Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[31]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[69]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[31]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2017-01-17 02:28:39.802
	1	+2017-01-17 02:28:39.0

Caselist.CitesClass[69]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,25 @@
	1	+Campus activism against war undermines morale and forces withdrawal – collapses American presence abroad and causes massive instability that culminates in extinction
	2	+Janet Levy 7 (Janet Levy, ) Iraq’s only Similarity to Vietnam: Its Dangerous Anti-War Movement, Accuracy in Media 2-28-2007 AT
	3	+Contrary to media reports and the perception of a majority of Americans, the United States was winning the war in Vietnam following the successful watershed battle known as the Tet Offensive. Sadly, the Vietnam War was not lost on the battlefield. The carnage and repressive regimes that followed the U.S. exit may have been avoided had the truth been known by the American public. The United States was defeated by a carefully conceived, multi-pronged propaganda campaign that set the stage for America’s eventual failure in the region. The ingredients for the U.S. defeat consisted of the funding and encouragement of the anti-war movement by Hanoi and Communist splinter groups, enlistment of “useful idiots” in Hollywood to publicize and popularize the movement, media complicity with negative portrayals of the war, anti-American proselytizing by professors and students on American university campuses, denigration and demonizing of the military and, ultimately, withdrawal of support and appropriations by the U.S. Congress. All these factors led to the perceptual reframing of the Vietnam War as an ignoble imperialistic atrocity, a far cry from its launch as a fight to extinguish communism in Southeast Asia. Today, many of these same elements have reappeared as the United States struggles to defeat Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and to apprehend a fifth column of jihadists at home. Inherited from the Vietnam experience, they are now evident within the new conflict. This time, the risks to our country’s future are even greater should they succeed. Anti-War Groups As was true during the Vietnam War, today’s anti-war groups hide their anti-Americanism behind the politics of peace. Recruiting others on a platform of “peace,” they ally themselves with radical Islamists, glorify the enemy’s goals and identify themselves as “freedom fighters,” battling an imperialistic world power. In the lead up to the war against Iraq, anti-war activists effectively mobilized some of the largest protests and demonstrations since the Vietnam War. They attacked the war effort abroad and security measures at home, sympathized with Saddam Hussein as a victim of American war-mongering and even served as strategically-placed human shields. Although Operation Iraqi Freedom was welcomed by the vast majority of Iraqis and succeeded in liberating 25 million people from the ravages of a murderous despot, anti-war protestors decried the U.S. “occupation” of Iraq and the alleged subjugation of the Iraqi people. Their steadfast position was that any use of American military power was an attempt to establish American hegemony in the region and exploit Iraq’s oil resources. The discovery of Saddam’s mass graves and torture chambers were ignored by the anti-war movement in the service of demonizing the actions of the evil, American empire. Hollywood Similarly, in the tradition of Hanoi Jane Fonda, Hollywood plays a highly visible role in opposing the Iraq war and in spearheading demonstrations. Fonda is back in the anti-war fray as Jihad Jane joined by actors Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn and others. Before the invasion by coalition forces, Penn embarked on a “fact finding mission” in Iraq, where he met with Saddam Hussein. In a propaganda coup for the anti-war movement and the Baathists, Penn proclaimed to the media that the United States had initiated the war effort on false and illegitimate premises and declared that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction. Since then, the Hollywood anti-war cabal has threatened the political future of elected representatives unwilling to support the recent, nonbinding resolution against the war. As Hollywood stars use their celebrity in their attempts to sabotage the U.S. war effort, they fail to mention Saddam’s rape rooms, gassing of Kurds and murder of children in front of their parents. These movie stars deny the valiant purpose of the U.S. mission and its committed and brave soldiers. Instead, they give aid, comfort and legitimacy to the enemy. Mass Media As in the Vietnam era, the media has become the propaganda machine for the anti-war movement, using the same tactics of the 1960s and 1970s. The overwhelmingly negative and biased reporting of the Vietnam War era is very much in evidence in today’s Iraq coverage. The press continually advances the notion that life was better for the Iraqis under Saddam, minimizes the atrocities committed by Saddam and his henchman, and focuses instead on the U.S. role in “destabilizing” Iraq. The “good news” about economic recovery, business successes, progress made by the Iraqi government and improvements in public services are ignored in favor of stories of civil strife. Every attack on American soldiers and Iraqis is magnified and featured prominently, while successes are largely ignored or reported in passing. Few news stories focus on the heroism and generosity of American troops. Any hint of malfeasance, allegations of combat errors or misconduct on the part of the U.S. military gets center stage. U.S. forces are portrayed as an enemy as dangerous or even more so, than the terrorist groups they fight. U.S. soldiers are portrayed as acting without regard to the rule of law and abusing the rights of captured “insurgents.” Schools Equally reminiscent of the ’60s and ’70s, university and high school campuses are hotbeds for anti-American and anti-war sentiments. Prior to the inception of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the “Books Not Bombs” strike was coordinated on campuses nationwide by the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, whose members include the Young Communist League, USA, and the Muslim Students’ Association of the U.S. and Canada. This anti-war protest was endorsed by professors in a wide variety of disciplines, from economics to biology, who cancelled classes or assured anti-war students they would not be penalized for absences. Some professors even focused the day’s class material on the potential war. Thus, a majority of institutions of higher education appeared to expect conformity of anti-war opinion and, in some cases, actually imposed the strike on the student population. This behavior continues today as literature and anthropology professors use classroom time to express their opinions against the war and pressure students to toe their ideological line. Often, students who agree with the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq jeopardize their grades by coming forward. They are treated with disdain and even disrespect in the classroom. Returning Iraq war veterans have been insulted, harassed and called “baby killers” in university classrooms. The Military Finally, as was the case during the U.S. fight against communism in Southeast Asia, the mission of the military has been undermined by blatant hostility and blanket condemnations. Venomous slurs have been directed toward the dedicated servicemen and women who toppled a brutal dictator, struggled against radical Islamists, and fought for a better life for the Iraqi people. Politicians have been extremely negative. For example, Illinois senator Barrack Obama referred to the “wasted” lives of our soldiers. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry insulted the intelligence of our armed forces by proclaiming that people end up in the military if they’re not smart or studious. Anti-military groups have tried to stop military recruitment drives and job fair participation in high schools and on college campuses. Even though all recruits today are committed volunteers who believe in the U.S. mission, anti-war activists portray them as victims, mercenaries or butchers. Isolated military improprieties committed by a few soldiers, like the Haditha incident and the Abu Ghraib scandal, receive outsized attention and are portrayed as representative of all military conduct. The slightest hint of misconduct is used to characterize all recruits and to malign the entire military mission. Anti-militarism has even been expressed by sweeping, local government measures. The city of San Francisco has engaged in various actions to rid itself of any relationship whatsoever to the military. Residents recently passed a symbolic measure demanding the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and prohibiting recruitment at high schools and colleges. City residents tried to stop Navy sponsorship of a summer concert, successfully blocked the docking of the USS Iowa at the Port of San Francisco and are trying to eliminate Fleet Week and the Blue Angels air shows. Congress In Congress, many Democrats and several Republicans are invoking the Vietnam “quagmire” descriptive to support demands to curtail the Iraq war and withdraw U.S. troops. The Democrat electorate has chosen to interpret recent election results as a sign that the public is opposed to the war, rather than opposed to the way the war is being fought. According to a recent national survey by Public Opinion Strategies, a majority of Americans (57) wants to win the war in Iraq and makes the connection between Iraq and the global jihad. Fifty-three percent feel the Democrats are acting precipitously in pushing for immediate withdrawal and a majority (56) also believes that Americans should stand behind the president in times of war. Most telling, 74 of those surveyed disagreed with the statement, “I don’t care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves. I just want the troops brought home.” Last week, on the same day that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki told Bush that the new security plan and heightened troop presence in Baghdad were “a dazzling success,” the House passed a non-binding resolution rejecting Bush’s 21,500-troop surge in Iraq. In the Senate, the resolution was just four votes short of the sixty required for cloture, which would have limited debate on the resolution and ensured passage. As a consequence of this narrow defeat, Democrats have pledged to repeal a 2002 measure authorizing and defining the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq. With no consideration of how this plays with the enemy, the morale of U.S. troops and the U.S. ground troops’ ability to build alliances with Iraqis, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement that the invasion of Iraq was “the worst foreign policy mistake” in U.S. history. In further attempts to block the deployment of more troops, House Democrats hope to restrict parts of a $100 billion emergency military funding request by the President. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and other Democrats have joined forces with anti-war groups to limit the President’s powers as Commander-In-Chief. Murtha and company plan to attach stipulations to any military appropriations; embark on a multi-million dollar, anti-war advertising campaign; and target vulnerable Republicans. Murtha is also seeking legislation as part of what he calls his “slow bleed strategy.” It would prevent military units from being deployed unless they meet certain standards and receive a break of at least one year between deployments. This damaging action by politicians and their failure to support the U.S. government “destroys morale, stymies success and emboldens the enemy,” says Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), a former Vietnam prisoner of war. “Words cannot fully describe the horrendous damage of the anti-American efforts against the war back home to the guys on the ground,” Johnson said. “We must stick by ‘the troops.’ We must support them all the way. To our troops we must remain always faithful.” This inattention to the message being sent to our soldiers is part of the broader failure by Iraq war opponents to recognize the dire consequences of U.S. withdrawal. It completely escapes opponents of the war on all fronts anti-war activists, Hollywood, colleges and universities and politicians that the conflict is not regional and one from which we can walk away without harm. It is positively stunning that they fail to recognize that Iraq could fall to Islamic terrorists. If this happened, Iraq would be a fertile base for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and a haven from which emboldened terrorists could attack U.S. allies and interests and threaten the very existence of our nation.
	4	+US leadership prevents great power war and existential governance crises
	5	+Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth ’13 (Stephen, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College “Don’t Come Home America: The Case Against Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51)
	6	+A core premise of deep engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war). Hence it is unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security dilemmas in the world’s core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the pure security ramifications, there are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher levels of military spending and innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional proxy wars and arming of client states—all of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away from the United States. Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear forces. 78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem. 79 Usually carried out in dyadic terms, the debate over the stability of proliferationchanges as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse. Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces—seem prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows. 80 Moreover, the risk of “unforeseen crisis dynamics” that could spin out of control
	7	+Retrenchment green lights revisionist powers — causes nuclear conflict and arms races.
	8	+Grygiel and Mitchell 16 — Jakub Grygiel, PhD in Politics from Princeton, Associate Professor in IR at Johns Hopkins, former consultant for the OECD and the World Bank, former editor of the Journal of Public and International Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC, and A. Wess Mitchell, President of the Center for European Policy Analysis, former member of the National Security Transition Team for Romney, member of the Advisory Board for the Lugar Institute for Diplomacy, co-authors of The Unquiet Frontier, 2016 (“Predators on the Frontier,” The American Interest, Vol. 11, No. 5, February 12th, Available Online at http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/12/predators-on-the-frontier/)
	9	+Revisionist powers are on the move. ‎From eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, large rivals of the United States are modernizing their military forces, grabbing strategic real estate, and threatening vulnerable U.S. allies. Their goal is not just to assert hegemony over their neighborhoods but to rearrange the global security order as we have known it since the end of the Second World War.
	10	+We first wrote about these emerging dynamics in 2010, and then in TAI in 2011. We argued three things. First, that revisionist powers were using a strategy of “probing”: a combination of assertive diplomacy and small but bold military actions to test the outer reaches of American power and in particular the resilience of frontier allies. Second, we argued that the small, exposed allies who were the targets of these probes were likely to respond by developing back-up options to U.S. security guarantees, whether through military self-help or accommodation. And third, we argued that that China and Russia were learning from one another’s probes in their respective regions, and that allies themselves were drawing conclusions about U.S. deterrence in their own neighborhood from how America handled similarly situated allies elsewhere.
	11	+Five years later, as we argue in a new book released this month, these dynamics have intensified dramatically. Revisionist powers are indeed probing the United States, but their methods have become bolder, more violent—and successful. Allies have grown more alert to this pressure, amid the steady whittling away of neighboring buffer zones, and have begun to pursue an array of self-help schemes ranging from arms build-ups to flirtations with the nearby revisionist power. It has become harder for the United States to isolate security crises to one region: Russia’s land-grabs in Eastern Europe provide both a model and distraction effect for China to accelerate its maritime claims in the South China Sea; Poland’s quest for U.S. strategic reassurance unnerves and spurs allies in the Persian Gulf and Western Pacific.
	12	+By degrees, the world is entering the path to war. Not since the 1980s have the conditions been riper for a major international military crisis. Not since the 1930s has the world witnessed the emergence of multiple large, predatory states determined to revise the global order to their advantage—if necessary by force. At a minimum, the United States in coming years could face the pressure of managing several deteriorating regional security spirals; at a maximum, it could be confronted with a Great Power war against one, and possibly two or even three, nuclear-armed peer competitors. In either case, the U.S. military could face these scenarios without either the presumption of technological overmatch or favorable force ratios that it has enjoyed against its rivals for the past several decades.
	13	+How should the United States respond to these dynamics? As our rivals grow more aggressive and our military edge narrows, we must look to other methods for waging and winning geopolitical competitions in the 21st century.
	14	+The most readily available but underutilized tool at our disposal is alliances. America’s frontline allies offer a mechanism by which it can contain rivals—indeed, this was the original purpose for cultivating security linkages with small states in the world’s rimland regions to begin with. In coming years, the value of strategically placed allies near Eurasia’s large land powers will grow as our relative technological or numerical military strength shrinks. The time has come for the United States to develop a grand strategy for containing peer competitors centered on the creative use of frontline allies. It must do so now, before geopolitical competition intensifies.
	15	+Predatory Peers
	16	+Probing has been the strategy of choice for America’s modern rivals to challenge the existing order. Over the past few years, Russia, China, and, to a degree, Iran have sensed that the United States is retreating in their respective regions—whether out of choice, fatigue, weakness, or all three combined. But they are unsure of how much remaining strength the United States has, or of the solidity of its commitments to allies. Rather than risking direct war, they have employed low-intensity crises to test U.S. power in these regions. Like past revisionists, they have focused their probes on seemingly secondary interests of the leading power, either by humbling its weakest allies or seizing gray zones over which the United States is unlikely to fight. These probes test the United States on the outer rim of its influence, where the revisionist’s own interests are strongest while the U.S. is at its furthest commitments and therefore most vulnerable to defeat. Russia has launched a steady sequence of threatening military moves against vulnerable NATO allies and conducted limited offensives against former Soviet satellite states. China has sought out low-intensity diplomatic confrontations with small U.S. security clients, erected military no-go zones, and asserted claims over strategic waterways.
	17	+When we wrote about this behavior in The American Interest in 2011, it was composed mainly of aggressive diplomacy or threatening but small military moves. But the probes of U.S. rivals are becoming bolder. Sensing a window of opportunity, in 2014 Russia upped the ante by invading Ukraine—the largest country in Eastern Europe—in a war that has so far cost 7,000 lives and brought 52,000 square kilometers of territory into the Russian sphere of influence. After years of using unmarked fishing trawlers to harass U.S. or allied naval vessels, China has begun to militarize its probes in the South China Sea, constructing seven artificial islands and claiming (and threatening to fight over) 1.8 million square kilometers of ocean. Iran has recently humiliated the United States by holding American naval vessels and broadcasting photos of surrendering U.S. sailors. In all cases, revisionist powers increased the stakes because they perceived their initial probes to have succeeded. Having achieved modest gains, they increased the intensity of their probes.
	18	+The strategic significance of these latest probes for the United States is twofold. First, they have substantially increased the military pressure on frontline allies. The presence of a buffer zone of some sort, whether land or sea, between allies like Poland or Japan and neighboring revisionist powers, helped to reduce the odds of sustained contact and confrontation between allied and rival militaries. By successfully encroaching on or invading these middle spaces, revisionists have advanced the zone of contest closer to the territory of U.S. allies, increasing the potential for a deliberate or accidental military clash.
	19	+Second, the latest probes have significantly raised the overall pressure on the United States. As long as Russia’s military adventures were restricted to its own southern periphery, America could afford to shift resources to the Pacific without worrying much about the consequences in Europe—an important consideration given the Pentagon’s jettisoning of the goal to be able to fight a two-front war. With both Ukraine and the South China Sea at play (and with a chaotic Middle East, where another rival, Iran, advances its reach and influence), the United States no longer has the luxury of prioritizing one region over another; with two re-militarized frontiers at opposite ends of the globe, it must continually weigh trade-offs in scarce military resources between geographic theaters. This disadvantage is not lost on America’s rivals, or its most exposed friends.
	20	+Frontier Frenzy
	21	+The intensification of probing has reverberated through the ranks of America’s frontline allies. In both Europe and Asia, the edges of the Western order are inhabited by historically vulnerable small or mid-sized states that over the past seven decades have relied on the United States for their existence. The similarities in the geopolitical position and strategic options of states like Estonia and Taiwan, or Poland and South Korea, are striking. For all of these states, survival depends above all on the sustainability of U.S. extended deterrence, in both its nuclear and conventional forms. This in turn rests on two foundations: the assumption among rivals and allies alike that the United States is physically able to fulfill its security obligations to even the smallest ally, and the assumption that it is politically willing to do so.
	22	+Doubts about both have been growing for many years. Reductions in American defense spending are weakening the U.S. military capability to protect allies. Due to cuts introduced by the 2009 Budget Control Act, the U.S. Navy is smaller than at any point since before the First World War, the U.S. Army is smaller than at any point since before the Second World War and the U.S. Air Force has the lowest number of operational warplanes in its history. Nuclear force levels are static or declining, and the U.S. technological edge over rivals in important weapons types has diminished. The Pentagon in 2009 announced that for the first time since the Second World War it would jettison the goal of being able to conduct a two-front global war.
	23	+At the same time that U.S. capabilities are decreasing, those of our rivals are increasing. Both Russia and China have undertaken large, multiyear military expansion and modernization programs and the technological gap between them and the United States is narrowing, particularly in key areas such as short-range missiles, tactical nuclear weapons, and fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
	24	+Recent American statecraft has compounded the problem by weakening the belief in U.S. political will to defend allies. The early Obama Administration’s public questioning of the value of traditional alliances as “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” shook allied confidence at the same time that its high-profile engagement with large rivals indicated a preference for big-power bargaining over the heads of small states. The U.S.-Russia “reset” seemed to many allies both transactional and freewheeling, and left a lasting impression of the suddenness with which U.S. priorities could shift from one Administration to the next. This undermined the predictability of patronage that is the sine qua non of effective deterrence for any Great Power.
	25	+As the revisionists’ probes have become more assertive and U.S. credibility less firm, America’s frontier allies have started to reconsider their national security options. Five years ago, many frontline states expressed security concerns, began to seek greater military capabilities, or looked to offset risk by engaging diplomatically with revisionists. But for the most part, such behavior was muted and well within the bounds of existing alliance commitments. However, as probing has picked up pace, allied coping behavior has become more frantic. In Europe, Poland, the Baltic States, and Romania have initiated military spending increases. In Asia, littoral U.S. allies are engaged in a worrisome regional arms race. In both regions, the largest allies are considering offensive capabilities to create conventional deterrence. Their willingness to build up their indigenous military capabilities is overall a positive development, but it carries risks, too, spurring dynamics that were absent over the past decades. The danger is that, absent a consistent and credible U.S. overwatch, rearming allies engage in a chaotic acquisition strategy, poorly anchored in the larger alliance. Fearing abandonment, such states may end up detaching themselves

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2017-01-17 02:28:41.821

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Steele, Saiedian, Legried

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Harker SP

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+31

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Semis

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+La Canada Zhao Neg

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+JANFEB - DA - Heg

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Harvard Westlake