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Cites

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1		-====Link: Nuclear submarines are the linchpin of US naval leadership, generically banning nuclear power halts the creation of nuclear submarines====
2		-**Posen 3** ~~Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, Director of the MIT Security Studies Program (http://web.mit.edu/ssp/), and serves on the Executive Committee of Seminar XXI (http://semxxi.mit.edu/). He has written three books, Restraint-A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks and The Sources of Military Doctrine. The latter won two awards: The American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award, and Ohio State University's Edward J. Furniss Jr. Book Award. He is also the author of numerous articles, including "The Case for Restraint," The American Interest, (November/December 2007) and "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security, (Summer, 2003.) He has been a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow; Rockefeller Foundation International Affairs Fellow; Guest Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow; Smithsonian Institution; Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and most recently Visiting Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. "The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony". 2003. "The MIT Press Journals". http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/posen_summer_2003.pdf.~~//roman
3		-U.S. nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) are perhaps the key assets of U.S. open-ocean antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capability, which in turn is the key to maintaining command of the sea.17 During the Cold War, the Soviet Union challenged U.S. command of the sea with its large force of SSNs. The U.S. Navy quietly won the "third battle of the Atlantic," though the Soviet successes in quieting their nuclear submarines in the 1980s would have necessitated another expensive and difficult round of technological competition had the Cold War not ended.18 At more than $1 billion each (more than $2 billion each for the new U.S. SSN), modern nuclear submarines are prohibitively expensive for most states. Aside from the United States, Britain, China, France, and Russia are the only other countries that can build them, and China is scarcely able.19 Several partially built nuclear attack submarines remained in Russian yards in the late 1990s, but no new ones have been laid down.20 Perhaps 20–30 Russian nuclear attack submarines remain in service.21 Currently, the U.S. Navy has 54 SSNs in service and 4 under construction. It plans to build roughly 2 new boats every three years. It also has a program to convert 4 Ohio-class Trident ballistic missile submarines into nonnuclear cruise missile–carrying submarines for land attack. The U.S. Navy also dominates the surface of the oceans, with 12 aircraft carriers (9 nuclear powered) capable of launching high-performance aircraft.22 The Soviet Union was just building its first true aircraft carrier when its political system collapsed. Aside from France, which has 1, no other country has any nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. At $5 billion apiece for a single U.S. Nimitz-class nuclear–powered aircraft carrier, this is no surprise.23 Moreover, the U.S. Navy operates for the Marine Corps a fleet of a dozen large helicopter/VSTOL carriers, each almost twice the size of the Royal Navy's comparable (3 ship) invincible class. To protect its aircraft carriers and amphibious assets, the U.S. Navy has commissioned 37 Arleigh Burke–class destroyers since 1991—billion-dollar multi-mission platforms capable of anti-air, antisubmarine, and land-attack missions in high-threat environments.24 This vessel is surely the most capable surface combatant in the world.
4		-
5		-====US Naval weakness crushes command of the seas and causes US-China war – sea power also ensures global coop and solves every conflict====
6		-Robert C. **Rubel 14**, Dean of Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, "Navies and Economic Prosperity: The New Logic of Sea Power," in Writing to Think: The Intellectual Journey of a Naval Career, p.60-68
7		-Systems thinking recognizes the interdependency of the various elements that contribute to a system. If we understand and accept that the world has knitted itself together into a global system of commerce (and the necessary forms of collective security that accompany commerce), then we are prepared to recognize and acknowledge that a wide range of factors impinge upon and even govern the effectiveness and efficiency of each subsystem. Using this logic we can easily understand not only that resource extraction, manufacturing, consumption and transportation are inextricably integrated elements of the world economy, but also that the protection of one to the exclusion of the others is not rational. The system as a whole must be protected. While it is true that no single military service—or nation—has the capability to render holistic systemic protection it is also true that the effects of each one's operations ripple throughout the system as a whole, either enhancing or diminishing its overall security. For navies, then, it is not sufficient to think of their purpose only in terms of protecting shipping. Certainly, shipping must be protected, but if there is nothing to put in those ships, their transits, safe or not, are meaningless. Therefore, it is as important that manufacturing nodes and resource nodes be similarly protected and that efforts be made to protect and enhance the nations and societies that constitute these nodes, not to mention the nations and societies that consume their output. Thus we have an endto- end systemic-view of what we might call the "mission space" of navies. The better the system works—the more secure it is—the better the world's prospects for economic prosperity. It does not work for just one nation. For the purposes of this discussion, the important point is that the flow of finance, goods, information, etc. must be sustained across the system. The flow can be interrupted by disrupting shipping (and air travel and the internet), but commercial shipping, at least, is not significantly threatened in today's world. On the other hand, war among major powers, instability in resource areas and major terrorist attacks in consumption areas all could significantly disrupt the flow, with disastrous results for the world economy as well as international peace. Given the dependency of most pension plans on the growth in the value of securities, it is not inaccurate to say that the well-being of much of the world's greying population is dependent upon the effective functioning of navies. Having established the systemic context for the new syllogism, we can engage in some reductionism to sort out some individual factors that can help us identify particular naval capabilities that are needed, their magnitude and even their mode of application (strategy). In doing so, we will focus, naturally, on threats to the system, proceeding from the most to the least dire. As intimated previously, war among major powers is potentially the most disruptive threat to the global system. When one considers the almost eighty-year global system "dark age" between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War, the impact of major power war becomes obvious. It would be arrogant and facile to suggest that navies themselves can prevent such wars, but it should be noted that a naval arms race between Great Britain and Germany played no small part in the chain of events leading to 1914 and the perceived vulnerability of the U.S. fleet in Hawaii was a factor in the Japanese decision to attack in 1941. These two themes, naval arms races and perceived naval vulnerability, constitute factors that have continuing relevance in today's systemic world. Let us start with naval arms races. We must admit that nations build navies for a range of reasons beyond protection of merchant shipping. These may include the desire to protect a vulnerable coast line, deter depredations by other powers and even generate prestige. There is, perhaps, one element of Mahan's syllogism that continues to be true: at a certain level of economic activity and wealth, nations start building navies. A capable, ocean-going navy is a sign that a nation has "arrived" as a major power. Whether such navy building is a herald of future war or is a politically neutral phenomenon is not clear, although the historical record is cause for concern. Today, China, Japan, India, Brazil and other nations are building navies. They each have their reasons, but the prospects that such building programmes will lead to suspicion, alarm, fear and ultimately war may depend very much on how the current leading navies and their parent nations proceed. An important reason the world system has been able to stitch itself back together after the world wars is the military superiority of the United States. A liberal democratic trading nation, it has coupled this superiority with free trade policies to stimulate economic growth. Capital, goods and people can flow freely around the globe, generating systemic behaviour. A key element of American military superiority is command of the seas, a term denoting the inability of any other navy to impose a strategic defeat on the U.S. Navy on the high seas. It is this command, like that achieved by the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century, which helped create the necessary conditions for system formation. When it is lost, as it was in 1914 and 1941, the world fragments and falls into war. The challenge becomes how to use command of the sea to manage or influence the emergence of other navies such that true naval arms races do not occur. The right way to do this is not completely clear but there appear to be several sure-fire losing strategies. The first is for the United States to start the arms race itself by reflexively viewing the emergence of the Chinese Navy or others as a threat. Policies and patterns of building and deployment based on alarm and fear will generate reciprocal responses in China and elsewhere. This is why CS21 does not mention China or any other nation by name, something often criticized by those with an alarmist bent. Among the ways the U.S. Navy can stimulate Chinese alarm is to openly consider interdiction of their seaborne commerce in exercises, war games or articles. Not only would this strengthen the hand of Chinese alarmists, but commerce interdiction would probably be infeasible on a number of counts anyway. Another good way to invoke this kind of reciprocal security dilemma is to link sea control and power projection. After the Cold War, the U.S. Navy focused so narrowly on power projection that it and some of its allied navies forgot how to talk about sea control.12 While progress has been made in this area, there is still a sense in the doctrine that U.S. forces will use land strikes to neutralize shore based antiaccess systems with sea control being an exercise in access generation that is prerequisite to projecting power ashore.13 One can imagine the effect such talk has on a nation like China that has suffered humiliation and exploitation from the sea at the hands of western nations. Already, the Chinese are reacting to the most recent U.S. concept of this ilk, Air-Sea Battle: "If the U.S. military develops Air-Sea Battle to deal with the ~~People's Liberation Army~~, the PLA will be forced to develop anti-Air-Sea Battle."14 A second way to increase the odds that navy building will lead to war is for the leading navies to allow vulnerabilities to emerge. The U.S. Navy did this in two ways during the 1930s and up to 1941. First, it was slow to recognize and accept that the bomb-carrying aircraft had replaced the major calibre gun as the dominant naval weapon. Although war games at the Naval War College and demonstrations by Billy Mitchell provided clear indicators, it took the December 1941 disasters of Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales to force the new reality on the admirals. Today, the new reality is that the anti-ship missile is the arbiter of what floats and what does not. This is a condition that has existed since the early 1970s but has not been compellingly revealed due to the lack of an all-out naval battle, just as there was no all-out naval battle between 1922 and 1941 to reveal the bomb's superiority. Vulnerability can also be generated by concentration. In 1941 the bulk of the U.S. fleet was concentrated at Pearl Harbor, leading Admiral Yamamoto to think that a single knock-out blow was possible. Although today the U.S. Navy is strategically dispersed around the world, its principal combat power is concentrated into eleven aircraft carriers. Taking several of these out would seriously compromise the strategic capabilities of the U.S. Navy, not to mention the potential adverse effects of derailing U.S. policy as happened via the loss of eighteen Special Forces soldiers in Somalia, or conversely stimulating escalation, possibly to the nuclear level. Moreover, a hit on a nuclear carrier that killed hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. sailors in a single blow might easily generate national outrage and serve to escalate the conflict far above initial intentions. In naval warfare, history has shown that the tactical offense has most often trumped the tactical defence, and thinking that aircraft carriers can be defended against the array of existing and potential anti-ship missiles is not much different than the outlook of battleship admirals in the fall of 1941.15 The combination of vulnerability issues suggests that the U.S. Navy and any allied or cooperating navies that seek to constitute a combat credible force in ocean zones threatened by anti-ship missiles will have to disaggregate their power into a dispersed grid of submarines, destroyers and unmanned vehicles, themselves armed with highly lethal anti-ship missiles. Their purpose should be clearly articulated as defending the system by deterring aggression via the sea by means of defeating—at sea—any attempt to do so. Even the best anti-ship missile cannot hit what cannot be found. By disaggregating naval combat power and equipping it to exert sea control—at sea—we thereby eliminate both forms of naval vulnerability that contribute to naval arms races, and the deterioration of deterrence. There is one other vulnerability issue that must be considered, and that is positioning. If caught out of position when a crisis erupts, the reactive movements of naval forces can catalyse rather than deter military action. In 1982, during the crisis leading up to the Falklands War, fears that the British were gathering up naval forces to send south helped put the Argentine Junta in a now-or-never state of mind, which precipitated their invasion and the war.16 If catalysis is to be avoided, naval forces must maintain a persistent presence in such areas where deterrence is necessary. This is why CS21 prescribes concentrated, credible combat forces be stationed forward in East Asia and the Persian Gulf. The Navy's inventory of ships, aircraft and other systems must be sufficiently large such that this presence can be maintained indefinitely without "using up" ships and sailors at an unsustainable rate. If command of the seas is achieved and maintained wisely by not provoking alarm and not allowing naval vulnerabilities to occur, the seas can constitute a massive geopolitical shock absorber, preventing conflicts in one area of the world from spilling over into others, mainly by keeping hostile armies from moving by sea, and allowing one's own to do so. Even though this condition holds today as a function of American command of the sea, there has emerged, since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the prospect of terrorists and their weapons being smuggled by sea to the shores of America, Europe, China, Japan and other developed countries. Given the disruptive potential of terrorist attacks, it is reasonable to regard them as only a step down from major power war as a threat to the system. Although the attacks of 9/11 were perpetrated by the radical Islamic organization al Qaeda, in the future such strikes might be staged by any number of groups. Although neutralization of such organizations by intelligence or law enforcement agencies is the preferred method, the lack of success to date in doing so for narco-traffickers and other criminal enterprises leaves us to consider at-sea interdiction as a necessary measure. The seas, of course, are huge, and at any moment they are dotted with tens of thousands of ships. There is not now nor has there ever been a navy of sufficient size to hermetically seal off the seas to smugglers. The only way to make the seas a barrier to terrorists is to have every costal nation effectively guard its own waters and establish good teamwork between its navy, intelligence service and law enforcement agencies. Some nations do but many do not. Thus CS21 calls for building capacity in those developing nations whose navies or coast guards are embryonic. The mission of capacity building requires a very different kind of naval force than the one needed to prevent major power war. The main "weapon system" of such a force is the sailors and other personnel that train, educate and influence those in developing countries that will become sailors. The sheer number of countries needing such assistance suggests these missions be conducted from relatively inexpensive ships that can be procured in some numbers. In addition to actual naval forces deployed for capacity building purposes, the navies of developed nations employ their shore training and education infrastructures. The importance of naval academies and war colleges in building not only capacity but relationships cannot be overstated. Beyond capacity building, making the seas a barrier to terrorists requires information about who is at sea, what is in the containers and holds, and where they are. Not only are new forms of surveillance needed, but also intensive information sharing so that two and two can be put together to reveal suspicious activity. To manage this, the U.S. Navy is developing a global network of maritime operations centres that will develop regional pictures that will be shared globally. This, in turn requires an international effort to develop trust and confidence so that information flows freely. If an adequate degree of maritime security can be achieved, the seas will constitute a geopolitical shock absorber in another way. In the wake of 9/11 the United States had no equivalent of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Admiral Lord St Vincent, who supposedly advised a jittery parliament in 1801, "I do not say my lords that the French will not come, I say only that they will not come by sea." Without the assurance of the seas as a barrier to further attack, it was as if New York City was connected to Kabul and Baghdad by a land bridge. The Bush Administration was spooked by the prospect of a WMD attack and rather stampeded itself into two simultaneous Eurasian land wars that got the United States mired down and over-extended. The comfort of insulating oceans can provide, among other things, a certain poise to the deliberations of the National Security Council and time for cooling off and reflection before committing the nation to war. Moreover, in the wake of the pull-out from Iraq and an increasingly rapid drawdown in Afghanistan, both the current and former U.S. Chiefs of Naval Operations have advanced the notion of an "offshore option" for anchoring forward U.S. military capabilities in the future.17 This would increase the proportionate contribution of naval forces to the U.S. effort to maintain global stability. The threat of terrorism emanates principally from an area of a world that has been variously referred to as the "arc of instability" and Barnett's Non-Integrating Gap. It encompasses much of Africa and the Middle East as well as parts of Southeast Asia. It is where most failed states exist but also where much of the natural resources necessary for the world economy are found. Thus the nations that constitute the global economic system can ill afford a hands-off strategy of containment, hoping to seal off the area against the spread of terrorism until it heals itself. Therapeutic incisions have been and will continue to be necessary at various times and places. Because of the undeveloped nature of this area of the world, along with the fact that most of its inhabitants live within several hundred miles of the coast, naval force projection capability from a sea base will be necessary. The early phases of the Afghanistan operations were of this nature and we can confidently expect that if and when the world's developed nations reach a consensus about going into Somalia to cure the piracy problem, it will be a sea-based expeditionary operation. Thus, protection of resource areas will require that some number of navies possess substantial sea-based expeditionary force capability, preferably of a kind that can integrate multi-national contributions easily. Rendering disaster relief, as was done in the tsunami relief effort in 2004, the Haiti earthquake and the Japan tsunami, is also an important form of sea-based force projection that mitigates economic damage to the system. It is likely that future sea-based expeditionary operations will be international, and so that capability must be conceptualized and practiced. The mere presence of naval forces in areas of the world that are the source of resources, notably oil, seems to have a beneficial economic effect. Both routine presence of naval forces and their responses in crises were shown to have a substantial economic benefit in a 1997 study by the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.18 It found that the initial naval response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is likely to have increased global GDP by over $86 billion.19 Perhaps the least dire threat to the global system is piracy —albeit one that is currently seizing the headlines. Somali pirates, a manifestation of a failed state in the Non-Integrating Gap, hijack merchants and demand ransom for the crew and ship. The actual chance of a particular merchant being hijacked is less than one in nine hundred,20 and shipping companies seem more inclined to pay the ransom than install armed guards aboard their ships. However, the publicity has galvanized nations and their navies to take action. A previous bout of piracy in the Straits of Malacca was cured by the joint action of local navies. The Somalia/Gulf of Aden situation is more problematic since there is no effective governmental authority ashore. However, the emerging world response to it reveals some important facets of an emerging global naval infrastructure that supports the global system of commerce and security. In Mahan's day, the movement of major naval forces was noted by many countries, sometimes with alarm, as it might presage invasion, or at least a round of coercive diplomacy. In fact, when the PRC announced it was dispatching a small squadron to the Gulf of Aden, there was alarm in some quarters in the United States and other countries that this was a sign of an expansionist China. The Chinese themselves announced that their ships would operate independently in the Gulf of Aden to protect their own merchants. However, after several weeks on station two things happened: the alarm about their movement died off and the Chinese commander suggested a cooperative zone defence in order to make most efficient use of the international naval forces on station. Moreover, not only the Chinese are there, but the Russians, NATO, EU (different task force), the Japanese, Koreans, Singaporeans and even the "rogue" nation of Iran. Everybody is cooperating—why, how and what does it mean? To start with, we must acknowledge the uniqueness of the Gulf of Aden situation. Somalia is a failed state that possesses neither resources nor location that would incite major power rivalry over influence ashore there. There is a universal confluence of interests centred on the protection of shipping. The unusual absence of major power competition allows naval operations to follow their natural course and provide a unique opportunity for us to see the security side of the global system in action. The Chinese, Russians, Iranians and other naval forces have become virtually invisible in the Gulf of Aden because they have fallen in on an existing framework and infrastructure of sea power that girdles the globe. This infrastructure (perhaps more accurately the maritime security subsystem of the global economic system) consists of both physical and intangible elements. On the physical side, there is the U.S. Navy's world-wide logistics system. It operates 24/7/365 and is composed of a web of bases, husbanding (victuals) contracts and replenishment ships, augmented by the supply ships of the Royal Navy, Japan and other allies. This system can support international naval operations anywhere in the world. In addition, there are GPS and communication satellites as well as the ubiquitous internet. Among the intangibles are the UN Law of the Sea that provides a clear framework for who can do what in whose waters, any number of other international agreements governing a range of maritime issues, and a world conditioned to see U.S. Navy and allied ships cruising the littorals of Eurasia. Perhaps another intangible element is CS21 itself, which casts the United States and its navy in a defensive posture (defence of the global system). This makes it easier politically for other nations to deploy their ships on a cooperative mission and make use of the U.S. Navy's logistics system. It also appears that the navies of the world are getting comfortable with looser coordination arrangements. Before the internet, strict communications, protocols, and structured command and control schemes were necessary. With the internet, everyone can talk more extensively and in new ways such that restrictive command arrangements are not so necessary. This in turn obviates the need for formal agreements prior to conducting cooperative operations. With the political and technical barriers to entry low, nations become more willing to send their navies on cooperative ventures. Previously we discussed the seas as geopolitical shock absorbers, both to limit other nations' options for aggression and to provide our own government time for reflection and preserving the option of doing nothing. In the cooperative naval operations off Somalia, we see another aspect of the phenomenon emerging in a very positive way. It turns out that ships from the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean navies have taken to operating together in the Gulf of Aden. Strange bedfellows indeed, but as both the Japanese navy's operations chief and a Chinese maritime scholar have said to the author on different occasions, cooperating on easier missions can build trust and confidence that will provide a basis for achieving resolution of more difficult maritime issues between the nations. This is indeed geopolitical shock absorbing of the most congenial kind. We have now arrived at a point where we can put all of the elements of modern naval endeavour together in a new syllogism. Navies protect their nations' economic prospects by operating cooperatively to defend all elements of the global system of commerce and security. Their necessary functions range from averting naval arms races to rendering disaster relief to, yes, protecting shipping. But it is not an every navy for itself process; the more cooperation, the better. It may even turn out that sustained and habitual international naval cooperation will someday make the concept of command of the sea irrelevant. Until then, the U.S. Navy must exert careful stewardship over its command of the sea, keep its global logistics system robust and develop the capacity to catalyse a global maritime security partnership on a broad front by being in a lot of places at the same time. Other navies must also look at the world in systems terms if they are to most effectively develop utility arguments and determine how to most effectively target their limited resources. If one accepts the arguments that underpin the new syllogism of how navies support economic prosperity, then reasons for optimism become clear. Naval building programmes in China, India and elsewhere do not have to lead to war as has happened in the past in Europe; there is a reasonable prospect that the seas can be denied to terrorists; the seas can be used to bring the Non-Integrating Gap into the system; and the emerging pattern of naval cooperating can not only secure the seas but reduce the likelihood of conflict and war. None of this will happen if nations let their navies decay. The unique thing about navies is that their optimum utility is in time of peace. When sea power is hitting on all cylinders, it is invisible. An investment in sea power is most appropriate and effective at a point when threats are not apparent. In Mahan's day the syllogism of sea power focused on the sovereign interests of individual nations and its application led eventually to war. Today we see the world as a system, with a sea power logic that is expressed in systems terms. Its application, that is, investment in navies structured along systemic lines, promises a massive return in the form of an extended and improving peace and—despite the current global economic woes—prosperity.
8		-Every submarine in the US fleet uses nuclear power
9		-Heinrich 4/14
10		-~~—Torsten, military historian from Germany, currently living in Switzerland. "Why the US Needs
11		-Conventional Submarines," Apr 14 2016, The Diplomat~~
12		-The U.S. Armed Forces operate a wide array of sophisticated weaponry, in many cases superior to anything else in the,,,,world. But while the new destroyers, carriers, or the F-22 might have no equal, the U.S. Armed Forces face a significant gap in their capabilities: the total lack of any conventional submarines. The United States hasn't produced any conventional submarines since the ,,Barbel-class in the,,late 1950s; every submarine class ,,since then,,has been nuclear powered
13		-
14		-====Decline of naval force is worst impact, laundry list of reasons- econ collapse, increased terrorism, US-China relations, and struggle for resources ====
15		-**Weaver 09 **Lynn Edward Weaver, 1-28-2009, "Nuclear Power Good for Economy," TheLedger, http://www.theledger.com/article/20090128/columnists/901280304?p=2andtc=pgandtc=ar
16		-The primary reason to consider a near-term scenario is that, if the U.S. gradually declined over the course of decades, another nation could slowly rise in its place and assume much of the world leadership that the United States currently exercises. The changes produced by such a decline would occur slowly and incrementally, with each successive step deviating only slightly from the status quo. Currently, although China may have the resources to assume world leadership, it appears disinclined to assume that role quickly, and no other nation possesses the means or the will to do so. Therefore, in considering the present value of sea power, it is more useful to create a scenario in which U.S. sea power declines quickly and radically rather than one in which it is slowly superseded. In essence, this scenario divines the worth of an asset by evaluating the impact of its absence. The scenario described here is inspired by work done by Decision Strategies International (DSI) for the U.S. Navy's Strategic Planning Process, with which one of the authors was loosely associated in 2006–2007.~~9~~ In this scenario, events unfold in a world that is very unstable and unsafe. International cooperation declines dramatically as countries hoard natural resources and the U.S. struggles against the strength of other resource-rich and economically robust regions of the world. Like the recession of 2008, the main trigger for this catastrophe is the international finance system. In 2020, several major European nations default on their debt, causing a flight of private money from the formal financial systems of the European Union (EU), the U.S., and Japan. Contagion in the financial markets plunges the world economy into global depression. Virtually every major Western nation finds itself in horrific economic straits, and only nations without expansive social safety nets are able to meet current obligations. Those with robust social welfare programs face aging populations, smaller workforces, and drastic cuts in services that spill over into all sectors of their economies. The U.S. economy contracts from $20 trillion in 2020 to $12 trillion in 2025. During this time, two separate U.S. presidential Administrations seek and obtain significant cuts in the size of the U.S. armed forces. Homeland security becomes the sole focus of the Department of Defense, with policymakers concentrating primarily on port and border security, land-based strategic nuclear forces, anti-terrorism, and managing civil unrest. Islamic terrorism accelerates the turn inward, which had abated in the second decade of the 21st century, as terrorists take advantage of the weakened condition of the West, especially the United States. Two "dirty bomb" explosions in 2021 accelerate the worldwide redeployment of U.S. military forces to home bases as the nation demands protection from terrorism. By 2025, U.S. international influence has all but disappeared, and U.S. efforts to counter Islamic terrorism garner little worldwide support due to economic and political interests. While the worldwide depression is devastating, it is less so in China, which in 2015 began to rebalance its economy aggressively toward domestic consumption. A China–Russia entente dominates the international distribution of resources and is ascendant economically. A global "basket currency" replaces the dollar as the reserve currency of choice, and Southeast Asia leads in technology development. Global maritime trade declines dramatically due to rising oil prices, terrorism, and piracy, and international cooperation to provide enhanced security does not materialize. With the decrease in long-haul international trade, regional trade blocs become the dominant mode of commerce. Even as the depression reduces demand, supply is reduced further. The United Nations is ineffective and ignored, a relic of an age of international cooperation long since past. Worldwide competition for declining energy resources increases, exacerbated by a global decline in energy innovation as commercial investment slows dramatically. Industrial nations with domestic access to energy engage in power politics, creating even more conflict in an already unstable world. In this environment, Americans are not embraced internationally, and the U.S. military loses many of its basing rights as it redeploys to the United States.

EntryDate

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1		-2016-10-02 21:57:52.0

Judge

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1		-Lawrence Zhao

Opponent

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1		-Northland Christian MP

ParentRound

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1		-13

Round

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1		-6

Team

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1		-Westwood Shhah Neg

Title

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1		-Sept Oct ~-~- DA ~-~- Subs

Tournament

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1		-Grapevine