy used in the world today. Yet
need to directly reduce carbon in the atmosphere now. We cannot use traditional methods to remove CO2 from smokestacks (called often
Carbon Capture and Sequestration, CSS) because they are not carbon negative as is required. CSS works but does not suffice because it only
captures what power plants currently emit. Any level of emissions adds to the stable and high concentration we have today and CO2 remains in
the atmosphere for years. We need to remove the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere, namely air capture of CO2 also called carbon
removals. The
solution is to combine air capture of CO2 with storage of CO2 into stable materials such as
replace a number of other construction materials such as metals. The most recent
BMW automobile model uses only carbon fibers rather than metals. It is also possible to combine CO2 to produce renewable
gasoline, namely gasoline produced from air and water. CO2 can be separated from air and hydrogen separated from water, and their
combination is a well-known industrial process to produce gasoline. Is this therefore too expensive? There are new technologies using
algae that make synthetic fuel commercially feasible at competitive rates. Other policies would involve combining air
biochar, cement, polymers, and carbon fibers that
capture with solar thermal electricity using the residual solar thermal heat to drive the carbon capture process. This can make a solar plant
more productive and efficient so it can out-compete coal as a source of energy. In summary, the
blueprint offered here is a
private/public approach , based on new industrial tech nology and financial markets , self-funded and
using profitable greenmarkets , with securities that utilize carbon credits as the “underlying” asset, based on the KP CDM, as well as
new markets for biodiversity and water providing abundant clean energy to stave off impending and actual energy crisis in developing nations,
fostering mutually beneficial cooperation for industrial and developing nations. The blueprint proposed provides the two sides of the coin,
a
carbon negative economy that represents green capitalism in resolving the Global Climate negotiations and the
North–South Divide . Carbon negative power plants and capture of CO2 from air and ensure a clean atmosphere together innovation
and more jobs and exports: the more you produce and create jobs the cleaner becomes the atmosphere. In practice, Green Capitalism
means economic growth that is harmonious with the Earth resources.
equity and efficiency, and can assign a critical role for women as stewards for human survival and sustainable development. My vision is