Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[82]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[77]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[82]

EntryDate

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1		-2017-03-08 16:28:49.671
	1	+2017-03-08 16:28:49.0

Caselist.CitesClass[77]

Cites

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	1	+Despite budget cuts, our military is a beast right now. Patraues and O’Hanlon 16
	2	+Petraeus, David and Michael O'Hanlon. "The Myth of a U.S. Military 'Readiness' Crisis." Wall Street Journal, Aug 10, 2016, Eastern edition. EE
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	4	+U.S. military readiness is again a hot issue in the presidential election, but unfortunately the current debate glosses over some of the most important facts. While Congress's sequestration-mandated cuts to military spending have hurt preparedness, America's fighting forces remain ready for battle. They have extensive combat experience across multiple theaters since 9/11, a tremendous high-tech defense industry supplying advanced weaponry, and support from an extraordinary intelligence community. For those concerned that America's military is in decline or somehow not up to the next challenge, we offer a few reassuring facts: ~-~- The current national defense budget of over $600 billion a year far exceeds the Cold War average of about $525 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2016 dollars) and the $400 billion spent in 2001, according to official Pentagon and Office of Management and Budget data. The national defense budget, which doesn't include Veterans Affairs or the Department of Homeland Security, constitutes 35 of global military spending and is more than that of the next eight countries ~-~- including China and Russia ~-~- combined. Spending has been reduced from the levels of the late Bush and early Obama years, but that isn't unreasonable in light of scaled-down combat operations abroad and fiscal pressures at home. ~-~- Assuming no return to sequestration, as occurred in 2013, Pentagon budgets to buy equipment now exceed $100 billion a year, a healthy and sustainable level. The so-called "procurement holiday" of the 1990s and early 2000s is over. ~-~- While some categories of aircraft and other key weapons are aging and will need replacement or major refurbishment soon, most equipment remains in fairly good shape. According to our sources in the military, Army equipment has, on average, mission-capable rates today exceeding 90 ~-~- a historically high level. Marine Corps aviation is an exception and urgently needs to be addressed. ~-~- Training for full-spectrum operations is resuming after over a decade of appropriate focus on counterinsurgency. By 2017 the Army plans to rotate nearly 20 brigades ~-~- about a third of its force ~-~- through national training centers each year. The Marine Corps plans to put 12 infantry battalions ~-~- about half its force ~-~- through large training exercises. The Air Force is funding its training and readiness programs at 80-98 of what it considers fully resourced levels. This situation isn't perfect, but it has improved ~-~- and while the military is still engaged in combat operations across the world. ~-~- The men and women of today's all-volunteer military continue to be outstanding and committed to protecting America. Typical scores of new recruits on the armed forces qualification test are now significantly better than in the Reagan years or the immediate pre-9/11 period, two useful benchmarks. The average time in service, a reflection of the experience of the force, is now about 80 months in the enlisted ranks, according to Defense Department data. That is not quite as good as in the 1990s, when the average was 85-90 months, but is better than the 75-month norm of the 1980s. While there are areas of concern, there is no crisis in military readiness. But that doesn't mean the U.S. is good enough ~-~- especially in a world of rapidly changing technology, new threats emerging across several regions, and a constantly evolving strategic landscape. Here are some of the most pressing issues:
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	7	+The pursuit of heg is inevitable – it’s just a question of effectiveness. Tellis ’09,
	8	+Tellis, senior associate at Carnegie, 9 — Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in international security, defense and Asian strategic issues, Research Director of the Strategic Asia program at NBR—the National Bureau of Asian Research, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, 2009 (“Preserving Hegemony: The Strategic Tasks Facing the United States,” Global Asia, Volume 4, Number 1, Available Online at http://globalasia.org/pdf/issue9/Ashley_J._Tellis.pdf, Accessed 09-13-2011, p. 54-55) recut from Woodward
	9	+This hegemony is by no means fated to end any ¶ time soon, however, given that the United States ¶ remains predominant by most conventional indicators of national power. The character of the ¶ United States’ hegemonic behavior in the future ¶ will thus remain an issue of concern both within ¶ the domestic polity and internationally. Yet the ¶ juvenescence of the United State’s “unipolar ¶ moment,” combined with the disorientation ¶ produced by the September 11 attacks, ought to ¶ restrain any premature generalization that the ¶ imperial activism begun by the clinton administration, and which the Bush administration took ¶ to its most spirited apotheosis, would in some ¶ way come to define the permanent norm of US ¶ behavior in the global system. In all probability, ¶ it is much more likely that the limitations on US ¶ ¶ power witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq will ¶ produce a more phlegmatic and accommodating United States over the longer term, despite ¶ the fact that the traditional US pursuit of dominance — understood as the quest to maintain a ¶ preponderance of power, neutralize threatening ¶ challengers, and protect freedom of action, goals ¶ that go back to the foundations of the republic — ¶ is unlikely to be extinguished any time soon.¶ Precisely because the desire for dominance is ¶ likely to remain a permanent feature of US geopolitical ambitions — even though how it is exercised will certainly change in comparison to ¶ the Bush years — the central task facing the next ¶ administration will still pertain fundamentally ¶ to the issue of US power. This concern manifests ¶ itself through the triune challenges of: redefining ¶ the United States’ role in the world, renewing the ¶ foundations of US strength, and recovering the ¶ legitimacy of US actions. In other words, the next ¶ administration faces the central task of clarifying ¶ the character of US hegemony, reinvigorating the ¶ material foundations of its power, and securing ¶ international support for its policies.
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	11	+Ineffective crisis response guarantees extinction ~-~-- a laundry list of threats are on the brink
	12	+Paul Miller 11, Assistant Professor of International Security Studies at the National Defense University, former director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council, October 17, 2011, “This is no time to cut defense,” online: http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/10/17/this_is_no_time_to_cut_defense
	13	+The threats to us are more numerous, not less. There are two major families of threats to U.S. national security today. First, at one end of the state spectrum, are the nuclear-armed authoritarian powers: Russia, China, soon Iran, North Korea as a junior partner, and Pakistan if it falls to jihadists. The latter three are (or will be) new to the nuclear club since the Cold War, and China is vastly more powerful today than it was in 1989. Second, at the other end, is the aggregate global consequences of state failure and anarchy across much of the world ~-~- such as the rise of terrorist groups, organized crime, drug cartels, human traffickers, nuclear smugglers, pandemic disease, and piracy ~-~- that will collectively erode global stability and raise the cost of U.S. leadership. State failure, with its effects magnified by globalization, is also a vastly greater threat that during the Cold War. These two families are the threats we face in the 21st Century. By contrast, we faced fewer threats and a simpler world at almost every point in our history before 1989.¶ The threats are equally apocalyptic. Nuclear war with the Soviet Union was the gravest danger we ever faced, and we came perilously close to it in 1962. Nuclear war with Iran or North Korea would be almost equally dangerous, especially after they have acquired longer-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting U.S. allies and even the U.S. homeland. (Yes, the Soviet Union had thousands of warheads, but you only need a few nukes to cause more damage to us than all the wars we have fought in history, combined, and only a few dozen to effectively wipe out the United States. And if I were a new nuclear power, I wouldn't announce my capability until I already had a few dozen to make sure I could withstand an attack on my arsenal. Which means that North Korea and Iran (when it announces) will almost certainly be existential threats). The difference is that war with them or their proxies may be more likely to actually happen. The latter two countries may be less deterrable, less predictable, and more prone to transfer nuclear technology to proxies and non-state groups, given their history of erratic behavior, sponsoring terrorism, and proliferation. All told, the chances of a nuclear detonation in New York City are higher, not lower, today than twenty years ago. Unfortunately, we do not have a team of patriotic mutant superheroes to avert disaster this time.¶ Our allies are less capable, not more. Militarily, the Allies have underinvested in defense for decades-nothing new there. But the situation is actually getting worse, not better. The European allies spent 1.7 percent of GDP on defense in 2010 compared to 3.7 percent in 1985, according to NATO figures, a huge decline. As a result, the allies' performance in Libya and Afghanistan has not covered them with glory. And the alliance ~-~- including us ~-~- is still using mostly the same weapons systems and platforms that were developed in the late Cold War, just with a layer of IT, often glitchy and unreliable, grafted on in recent years (I agree with Tom's new post in this respect). Politically, the alliance has suffered tremendous strain from the double hammer-blows of disagreement over Iraq followed by unequal burden-sharing and nearly losing the war in Afghanistan. I am less confident in the alliance now than during the Cold War.¶ Our enemies and competitors are more capable, not less. Again, several states have acquired nuclear weapons since 1989. China has engaged in a massive conventional military buildup. Russia, after initially suffering a crippling loss of manpower, resources, and morale, has undertaken a long process of professionalizing and modernizing its military. Non-state actors have harnessed the tools of globalization and exploited the weakness of failed states to give them a global operating scope and comfortable safe haven.¶ Our values are not ascendant. The global financial crisis has (unfairly, I think) cast disrepute on the west in the eyes of many developing nations. China's rise has made state-managed and autocratic development attractive to many an aspiring power. Illiberal political Islam, with its hostility to women's rights and religious freedom, is at least competing aggressively with democracy and human rights across the Islamic world. Hindutva, largely content to compete peacefully through the Indian democratic system so far, may not always be so. Marxism of a sort is still alive, fashionable, and even resurgent in a few quarters like Venezuela and Bolivia. Democracy has indeed spread farther since 1989 than ever before in human history, but that is different from "ascendancy." Democratic gains since 1989, for example in Africa and Latin America, are new and might easily be reversed, especially given the competition.¶ What worries me is that I am increasingly convinced that we do not have the capabilities to meet the various threats we face today. We don't need to be omnipotent, but we do need to be able to protect ourselves. Can we stave off state failure in Pakistan? Can we prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, or contain it afterwards? Could we prevent Russia from doing to Ukraine what it did to Georgia in 2008? Can we defeat the drug cartels wreaking havoc in Mexico and Columbia? Is al-Qaida really nearing "strategic defeat," as Panetta claims? Are we prepared to handle a collapse in North Korea ~-~- possibly having to fight a sudden war with a desperate regime, contribute to a multilateral occupation and reconstruction afterwards, and handle the delicate diplomacy with the Chinese?

EntryDate

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	1	+2017-03-08 16:28:52.617

Judge

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	1	+Dan Miyamoto

Opponent

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	1	+Servite PA

ParentRound

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	1	+82

Round

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	1	+6

Team

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	1	+Harvard Westlake Engel Neg

Title

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	1	+JAN-FEB - DA - Heg Good

Tournament

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	1	+USC