Military ESAs Neg

Readiness Advantage
Sqo
 Status Quo Solves Military Retention
Squo solvesarmy is taking measures to incentivize retention
Myers 2/19
(Meghann writes for the Army Times, The Army is offering two-year contracts and cash
bonuses to grow the Army, Army Times, 6/28, https://www.armytimes.com/articles/the-army-
is-offering-two-year-contracts-and-cash-bonuses-to-grow-the-army)///NDG
The Army is offering bonuses worth up to $40,000 or enlistment contracts as short as two years
as it tries to recruit 6,000 more soldiers this year than it had planned. In a reversal of a drawdown that has
been going on for years, the Army now needs to add 16,000 more soldiers to its active-duty ranks by Sept. 30. The growth, which is
outlined in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Bill, also requires the Army to retain 9,000 more soldiers than it originally
planned. This means two-year enlistments are on the table for almost 100 military occupational specialties, and U.S. Army Recruiting
Command is prepared to funnel $300 million into enlistment bonuses, recruiter incentives and marketing, according to its deputy
commander. The recruiting plan, which includes adding about 600 new recruiters and boosting their
pay, will combine with the Armys retention plan the service is offering big bonuses to
existing soldiers as well, including $10,000 for a one-year extension to put the active
component at 476,000 soldiers by the end of September. In all, the Army needs to grow by 28,000 soldiers in
the active Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve by Sept. 30. The Army then is faced with the challenge of determining
where to put all of the new bodies, which will total 6,000 recruits, 9,000 reenlisted soldiers and 1,000 retained officers. A decision on
the ultimate end strength plan, to include the National Guard and Army Reserve, is due later in February, said Lt. Col. Randy Taylor,
an Army spokesman. That task is made even more complicated by the budget uncertainty facing the Army. As of Feb. 14, the Army
has enlisted 20,600 recruits this fiscal year, according to USAREC. In total, the service is at about 53 percent of its total plus-up goal
for the year,
Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey said. The next step is for Congress to pass an appropriations bill
with a budget to match the new end-strength numbers. Dailey
said he was confident that the Army would get
enough money in this years budget to properly train and equip the influx of new soldiers and
pay for the bonuses the Army is promising to soldiers old and new. Were going to go back and ask for
more money, Dailey said. He added that senior Army leaders have long sounded the alarm about how much the Army was
shrinking. For the last several years, weve been talking about the risk with the size of our force, Dailey said. [Army Chief of Staff
Gen. Mark Milley] has made it very clear that hes uncomfortable with our risk. Weve been communicating with Congress that we
need to increase end strength. But numbers arent everything, he said. We need the resources to accomplish the missions we have
at hand, he said, including everything from obligations to combatant commanders in the Pacific, Europe, Middle East and beyond,
down to benefits and Morale, Welfare and Recreation programs at home that provide a high quality of life for soldiers. A quick two
years The Army has offered two-year enlistments on and off during the past few decades and has generally limited them to very
specific military occupational specialties, officials said. But this year, 94 of the Armys enlisted MOSs are eligible for a two-year
contract, to give people who are reluctant to sign away four or six years the chance to get their feet wet, Brig. Gen. Donna Martin,
deputy commanding general of USAREC, told Army Times in a Feb. 14 interview.
And while theyre in for those two
years, they earn benefits for education, she said. That means 80 percent of that soldiers college degree will be
covered by the GI Bill. Theyre going, Four years? Six years? Martin said of the average young person considering enlisting. That
seems like forever, right? But
two years, USAREC hopes, will be a more manageable amount of time
that could sway a potential recruit toward enlisting. The Army also is hoping that two-year
enlistments will appeal to a certain kind of kid just getting out of high school. Theres a population out
there thats doing this gap year, Martin said, using Malia Obama, whos taking a year off before starting college, as an example.
Martin and her team are hoping that the promise of some life experience and money for college will appeal to smart, motivated high
school graduates who are interested in serving but want the option to move on by the time theyre 20, for example. Selling the
benefits Technically, theres not a whole lot soldiers can do in the Army in under two years. Depending on the MOS, theyll spend
several months to a year in the initial training pipeline, and likely not have enough time left on their contract to report to a unit, get
into the deployment training cycle and go abroad for a full deployment. However, the Army is betting that a good
chunk of those enlistees will stay on. You know who enlisted on a two-year enlistment? Dan Dailey did, the Armys
senior enlisted soldier told Army Times on Feb. 14. Dailey said he joined to be an aviator, but went infantry instead because his
hearing disqualified him from flying. Not until after those two years did I realize, this is my calling, he said. Had I not been
afforded that opportunity, maybe to somebodys benefit now, I might not have been the sergeant major of the Army. So while
two-year contracts could be a quick fix to get the Army to this years end strength requirement,
it could pay off in the long run by getting commitment-shy kids in the door. Its not just about getting
people, Dailey said. A lot of these young men and women want to join the Army, but just like any 18- to 24-year-old like my son
whos in college now they dont know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. And theyll have plenty of choices once
they make the decision. The 94 MOSs opened up for two-year commitments include everything from infantry, combat engineer and
fire support specialist to highly specialized jobs like cryptologic linguist and signals acquisition/exploitation analyst. For those who
are willing to sign away more than two years, there are bonuses up for grabs worth anywhere from $1,000 to $40,000. Soldiers who
enlist for six years to be a cardiovascular specialist, satellite communications maintainer-operator or patriot fire control enhanced
operator maintainer can net $40,000 for enlisting, according to this years bonus program scheme. There are also bonuses as low as
$1,000 for a three-year contract as a cannon crewmember, cavalry scout or combat medical specialist, among others. And for
those looking at a job that doesnt offer an enlistment bonus, there are quick ship bonuses for
most recruits willing to head to basic training within in a month or two of signing up. Those are
worth between $5,000 and $20,000. If youre eligible for both an enlistment bonus and a quick-ship bonus, your pay-
out is capped at $40,000. Theres also something in it for those already on active duty. The Army is trying to add 600 recruiters to
bring in these 6,000 new soldiers, and recruiting detail could net you an extra $500 a month for up to a years commitment. Finding
the best The Army, and the military in general, has a problem that officials have been opening up about more and more: More than
70 percent of American youth aren't even eligible to join the military. In the past, the Army has relaxed fitness, tattoo and criminal
history standards, but this year USAREC is determined to bring in more talent with the same strict rules. Once the Army looks at the
pool of physically fit high school graduates with clean records, its an even narrower sliver of people who are suited to doing the
Armys toughest and most technical jobs, and the service has to compete with college and civilian job prospects to draw them in.
The mantra used to be either you go into the Army or you go to college, Martin said. What
the Army has developed is a system where you can go into the Army and go to college. Then
theres the diversity issue, she added. More than 50 percent of new recruits come from just seven states, and many of them join
because they have a parent who served. In 1990, 40 percent of young people between 16 and 24 had a military parent, she said.
In 2014 it was 16 percent. Theres also a growing economy. While thats great for the rest of the United States, because of the
quality of the young person were going after, were competing against industry for that same young person, Martin said. The
hope is that bonuses and short enlistments will draw in enough people to reach this years
quotas and retain a handful of quality soldiers for the long-term.
 Status Quo Solves Military Education Programs

Squo solves plan- bill passed provides funding for military children
ALEC 9
(American Legislative Exchange Council) "The Military Family Scholarship Program
Act." American Legislative Exchange Council. N.p., Aug. 2009. Web. 26 June 2017.
<https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-military-family-scholarship-program-act/>.
The Military Family Scholarship Program Act creates a scholarship program to provide all
children of veterans and active military personnel the option to attend the public or private
elementary or secondary school of their parents choice. The definition for an eligible student in
this model legislation includes all children of school age whose parents are veterans or active
military personnel. The purpose of this bill is to provide a new benefit to veterans and active military
personnel by giving them the option to choose their childrens school. The willingness of military
personnel to work and live wherever they are assigned weakens the opportunity for military families to
weigh school options heavily in relocation decisions. In recognition of the sacrifices made by military
families on behalf of the security of the American people, this legislation aims to strengthen the decision-
making power of families to provide the best education possible for their children wherever their military
service takes them and their families. Please note that the inclusive definition in this bill may increase the
number of students in your state receiving public support for their education and thereby either increase
the costs to taxpayers or reduce the level of assistance available to support each student. Legislators may
wish to consider limiting eligibility to more specific groups within the military community such as more
recent veterans or members in an active component of the armed forces only. To do this, legislators could
limit eligibility to any military personnel, reservist or National Guard member called up to support
Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom only. To broaden this eligibility beyond Iraq,
Afghanistan or Cuba while still limiting the pool of eligibility, legislators may consider limiting eligibility to
any reservist or National Guard member serving under Title 10, the federal code governing assignment to
active military status. Alternatively or in addition, eligibility could be limited by time of service excluding
some shorter tours of duty. Benchmark suggestions for cutoff include 180 days, 270 days or 365 days on
active duty. If, on the other hand, legislators are looking for a more inclusive bill than this model language
indicates, they may include anyone in the Individual Ready Reserve. This may include personnel with little
time serving in the reserves who may not have any active duty experience and who are not in a current
drilling status. The authors of this model bill support the use of an inclusive eligibility definition but also
recognize that when a more limited definition is necessary, legislators may want to focus on providing
opportunities to those most affected by military service. 2. This bill designates the Department of
Public Instruction as the agency regulating the Military Family Scholarship Program, though if
your state has an existing school choice program, it could be administered in a different
department.
 Status Quo Solves Military Education ACCESS Act
ACCESS Act solvesprovides childcare benefits to incentivize enlistment
BPC 6/26 (The Bipartisan Policy Center, Gillibrand, Cotton Bill Would Help Military Families,
BPC, accessed 6/29, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/press-release/gillibrand-cotton-bill-would-help-
military-families/)///NDG
Washington, D.C. The bipartisan ACCESS Act introduced by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and
Tom Cotton (R-AR) underscores one of the main points made by the Bipartisan Policy Centers Task Force on Defense
Personnel: members of our military should not have to choose between serving their nation or
taking care of their families. This legislation takes an important step toward ensuring that our
troops do not have to choose between serving their nation and serving their families. By
improving access and flexibility for child care options, this bill will make it easier for service
members and their families to deal with some of the challenges of military life, Blaise Misztal, BPC
director of national security, said. It will help bring the military closer in line with expectations of 21st Century Americans. This
strengthens our nation and our national security. The
ACCESS legislation addresses one of the important
objections families often have to military servicelack of child care facilities. By adding child care
coordinators, improved hours of operation of military-run Child Development Centers, and proposing a pilot program to coordinate
off- and on-base child care centers, this proposal by
Senators Gillibrand and Cotton would improve family
morale and lead to greater retention of military personnel, Steve Bell, senior advisor at BPC, said. I hope that
this proposal appears in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate Armed Services Committee
will begin drafting soon.
Readiness
 Readiness High Now / Resilient
Military readiness is resilient and high now tons of money and equipment
OHanlon 2016
(Michael OHanlon is a Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for 21st Century Security and
Intelligence Director of Research - Foreign Policy Co-Director - Center for 21st Century Security
and Intelligence The Sydney Stein, Jr. Chair, 8/15 2006 The state of U.S. military readiness
Brookings Institute, accessed 6/27, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order -from-
chaos/2016/08/15/the-state-of-u-s-military-readiness/)
Last week retired General David Petraeus and I wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that, while the U.S. military is certainly
facing a number of significant strains and future challenges, there
is no crisis in military readiness. Unit by unit,
todays American armed forces are very good and rather well-prepared for the various tasks
they could be called upon to undertake. To be sure, they remain better prepared for counterinsurgency and
stabilization missions than for high-end warfare. The Army, and the U.S. military in general, continue to recover from Iraq and
Afghanistan; that effort will take some additional time. And there is plenty of room for debate about whether the military is large
enough, and also about whether it is following the right strategy to prepare for new threats. But on
balance, the quality of
our armed forces today is quite good. This point is important enough to be worth nailing down decisively. This op-ed
attracted a number of criticisms. I would like to respond to several personally. Some have said that Army budgetary
resources are inadequate. But they are, unit by unit, substantially greater than during the
Reagan buildup, even after being adjusted for inflation. There are anecdotes of Army rifle companies that are
undermanned, and other such concerns about hollow force structure. My best guess is that some of these problems, to the extent
they are real, result in certain units from the process of downsizing (which the Army has been doing in recent years). For example, if
there is a plan to combine two units into one and the plan has not yet been put into effect, the preexisting units might have
shortages just before they are merged. Or, a unit about to deploy might be capped at a certain numerical size (given President
Obamas quantitative troop ceilings imposed on various operations abroad, for better or for worse). That might require it to deploy
understrength. But
across the Army, there is no systematic mismatch between soldiers and targeted
force structure, so this should be at worst a localized and temporary problem. There are other
anecdotes of tank crews never having fired a live round, and related stories of unpreparedness. If this is so, I question how the Army
is allocating resources among its different units. Again, training dollars are robust, by any historical measure and when compared
with what the Army calculates that it needs. Yes,
sequestration caused temporary problemsbut that was
back in 2013. Yes, Iraq and Afghanistan caused problemsbut we have been downsizing from
them since 2011 and now have fewer than 15,000 soldiers deployed (out of a total Armyactive plus
reserve plus National Guardof nearly one million soldiers). That represents a 90 percent reduction from peak deployments
todayand deployed numbers have been quite modest since about 2013. If the Army has not used these last three years to begin to
recover, I would humbly submit that there could be a case for rethinking some of its force management concepts. Yes, the Army and
other services have had to cope with new operations from Liberia to the Baltic states to other hotspots in recent times. But these
have all been small operations, totaling at most a few thousand troops each, for a grand total of less than 10,000 in alland
generally far fewer than that at any given time. Budgets for overseas contingency operations have come down far slower than have
forces deployed abroad over the last half decade. This means that there are some extra dollars from the war supplementals that the
military can use for recovery. So again, available resources do not appear to be a major problem. In fact,
they are relatively robust and generous at present. To be sure, given the normal life cycle of major units, the Army will need several
more years to fully recover from all of the strains of recent operations abroad. There is no case for complacency, or for declaring
victory. Nor is there a case for cutting readiness budgets. And to be sure, one can have a vigorous debate about whether the size of
the Army has been cut at least a bit too much; indeed, General Petraeus and I make this case, in the op-ed as well as our
forthcoming Foreign Affairs article. But
there is not, to my mind, a strong case for questioning the unit-by-
unit excellence of the Army in particular, or the U.S. military in general. Nor is there a serious concern
about the adequacy of resources on a unit-by-unit basis for equipment, people, and training. In short, there is no readiness crisis
requiring dramatic policy intervention. Luckily, for those would-be adversaries who might be listening to our debate, there is
therefore also no window of opportunity to exploit in Americas ability to defend its global interests.
 Readiness Alt Causes
Multiple alt causes tech, budget
Sirota, Poli Sci BS, and Perez, 15 (David, BS @ Northwestern, and Andrew, "US Military
Readiness In Question Amid Calls For Syria Invasion Against ISIS", 12/11/15, Accessed 6/30/17,
www.ibtimes.com/us-military-readiness-question-amid-calls-syria-invasion-against-isis-
2221023) SS
Aging hardware is indeed a top concern of Pentagon leaders. In 2010, the General Accountability Office
reported that Navy officials found that fleet readiness had declined over the previous ten years and was
well below the levels necessary to support reliable, sustained operations at sea. Military leaders told
lawmakers in March that aircraft are now anywhere from 22 to 29 years old and F-18 jets are being flown for 60 percent more hours
than the lifespan for which they were designed. Just last week, the Air Force -- which has been launching airstrikes on ISIS for 15
months -- warned of a possible shortage of bombs.
Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told International Business Times that the
degradation in military hardware and the attendant overall decline in readiness is primarily the
result of two factors: long-term combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and sequestration --
the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts passed by Congress in 2013.
Theres no doubt an intense, high-level, high pace of operations for 10 years and two theaters just wore the military plain out
across the board, Eaglen said. The budget cuts then did so much damage to military readiness that all
of the services will not recover from that one years consequences until at least 2020, she said.
Defense Spending and the Budget Control Act
The chart from a Congressional Research Service report on July 22, 2015 shows the difference between President Obamas defense
budget requests and the funding allocated by congress. Photo: Congressional Research Service
Military officials have long feared the effects of sequestration. Leon Panetta, then the
defense secretary, warned in
2013 that the budget reductions would force the Pentagon to cut back on Army training and
maintenance and cut back on the ability to support the troops who are not in the war zone.
Sequestration also accelerated the federal governments previous plans to reduce the size of the
U.S. Army by 120,000 from where it stood when Obama first took office -- which will translate
to a 21 percent reduction of active duty soldiers.
In its 2016 budget documents, the Army now says that if the cuts from sequestration are permitted to persist, they will end up
jeopardizing the Armys ability to execute even one prolonged multiphase contingency operation -- such as the one being
proposed to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
A Washington game
Even at a time when high-profile lawmakers like Sens. Graham and John McCain are calling for an initial deployment of 10,000
troops into Syria and another 10,000 to Iraq, some experts dispute that the sequestration cuts have been severe enough to damage
readiness. The U.S. military currently enjoys, by far, the largest budget of any defense force in the world.
The watchdog group National Priorities Project, for instance, has pointed out that Congress quietly restored many cuts, leaving the
Pentagons 2013 budget less than 6 percent below pre-sequestration levels in 2013 and less than 1 percent below those levels in
2014. An analysis from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that while the cuts would
have an important impact on U.S. deterrent and warfighting capabilities, the Pentagon in fact had plans in place to prioritize
readiness -- an assessment confirmed by some of the findings of a General Accountability Office review delivered to Congress this
past spring.
That report found that following orders to preserve military readiness and wartime operations, military leaders ended up
protecting funding for training the soldiers who were scheduled for imminent deployment. The GAO said at least one branch of the
armed forces the Marines avoided cancelling deployments or major exercises and reported no readiness effects as a result of
sequestration.
The brass are playing a Washington game, where they say you want us to put 20,000 people into the Middle East so you have to
increase our budget, former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb told IBT. A military with a $500 billion annual
budget and a standing army of more than 1.3 million personnel has plenty of resources for such a deployment and the term
readiness is being misunderstood, Korb said.
Readiness is a specific military term they set standards for each unit and if you dont meet
those standards, you dont get the readiness classification, said Korb, who is now a senior fellow at the left-
leaning Center for American Progress. They are saying not all the units are where you would like them to be if you want to fight two
wars, but what happens is that the common, ordinary person hears readiness and they think it means more than the specific
narrow definition that the military uses.
 No Impact to Readiness
Military readiness theory is wrong
Amar Bhide 8, Professor of Business at Columbia, The Venturesome Economy: How
Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World,
http://bhide.net/venturesome_press/JACF_Venturesome_Economy_1_bhide.pdf

Techno-nationalist arguments based on sound bytes or parsimonious economic models

cannot deal with the complexity of the multiplayer game. They rarely distinguish between
different levels and kinds of know-how. Instead, they equate innovation with scientific
publications or patents on cutting-edge technology produced in universities or in commercial
research labs. They ignore the contributions of the other players in the innovation game that
dont result in publications or patents. Techno-nationalists also tend to oversimplify the
phenomenon of globalization, often assuming that high-level know-how never crosses
national bordersonly the final products made using the know-how are traded.19 This assumption is pivotal in
theoretical models of North-South trade that Richard Freeman invokes to predict the woeful consequences
of the erosion of U.S. technological leadership. The reality, however, is that high-level ideas cross
national borders rather easily, whereas a large proportion of final output, especially in the service sector, does not.
The Propositions My analysis of the multiplayer game and cross-border interactions suggests outcomes that differ sharply from the
dire predictions of the techno-nationalists. According to my assessment, theUnited States is not locked into a
winner-take-all race for scientific and technological leadership, and the growth of research
capabilities in China and Indiaand thus their share of cutting-edge researchdoes not
reduce U.S. prosperity. Indeed my analysis suggests that advances abroad will improve living standards
in the U.S. Moreover, the benefits I identify are different from the conventional economists account whereby prosperity
abroad increases opportunities for U.S. exporters. Instead, I show that cutting-edge research
developed abroad benefits domestic production and consumption in the service sector. And
contrary to the policy prescriptions of techno-nationalists, I suggest that the U.S. embrace the expansion of research capabilities
abroad instead of devoting more resources to maintaining its lead in science and cutting-edge technology.20 My assessment and
prescriptions differ so sharply from those of the techno-nationalists for reasons that I summarize below: The
world is a long
way from being flatChina and India arent anywhere close to catching up with the U.S. in
their capacity to develop and use technological innovations. Starting afresh may allow China and India to
leapfrog ahead in some fields, in building advanced mobile phone networks, for example. But excelling in the overall
innovation game requires a great and diverse team, which, history suggests, takes a very long
time to build. Consider Japan, which began to enter the world after the Boshin War of 1868. In the subsequent Meiji
Restoration, the country abolished its feudal system and instituted a Western legal system and a quasi-parliamentary constitutional
government. In a few decades, Japan had modernized its industry, its military, and its educational system. Today Japan is a highly
developed economy and makes important contributions to advancing the technological frontier. But nearly a century and a half after
Japan started modernizing, its overall capacity to develop and use innovations, as evidenced by the countrys average productivity,
remains behind that of the U.S. Similarly, Korea and Taiwan started industrializing (as it happens, under Japanese rule) about a
century ago and enjoyed miraculous rates of growth after the 1960s. In several sectors of the electronics industry, Korean and
Taiwanese companies are technological leaders. Yet their overall productivity suggests they have less capacity than Japan to develop
and use innovations. Is it likely, then, that within any readers lifetime China and India will attain the parity with the U.S. that has
eluded Japan, Korea, and Taiwan? The fear of offshoring of innovation is similarly exaggerateddont
expect to hear a giant sucking sound anytime soon. The massive relocation of innovation appears highly
unlikely. The fact that U.S. companies have started R&D centers abroad that do high-level
research doesnt mean that all lower-level know-how development will quickly follow. Of the
many activities included in the innovation game, only some are performed well in remote, low-cost locations. Many mid-level
activities, for instance, are best conducted close to potential customers. Any catch-up, even if it takes
place gradually and in the normal course of development, will to some degree reduce the U.S. lead. Furthermore,
the global influence of techno-nationalism could accelerate this process. As alarmists in the U.S.
continue to remind us, governments in emerging countries such as China and Indiaalso in the thrall of techno-nationalist
thinkingare making a determined effort to leap ahead in cutting-edge science and technology. But I am skeptical that these efforts
are going to do any more good for Chinas and Indias economy than similar efforts in Europe and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s.21
But putting aside the issue of whether investing in cutting-edge research represents a good use of Chinese and Indian resources,
does whatever erosion of U.S. primacy in developing high-level know-how this might cause really threaten U.S. prosperity? Should
the U.S. government respond in kind by putting even more money into research? Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has long decried
what he refers to as the dangerous obsession with national competitiveness. As Krugman wrote in a 1994 article in Foreign
Affairs, the
widespread tendency to think that the United States and Japan are competitors in
the same sense that Coca-Cola competes with Pepsi is flatly, completely and demonstrably
wrong. Although competitive problems could arise in principle, as a practical, empirical matter, Krugman goes on to say, the
major nations of the world are not to any significant degree in economic competition with
each other.22 The techno-nationalist claim that U.S. prosperity requires that the country
maintain its scientific and technological lead is particularly dubious: the argument fails to
recognize that the development of scientific knowledge or cutting-edge technology is not a
zero-sum competition. The results of scientific research are available at no charge to anyone
anywhere in the world. Most arguments for the public funding of scientific research are in fact based on the unwillingness
of private investors to undertake research that cannot yield a profit. Cutting-edge technology (as opposed to scientific research) has
commercial value because it can be patented; but patent
owners generally dont charge higher fees to
foreign licensors. The then tiny Japanese company Sony was one of the first licensors of Bell Labs transistor patent. Sony paid
all of $50,000and only after first obtaining special permission from the Japanese Ministry of Financefor the license that started it
on the road to becoming a household name in consumer electronics. Moreover, if patent holders choose not to grant licenses but to
exploit their inventions on their own, this does not mean that the country of origin secures most of the benefit at the expense of
other countries. Suppose IBM chooses to exploit internally, instead of licensing, a breakthrough from its China Research Laboratory
(employing 150 research staff in Beijing). This does not help China and hurt everyone else. Rather, as I discuss at length later, the
benefits go to IBMs stockholders, to employees who make or market the product that embodies the invention, andabove allto
customers, who secure the lions share of the benefit from most innovations. These
stockholders, employees, and customers, who number in the tens of millions, are located all over the
world. In a world where breakthrough ideas easily cross national borders, the origin of ideas is
inconsequential. Contrary to Thomas Friedmans assertion, it does not matter that Googles
search algorithm was invented in California. After all, a Briton invented the protocols of the World Wide Webin a
lab in Switzerland. A Swede and a Dane in Tallinn, Estonia, started Skype, the leading provider of peer-to-peer Internet telephony.
How did the foreign origins of these innovations harm the U.S. economy? The techno-nationalist preoccupation with high-level
research also obscures the importance of what happens at lower levels of the innovation game. High-level breakthroughs that
originate in China or India can in principle be used to develop mid- and ground-level products of value to workers and consumers
everywhere. But the benefits are not automatic: realizing the value of high-level innovation requires venturesome lower-level
players who have the resourcefulness and gumption to solve challenging technical and business problems. Without venturesome
radio manufacturers such as Sony, transistors might have remained lab curiosities. Moreover, the benefits of lower-level
venturesome consumption often remain in the country where it occurs, and all countries dont have the same capacity for such
consumption. Therefore, I argue, because high-level ideas cross borders easily, a nations venturesome consumptionthe
willingness and ability of intermediate producers and individual consumers to take a chance on and effectively use new know-how
and productsis at least as important as its capacity to undertake high-level research. Maryland has a higher per capita income than
Mississippi, Norway has a higher per capita income than Nigeria, and Bosnia has a higher per capita income than Bangladesh; the
richer places are not ahead because they are (or once were) significant developers of
breakthrough technologies. Rather, they are wealthier because of their capacity to benefit
from innovations that originated elsewhere. Conversely, the city of Rochester, New York (home to Xerox, Kodak,
and the University of Rochester) is reputed to have one of the highest number of patents per capita of any city in the U.S. It is far
from the most economically vibrant. The United States, according to my analysis, has more than just great scientists and
research labs: it also hosts
an innovation game with many players who can exploit high-level
breakthroughs regardless of where they originate. Therefore, the erosion of the U.S. lead in
cutting-edge research, far from hurting the U.S. economy, may well be a blessing for the
following reason: an increase in the worlds supply of high-level know-how provides more raw
material for mid- and ground-level innovations that increase living standards in the United
States. The U.S. technological lead narrowed after World War II as Western Europe and Japan rebuilt their economies and
research capabilities. This led not to a decrease, but to an increase in U.S. prosperity.23 And the U.S. likely enjoys a higher standard
of living because Taiwan and Korea have started contributing to the worlds supply of scientific and technological knowledge.
 No Troop Shortage Now
The status quo solves low troop numbers and readiness
Tomkins 17 (Richard, "U.S. Army boosting troop numbers", 3/21/17, www.upi.com/Defense-
News/2017/03/21/US-Army-boosting-troop-numbers/6201490109775/) SS
March 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of the Army is boosting its end strength to 1,018,000 soldiers
by the end of September with the addition of 28,000 soldiers to its ranks.
The increase announced this week is in line with the N ational D efense A uthorization A ct for fiscal year 2017.
"The Army is hiring," Maj. Gen. Jason Evans, director of military personnel management for the Army, said in a press release. "The
added end strength will allow the Army to increase manning [personnel] in its tactical units,
enhancing overall readiness.
"The increased manning [personnel] also provides additional promotion opportunities and
retention incentives for our existing soldiers and more opportunities for those who are fit,
resilient and possess character, who want to join the Army."
The National Defense Authorization Act increases the Army's active end-strength by 16,000 to 476,000; the Army National Guard
increases by 8,000 to 343,000; and the Army Reserve by 4,000 to 199,000, the Army said.
The Army will employ a variety of methods to meet the troop strength requirement. Among
them: enlisted personnel accessions, recruitment and retention, along with officer accessions
and retention.
 Troop Loss Alt Cause Budgets
Alt cause to troop loss budget cuts!
Seck, Politics BA, 16 (Hope H., BA @ Kings College, " Service Chiefs: Troops Will Head for
Exits if Budget Cuts Persist ", 9/15/16, Accessed 6/26/17, http://www.military.com/daily-
news/2016/09/15/service-chiefs-troops-will-head-for-exits-budget-cuts-persist.html) SSN
Caps on defense spending limit training , force service members to use old gear and may lead
to an exodus of troops from the armed services , the four service chiefs told lawmakers
Thursday.
Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the
leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine
Corps warned that a return of sequestration budget caps would promote fiscal uncertainty and take a
deep toll on rank-and-file morale.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 put a temporary stay on a half-trillion dollar tranche of defense budget cuts, but the armed
services must plan around the reductions for five more years if Congress does not again act to avert them.
For the Navy and Marine Corps, limited funding and delayed aircraft modernization have
resulted in limited pilot flight hours. This summer, the Marine Corps resorted to an unusual measure, pulling 30 F/A-
18C Hornets from the "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and putting them back into service in an effort to
maintain readiness ahead of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters entering the fleet in numbers.
"When our pilots are flying less hours a month than Russian and Chinese pilots are, we're going to have a problem," Sen. John
McCain, a Republican from Arizona who heads the defense committee, told the generals.
The chief of naval operations said limited flight hours also take a toll on morale.
"Our pilots join the Navy to fly naval aircraft; that's what they want to do," Adm. John Richardson said. "Money can help up to a
point but at the heart of the matter, there is a highly dedicated team that wants to defend the nation in high-performance
aircraft, and that's what they want to do: They want to fly."
Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, said aircraft maintainers and aircrew were
also at risk of being lost to commercial aviation companies and contractors as the service is
forced to cannibalize parts and require staff to maintain productivity with fewer resources.
"We're making it now on the backs of those sergeants and staff sergeants out there that have to do work twice to get the part we
want and put it on another [aircraft]," he said. "So I'm as concerned about maintainers sticking around."
Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said readiness and morale are inextricably linked for
the service, and airmen who are not being used to their full potential will look for other
opportunities .
 Troop size =/= readiness
Troop numbers dont matter and costs are an alt cause
Ullman, PhD, 15 (Harlan, PhD @ Fletcher School @ Tufts, "Smallest Army and Navy Since
Before WW II: So What?", 8/10/15,
www.defensenews.com/story/defense/commentary/2015/08/10/smallest-army-and-navy-
since-before-ww-ii-so-what/31428429/) SS
Now that the US Army has officially announced cuts to reduce its active duty force to 450,000, the howls and screams of protest
coming from many directions, and especially from Capitol Hill, are deafening. Many will complain that this will be the
smallest Army since the start of World War II. Similarly, the Navy will sink to some 280 ships and pre-World War II
size. And the Air Force too has made sharp cuts in its aircraft fleet. But are these fears and dire predictions of
Americas fate due to smaller land, sea and air forces justified? Or are there other views and
reasons from which to draw different conclusions? Unfortunately, emotion rather than thoughtful
analysis is dominating reactions to these drawdowns. And of course, no one refers to the Constitution in this
debate that grants Congress the power to raise an army ... and to maintain a navy. People forget that the US
actually has other armies by different names . The first is the US Marine Corps, some 175,000 strong. Even if
the Army were to be reduced further to 425,000, America would have an active ground force of
600,000. Unless the U nited S tates decides to re-occupy Iraq or invade Syria or Iran, that number
seems more than enough to keep the nation safe. And if the US stumbled into a war with China and its
population of 1.3 billion, even the 12 million in uniform during World War II would not necessarily be up to the task. As a retired four
star general wryly remarked after visiting China before its current defense build-up, the US does not have enough bullets to win a
land war in Asia. The
US also has a sizable Army National Guard and reserve component of about a
million, a force it did not have in any quantity before World War II. And no mention has been
made about the technologically advanced weapons that the services wield, orders of magnitude
more effective and destructive than what was in the field 75 years ago. If the Navys 280 ships found itself
in battle with the World War II Navy that was more than 20 times larger in total numbers, including 27 large and 90 small deck
aircraft carriers, how long would it take to send that fleet to the bottom? Not long. The point is that numbers alone say very little
without a strategic or operational context. Similarly, the
Air Force of today and tomorrow is light years more
advanced than even its predecessor of 20 years ago. Of course, quantity can have a quality of its own. And
reductions can go too far in preventing the formation of a critical mass of military capability. While this furor over cuts is substituting
for a real debate, a far
greater threat faces the US military, a threat likely to be more damaging than a recrudescent
Russia, a more muscular China and an expanding Islamic State. This danger is uncontrollable internal cost

growth that will erode and deplete military capability and capacity unless it is checked now.
Unfortunately, few realize the consequences and fewer are prepared to take necessary corrective action that indeed could exceed
the ability of a political system and its broken government in Washington to effect. The sources of this exploding cost growth are no
secret. By way of comparison, in constant dollars, more is being spent on defense today than at the height
of the Reagan defense build-up more than a quarter of a century ago when nearly a million more people were serving on active
duty in uniform. Cost of the all-volunteer force, health care, overhead, operations and maintenance,
procurement, retirees, research and development, and all the other budget line items are
increasing in some cases by 5-7% a year. Even if the defense budget is significantly increased,
which it will not be short of an existential crisis, this cost growth will exceed the most optimistic
estimates of any plus ups for the Pentagon. As a result, if action is not taken now, a 21st century version of the
dreaded hollow force that plagued the military after the Vietnam War will recur. The issue will not be the size of

the military. The issue will be how the nation will cope with a military that is not fully prepared
or capable of defending the country, our friends and our interests. Rather than bemoan the current
reductions, lets get on with actions to contain this exploding cost growth so that the term hollow force remains an artifact of
history.
 Increasing Troop Size Kills the Military
Increasing military size without budget increase causes hollow military
Cox 2016
(Matthew, Matthew Cox has been a defense reporter since 1998 12 years for Army Times, April
7, 2016, Army Needs 220K More Soldiers to Deal With Major Foes: Milley, Military.com,
6/26/17, http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/07/army-needs-220k-more-soldiers-to-
deal-with-major-foes-milley.html) SB
The U.S. Army's chief of staff told lawmakers Thursday that the service would need another
220,000 soldiers before it could confidently handle major operations with emerging military foes
around the world. Gen. Mark Milley told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee
that the Army is operating at "high military risk" if it continues to operate at the proposed total
Army troop strength of 980,000 soldiers. By fiscal 2018, the Army's active force is slated to have 450,000 soldiers in
its ranks. The National Guard will have 335,000 and the Army Reserve will have 195,000 soldiers. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia,
has been one of several lawmakers who's been very vocal about his concern that the Army is too small. "Everything
that I
have heard from your generals is there is no way we can meet the imminent threats that we
have around the world with 980,000 soldiers," Manchin said. "It's high risk," Milley said. Manchin asked
Milley, "What would it take for us not to be at high risk?" Milley said he has a series of studies that are looking at this issue. "If we
operate under our current national security strategy, the current defense planning guidance, in order to reduce significant risk or
moderate risk, it would take roughly speaking about a 1.2 million-person Army," Milley said. That would mean adding about 50,000
soldiers to the active force alone, Milley said. "And at $1 billion for every 10,000 soldiers, the money is not there, so we are going to
make the most efficient and effective use of the Army that we have," Milley said. Sen. Tom Cotton,
R-Arkansas, said he
wanted to see the Army's active force grow larger than the scheduled 450,000, but asked Milley to talk
about the consequences of such a mandate with no additional funding. Milley said the Army
would have to make drastic moves to offset the costs, such as making more cuts to
modernization and closing installations. "At the end of the day, we would risk literally having a
hollow Army," Milley said. " We don't have a hollow Army today, but many on this committee
can remember the days when we did -- when people didn't train and units weren't filled up at
appropriate levels of manning strength and there were no spare parts -- all of those things
would start happening if we increased the size of the force without the appropriate amount
of money to maintain its readiness. " Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, called it a "remarkable statement" when a service
chief talks about high military risk. Sullivan asked Milley if he has looked at how much larger the active force would need to be to
reduce some of that risk. "We do we have it broken down for active, Guard and Reserve," Milley said. "The active piece comes out to
just a little bit more than 500K or so. "But it's not just numbers; it's the readiness of that force, it's the technological capability of
that force, it's how that force plays into the joint force. ... It's the sum total of all those things. We tend to laser focus on size. I think
that is critical -- capacity, size. I think that is fundamental to the whole piece, but there are other factors to calculate beyond just the
numbers of troops."
Heg Stuff
 Heg Decline Inevitable
Heg decline is inevitable
Marchetti, LSE PhD, 17 (Raffaele, PhD @ London School of Economics, Asst Prof in IR @
Libera Universit Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli, "End of the American hegemonic
cycle", 2/14/17, Accessed 6/28/17, https://www.opendemocracy.net/raffaele-marchetti/end-
of-american-hegemonic-cycle) SSN
Trumps election marks the end of the long phase of American world hegemony . Despite the
electoral slogan Make America Great Again and the great expectations this may have generated, his presidency
will presumably be characterized by an overall retrenchment . Many different interpretations have been provided on the
reasons of Trumps success ranging from populist framing to FBI support. Contrary to the mainstream debate, I see a more
fundamental reason underpinning his victory: the changed costs/benefits balance in the US role in the world. The theory of
hegemonic stability holds that at
some point the hegemon will start to decline due to the increased costs
of the management of the system which outbalance the benefits the hegemon gains out of it.
The costs of the management of the system have in fact been accumulating in the last 4 presidencies .
During the Bush administrations, security costs due to the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have, among other damage,
impacted negatively on the US government. Equally, during the Obama presidencies costs due to economic stimuli have increased
the overall debt of the country.
As predicted by hegemonic theory, we finally come to a point in which the costs became too
heavy for the citizens, or rather their perception of this becomes more evident, so that they start to protest and
demand a change. This was intercepted by Trump much more than by Clinton, with Trump stepping back to decrease the
costs of international projection. So-called imperial overstretch, formed much earlier, led Trumps electorate
to seek less international costs (and possibly, but less likely, more domestic benefits). Hence, the promised
withdrawal from a number of Free Trade Agreements, the discussion of the terms of NATO participation, cancellation of the
environmental deals etc.
From this perspective Trumps election has to do with a much longer trend of international order rather
than the specific time-lapse of the electoral campaign, a trend of dis-engagement that had
already begun during the Obama administration and will now be more clearly visible with
Trump.
The system in which we have been living in the last 70 years was created in large part by the US leadership. The UN system, Bretton
Woods Institutions, NATO, and WTO are all institutional arrangements that have been strongly promoted by the post WWII
hegemon and that have been preserved in life thanks to continuous support by the USA. Now all of this is put into question by the
resistance of the newly elected president to engage in and with these multilateral organizations. Trump will most likely have a more
unpredictable, possibly turbulent behaviour vis a vis all of these institutions and this will lead to their transformation and perhaps for
some, to their marginalization.

Other significant elements in this jigsaw puzzle have to do with the phenomenon of globalization. It is because of global
transformation in production chains, the relocation of multinational corporation abroad coupled with the possibility of (re-
)importing goods, and the subsequent loss of jobs that a component of the middle class has been badly affected by unemployment.
But it is also thanks to globalization that China is rising fast and challenging the US leadership in
economic, but also increasingly in political and military terms . It is clear by now that the policy choice for
globalization taken by the US leadership in the 80s (republican) and 90s (democratic) was beneficial only at the beginning, but later
turned out to be detrimental to the power position of the USA in the world economy. It is widely recognised that
India and especially China are the real winners in the game of globalization, hence closing the
gap with the west. Russia is an additional element in this calculation.
This new would-be multipolar system, deprived of the overall western master plan, is left to pure
bargaining, pure transactionalism played with ad hoc games, which is very much in line with Trumps overall
attitude to socio-economic engagement.
 Heg Decline Now
US heg decline nowsquo means global disruption
Clark Mindock, June 21, 2017 (Clark Mindock citing John Sawers, Former head of MI6,
Former MI6 boss: America's declining global leadership under Trump is 'biggest menace to the
world' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-us-decline-
global-leadership-menace-world-mi6-boss-john-sawers-a7801746.html, date accessed Jun 30,
2017) am
Americas declining world role under Donald Trumps leadership is the greatest menace facing
the global community, a former head of the Secret Intelligence Service says. The biggest threat
the world faces is how we all adjust to the progressive withdrawal of responsible American
leadership and the network of alliances that America maintained with Europe, with Asian
countries and the pattern of alliances and partnerships they had across this region, John
Sawers told an Israeli security conference according to Agence France Presse. It's going to have
a major disruptive effect and no one is yet adjusting to it, Mr Sawers added. He also noted that
some of the affects have already been felt on the international stage. It is now having a major
impact in the security world, and I think it's how we adjust to that the behaviours of other
countries trying to take advantage of it which poses the biggest threat in the world, he said.
Mr Trump has taken a series of actions since becoming president that have pulled the US away
from international leadership. That includes lukewarm pledges to assist in ensuring the security
of NATO allies, and withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris climate change accords. Mr Sawers
says that the populist uprising in the US has led to a massive change in politics on a global scale.
I've got serious reservations about Donald Trump as president of the United States, he said.
But I see him not as the cause of these problems, but as a consequence of the changes in
American society and America's willingness to uphold the burdens of the world as it has for the
past 70 years or so. There may be several contributing factors, he said. That includes a recovery
from the world financial crash that has still left average workers in distress, as well as a lack of
success in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
 Alt Cause Trump
No impact to heg - low favorability of trump
Wike et al. 6/26/2017 (Richard Wike, Bruce Stokes, Jacob Poushter, Janell Fetterolf, Pew
Research Center, U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around World Question Trumps Leadership,
date accessed 6/30/2017, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/26/u-s-image-suffers-as-publics-
around-world-question-trumps-leadership/) am
Although he has only been in office a few months, Donald Trumps presidency has had a major impact on how the world sees the
United States. Trump and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined
steeply in many nations. According to a new Pew Research Center survey spanning 37 nations, a median of just 22% has
confidence in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs. This stands in
contrast to the final years of Barack Obamas presidency, when a median of 64% expressed confidence in Trumps predecessor to
direct Americas role in the world. The sharp decline in how much global publics trust the U.S. president on the world stage is
especially pronounced among some of Americas closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada. Across
the 37 nations polled, Trump gets higher marks than Obama in only two countries: Russia and Israel. In countries where confidence
in the U.S. president fell most, Americas overall image has also tended to suffer more. In the closing years of
the Obama presidency, a median of 64% had a positive view of the U.S. Today, just 49% are favorably inclined toward America.
Again, someof the steepest declines in U.S. image are found among long-standing allies. Since 2002,
when Pew Research Center first asked about Americas image abroad, favorable
opinion of the U.S. has frequently
tracked with confidence in the countrys president. Prior to this spring, one of the biggest shifts in attitudes
toward the U.S. occurred with the change from George W. Bushs administration to Obamas. At that time, positive views of the U.S.
climbed in Europe and other regions, as did trust in how the new president would handle world affairs. Even though the 2017 shift in
views of the U.S. and its president is in the opposite direction compared with eight years ago, publics on balance are not necessarily
convinced that this will affect bilateral relations with the U.S. The prevailing view among the 37 countries surveyed is that their
countrys relationship with the U.S. will be unchanged over the next few years. Among those who do anticipate a change, however,
more predict relations will worsen, rather than improve. Confidence in President Trump is influenced by
reactions to both his policies and his character. With regard to the former, some of his signature policy initiatives are widely
opposed around the globe. His plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, for example, is opposed by a median of 76% across
the 37 countries surveyed. Opposition is especially intense in Mexico, where more than nine-in-ten (94%) oppose the U.S.
government erecting a wall. Similar levels of global opposition greet Trumps policy stances on withdrawing from international trade
agreements and climate change accords. And most across the nations surveyed also disapprove of the new
administrations efforts to restrict entry into the U.S. by people from certain Muslim-majority
nations. Trumps intention to back away from the nuclear weapons agreement with Iran meets less opposition than his other
policy initiatives, but even here publics around the world disapprove of such an action by a wide margin.

US Heg low now-Trump

Rice 17 Susan E Rice was the national security adviser from 2013 to 2017 and the United States
ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013. June 2nd 2017 To Be Great, America
Must Be Good New York Times Date accessed June 30, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/trump-america-leadership-susan-rice.html//EP
WASHINGTON Four and a half months is not long, but President Trump has accomplished an extraordinary
amount in a short time. With shocking speed, he has wreaked havoc: hobbling our core
alliances, jettisoning American values and abdicating United States leadership of the world.
Thats a whole lot of winning for Russia and China. This work began promptly on Jan. 23,
when the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving key allies empty-
handed, fearful of the strategic benefit that will inevitably accrue to China. Then the secretary of state
made plain that American values now take a back seat to security interests, even though those interests are enhanced by our
partnerships with democracies that respect human rights and undermined by regimes that repress their citizens. Witness the brutal
crackdown on opposition elements in Egypt and Bahrain after President Trump told their leaders that the United States no longer
cares how they treat their people. The presidents budget would slash funding for the United States Agency for International
Development and the State Department by nearly 30 percent, rendering our embassies vulnerable to attack and shuttering vital
programs that advance our interests. The budget would also starve the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations of essential
support. This will condemn the United States to pariah status at this important, if flawed,
institution, where our leadership has been unrivaled. At NATO, the presidents reckless refusal
to reaffirm our commitment to the defense of our allies under Article 5, while hectoring them
publicly about their military spending, made our allies conclude they must go it alone. Nothing could
have thrilled President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia more, or done more damage to the strength and unity of the Western world. And
now the president has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, putting us at odds with virtually the entire world.
Europe and China stand together on the Paris accord, while the United States is isolated . This last, disastrous decision
is the coup de grce for Americas postwar global leadership for the foreseeable future. It was
not taken from us by any adversary, nor lost as a result of economic crisis or collapse of empire. America voluntarily gave
up that leadership because we quit the field. How consequential is this choice? The network
of alliances that distinguishes America from other powers and has kept our nation safe and
strong for decades is now in jeopardy. We will see the cost when next we need the world to rally to our side. Every
weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from
around the world. Contrary to the view of this White House, we do not live in a zero-sum world. We live in a world where our
security and prosperity are maximized when others enjoy the same. Todays threats terrorism, nuclear proliferation, disease,
climate change, violent cartels are not amenable to simple military solutions, nor can they be tackled by any one country acting
alone. They require effective collective action, and thus, willing partners. When the United States called after the Sept. 11 attacks,
NATO answered, and for nearly 16 years the alliance has fought alongside us to defeat Al Qaeda and strengthen the Afghan
government. Over 65 countries joined the fight against the Islamic State, and we rely on their enduring commitment to roll back
terrorist havens. And when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine, the United States led the effort to impose
sanctions on Russia. It wont be long before a fresh crisis arises. In 2014, I saw President Barack Obama successfully coax our allies to
help contain and eradicate the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. If there is a flu pandemic that requires a similar coordinated
international response, will our European friends heed President Trumps call? Or if China takes aggressive action in the South China
Sea, threatening our Asian allies as well as our own freedom of navigation, will our Western allies risk the economic repercussions of
confronting China to stand beside an America First president who refuses to affirm our NATO commitments? Our friends
profound disappointment with the United States is a measure of the damage already done to Americas global standing by this
administration. Most Americans surely still see the benefits of the United States being the strongest, most trusted and respected
country in the world. So, we must take steps now to recover and regroup. Congress must insist, on a bipartisan basis, that the United
States continue to play its traditional leadership role, by fully funding both defense and our foreign assistance programs. Congress
should ensure the United States meets its obligations to the United Nations. It must also scrutinize foreign military sales to align our
policies with our values. Congressional delegations, governors and mayors can reassure our key allies that the American people still
value them and that we do not intend to cede our global leadership. We must make clear to our foreign partners that this present
policy is an aberration, not the new normal. American corporations and civil society groups can assist by demonstrating that the
United States remains committed to its integration into the global economy and to our democratic principles. In the absence of
White House leadership, the American people should act as informal ambassadors, via contacts through tourism, study-abroad
programs and cultural exchanges. We can all contribute to showing other nations that we hold dear Americas place at the forefront
of moral and political leadership in the world. And we must remain steadfast until, once again, we have a president willing to lead in
accordance with American interests, traditions and values.
 Alt Cause EU Relations
EU relations downplummets US leadership
Heather Hurlburt June 6, 2017 (Heather Hurlburt is former Deputy of the International Crisis
Group and Senior Fellow of the Human Rights First organization, NY Magazine, Daily
Intelligencer, The World without America, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/the-
world-without-america.html, accessed July 1, 2017) am
Its time to stop asking whether the Trump administration believes in U.S. global leadership as weve known it since World War
II.The answer is clear now. It doesnt. Its also time to stop
hoping that the officials around Trump can prop up
international institutions as fast as he assaults them. Cabinet secretaries and career diplomats may be soothing
Americans, but they arent fooling foreigners. No, President Trump and his enablers are ushering us into a new, post-
American stage of global relations, at the speed of Twitter. Increasingly, Washington is viewed by other nations a
problem to be managed rather than a leader to be sought. World leaders are building new relationships and jockeying
for the space weve left behind as fast as they can, while the U.S. trashes its relations and fights over the last election
at home. On security, politics, and economics, no one is waiting for the grown-ups, the midterms, or Vice-President Pence. Consider
our closest ally, the United Kingdom. The country has suffered two grievous terror attacks in the last two weeks. Its sitting prime
minister is one of few world leaders with whom the Trump White House enjoyed cordial relations so much so that the White
House floated the idea of a Trump visit after the most recent London attacks. The British government was having
none of it though. Trump and his team had both undercut Prime Minister Mays short-term political prospects and run over
some of the two countries most basic shared interests. When Trump raced to Twitter to exploit the London attacks for
domestic political points even before basic facts were clear including twisting the words of the popular (and Muslim) mayor of
London he demonstrated why the ruling Conservative Party thinks of him as a loose cannon whose
presence might send British voters into the arms of the Labour Party when the country votes on Thursday. Theres also the
awkward matter of Nigel Farage, the former head of the right-wing U.K. Independence Party, whos been namedas a person of
interest in the FBIs investigation of TrumpRussia 2016 campaign contacts. U.K. conservatives are quietly picking up former UKIP
voters and dont need the embarrassment of the connection being spotlighted. Suddenly America is that kind of
country though an ally to keep at a wary, and often awkward, distance. Hanging over the whole electionis the stark new
reality that the next British government will have to contend with. Washington broke confidentiality agreements and enraged U.K.
law enforcement with leaks after the Manchester attacks. And Trumps refusal to reaffirm NATOs core principle an attack on
one is an attack on all leaves the U.K. badly exposed between a Europe it has left and a U.S. it can no longer count on. Other key
European allies have also started treating us in ways that would have been unthinkable until last year. The
French and
German publics are so angry at Trump that leaders are mocking him to rile up their supporters.
French president Emmanuel Macron and his government are trolling the U.S. daily in (English-language) social media ahead of
Frances parliamentary election in which his party has surged to an unexpectedly strong lead in polling. German premier
Angela Merkel, who once looked to be in trouble in German elections this fall, is riding high as she soberly tells the
German public that the days they could depend on others outside Europe are over. Campaign insults
may be forgotten, but the follow-up actions to build relationships and institutions that dont depend on Washington and
downgrade those that do will be harder to reverse. American businesses want U.S.-EU agreements that harmonize
environmental and health regulations, which saves them money but after Trump left the popular Paris accord those will be harder
to come by. The
general chill in relations is likely to mean a decline in European support for any
potential U.S. military actions. That means more deployments for American service members, and more of the bill footed
by American taxpayers. It may also mean less European willingness to host and help pay for the U.S. military bases that support
Middle East operations. In the long term, the perception that Europes interests are different are likely to lead toward exactly the
opposite of Trumps call for Europe to spend more money on NATO. Instead, we may see moves toward security
institutions based on the EU where the U.S. is out of the loop instead of NATO. Outside Europe,
countries that we are used to thinking of as partners and perhaps junior partners are stepping up to fill space
the U.S. is vacating. China has amped up its rhetoric aboutbeing a global climate leader rolling out a new partnership
with the European Union and lecturing about international responsibility to manage global warming, in tones were more used to
hearing from Washington, not directed at it. You cant open a foreign-policy journal without finding an article on One Belt One
Road, Chinas regional economic plan which it is touting as a vehicle for foreign investment and integration a stirring contrast to
the U.S. pullout from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (even if there is less to One Belt than meets the eye). And as Beijing offers
diplomatic and economic carrots, it has kept up its shows of force in maritime territories it disputes with
U.S. partners and allies. China is building its own leadership on its own terms, thank you very much. So is India. President Trump
had scarcely left Europe when Indian prime minister Modi arrived for a four-country tour, including trade talks and pledges to
strengthen the global order with Germany and on the heels of Trumps Paris climate-deal pullout work together on the
environment with Frances Macron. At the same time, Indian defense officials were at a regional meeting pledging assistance to
Vietnams military. Memories of Indian reluctance to commit on climate, and its discomfort at Washingtons role supporting
Vietnam and other Southeast Asian powers, were fading fast as fast as any expectation that Washington would take the lead
again soon, on either front.
 China Rise Now
Withdrawal from paris creates leadership vacuum for China rise
Carol Morello and John Wagner, 6/1/2017 (The Washington Post: National Security, As the
U.S. leaves Paris climate accord, some see shifts in global leadership
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-the-us-leaves-paris-climate-
accord-some-see-shifts-in-global-leadership/2017/06/01/4c916554-4634-11e7-a196-
a1bb629f64cb_story.html?utm_term=.0afdc51867e6, date accessed 6/30/2017) am
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Trump has shown that unlike some European allies, he
is not embracing this ideological commitment to multilateralism for its own sake. Bolton said that
the administration of President George W. Bush, in which he served, was branded as isolationist for several actions during its tenure,
including a decision to pull out of the International Criminal Court. What was happening then and now is a series of decisions
about what was in the best interests of the United States, he said. Like Trump, Bush was just a few months into his presidency
when he decidedto withdraw the United States from a major multinational climate agreement
negotiated by his predecessor. The 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming had been signed by 192 nations, almost as
many as the 195 that signed the Paris agreement. Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University, said no president
has done so much so early in his term to unilaterally alter the world order. Ronald Reagan had to have a partner in upending the
world order, and that was Mikhail Gorbachev, he said. Nixon tried to change American foreign policy, but it took him several years.
Trump seems to be doing it on caffeine. But the old world order has been declining for years now, with Chinas rise as an economic
and military power. Now, China is positioned to move into the void left by the United States. At the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech extolling the virtues of globalized trade
as the United States appeared to be turning inward. The
U.S. abandonment of the Paris accord represents
another opportunity. On Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stood beside Merkel in Berlin and declared the
fight against climate change a global consensus and an international responsibility. He noted
that China was one of the first countries to ratify the Paris accord. Xi Jinping is sitting in Beijing and cant
believe whats happening to him, said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. representative to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council
on Global Affairs. The
United States retreat from leadership means China can move in Americas
wake. Were seeing the possibility of a shift in global leadership, away from Washington and the United States toward
Beijing and China. Others see no cause for alarm. Stephen Moore, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said
that Trump was exerting a different kind of leadership by pulling out of an agreement that he said would cost middle-class jobs and
lead to an increase in energy prices for Americans. The most important role for the United States is to lead by
example, said Moore, who has advised Trump on economic issues. When we get it right on economic policy, it tends to get
exported to the rest of the world. Its important that the U.S. show leadership on free-market policies.
 Heg Bad Economy
US Hegemony is not key and bad for the economy
Durand 2017 Cedric June 2nd 2017 Be prepared to say farewell to financial hegemony
Opendemocracy.net Accessed: June 30th 2017 https://www.opendemocracy.net/c-dric-
durand/be-prepared-to-say-farewell-to-financial-hegemony//EP
Its now ten years since the start of the great financial crisis, and, on the surface, waters stand still. In the US, exuberant stock
markets have celebrated the advent of Donald Trumps administration with a 12% rally since the US presidential election and the
Federal Reserve feels sufficiently confident to move to normalise its monetary policy, announcing a series of interest rate rises, and
is considering reducing its $4.5tn balance sheet. In Europe, uncertainties are still running high, but the election of a former
investment banker as the head-of-state in tumultuous France is icing on the cake for cheerful financiers, who have already embraced
the enthusiastic mood of their US counterparts. As seen from the stock market, the wounds of the financial crisis have long been
repaired and investors are betting on the next expansion. But,
deep down, all is not so rosey. Far from being
resolved, the underlying contradictions that caused 2008 financial meltdown have, if anything,
grown stronger in the past few years. Beyond the current deceiving calm, a tectonic socio-
political shift is on its way, waiting for a minor incident to unleash a new wave of financial
turbulences and draw a caesura of historical magnitude. Fortunately, the 2008 crisis was not allowed to run its
course. Ordinary people suffered a lot, but government and central bank interventions succeeded in averting a complete economic
collapse. In doing so they not only intercepted the debunking of many unsustainable financial claims but also opened the way for
increasing financial risk. Indeed, as public management successfully mitigates financial catastrophes, investors take extra risks as
they put their faith in the ability of government to save them again when something bad occurs. In the meantime, regulators, if they
are not simply overconfident, are neither strong nor determined enough to rein in their appetite for greedy financial innovations.
This has led to far more risk-taking by private investors why should they be prudent? and
deficient regulation and oversight, which are both key ingredients for an even more violent
tremor in future. This is the main lesson taught by the great post-keynesian economist Hyman Minsky, briefly remembered at
height of the crisis, although forgotten again now. Private finance saved by public money is now strong enough to push the Goldman
Sachs-staffed US administration to reverse the timid regulation of the Obama years and to convince the European Commission to
promote securitisation, the very kind of network finance that produced the 2008 rout. Financial
hegemony dresses up in
the liberal trappings of the market, yet captures the old sovereignty of the state all the better to
squeeze the social body to feed its own profits. The illusion that financial assets can create value
as it is the property of pear-trees to bear pears is nowadays much more vivid than in Marxs
times. This fetishisation of finance and its empowerment are the reasons why the main avenue
to roll back the danger of a debt-deflation spiral was a huge monetary stimulus. As
acknowledged by Claudio Borio, a prominent figure at the Bank of International Settlement, rich
economies became addicted to low interest rates and central bankers have dramatically
increased the dose in the past few years with near zero or even below zero key interest rates
and assets purchase programs. The outcome of this sequence is an outrageously unsustainable dynamic: on the one
hand, financial fragility is on the rise again, in particular with excessive corporate debt in the US, persistent bank fragility in Europe,
and overvalued stock markets.In the real economy, this monetary stimulus has not delivered much:
growth rates are anaemic, underemployment endemic, productivity sluggish and investment
hardly sufficient to prevent a productive involution throughout the developed world. It seems,
then, that there is no recovery but only a renewed financial assertiveness backed by highly
biased policies. But as the hard data brings more bad news, of the kind of the dramatic slowing
of the US economy to an annual rate of 0.7 in the first quarter of 2017 or the rebound of unemployment
in France in March, disruption is just around the corner. The elementary forms of finance capital
stock-market capitalization, credit to the private non-financial sector, and public debt now
represent more than 350% of GDP on average in the major high-income countries compared to
150% in the early eighties, and 330% before the crisis. In order to be sustained, the value of these financial
claims require that the expected financial incomes fall in due time: debt must be honoured, interests paid, dividends disbursed. But
how can that be in stagnating economies? The first possibility is just ponziying further: as more debt floods in, everything moves
smoothly. But this puts central banks in a deadlock. If they move back to more usual monetary policies, they will trigger a recession
and increasing financial distress. The fact that long-term interest rate in the US are still trending downward in spite of recent
Federal Reserve rises indicate that markets do not believe in a normalisation of monetary policy.
However, if central bankers do not move forward, financial imbalances will continue to build up,
favouring misallocation of resources and increasing the amplitude of the next crash. Indeed, when
the future upturn ends, as surely it will, could the global economy see, to use Freuds term, a return of the repressed? What would
this be? It is necessary to exploit labour to create value and for this to be captured to sustain financial incomes. Yet this financial, or
fictitious, capital
has ceased to be a dynamic factor in accumulation, instead becoming a dead
weight on the whole social reproduction process. Financial hegemony dresses up in the liberal
trappings of the market, yet captures the old sovereignty of the state all the better to squeeze
the social body to feed its own profits. This ruse of liberal reason allowed financial hegemony to survive a few
additional years in intensive care but now is the time to say farewell. The next crash wont be a repetition of 2008: this time the
credibility of central banks will be at stake, with the risk of a full blown monetary crisis. The left should be prepared for this
predictable unfolding of events. It should already make clear that private finance will not be saved again, that delirious financial
claims of the wealthiest over the work of the rest of us wont be anymore validated by government intervention. Meanwhile
agitation for the socialization of the banks, debt jubilee, universal pension, education and healthcare systems, ecological investment
planning and open data should be deployed to prepare this forthcoming historical window of opportunity.
Freeing our
societies from the financial time-bond will require a new ability to engineer the future.
 Heg Bad Causes Conflict
US Heg causes conflicts
Manheim June 30, 2017 Frank, Affiliate Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow, Schar
School of Policy and Government, George Mason University U.S. leadership since World War II
has caused global chaos Washington Post Date Accessed: June 30th 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-leadership-since-world-war-ii-has-caused-
global-chaos/2017/06/30/b449b318-5ab1-11e7-aa69-
3964a7d55207_story.html?utm_term=.452174052d5f//EP
Carlos Lozadas June 18 Outlook review, Is the Western order becoming irrelevant?, didnt counter the implication offered in two
British books that though the United States has made mistakes, abdication of its role in world leadership would leave a gap. Really?
The United States arguably reached a high point in international statesmanship in the
immediate aftermath of World WarII with the Marshall Plan and policies toward defeated Axis
nations. But since then, has the United States really had a principled and positive role in world
affairs? Has it contributed to peace and stability? Consider history: With President Dwight D. Eisenhowers
approval, the CIA contrived with British intelligence to overthrow MohammadMossadegh in 1953
because he planned to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. Mossadegh was Irans democratically
elected prime minister, a brilliantly talented and principled leader elected with nearly 90
percent vote in the Iranian Majlis (parliament). He rejected both Soviet and Western influence.
The bungled Bay of Pigs attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1961 led to the Russian missile crisis in Cuba in 1962. In
1963, President John F. Kennedy assented to South Vietnamese generals plan to remove
President Ngo Diem Dinh and his brother. Despite promises of safe passage, they were killed.
According to Mark Moyars book Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965, Ho Chi
Minh said he could scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid. The Pentagon Papers, released
by Daniel Ellsberg to the New York Times in 1971, revealed that Lyndon Johnsons administration had
systematically lied about U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, not only to the public but also
to Congress. Under President Richard M. Nixon, the United States materially supported Pakistan in the
Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which resulted in horrendous loss of life, genocide against the East
Pakistan intelligentsia and systematic rapes. The Reagan-Bush administration supported Saddam Husseins
Iraq in the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) with several billion dollars worth of economic aid, weapons sales,
intelligence and training. Can we understand that Irans hostility toward the United States may have legitimate roots? After the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States did almost nothing to support the former Communist superpower in its deep
economic crisis and fledgling attempts to form a democratic system. Meanwhile, it supplied billions in weaponry to Egypt and other
nations. And that doesnt take into account recent history.
In short, the United States has talked lofty principles
while both Democratic and Republican administrations have been ready to interfere in other
nations affairs whenever perceived U.S. interests were involved. While it continued to provide billions in aid
to other nations, it expressed only satisfaction over the collapse of the Soviet Union, failing to step in with meaningful support when
this might have helped head off authoritarian rule in Russia. Compare this
with the history of the European
Union and its extraordinary commitment in the Middle East refugee crisis. Give me E.U.
leadership any day.
Airforce
 Airpower Fails
Air power fails especially for ISIS
Byman, Poli Sci PhD, 16 (Daniel L., PhD @ MIT, senior fellow in the Center for Middle East
Policy @ Brookings, former staff member on the 9/11 Commission, Security Studies Professor @
Georgetown, "The limits of air strikes when fighting the Islamic State", 12/6/16, Accessed
6/26/17, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2016/12/06/the-limits-of-air-strikes-when-
fighting-the-islamic-state) SSN ***vulgar language [quoted from Donald Trump] removed
Air power seems like the perfect middle ground between a large ground force invasion and inaction: a way to hit the Islamic State
hard while avoiding an Iraq-like quagmire. The previously cited poll also showed that 72 percent of Americans favor airstrikes on the
Islamic State, and apparently our president-elect is among their ranks. As Eliot Cohen, one of our countrys leading military analysts,
once wryly remarked, Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because,
like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment. Yet air power, if not used

carefully, runs all the risks of a one-night stand : it can create false expectations , drag
America into unwanted relationships with flawed partners , and winds up meaning little in
the long-term .
Not surprisingly, in Iraq and Syria, the United States relies heavily on airpower to supplement Iraqi Security Forces, Peshmerga, Sunni
tribal, and other militias to fight the Islamic State. Over the course of Operation Inherent Resolves two year life, Coalition aircraft
(with the United States by far the largest contributor) have flown an estimated 125,000 sorties and destroyed or degraded around
32,000 targetsa massive effort. Air strikes also play an important role in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other countries where
the United States is fighting jihadist organizations.
Air powers attractions are both clear and real. A sustained campaign of targeted killing using drones or fixed-wing aircraft can
remove large numbers of terrorist leaders from the Islamic States ranks. Although killing one leader rarely has a decisive impact, the
cumulative effects are considerable. Over time, veterans are weeded out and replaced by less experienced figures. At the very least,
the constant transition in leadership is disruptive, as anyone who has worked in an office where bosses seem to rotate constantly
can testify.
Perhaps most important, adaptation in response to air strikes renders terrorists less effective. A tip sheet found among jihadists in
Mali advised militants they could avoid drones by maintaining complete silence of all wireless contacts, [avoiding] gathering in
open areas, and taking strenuous measures to root out spies, and noted that leaders should not use communications equipment,
among other suggestions. These are all sensible tips for avoiding death from above, but the implications for group effectiveness are
staggering. Training on a large-scale is harder, if not impossible, as large gatherings can be lethal. Group leaders influence wanes, as
they must hide or remain incommunicado. Trying to organize a kids soccer game, let alone a global terrorist network, becomes
almost impossible if you cant use phones or the Internet regularly. The indirect effects also matter. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-
Baghdadi has been laying low since U.S. military operations began, diminishing his charismatic presence from Islamic State
propaganda and, presumably, disheartening his beleaguered troops. Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, the spokesman who headed the
groups external operations, was also charismatic and inspired terrorists around the world to attackand eventually the United
States tracked him down and killed him in an airstrike.
Politically, air power is also attractive, and it is not surprising politicians as diverse as Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush,
and Bill Clinton found it appealing. When drones crash or are shot down, the pilot still lives. Pilots of fixed-wing aircraft, of course,
take on more risk, but the combination of terrorists weak air defenses and the sophisticated aircraft U.S. pilots fly often limit this
danger considerably. Because few or no American lives are at risk, U.S. leaders can intervene with less concern about the political
costs at home.
Air power is particularly valuable when it can be yoked with local allied fighters on the ground. In Afghanistan after 9/11, the rag-tag
Northern Alliance quickly turned the tables on the Taliban after the U.S. Air Force entered the fray. NATO airpower stopped
Gadhafis forces at the gates of Benghazi and then helped the Libyan opposition push back regime forces and eventually gain victory.
When local fighters support air powerand vice versaenemy forces find it hard to maneuver and mass: when they do, they risk
being destroyed. This puts them on the defensive, enabling allied militaries or militias to isolate terrorist fighters. Air power plays a
role in crushing these isolated forces too, helping support ground operations, even in relatively built up areas.
Urban environments present significantly greater challenges for targeting and minimizing civilian casualties, yet the U.S. has still
identified and destroyed hundreds of Islamic State fighting positions, fortified buildings, vehicles, and equipment in the support of
the Mosul offensive. In the first week of the offensive alone, coalition air power conducted around 100 airstrikes in and around the
city. As the Iraqi forces approached the citys outskirts, Islamic State defenders were subjected to strikes every eight minutes during
one three-day period. U.S. airpower continues to be critical in enabling even minor tactical advances against the Islamic State to the
point of near dependency, which some observers, including my colleague Kenneth Pollack, warn could overstretch even the
relatively substantial coalition effort.
Yet air power has real limits .
For it to be effective, for starters, certain preconditions must be met. Bombers need bases near the
conflict zone and access to the battlefield . True, some systems can fly bombing runs all the way from the United
States. But to maintain a sustained battlefield presence, aircraft must be able to get to and from
the conflict zone quickly and easily. Allies, of course, dont provide access to their bases for free:
they expect favors in return. Current armed drone systems also need a permissive environment,
as they are simply too easy to shoot down otherwise. Thus, the United States either needs local governments to
cooperate with drone strikes or the absence of an effective government (and thus the absence of air defenses).
Nor does air power address the biggest long-term challenges in fighting the Islamic State:
governance . The United States has proven again and again that it can dislodge terrorists, insurgents,
and forces loyal to local despots. Filling the vacuum so that they dont return is much harder .
The terrorists often come back, or, at times, chaos rules. Neither outcome is an improvement for locals, and new
terrorist groups can breed if there is no government to keep them down. You cant provide that governance
with a drone .
Moreover, for air power to be effective, you need capable local allies. Their forces can provide the necessary
intelligence to find and target Islamic State fighters. In addition, when they advance, they force Islamic State forces to massmaking
them vulnerable to air power. If Islamic State fighters stay dispersed and hidden, then forces on the ground can root them out. Local
forces can also fill the vacuum after victory, ideally establishing a legitimate government and preventing the terrorists from
returning or new extremist groups from arising.
The trouble is that local allies are often themselves flawed instruments : corrupt , ineffective ,
and brutal . Often, U.S. troops are necessary to leaven local forces, provide necessary intelligence, and otherwise carry much of
the burden.
Finally, by
using air power, the United States becomes implicated in the local conflict. Bombing the
[crap] out of the bad guys leaves an impression on more than just the bad guys. Although from a
U.S. perspective the current intervention seems limited and low-risk, the perception may be different on the ground. The United
States has taken sides in a war, and Washingtons partnership with local forces means locals
do not always distinguish
between more precise U.S. air strikes and more brutal and indiscriminate attacks from allied
militias and forces.
 AT: ASATs
China wont use ASATs to attack US
Kulacki 16
(Military analyst regarding Chinese threat) "The United States, China, and Anti-Satellite
Weapons." All Things Nuclear. N.p., 07 Sept. 2016. Web. 28 June 2017.
<http://allthingsnuclear.org/gkulacki/the-united-states-china-and-anti-satellite-weapons>.
Many US observers believe anti-satellite (ASAT) attacks could be Chinas trump card in a major
military confrontation with the United States. But the reality may be exactly the opposite. The
United States could have more to gain, and China more to lose, from taking the fight to outer
space. A US presidential decision to pursue this advantage would make the United States, not
China, the protagonist in a new space arms race that would undermine the security of both
nations. Skewed US Perceptions Sixteen years ago a Congressionally mandated commission on
US space security ignited a debate on the role of ASATs in US-China relations with the incendiary
assertion that China was preparing to launch a massive pre-emptive attack on US satellites. US
analysts described this as a space Pearl Harbora form of asymmetric warfare that a weaker
China could use to gain a decisive military advantage over a stronger United States. Chinese
military authors reported and discussed the US claim, and US analysts mistakenly interpreted
what they published as official confirmations of a Chinese plan for space warfare. Chinas
successful test of a destructive ASAT weapon in January 2007 increased US concerns about a
Chinese attack on US satellites. In February 2008 the United States demonstrated that its Aegis
sea-based missile defense system could also be used as an ASAT weapon. The two events helped
define the US discussion of the role of anti-satellite weapons in US-China relations by placing the
focus on the potential consequences of Chinese ASAT attacks and how the United States might
deter or defeat the hypothetical Chinese threat. Although Chinese research, development and
testing of ASAT capabilities continues there is no indication Chinese military planners intend to
launch a pre-emptive strike against US satellites at the beginning of a future war with the United
States. Moreover, Chinese military strategists do not see the US military use of satellites as a
weakness they can exploit. To the contrary, they see it as a strength they should emulate.
Nevertheless, US concerns about a Chinese space Pearl Harbor attack on US satellites continue
to cast a large shadow over US perceptions of Chinese space policy and programs.
Russia
 No US-Russia War
The Russia threat is inflated
Borroz, International Econ MA, 17 (Nicholas, MA in International Studies @ JHU,
contributor @ International Security Observer, "Is Russia Really America's Top Security Threat?",
2/2/17, Accessed 6/29/17, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/russia-really-americas-top-
security-threat-19298) SSN
The politicization of Russian influence has unfortunately created misperceptions about how and to

what extent Russia threatens American interests. The American people must take a moment and ensure
they are not fearing Russia more than is necessary . This is important because misperception can have grave
consequences: distraction from other more serious threats, limited geostrategic maneuverability and potential future conflict. A
quick skim of the headlines will show that Russia is the United States latest foreign-policy villain. Its hacking
of the Democratic National Convention last year was proof it poses a national-security threat. And the awareness of this threat is not
newthere have been government investigations since early last year into Russias interference in American politics, and specifically
its support of the Trump campaign. Not surprisingly, Russia is viewed with particular suspicion on the political left. At the Womens
March and subsequent demonstrations, protesters waved a variety of signs claiming Trump is a Putin stooge. Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Czar, Putin Made You What You Are. Say No to Putins Puppet! The truth of the matter, though, is that although

Russia does present a threat, that threat has been greatly exaggerated by domestic political
mudslinging . Think back to mid-2016. At that time, it was becoming apparentdreadfully so to the Democratsthat Trump
might actually win the election. One of the main ways in which Trump was beating Hillary Clinton was with his America first
rhetoric. According to him, Hillary and the Obama administration she worked for gave birth to ISIS, were responsible for the
Benghazi attacks, were letting China take advantage of the United States and were allowing Latin American immigrants to hurt the
economy. Trump furthermore accused Hillary of being influenced by foreign powers via the Clinton Foundation. These claims
convinced many Americans that Trump was the right man to protect the country in an increasingly dangerous world. It was also
true that Russian interference in American politics was becoming more of a concern at this time. Although not widely reported until
mid-June, the DNC became aware of Russia-linked hacking a few months earlier. Putin had already shown his preference for Trump
over Hillary. As is natural for a politician of her abilities, Hillary realized Trumps murky Russian connections were good debate
fodder. During the first debate, she made good use of this material: Theres no doubt now that Russia has used cyberattacks against
all kinds of organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this. I know Donalds very praiseworthy of Vladimir
Putin. She painted Russia as a threat, implying that Moscow was insidiously using Trump as a twenty-first-century Manchurian
candidate. It was cringeworthy when Hillary did this. To put it bluntly, she realized xenophobia sells. Why does all this matter?
Because it means both the public and the government agencies that investigate national-security threats
remember, those agencies members are part of the public, toohave a heightened focus on Russia that is not
entirely the result of sober analysis . Campaign politics , hilarious memes and a good number of
conspiracy theories have made people more certain than they should be about the severity of
the Russian threat. Being overly afraid of Russia is a problem for three reasons. First, it is dangerous because it is distracting.
Public fixation may cause reallocation of limited government resources towards a threat of perceived importance, at the expense of
detecting other threats. The reallocation of resources is happening now, as evidenced by the House Select Intelligence Committees
recent decision to look into Russian influence in the election. While Russia poses a serious espionage threat to the United States, it
is just one of many national-security concerns. Putting too much effort into watching for a Russian hack might prevent government
agencies from detecting other threats. The consequences of such cognitive bias are not without precedent. In the 1980s, for
instance, when the Cold War was still on and the Soviet Union presented the primary foreign-policy threat to the United States, an
American intelligence officer named Jonathan Pollard spied on the United States on behalf of Israel, an allied country. He was
sentenced to life imprisonment, but not before spying for five years. Second, public hostility to Russia limits Washingtons ability to
take a flexible approach to Moscow. This is precisely the trap that Barack Obama fell into: when Russia becomes defined as a bad
actor, it is difficult to work with it precisely when the United States needs to the most. Escalating tensions with Russia hamstring the
United States on a variety of fronts. If Washington plans to address Venezuelas instability or Chinas behavior in the South China
Sea, it is better to approach Russia as a potential partner. Russia has a unique opportunity to prevent the United States from taking
action in many parts of the world, and it persistently challenges American initiatives to force its way to the negotiating table.
Finally, fear can be a precursor to war, even though at present that seems unlikely. Fear makes Americans forget that Russia is full of
people just like them. The leaders of feared countriessuch as Putinare thought of as dangerous monsters, and this cognitive bias
distorts threat perceptions and strategic decisionmaking. Remember 9/11? Remember the irrational linkages between Al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein? Remember the yellowcake that proved the United States needed to act? Of course, there are a few
 factors in play that limit the likelihood of full-blown conflict between the United States and Russia
anytime soon. One important one is that Trump does not seem responsive to public or even congressional
sentiment about Russia. Another is that Russia is cautiously optimistic about bilateral relations under
Trump. Despite this, it must not be forgotten that antagonism still increases the likelihood of eventual conflict. As disagreements
with China over maritime sovereignty in Asia show, the more that harsh words are exchanged, the more explosive confrontations
become.

Laundry list of factors check US-Russia war

Harari, History DPhil, 17 (Yuval N., DPhil @ Oxford, History Prof @ Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, " Why Russia, U.S. and Israel Probably Won't Start a World War ", 6/23/17,
Accessed 6/30/17, http://time.com/4826856/russia-trump-north-korea-china-war) SSN
Indeed, when Russia sought to reproduce its Crimean success in other parts of the Ukraine, it
encountered substantially stiffer opposition , and the war in eastern Ukraine bogged down into
an unproductive stalemate . Conquering decrepit Soviet-era factories in Luhansk and Donetsk hardly pays for the war, and it
certainly does not offset the costs of international sanctions. The conquest of Crimea notwithstanding, it seems that in the twenty-
first century the most successful strategy is to keep your peace and let others do the fighting for you. Why has it become
so difficult for major powers to wage successful wars? One reason is the change in the nature of
the economy. In the past, if you defeated your enemy on the battlefield, you could easily cash in by
looting enemy cities, selling enemy civilians in the slave markets and occupying valuable wheat
fields and gold mines. Yet in the twenty-first century, only puny profits could be made that way.
Today, the main economic assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge and you
cannot conquer knowledge through war. An organization such as ISIS may flourish by looting cities and oil wells in the Middle East
in 2014, ISIS seized more than $500 million from Iraqi banks and in 2015 made an additional $500 million from selling oil. But China
and the U.S. are unlikely to start a war for a paltry billion. As for spending trillions of dollars on a war against the U.S., how could
China repay these expenses and balance all the war damages and lost trade opportunities? Would the victorious Peoples Liberation
Army loot the riches of Silicon Valley? True, corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Google are worth hundreds of
billions of dollars, but you cannot seize these fortunes by force . There are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley.
A successful war could theoretically still bring huge profits by enabling the victor to rearrange the
global trade system in its favor, as the U.S. did after its victory over Hitler. However , present-day military
technology would make it extremely difficult to repeat this feat. By definition, profits large enough to
make a global war worthwhile for the victor will also make it worthwhile for the loser to resort to
w eapons of m ass d estruction. The atom bomb has turned victory in a World War into collective
suicide . It is no coincidence that since Hiroshima superpowers never fought one another directly, and engaged only in what (for
them) were low-stake conflicts in which none was tempted to use nuclear weapons to avert defeat. Indeed, even attacking a second-
rate nuclear power such as Iran or North Korea is an extremely unattractive proposition.
 AT: Russia Military Spending Proves Threat
No Russia arms race
Stratfor 16 (Strategic Forecasting, Inc., American publisher and global intelligence company,
provides strategic analysis and forecasting, An Arms Race Russia Will Not Run , 12/30/16,
Accessed 6/30/17) SSN
In the 25 years since the Soviet Union fell, Russia has punctuated military buildups on its border with the occasional rattle of its
nuclear saber in response to U.S. provocations. But a
muted reaction to President-elect Donald Trump's recent
suggestion that the United States should expand its nuclear weapons arsenal reflects a different
military and economic reality for Russia, one in which the Kremlin realizes it could not afford
to keep up in a new nuclear arms race . Trump's Dec. 23 pronouncement that the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be
beefed up came as President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging $618.7 billion defense spending bill. Trump's remarks, particularly
his quip about reigniting an arms race, elicited criticism from the Kremlin. Russian
presidential spokesman Dmitri
Peskov responded that his country would not take part in any arms race , and Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized the United States for trying to spend Russia to death. In years past , Russia used
news of U.S. arms buildups to justify expanding its own arsenals, but echoes of the disastrous
Soviet defense spending spree in the 1980s have given Moscow pause. Russia's more moderate
tone does not mean it will pull back on its defense plans, but rather that the Kremlin does not want to repeat a
history of military overspending that helped accelerate the demise of the Soviet Union. Analysis
The United States and Russia have long been locked in a bitter standoff over Moscow's borderlands, and the tensions between the
two have intensified since 2014 over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Washington and Russia are implementing long-term plans in
expectation of prolonged antagonism. The United States is driving measures to bolster NATO's forces along Europe's eastern flank. It
established a ground-based missile-defense system in Romania in May and plans to expand NATO troop rotations starting next year.
The United States also is in the midst of a $350 billion plan to modernize all three legs of its nuclear weapons triad bombers,
submarines and land-based missiles but those upgrades do not equate to an expansion of its arsenal. In response, Russia is
transforming its military by implementing a division-level structure that is focused on high-end conventional warfare against a
potential enemy like NATO. It has deployed its 1st Guards Tank Army along its western border as a spearhead force prepared for
offensive and defensive operations in Europe, with plans to add three brigades with the same mission and capabilities. Moscow
announced in November that it will send S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander short-range mobile
missile systems to its European exclave of Kaliningrad. But Russia is attempting to shape its strategic one-upmanship to
today's reality and not repeat Cold War mistakes . Under Russia's current foreign policy strategy, known as the Strategic
Concept, it plans for future hostilities with the West that take the form of more asymmetric and
regionalized proxy conflicts , such as the one in Ukraine, rather than a direct military or nuclear
confrontation . Global proxy wars played a significant role in Moscow's Cold War calculations, but its tactics today
are more focused on struggles closer to home . NATO remains a top concern, as evidenced by the steps Moscow is
taking to shore up its military position, but Russia can afford to go only so far in its push against the West. An enduring economic
recession and stagnant oil prices forced the Kremlin to trim the national budget in 2016. Military spending dropped from $66 billion
in 2015 to $50 billion, or 4 percent of gross domestic product, this year. However, the modest oil price recovery over the past few
months has allowed the Kremlin to toss an extra $12 billion to its defense industry. Even though Moscow plans to raise its defense
budget to $60 billion in 2017, U.S. military spending still exceeds that figure tenfold. But Russia's decision to keep half of its 2017
federal budget secret means that the true amount it spends on defense is unknown. By making the budget opaque, the Kremlin
gains the flexibility to shift money to its defenses without exposing itself to the disapproval of an increasingly impoverished Russian
population, which has seen its social support funds diminish. Its budget-shifting ability still would not afford the
Kremlin the ability to engage in the kind of arms race that defined the last years of the Cold
War and helped bankrupt the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, Washington was gripped by the idea that the Soviets were far more
powerful than its allies. The Pentagon shifted its strategy to boost the offensive potential it could bring against the Soviets by
doubling defense spending between 1980 and 1989, a financial race the Soviets could not win. In addition, the launch of the
Strategic Defense Initiative anti-ballistic missile system (colloquially known as Star Wars) showed off the United States' vast
technological advantage over the Soviets.
 Russia War
A conflict with Russia would cause heavy damage to both sides
Marcus 2017 June 29 (Johnathan Marcus is a foreign reporter with the BBC. Marcus,
Jonathan. "How Much of a Threat Does Russia Pose, and to Whom?" BBC News. BBC, 29 June
2017. Web. 29 June 2017. <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40428132>.)
Nato defence ministers are reviewing progress in what's known as the alliance's "enhanced
forward presence" - its deployment of troops eastwards to reassure worried allies, and deter
any Russian move west. Nato has dispatched four battalion-sized battle groups, one deployed in
Poland and one in each of the three Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The US has
also begun to bring back heavy armoured units to western Europe. The whole effort is prompted
by the shock emanating from Russia's seizure and subsequent annexation of the Crimea, and its
continuing support for rebel groups in eastern Ukraine. If Moscow could tear up the rule-book
of security in post-Cold War Europe by carving off a slice of Ukraine (as it previously did in
Georgia), many feared the Baltic republics - also territory of the former Soviet Union - could be
next. Russia says that in response to these Nato moves, it is making new deployments of its
own. But the reality is rather more complex. I've been speaking to some of the leading Western
experts on the Russian military to get a sense of what is behind Russia's modernisation effort,
and to determine what threat it really poses and to whom. "Russia would like us to think that its
current militarisation and preparations for conflict are a response to Nato doing the same, but
it's simply not true." That's the view of Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research
Centre, and probably Britain's leading watcher of Russian military matters. Russia's enormously
expensive reorganisation and rearmament programme," he told me, "was already in full swing
well before the crisis over Ukraine, while Nato nations were still winding down their militaries.
"As late as 2013, the US withdrew all its armour from Europe - while Russia was already busy
investing billions in upgrading its forces." Analyst Dmitry Gorenburg of Harvard University dates
the start of the Russian modernisation programme to 2009. It was a response, he says, to the
evident shortcomings in the Russian military campaign against Georgia. He says the main focus
was "the improvement of the speed of decision-making and communication of decisions to the
troops, and interoperability among military branches, followed by the replacement of Soviet-era
equipment that was rapidly reaching the end of its service life". The results have been
significant. According to Michael Kofman of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, "by 2012
Russia had reorganised its armed forces from a Soviet mass mobilisation army into a permanent
standing force, and began improving quality across the board". This was coupled with an intense
regimen of snap checks on readiness and countless exercises, to the extent that "by 2014 the
Russian military was markedly improved compared to its lacklustre performance in the Russia-
Georgia war in 2008," he says. All the experts I spoke to insist that the initial focus of the Russian
effort has been on Ukraine, not the Baltics. Indeed, Michael Kofman argues that the war in
Ukraine imposed unexpected requirements on Russia's military, which found itself lacking
permanently stationed forces on the country's borders, and ill-positioned for the conflict.
"Russian armed forces," he says, "were, and still are, in transition." To address the prospect of
war with Ukraine in the medium to long term, he says, Russia "has spent much of the past three
years repositioning units around Ukraine, building three new divisions, rebasing several
brigades, and creating an entire new combined-arms army. The intent is for Russian ground
forces to be in place just across the border should they need to reinforce proxies in the Donbas,
invade from several vectors, or simply deter Kiev from thinking it could quickly retake the
separatist regions by force". Ukraine may be the immediate strategic concern of the Russian
general staff. But as Keir Giles notes, "Russia is developing its military infrastructure all the way
along its western periphery - not just opposite Ukraine, but also Belarus, the Baltic states and
even Finland. They have re-organised in order to be able to deliver combat troops to the
western border as rapidly as possible". This includes "setting up new heavy road transport units
in order to reduce their traditional reliance on railways to deliver armour to the operational
area. That gives them a lot more flexibility to move in areas where road networks are better
developed - primarily the west of Russia, including across the border in Russia's western
neighbours," he tells me. Given Moscow's focus on Ukraine, have some Nato countries over-
reacted to the perceived Russian threat? Not at all, says Keir Giles. On the contrary, he insists,
the concern is that Nato has under-reacted. "The direct military challenge from Russia, and
confirmation of Russia's willingness to use military force against its neighbours," he argues,
"with few exceptions, hasn't translated into European countries taking a serious interest in
defending themselves." He adds that the failure of many Nato allies to meet even symbolic
commitments, like the pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defence, let alone urgent real measures
like regenerating the capacity for high-intensity warfare to match Russia's developing
capabilities, "speaks of an unwillingness to recognise politically inconvenient reality". That
reality, according to Michael Kofman, is nothing short of a transformation of the Russian
military. "Reform, modernisation and the combat experience gleaned from Ukraine and Syria
will have lasting effects on the Russian armed forces," he told me. "Russia," he says, "retains the
ability to deploy decisive force anywhere on its borders, overpowering any former Soviet
republic. In terms of its strategic nuclear arsenal, Russia is not only a peer to the United States,
but actually ahead in modernisation and investment in non-strategic nuclear weapons.
"Meanwhile Russia's conventional forces are now capable of imposing high costs on even a
technologically superior adversary such as Nato in a high-end conflict - i.e. a fight would be quite
bloody for both sides." That is hopefully an unthinkable situation. At root, though, Dmitry
Gorenburg believes that "Russia's conventional capabilities will be nowhere near as strong as
those of the US military or Nato forces as a whole". Above all it is readiness, proximity, and the
ability to mass fire-power quickly that gives Russia an immediate local advantage. But Nato
needs to get the threat into perspective. As Michael Kofman notes, "Russia is a Eurasian land
power, bringing a lot of firepower to the fight, but its strength shines when fighting close to
home." Nato's defence and research budget dwarfs Russia's, as does the base capacity of the
alliance to generate forces and equip them in a prolonged conflict. "The bottom line," he says, is
that "while Nato has genuine worries on what a short-term conflict with Russia might look like,
the reality is that this is the world's pre-eminent military alliance, at the core of which is still an
incredibly potent military power, and a sustained fight would probably end disastrously for
Moscow." The Russian military is simply not structured to hold substantial territory, or to
generate the forces needed for a prolonged conflict. Nato needs to be ready, in the view of
experts. If deterrence is going to be credible it needs to restore its ability to fight high-intensity
combat, a capacity that has atrophied during the counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The consensus among the experts seems to be that Ukraine was a warning bell.
Russia's newfound assertiveness is not to be confused with a desire to launch a military attack
westwards.
North Korea
 AT Noko War
No North Korea War its Sabre Rattling on both sides
Alice Foster Apr 28, 2017 Will Donald Trump attack North Korea? US President warns 'MAJOR
conflict is possible http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/797837/Donald-Trump-will-attack-
North-Korea-US-President-declare-war-Kim-Jong-un
"We'd love to solve things diplomatically but it's very difficult. Mr Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for trying very hard
to rein in Pyongyang, adding: He certainly doesnt want to see turmoil and death. Dr Natasha Ezrow, a senior lecturer in
government at the University of Essex, said she would be very shocked if Mr Trump got any
more involved in North Korea. The political scientist, who is a leading authority on dictatorships, said that she cannot
see how a US attack on North Korea could be politically possible. I cant see any political benefit for
Trump of getting marred in this situation any more, she said, noting that it would only lead to danger. Not only is there no
public appetite for war against North Korea, Pyongyang has the power to launch missile attacks
against South Korea, Japan and US bases in both nations. But Dr Ezrow said: A nuclear war is very
unlikely , it is way too costly. It would be suicide for the North Korean regime to engage in that.
It is almost completely unlikely. Despite Kim Jong-uns sabre rattling, Dr Ezrow said that North
Koreas regime has been all talk but no bite in the past and depends on China for its survival.
If North Korea goes too far then it risks falling out with China, which is the economic lifeline of
Kim-Jong Uns reclusive, isolated regime. Dr Ezrow said that the regime makes threats to get
attention and increase its bargaining power, adding: It cant survive without China.
 Noko war No Escalation
North Korea cant escalate US special forces will take out all delivery systems
Bill Gertz May 3, 2017 US Commandos Set to Counter North Korean Nuclear Sites
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/us-commandos-set-counter-north-korean-nuclear-
sites/
U.S. special operations forces are set to conduct operations against North Korean nuclear, missile,
and other weapons of mass destruction sites in any future conflict, the commander of Special Operations Command
told Congress Tuesday. Army Gen. Raymond A. Thomas stated in testimony to a House subcommittee that Army, Navy,
and Air Force commandos are based both permanently and in rotations on the Korean peninsula in case conflict breaks out. The
special operations training and preparation is a warfighting priority, Thomas said in prepared testimony. There are currently around
8,000 special operations troops deployed in more than 80 countries. "We
are actively pursuing a training path to
ensure readiness for the entire range of contingency operations in which [special operations
forces], to include our exquisite [countering weapons of mass destruction] capabilities, may play a
critical role," he told the subcommittee on emerging threats. "We are looking comprehensively at our force structure and
capabilities on the peninsula and across the region to maximize our support to U.S. [Pacific Command] and [U.S. Forces Korea]. This
is my warfighting priority for planning and support." Disclosure of the commander's comments comes as tensions remain high on
the peninsula. President Trump has vowed to deal harshly with North Korea should another underground nuclear test be carried
out. Test preparations have been identified in recent weeks, U.S. officials have said. Trump said on Sunday that China appears to be
pressuring North Korea but that he would be upset if North Korea carries out another nuclear test. "If he does a nuclear test, I will
not be happy," he said on CBS Face the Nation. Asked if his unhappiness would translate into a U.S. military response, Trump said: "I
don't know. I mean, we'll see." Gen. Thomas' testimony did not include details of what missions the commandos would carry out.
A spokesman for the Special Operations Command referred questions about potential operations in Korea to the Pacific Command.
Special forces troops would be responsible for locating and destroying North Korean nuclear
weapons and missile delivery systems, such as mobile missiles. They also would seek to prevent the movement of the
weapons out of the country during a conflict. Additionally, special operations commandos could be used for
operations to kill North Korean leaders, such as supreme leader Kim Jong Un and other senior regime figures.
Special operations missions are said by military experts to include intelligence gathering on the
location of nuclear and chemical weapons sites for targeting by bombers. They also are likely to
include direct action assaults on facilities to sabotage the weapons, or to prevent the weapons
from being stolen, or set off at the sites by the North Koreans. A defense official said U.S.
commandos in the past have trained for covert operations against several types of nuclear
facilities, including reactors and research centers. Scale models of some North Korean weapons facilities
have been built in the United States for practice operations by commandos. The most secret direct action
operations would be carried out by special units, such as the Navy's Seal Team Six or the Army's Delta Force.
ISIS
 No Dirty Bomb
No dirty bombs!
Miller, Yale Poli Sci BA, 17 (Simon, White House Correspondent @ Time Magazine, "Inside
the Uranium Underworld: Dark Secrets, Dirty Bombs", 4/10/17, Accessed 6/30/17,
http://time.com/4728293/uranium-underworld-dark-secrets-dirty-bombs) SSN
There have already been plenty of signs that ISIS would like to go nuclear. After the series of ISIS-linked
bombings in Brussels killed at least 32 people in March 2016, Belgian authorities revealed that a suspected member of a terrorist cell
had surveillance footage of a Belgian nuclear official with access to radioactive materials. The country's nuclear-safety agency then
said there were "concrete indications" that the cell intended "to do something involving one of our four nuclear sites." About a year
earlier, in May 2015, ISIS suggested in an issue of its propaganda magazine that it was wealthy enough to purchase a nuclear device
on the black marketand to "pull off something truly epic." Though the group is unlikely to possess the
technical skill to build an actual nuclear weapon, there are indications it could already possess nuclear
materials. After the group's fighters took control of the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, they seized about 40 kg of uranium
compounds that were stored at a university, according to a letter an Iraqi diplomat sent to the U.N. in July of that year. But
the U.N.'s nuclear agency said the material was likely "low grade" and not potentially harmful .
"In a sense we've been lucky so far," says Sharon Squassoni, who heads the program to stop nuclear proliferation at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. "I honestly think it is only a matter of time before we see one of these
dirty-bomb attacks." Obtaining ingredients for such a weapon is not, it turns out, the hard part. According to
Chaduneli's lawyer, Tamila Kutateladze, his associates found the box of uranium in one of the scrapyards where he would find old
bric-a-brac to sell. His co-defendant in the case, Mikheil Jincharadze, told police that "unknown persons" had delivered the box
inside a sack of scrap iron, according to interrogation records and other court documents obtained by TIME in Georgia.
 ISIS Has No Nukes AT: Nuke Theft Iraq
No impact to nuclear theft its low-grade material and recovery is easy
Mitchell and McClam, BA, 14 (Andrea and Erin, Journalism BA @ University of Georgia,
Senior Editor Elections @ Fusion, "Nuclear Experts Play Down Threat of Uranium Stolen by ISIS",
7/10/14, Accessed 6/30/17, www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/nuclear-experts-play-
down-threat-uranium-stolen-isis-n152926) SS
The United Nations and outside experts cast doubt Thursday on the danger posed by nuclear material
that Iraq says was stolen from a university by the insurgent group known as ISIS. The Iraqi ambassador to the U.N., in a
letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this week, said that ISIS had gotten its hands on 88 pounds of

uranium compounds from Mosul University. Iraq said the material had been intended for
scientific research. The letter, obtained by Reuters, appealed for help to stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq
or abroad. Bob Kelly, who was a U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, told NBC News that the uranium
probably posed more danger as a toxin, like lead, than as radioactive material. Putting it in a dirty bomb is
a pretty silly idea, he said. If you spread uranium over a large area, it is just going to
disappear. He added: If you are standing right next to the bomb when it goes off and the explosion does not kill you there

will be some toxic material in the air for a bit, but the radiation is not going to cause you that
much of a problem. Far more dangerous, he said, would be something like cesium-137, which comes in powder form and
dissolves in water. He did say that he was surprised the university was allowed to keep the uranium, which he described as a big
amount, after the war. He also said the ambassador, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, should have gone to the U.N. nuclear agency, not the
secretary-general. Its clear what the ambassador is trying to get out of this help to deal with ISIS, he said. ISIS militants have
swept across swaths of Iraq and are threatening to fracture the country. ISIS, short for Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, aims to
establish an Islamic state across the broader Middle East. It would just be a case of getting the fire department to wash down the
pavements, one expert says. The U.N. nuclear agency itself said Thursday it believed that whatever nuclear material has fallen
under ISIS control was low-grade and did not pose a high risk. Nevertheless, any loss of regulatory control over nuclear and
other radioactive materials is a cause for concern, said Gill Tudor, a spokeswoman for the agency. The agency plans to seek further
details, she said. Senior U.S. officials also told NBC News that the uranium was not enriched, and thus could not be turned into
something of counterterrorism concern. Kelly, who retired from the nuclear agency in 2005, stressed his experience in the field and
if ISIS comes to my neighborhood and blows up a dirty bomb
said he respects danger, but he said that
with uranium, we would deal with it. Lets just wash down the pavements and that would be it, he said. Asked
whether Iraq would be as equipped to handle such an event, he said: It would just be a case of
getting the fire department to wash down the pavements, so, yes, I think they could just about
manage.
 Cant Solve Dirty Bombs Home Grown
Alt cause to dirty bombs homegrown threat
Winter, Columbia Journalism MS, 17 (Jana, BA @ Emory, "Why America Cant Spot Dirty
Bombs", 2/21/17, Accessed 6/30/17, http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-america-cant-spot-
dirty-bombs) SSN
As Trump preps a new executive order to stop terrorists before they enter the country, a government report finds we
arent prepared for the threat from within.
While President Trump doubles down on the hypothetical threats of incoming terrorists posing as refugees, he might be ignoring a
very real concern here at home: The
U.S. is largely underprepared to detect or respond to the threat of
a radiological terrorist attack on American soil.
A so-called Red Team from the U.S. federal agency charged with evaluating domestic capabilities to
defend against dirty bomb and w eapons of m ass d estruction attacks found gaping holes in
domestic nuclear detection and defense capabilities and massive failures during covert testing.
Thats according to the most recent annual report by the D epartment of H omeland S ecuritys
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.
The Red Team found significant issues in detecting dangerous radioactive and nuclear materials,
failing to do so in 30 percent of covert tests conducted over the course of the year. In far too many
cases , the person operating the detection device had no idea how to use it . And when the
operator did get a hit, he or she relayed sensitive info rmation over unsecured open radio
channels .
The Red Team report, dated July 2016 and reviewed by The Daily Beast, summarizes a year s worth of covert and
overt testing of nuclear and radiological detection and response capabilities. These tests were performed by a
broad range state, local, federal, and tribal agencies and across a range of venues: at border points
of entry, in aviation and maritime environments, during large public events like the Super Bowl or Inauguration, and at regular
checkpoints around the country.
Overcrowding Advantage
Sqo Solves
 Status Quo Solves Military STEM Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin solves military STEM ed
McSpadden 16 (Judy McSpadden is the Director of Communications for Our Military Kids,
LOCKHEED HELPS MILITARY KIDS SOAR WITH STEM, Our Military Kids, accessed 7-7,
http://ourmilitarykids.org/lockheed-helps-military-kids-soar-stem/)
Lockheed Martin has given generously to Our Military Kids for many years in fact, since OMKs
inception. Its recent donation, however, differs from most in that it restricts a third of its total to a
specific kind of earmarked activity, STEM programs. Lockheed, an aerospace, defense, security and
technology firm, wants kids to get excited about science, technology, engineering and math, said
Jennifer Mandel, manager of the STEM Portfolio at Lockheed. These are the jobs of the future, Mandel said. Our Military
Kids grants pay for a variety of activities arts, sports and other enrichment programs for children whose
military parents are deployed or recovering from injury. So far, 90 OMK grants this year have
paid for childrens STEM programs. AT&T, another OMK donor, has also restricted its grants to
STEM-related activities. Rylan Sellers, age 9, used his OMK grant to attend Camp Invention last summer. The camp covered
more than inventing, said Rylans mom, Tami Sellers, who described the camp activities that brought computers, engineering,
biology and mapping to life. For example, the kids had to develop this island. Bananas had to get to the monkeys or something
like that, she laughed. He loved every minute of it. According to Ms. Sellers, the camp happened at a very appropriate time.
Rylans dad was on an 11-month military deployment to Guantanamo Bay, and Rylans sister, age 4, had health issues. There was
definitely stress, said Ms. Sellers, whose husband, Don, a member of an Army National Guard security unit, had formerly served on
active duty. We no longer had the support system we were used to, Ms. Sellers said. Rylan had to get used to being more
independent, while I looked after his sister. But the hardest thing for me was to stop their grief while Don was gone. This kind of
stress is why were here, said Linda Davidson, Executive Director of Our Military Kids, Extracurricular programs reduce a childs
stress, increase academic performance, and enhance the well-being of the entire family. According to Davidson, Lockheed
has
continued its support of OMK programs through thick and thin, giving every year since 2005 for
a total of nearly $600,000. Lockheed has proved a wonderful corporate partner, giving not only funding but a variety of
opportunities for our military families. Lockheed, a company of 100,000 employees working in areas such
as aeronautics and space systems, has soaring in its DNA. Partnering with educators within
nonprofit groups and schools, it provides curriculum and even its own engineers as teachers of
kids, k-12. Its newest STEM education program, Generation Beyond, works with NASA to teach
middle school children about deep space. Mandel said, Theyve even outfitted a school bus as a virtual reality
experiment. The interest in STEM education reaches far and wide. During last years White House Science Fair, President Barack
Obama said: [Science] is more than a school subject. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and
engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change the world. Companies like Lockheed, operating through
organizations like Our Military Kids, are working toward enhancing national competitiveness on the world stageand beyond.
 Sqo Solves Military STEM Other Programs
STEM programs in the status quo reach out to military children
Kimmons 17
Sean Kimmons, January 10th, 2017, US Army, STEM program expanding to reach more military children
https://www.army.mil/article/180382/stem_program_expanding_to_reach_more_military_children- --JPARK
SAN ANTONIO (Army News Service) -- Col. David Raugh's 13-year-old daughter aspires to work in aviation someday, possibly as an
astronaut. But being uprooted six times from schools as her family moved around the world hasn't made it easy. Pursuing academic
interests can be a struggle for military children in situations like hers, her father admitted, especially in the STEM fields of science,
technology, engineering and mathematics. Military family life can teach children useful skills and values like loyalty and patriotism,
said Raugh, the 502nd Force Support Group commander at Fort Sam Houston. "However, we need to acknowledge that these
constant moves can impact their access to some educational opportunities," he added. One way to improve STEM
performance among military children, Raugh told a group of local and state education officials at a briefing Friday, is
through the National Math and Science Initiative's College Readiness Program. Launched in 2007, the
nonprofit program is now in more than 1,000 schools across the country. As a result, program officials say, the performance among
students in those schools on advanced placement exams has exceeded 10 times the national average. Schools
serving
military children have also jumped on board, with more than 150 military-connected schools
signed up and more funds available to expand to 200 in the next two to three years, said Matthew
Randazzo, the initiative's CEO. With all of its military bases, according to Randazzo, the San Antonio area was an ideal spot to spread
the program's success to more military dependents. "All
kids can be a STEM student," Randazzo said. "I can't think
of a better way to enter this market than by grading these proof points with military students."
Recognizing the need for more skilled professionals in STEM-related fields, the Defense
Department has granted $23 million in fiscal years 2015 to 2016 to bring the program to more
military-connected schools, he said. "They've not only committed the funds, they've also been
really important advocates in connecting us in base communities," he said. In 2010, the program first came
to military bases after former Army Secretary Pete Geren voiced concerns about Soldiers at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, being forced
to send their children to private schools due to the inadequate public schools, according to program officials. More schools joined,
and the rest is history. Burnie Roper, superintendent of the Lackland Independent School District, said he's interested in rolling out
the program at his schools, but first he wants to get buy-in from the teachers. "It's honestly something that I want to do, but I don't
make decisions in a vacuum like that," he said after the briefing. "I know that if I don't get teacher input and their support, it's not
going to be successful, because they're the ones who are going to have to deliver the program." Under the initiative,
teachers
who instruct students from third grade to high school can take part in a Laying the Foundation
Teacher Training Program, which coaches them on knowledge and instructional best practices and gives them classroom-
ready materials and resources. "I think it's about preparing kids for their future and, in our future, a lot of
it is STEM-based with [new] technology," Roper said. "The more STEM we can get into our schools,
the better for our kids." According to Raugh, research shows that greater emphasis on STEM-related courses is helpful
when students reach those middle and high school years when their enthusiasm for science tends to dip. "This potentially
allows us to stop this troubling trend," he said about the program coming to San Antonio. "This is a great
opportunity, and we need to grab onto it with bulldog tenacity and not let go until this program
is in place."
STEM Impact
 STEM Alt Causes
The plan doesnt solve for STEMReevaluation is key
Michael Collins, 16 is President of MPC Management, a consulting company that focuses
exclusively on the problems and challenges of small and midsize manufacturers (SMMs) of
industrial products and services. Why Education Reforms Have Failed -- and How to Make
Them Work accessed online 7/8/17 http://www.industryweek.com/education-training/why-
education-reforms-have-failed-and-how-make-them-work?page=5
How To Fix Education The premise of this article is that before demanding that all 16.3 million high schools
students participate in STEM, it might be wise to do some quantitative research (diagnosis)
that defines the problems and obstacles of various groups of students , and offer a plan B if
STEM education is not a good option. I must repeat, as a retired manufacturer, I love the idea of getting students to
study more science, technology, math and engineering. The more the kids know about STEM subjects, the
better chance that we can grow the U.S. manufacturing industries and be more competitive. But
I have some serious doubts as well. Instead of just imposing the STEM Curriculum on all
students, it is more practical to test each student to see if they have the aptitude for STEM
learning . This would force the school to address the remedial learning needs of some
students, rather than just impose the reform . Enforcing a one-size-fits-all approach for all
students and groups will probably not work for many students and schools , and regardless of
what the STEM gurus thinkthey will not be able to make students takeor succeed inSTEM
classes. The history of implementing education reforms has been, at best, a mixed bag of success and failure. The reason is
that education reformers decide that current education results are not acceptable, then they
decide on a solution based on what they would like to see happen. They always seem to decide
on their prescription before doing careful diagnosis of these three groups of kids.

Funding and Trump are alt causes

Golden, 16 is President of the Broadcom Foundation, which advances science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) worldwide. Paula is a leader in the National STEM
Funders Network and STEM Education Ecosystem Initiative that creates collaborations among
formal and informal STEM educators throughout the United States. (Paula Golden Lost In The
Fifties, Middle America Needs STEM Education & Infrastructure accessed online 7/8/17
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-golden/lost-in-the-fifties-middl_b_13613328.html)
At a post-mortem forum on the 2016 U.S. election, Mexicos former president Vicente Fox had choice words for those who elected
Donald Trump. Yearning for the manufacturing glory days of yesteryear, American workers were seduced by a sloganeer who
promised to Make America Great Again. But, said Fox, the world has moved on, and their jobs with it. Instead of attending
community colleges to pick up critical skills and proficiencies that would have enabled them to transition into jobs of the future,
American workers went home to down a few beers. A sardonic critique from a politician on the other side of Trumps great wall
designed to keep jobs in and migrs out? Not so. Donald Trump perpetuated the destructive myth about our nations infallibility
held by many in Middle America, especially workers in Coal Country and the Rust Belt whose family fortunes rose in the 1950s when
the United States dominated manufacturing and production while other nations crawled out from under the rubble of World War II.
Trump made them believe that the jobs in the factories and mills will magically return with the stroke of his presidential pen. This is
a lie. Fox said manufacturing jobs of the Fifties are gone forever, and the American worker has wasted precious time by failing to get
on the train to a better future. In the years following the World War, defeated and underdeveloped countries (many with their own
storied histories of innovation) have leaped over the 20th century and into the 21st, with high-tech infrastructures and ambitious,
gritty workforces eager to compete in global manufacturing and commerce. If you need proof, just catch a bullet train out of Tokyo,
pass through the airports in Singapore or Beijing or visit a high-tech factory in Tijuana. Resting on its laurels during the latter half of
the American Century, the United States took a noblesse oblige attitude toward STEM education. Kids with a penchant for science,
technology, engineering or math were pejoratively called nerds or geeks. Less rigorous majors became the gentile aspiration of
many kids heading into college. Short-sighted state governments have underfunded their classrooms, cut courses that fostered
critical thinking and creativity, failed to require a STEM certification for K-8 grade teachers and limited access to STEM literacy
courses that would move the entire high school class - not just those kids who were bound for universities - toward meaningful
STEM jobs that do not require college. Meanwhile, American workers,and the governments they elected,
remained rapt in Fifties mythology and buying, not making became the false floor of the
American economy. Recently released PISA scores are sounding alarm bells: they show that the United States had an 11 point
drop in the average score for math and has a flat score in reading and science. Our ability to compete in the global marketplace is in
peril. And even before he takes the oath of office, Trump is steering our ship of state even closer to the rocks. The majority of
Trumps cabinet picks are on record as anti-labor, anti-education and science-averse, with no experience governing in a federal
system. Alarmingly, his nominee for Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos is openly antagonistic toward public education
upon which millions and millions of Middle Americas families rely and which she pejoratively refers to as government schools.
DeVos plans to divert our tax dollars to private, religious or charter schools. Education historian Diane Ravitch says of DeVos,
[N]ever has anyone been appointed to lead in the past 150 years who was hostile to public education. If
confirmed, Ms.
DeVos will be embolden by a latter day Know-Nothing Congress that has opposed spending on
major education reform and investment on our national infrastructure for decades. I have written
that as a matter of national security, we must educate our entire workforce to become STEM literate and proficient in 21st century
skills and build a futuristic infrastructure that can sustain competition in a global economy if we are to avoid further economic and
societal decline. Trumps democratic opponent, Secretary Hillary Clinton called for a massive retraining program for our workforce
and developing an infrastructure to support 21st century enterprise. Trump and Congress needs to heed her call and change their
course before it is too late for all of us. Changing course requires a massive investment of trillions of
dollars, and Trumps intention to lower taxes for the rich shows reckless disregard for the
future of this country and the working people who elected him. The tax bracket for the wealthiest among us
has been in decline since 1956 during the much-vaunted Eisenhower Administration when the top tax bracket was between 80-90%.
Today, when our education and infrastructure investment needs are the greatest in history, the highest tax bracket is at 39.6%.
Unconscionable. If we are to regain a modicum of the preeminence enjoyed in the Fifties, we need
to pay to play . The top 20 percent of our society must pay a greater percentage in taxes, and
tax incentives for businesses should not line the pockets of those in the C-Suite, but create
rewards for retraining and hiring local workers of all ages. And the American worker must accept the
realities of global change. Steel worker-turned-HVAC-instructor Dennis Matney said: it is time to pay. He noted that everybody in
manufacturing should invest some time in more education. I think that you can resist change all you like. But its going to happen
regardless. You might as well get with the program.
Terror Housing Advantage
Sqo Solves
 Background Checks Now
Thorough background checks ensure that civilians living on military bases are
safe
Walsh 16 (Sean Collins, Reporter for Military 1,August 19, 2016 Fort Hood opens up post
housing to non-military affiliated renters, Military 1, Accessed July 6, 2017,
https://www.military1.com/military-lifestyle/article/1628371014-fort-hood-opens-up-post-
housing-to-non-military-affiliated-renters/) BA
Dealing with a low occupancy rate as the Army shrinks after the peak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Fort Hood has, for
the first time, opened up rental units on the post to people unaffiliated with the military. The shift, triggered
by a provision in the Army's contract with a private company that runs the post's family housing program, has caused concern among some soldiers
about whether the presence of outsiders will introduce a new security risk at Fort Hood, home to two high-profile shootings in the last decade. Brian
Dosa, Fort Hood's director of public works, said the Army has received "mixed reactions" from soldiers. "We would prefer to
have strictly military families living in our villages," Dosa said. "But I don't think it's a major impact ... that we now have
some civilians. The numbers are pretty small." Just like their soldier-neighbors in the family housing areas, the newcomers
are allowed to keep guns in their homes, Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said. (Single soldiers living in the barracks cannot keep guns in their
residences.) Haug said the gun policy isn't a security risk because there
are rigorous safeguards for the new residents,
who must go through two layers of background checks -- one by the housing company and
another by the Fort Hood Directorate of Emergency Services -- and register any firearms they
bring on post with Fort Hood authorities. "They've had two background checks for everyone in
their family over the age of 18. That's more than your neighbor has," Haug said. Thirty-four other
U.S. military installations have already brought in nonmilitary residents, and there have been no
major security issues, said Mack Quinney, project director for the housing company.
 Status Quo Solves Background Checks
Background checks solve the impact
Jowers 16 covers military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times
Karen, Military Times, September 23, "Military failed to conduct background checks on civilians
in base housing, putting troops at risk, http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/military-needs-
better-screening-of-general-public-tenants-before-allowing-them-to-live-in-on-base-privatized-
housing
A DoD directive from March, 2015, requires installation representatives to
query the National Crime Information Center and the Terrorist Screening
Database to determine fitness and eligibility for access to military
installations. They must require proof of identity, and use the persons name,
date of birth and Social Security number to perform the background checks.
Installations can deny access to prospective tenants based on the information received in
The NCIC database contains 14 different files of information,
that screening.
such as suspected terrorist , wanted person, national sex offender registry, missing
persons, foreign fugitive, identity theft, immigration violator, violent
person, gang, and others.
Impact Defense
 1nc BSL-4 D
BSL-4s are secure- triple redundant backup power solves grid- 80 years proves
GNL, 4 [Galveston National Laboratory, "Saftey & Security," published post 2004,
www.utmb.edu/gnl/safety/]

The GNL will use double High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters and contain redundant
systems within the utility, power and mechanical infrastructure. Biosafety labs that include
biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facilities are one of the most safely designed and constructed types of
buildings in the world. It is for this reason that over a combined 80 years of operation, there has
never been an environmental release from a BSL-4 facility in North America. In fact, UTMB has
experience operating a maximum containment laboratory. The University has long operated
level 2 and 3 labs. In 2004, UTMB began operating the Robert E. Shope, M.D. Laboratory, the
only full-sized BSL4 lab on a university campus in the United States. It has been operating
smoothly and safely for more than three years. State-of-the-art systems built into the design of
the GNL help protect workers and prevent any release of infectious agents. Use of cutting-edge
technologies coupled with state-of-the-art security and audit systems and highly trained
employees form the building blocks for the GNL. Proper oversight, monitoring and transparency
are central to the lab's operations and mission. The Institutional Biosafety Committee, the
Community Liaison Committee (CLC), and the Community Advisory Board (CAB) are a few of the
Committees that ensure safety and transparency of GNL operations. FAQs on Safety and
Security What experience does UTMB have operating a maximum containment laboratory?
UTMB has long operated levels 2 and 3 labs. In 2004, UTMB began operating the Robert E.
Shope, M.D., Laboratory, the only full-sized BSL4 lab on a university campus in the United States.
It has been operating smoothly and safely for more than three years. How does UTMB ensure
that researchers, employees and members of the local community are safe from microbes
studied under high containment? A combination of rigorous training, meticulous procedures,
tight security, carefully designed structures, and elaborate and redundant operating systems
keeps everyone working in the high-containment labs safe. These measures also ensure the
safety of those outside these labs. As the people most at risk in the event of an accident, the
highly trained researchers working in such labs are carefully trained to rigorously follow safety
procedures. Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) labs have been compared to submarines inside bank
vaults . Heat, pressure, and chemical systems housed in the vault area process, or
cook, all liquid and solid wastes completely, and high-efficiency filtration removes any
airborne material, making all the liquid and air effluents sterile or safe before they leave
the facility. Double and triple redundancies in equipment and systems help ensure that if an
unexpected failure does occur, a backup is in place to maintain safety. The laboratory studies
tiny amounts of infectious agents and the diseases they cause in order to develop ways to
mitigate their threat. As with all UTMB research involving infectious agents, work inside the
BSL4 and BSL3 high containment labs is overseen by the Institutional Biosafety Committee. No
experiment with such organisms can take place on campus without careful examination of all
protocols to assess all risks. What are the dangers if a hurricane strikes the area? The GNL is
among the strongest and most heavily reinforced of all structures in the region. It is designed to
meet hurricane building codes. Despite its structural integrity, plans are in place to shut down
and secure all laboratory operations if a hurricane landfall is predicted near Galveston. This
shut-down and decontamination can be done quickly, with all work in the facility ceasing, the
lab locked down, and all infectious agents and biological and chemical material placed into safe
and secure storage. What happens with the power fails? As with all critical areas on the UTMB
campus (which also is home to hospital facilities), the Galveston National Laboratory will have
primary power plus independent backup power provided by multiple generators that are tested
regularly.

OR theres a slew of alt causes- like incompetent staff, institutional incentives

Scutti, 14 Newsweek
[Susan, "The Only Thing Scarier Than Bio-Warfare is the Antidote," March 2014,
www.newsweek.com/2014/03/21/only-thing-scarier-bio-warfare-antidote-247993.html]
Expansion of BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs has outpaced even the government's understanding of what's
going on in these high-security kitchens. According to the GAO report, "There is still no one
agency or group that knows the nation's need for all U.S. high-containment laboratories,
including the research priorities and the capacity, number and location, to address priorities."
The GAO doesn't know how many labs are in the U.S. and doesn't even know what the safety
standards are in them. The agency has noted there are still no national standards for "designing,
constructing, commissioning, and operating high-containment laboratories, including provisions
for long-term maintenance." These issues, they say, make it difficult to guarantee or even assess
safety. There are some safeguards in place. For example, scientists handling the most
dangerous biological agents must register with the federal government, and facilities must
develop and implement a security plan, which in turn must be okayed by HHS. Dr. James LeDuc,
director of the Galveston National Laboratory, a BSL-4 facility at the University of Texas Medical
Branch, tells Newsweek, "Part of the complex includes a very robust security force. We have
armed guards 24 hours a day, seven days a week controlling access to the facility." But,
according to the GAO, there are no national standards, so Galveston may be an outlier. And with
the swift buildup of biodefense over the past decade, that means an increasing number of
scientists are working with the most dangerous pathogens in the highest-containment labs,
which have serious safety risks. "No one is doing due diligence on any of the labs, so we don't
really know if they're well run," Edward Hammond, a policy researcher and co-founder of the
now-defunct Sunshine Project, tells Newsweek. For years, Hammond tracked the U.S.
biodefense program. One of his many projects involved contacting institutional biosafety
committees (IBCs) across the country and asking for the minutes from their latest meeting. He
quickly discovered that many IBCs exist on paper only. He also found that the lack of safety
measures has already had serious consequences. "We caught them not reporting," Hammond
tells Newsweek. He tracked biosafety and security lapses at Texas A&M University, where a
student researcher accidentally contaminated him or herself with brucella, a deadly bacteria,
while trying to clean an advanced piece of containment equipment in which mice had been
exposed to particles. The researchers, according to a government report, were conducting
experiments in a room not authorized for such research. The studentthe university never
released his or her identityrecovered from brucellosis but was seriously ill for several
months. Thomas Ficht, lead investigator of the Texas A&M research team, tells Newsweek he
was out of town at the time of the accident, which was the result of "people not adhering to
protocols." Asked if he received any sanctions, he says, "The university paid $1 million to the
[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]." Ficht suggests that there's a clash of ideas
between scientists and regulators, and that when it comes down to it, the lab's scientific goals
prevaileven if it means putting lives on the line. "We don't necessarily think of all the
regulatory steps," he tells Newsweek. "It's taken a lot of spontaneity out of [research], but the
potential risk to investigators warrants that." Mistakes such as the one made at Texas A&M are
not new to sciencepioneering nuclear scientists, for example, often subjected themselves to
contamination in their labs, and Marie Curie, who won a Nobel Prize for her research into
radioactivity, died from a bone marrow disease caused by years of radiation exposure. Bio-error
can be as simple (and as human) as a scientist pricking herself with a needle that contains some
infectious agent, or in some inadvertent way transferring a virus outside the lab. It can also
mean an improperly shipped select agentyes, they are sometimes sent through the mail
or simple ignorance of appropriate lab safety.
 1nc BioTerror D
No impact---attacks will be small, no dispersion, and countermeasures solve
Filippa Lentzos 14, PhD from London School of Economics and Social Science, Senior Research
Fellow in the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at Kings College London,
Catherine Jefferson, researcher in the Department of Social Science, Health, and Medicine at
Kings College London, DPhil from the University of Sussex, former senior policy advisor for
international security at the Royal Society, and Dr. Claire Marris, Senior Research Fellow in the
Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King's College London, The myths (and
realities) of synthetic bioweapons, 9/18/2014, http://thebulletin.org/myths-and-realities-
synthetic-bioweapons7626
The bioterror WMD myth. Those who have overemphasized the bioterrorism threat typically portray it as an

imminent concern , with emphasis placed on high-consequence, mass-casualty attacks , performed

with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is a myth with two dimensions. The first involves the identities of terrorists and what their

intentions are. The assumption is that terrorists would seek to produce mass-casualty weapons and pursue

capabilities on the scale of 20th century, state-level bioweapons programs. Most leading biological disarmament and non-
proliferation experts believe that the risk of a small-scale bioterrorism attack is very real and present. But they consider the risk
of sophisticated large-scale bioterrorism attacks to be quite small. This judgment is backed up by
historical evidence . The three confirmed attempts to use biological agents against humans in terrorist attacks in the past
were small-scale , low-casualty events aimed at causing panic and disruption rather than excessive death tolls. The second dimension
involves capabilities and the level of skills and resources available to terrorists. The implicit assumption is that producing a

pathogenic organism equates to producing a weapon of mass destruction. It does not. Considerable
knowledge and resources are necessary for the processes of scaling up, storage, and dissemination.
These processes present significant technical and logistical barriers . Even if a biological weapon were
disseminated successfully, the outcome of an attack would be affected by factors like the health of the people who are exposed and the
speed and manner with which public health authorities and medical professionals detect and respond to the resulting outbreak. A prompt response

with effective medical countermeasures, such as antibodies and vaccination, can significantly blunt
the impact of an attack .
 2nc/1nr BioTerror D

No motivation, no access and vaccines check the impact

Clark 8 Emeritus Professor in Immunology at UCLA
William R. Clark, emeritus professor in Immunology at UCLA. Bracing for Armageddon?: The
Science and Politics of Bioterrorism in America, 2008, pg. 183
In the end, what may well stop groups like Al-Qaeda from using bioweapons to achieve their
aims against us is that it is just too much trouble. Not only are biological weapons
exceedingly difficult to build and operate, the United States has now developed vaccines or
drugs to counter most known conventional pathogens. Countermeasures for the rest should
be available over the next few years. We have the Strategic National Stockpile, Push
Packages, and vendor-managed inventories, as well as the ability to deliver these materials
and more to an attack site within a matter of hours. We could suffer casualties, yes, but not
mass casualties. Conventional bombs and chemicals are must easier to obtain and use, and
can achieve much the same ends with less risk. Sophisticated terrorist groups may well
agree with virtually all professional of the military establishments around the world that
actually had effective bioweapons in hand: they are simply not worth the bother. For at least
the near future, bioterrorism for Al-Qaeda and its ilk may be a non-starter.

No extinction impact.
Britt 1
Robert Roy Britt, Senior Space Writer/Space.com. Survival of the Elitist: Bioterrorism May Spur
Space Colonies. October 30 2001. http://www.space4peace.org/articles/moving.htm
Many scientists argue that there is no need to worry about the mortality of civilization right
now. Eric Croddy is an expert on chemical and biological weapons at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies. Croddy said the threat of a virus wiping out the entire human species is
simply not real. Even the most horrific virus outbreak in history, the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic
that killed between 20 million and 40 million people, including hundreds of thousands in the
United States, eventually stopped. Experts say new strains of the influenza virus emerge every few
decades and catch the human immune system unprepared, but prevention measures and ever-evolving
medical treatments overcome the outbreaks. "I'd be much more concerned about an asteroid
hitting the planet," Croddy said.
 1nc Disease D
No deadly pandemics their authors hype the threat and numerous barriers
prevent them from spreading
Orent 15
Wendy, anthropologist specializing in health and disease and author of Plague: The Mysterious
Past and Terrifying Future of the Worlds Most Dangerous Disease, January 11, Why predictions
of lethal pandemics should be ignored,
http://www.knoxnews.com/opinion/columnists/wendy-orent-why-predictions-of-lethal-
pandemics-should-be-ignored_94239189
Prophets of doom have been telling us for decades that a deadly new pandemic of bird flu, of
SARS or MERS coronavirus, and now of Ebola is on its way. Why are we still listening? If you
look back at the furor raised at many distinguished publications Nature, Science, Scientific
American, National Geographic back in, say, 2005 about a potential bird flu (H5N1) pandemic,
you wonder what planet they were on. Nature ran a special section titled "Avian flu: Are we
ready?" that began ominously and went on to present a mock aftermath report detailing
catastrophic civil breakdown. Robert Webster, a famous influenza virologist, told ABC News in
2006 that "society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I
think we have to face that possibility." Public health expert Michael T. Osterholm of the
University of Minnesota, at a meeting in Washington of scientists brought together by the
Institute of Medicine, warned in 2005 that a post-pandemic commission, like the post-9/11
commission, could hold "many scientists accountable to that commission for what we did or
didn't do to prevent a pandemic." He also predicted that we could be facing "three years of a
given hell" as the world struggled to right itself after the deadly pandemic. And Laurie Garrett,
author of what must be the ur-text for pandemic predictions, her 1994 book "The Coming
Plague," intoned in Foreign Affairs that "in short, doom may loom." The article went on to paint
a terrifying picture of the avian flu threat. And such hysteria still goes on, whether it's over the
MERS coronavirus, a whole alphabet of chicken flu viruses, a real but not very deadly influenza
pandemic in 2009, or a kerfuffle like the one in 2012 over a scientist-crafted ferret flu that also
was supposed to be a pandemic threat. Along the way, virologist Nathan Wolfe published "The
Viral Storm: the Dawn of a New Pandemic Age," and David Quammen warned in his gripping
"Spillover" that some new animal plague could arise from the jungle and sweep across the
world. And now there's Ebola. Osterholm, in a widely read column in the New York Times in
September, wrote about the possibility that scientists were afraid to mention publicly the
danger they discuss privately: that Ebola "could mutate to become transmissible through the
air." And Garrett wrote in Foreign Policy, "Attention, World: You just don't get it." She went on
to say, "Wake up, fools," because we should be more frightened of a potential scenario like the
one in the movie "Contagion," in which a lethal, fictitious pandemic scours the world, nearly
destroying civilization. But there were fewer takers this time. Osterholm's claims about Ebola
going airborne were discounted by serious scientists, and Garrett seemingly retracted her earlier
hysteria about Ebola by claiming that, after all, evolution made such spread unlikely. The
scientific world has changed since 2005. Now, most scientists understand that there are
significant physical and evolutionary barriers to a blood- and fluid-borne virus developing
airborne transmission, as Garrett has acknowledged. Though the Ebola virus has been detected
in human alveolar cells, as Vincent Racaniello, virologist at Columbia University, explained to
me, that doesn't mean it can replicate in the airways enough to allow transmission. "Maybe
the virus can get in, but can't get out. Like a roach motel," wrote Racaniello in an email. H5N1,
we understand now, never went airborne because it attached only to cell receptors located
deep in human lungs, and could not, therefore, be coughed or sneezed out. SARS, or severe
acute respiratory syndrome, caused local outbreaks after multiple introductions via air travel
but spread only sluggishly and mostly in hospitals. There probably will always be significant
barriers preventing the easy adaptation of an animal disease to the human species.
Furthermore, Racaniello insists that there are no recorded instances of viruses that have
adapted to humans, changing the way they are spread. So we need to stop listening to the
doomsayers, and we need to do it now. Predictions of lethal pandemics have always been
wrong.
 2nc/1nr Disease D
Burnout solves the impact
MacPhee & Marx 98
(Ross (American Museum of Natural History) and Preson (Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Facility
and Tulane University)
http://www.amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Day1/disease/Bit1.html)
It is well known that lethal diseases can have a profound effect on species' population size and
structure. However, it is generally accepted that the principal populational effects of disease are
acute--that is, short-term. In other words, although a species may suffer substantial loss from
the effects of a given highly infectious disease at a given time, the facts indicate that natural
populations tend to bounce back after the period of high losses. Thus, disease as a primary
cause of extinction seems implausible. However, this is the normal case, where the disease-
provoking pathogen and its host have had a long relationship. Ordinarily, it is not in the pathogens
interest to rapidly kill off large numbers of individuals in its host species, because that might
imperil its own survival. Disease theorists long ago expressed the idea that pathogens tend to
evolve toward a "benign" state of affairs with their hosts, which means in practice that they
continue to infect, but tend not to kill (or at least not rapidly). A very good reason for suspecting
this to be an accurate view of pathogen-host relationships is that individuals with few or no genetic
defenses against a particular pathogen will be maintained within the host population, thus ensuring
the pathogen's ultimate survival.

Humans will adapt

Gladwell 95 (Malcolm, The New Republic, Excerpted in Epidemics: Opposing Viewpoints, p.
29, July 17, 1995)
In Plagues and Peoples, which appeared in 1977. William MeNeill pointed out thatwhile mans
efforts to remodel his environment are sometimes a source of new disease. They are seldom a
source of serious epidemic disease. Quite the opposite. As humans and new microorganisms
interact, they begin to accommodate each other. Human populations slowly build up resistance
to circulating infections. What were once virulent infections, such as syphilis become
attenuated. Over time, diseases of adults, such as measles and chicken pox, become limited to
children, whose immune systems are still nave.
ISIS Defense
 No ISIS Threat
ISIS is no longer a threat- its defeat is inevitable.
McKernan 6/28 (Bethan McKernan is a middle east reporter with the Independent McKernan, Bethan. Mosul Defeat Leaves Isis
unlikely to Survive Three Years after Declaring Caliphate in Iraq, Analysts say. The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media. 29
June 2017. Web. 08 July 2017. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-mosul-defeat-latest-iraw-caliphate-al-nuri-
mosque-extinction-survival-islamic-extremists-a7814866.html.)
Isis leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared the creation of an Islamic caliphate
In a sermon on 29 June 2014,
from Mosuls grand mosque after his forces swept across a third of Iraq from neighbouring Syria. Exactly three years later, Iraqi troops
have wrested the site of the 12th century building back from the jihadists. Even though its infamous black flag
was still flying from the minaret, Isis blew up al-Nuri last week in an attempt to rob the security forces of the symbolic victory. Nonetheless, the authorities were

keen to stress the importance of retaking the compound. Their fictitious state has fallen, military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya
Rasool told state TV. The footage of Iraqi soldiers clambering around the ruins are bittersweet for Mosuls long suffering residents, and militants left in the city are
Isis' leaders can no longer hide the fact their
intent on fighting to the death. But on the third anniversary since the city was conquered,
caliphate is crumbling away. Islamic State's project lies in ruins. To see just how bad things are going, Consider
that they even destroyed the historic mosque where Baghdadi first emerged to declare his
caliphate, Dr Shiraz Maher, deputy director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, told The Independent. New
analysis from IHS Markits Conflict Monitor shows that while at the height of its powers Isis controlled 90,800 square kilometres (56,421 square miles) of
territory, thanks to aggressive US-backed ground and air campaigns across both Syria and Iraq the organisations territory has shrunk by 60 per cent to an estimated
Isis average monthly revenue was
36,200 km (23,000 m). Territorial losses have added to financial woes: while in the second quarter of 2015
estimated to be $81m (63m), by the same period in 2017 it had fallen to $16m (12m) a reduction of 80 per cent. While Isis has
always relied heavily on excessive taxation, fines and often outright stealing from populations under its control never a reliable source of income its oil revenue is

also down 88 per cent, IHS Markit said. US-led coalition bombing has destroyed the once lucrative illicit
oll trade by targeting wells, refineries and pipelines, as well as Isis trucking routes to Turkey. The Islamic States rise and fall has
been characterised by rapid inflation, followed by steady decline, said Columb Strack, a senior Middle East analyst at
IHS Markit. Three years after the caliphate was declared, it is evident that the groups governance project has failed. By
the end of the year, [the quasi-state will be reduced to a] string of isolated urban areas that will eventually be
retaken over the course of 2018. Pressure is mounting on the group in every direction. The fall of Mosul
is dovetailing with the fight over the border for Raqqa, Isiss de facto Syrian capital, and the last Iraqi Isis pockets in Hawija, Tal Afar and al-Qaim are now in the
coalitions crosshairs.

ISIS is deadtheyve lost territory, fighters, money, and momentumno more

terror threat
Stoffel 7/3/17 (Derek Stoffel is the Middle East correspondent for CBC News. He has covered
the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, reported from Syria during the ongoing
civil war and covered the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. He has also worked throughout Europe
and the U.S., and reported on Canada's military mission in Afghanistan. The end is near for ISIS
in Iraq, but the country's problems will persist, CBC news, accessed 7-8,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/isis-mosul-defeat-stoffel-1.4188005)
When ISIS fighters blew up Mosul's grand mosque in June, where its leader famously proclaimed
the creation of a caliphate, the move was seen as an act of desperation by a group on its last
legs. Indeed, Iraqi officials were quick to declare their battle against the self-proclaimed Islamic State is over, with the country's
prime minister Haider al-Abadi writing on Twitter, "We are seeing the end of the fake Daesh state," using the Arabic acronym for
ISIS. Still, that prediction seems a bit premature, as Iraqi security forces continue to fight the jihadists in the narrow streets and
alleyways of Mosul's old city, where the black ISIS flag flew from the now destroyed al-Nuri mosque. ISIS
is 'clearly defeated'
But most analysts who study ISIS think the militants' run in Iraq is close to over, three years after
storming into Mosul and taking control of the country's second largest city. ISIS blows up historic Mosul
mosque where it declared caliphate, Iraqi military says Mosul civilians in 'grave danger' as ISIS resists Iraqi forces "I think ISIS is
clearly defeated, not only militarily but also psychologically and propagandisticly," said Ely Karmon, a senior
research scholar at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Israel's Interdisciplinary Centre. "We see that their propaganda material,
which was quite sophisticated, is less and less disseminated. We don't hear the leaders of ISIS on audio or video," Karmon told CBC
News. "They are in retreat." The fate of the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remains unclear.
Russia has twice said it is certain he was killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria in May, but no
evidence of his death has been made public. The military campaign to retake Mosul began just over eight months
ago and involved thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers, as well as members of Iranian-backed militias and Kurdish troops.
Swaths of the city are destroyed Their predicted victory will be bittersweet. Large
swaths of the city have been
destroyed by the military offensive, and hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled their
homes, with many still living in cramped and squalid conditions in the many camps for displaced people outside of Mosul. The
U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS reports that two million people have returned to their homes throughout Iraq. But many came back to
find houses in ruins with no access to basic services, such as running water and electricity. Still, there is a sense of elation in Mosul
that three years of living under stifling rules imposed by ISIS, sometimes with the threat of the punishment of death if broken, are
soon to be history. When Mosul is fully under the control of the Iraqi authorities again, it will perhaps offer the most tangible proof
of how the ISIS caliphate continues to crumble. ISIS territory and revenues shrink A
recent report from IHS Markit
Conflict Monitor shows at the height of its power in early 2015, the militants controlled 90,800
square kilometres of territory in Syria and Iraq. Now, IHS estimates that the land under its
control has shrunk by more than 60 per cent to 36,200 square kilometres. The analysis also
found ISIS in severe financial trouble, with monthly revenues down to $16 million in the second
quarter of this year, compared to $81 million in the the same period of 2015. ISIS relied on high rates of
taxation and fines levied against those under its rule. But much of the money it brought in came from oil sales,
and those revenues are down by 88 per cent, according to IHS. "The Islamic State's rise and fall
has been characterized by rapid inflation, followed by steady decline," said Columb Strack, senior Middle
East analyst at IHS Markit. "Three years after the 'caliphate' was declared, it is evident that the group's governance project has
failed." ISIS is also under heavy pressure in Syria, where American-backed Kurdish and Syrian
forces continue to battle for control of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital in the north of the country. There are
reports that the militants are stepping up suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians as ISIS comes under pressure. ISIS has
lost many of its fighters to the campaign of heavy airstrikes launched by the U.S.-led coalition
fighting the militants. In both Mosul and Raqqa, the coalition has been criticized for what monitoring groups say are high
levels of civilian deaths caused by the strikes.

The ISIS threat is overstated. Its blown up by news media and politicians to
make money and pass bills. Lone wolf terror is a greater threat.
Fumento 16 (Michael Fumento is an attorney, journalist, author, and veteran paratrooper
who has frequently written on both hysteria and terrorism. He currently lives in Colorado, July
22, 2016, Dont Overstate the Terrorist Threat , The American Conservative,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dont-overstate-the-terrorist-threat/) BA
So why do we insist on an ISIS connection? Start with the obvious: Everything we see is through the prism of the media,
and terror sells. The networks arent going to assemble expert panels to discuss random vehicular
homicide no matter how awful. You wont get a flood of articles and op-eds for months
afterward. By contrast, Omar Mateens killing of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando tapped into deep fears that extremists are lying in
wait to prey upon the West at home, as one publication put it, fears that [the] Islamic State fans at every available opportunity. Pinning the
blame on ISIS also helps us cope, because we want to believe that by hammering hard enough at
ISIS with airstrikes we can put an end to attacks by Muslims. Bombing is what we do best, after all. But as the ISIS
caliphate has shrunk, weve seen terror attacks increase. Seizing all of ISIS territory could weaken the organization and certainly would
liberate those under its monstrous yoke, but to believe we can destroy ISIS by doing this is folly. Safe territory facilitates terrorism; its not a requisite.
Further, good intel may stop a carefully planned, ISIS-organized attack. But short of a predicting murders with
psychics la Phillip K. Dicks novel Minority Report, its almost impossible to stop somebody who merely buys a
couple of weapons and walks into a nightclub, or who rents a large truck and figures out where
he can find the most people clustered together. Its very hard to stop a conspiracy of one. Giving
random acts meaning and purpose can also be politically handy. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz put it in a
headline, ISIS Claim of Nice Attack Solves Many Political Problems for the French. These include an end to calls to lift the extension of the state of
emergency initiated after the Paris attacks that allows the setting of curfews, forbidding of mass gatherings, and establishing of secure zones where
people can be monitored in public. It
also gives the police and security services power to search houses
without a warrant and confiscate even legal weapons.

Theres little risk of terror

Toppo 17
(Greg Toppo is USA Today's national K-12 education write, 9/21/17, Expert: Terrorism frightens
us 'far out of proportion' to actual risk, USA Today, 7/8/17,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/21/expert-terrorism-frightens-us-far-out-
proportion-actual-risk/90799184/) jbb
To help put the attacks in context, USA TODAYs Greg Toppo talked to Kurzman, a professor at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of several books on Islam, the Middle East and terrorism, including
the 2011 book The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists. Q: In 2016, how likely is it that an American will be killed by a terrorist, Muslim or non-Muslim? A: Fortunately, terrorism

has been very rare in the United States. Thus far in 2016, there have been three acts of violent
extremism by Muslim-Americans, by my count, resulting in 49 deaths, all of whom were killed in the shooting at a
nightclub in Orlando in June. This is the highest death toll from Islamic terrorism that the country has experienced since
2001. There is no comparable count of non-Muslim terrorism in the United States, but the total is also very low. Terrorism frightens people far out of
proportion to the actual number of victims indeed, that is its primary goal: to create a sense
of terror.

ISIS is literally fleeing Mosulweve already won

Straits Times 7/8/17 (Straits Times is a leading Singapore newspaper, Mosul victory
imminent, US says, as Iraqi forces celebrate accessed 7/8,
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/victory-over-isis-in-mosul-to-be-announced-in-
next-hours-iraqi-state-tv)
WASHINGTON (AFP) Iraq will announce imminently a final victory in the nearly nine-month offensive
to retake Mosul, a US general said on Saturday (July 8), as celebrations broke out among police forces in areas they control.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group seized Mosul in a lightning offensive on June 10,
2014 before sweeping across much of the countrys Sunni Arab heartland and proclaiming a
caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi forces launched their campaign to recapture Mosul in October, and
since then ISIS has gone from holding the entire city to being trapped between security forces and the Tigris River on its western
side. Backed by a ferocious aerial bombing campaign by a US-led international coalition, the offensive has turned much of the city to
rubble and forced tens of thousands of people to flee. Diehard
militants have been putting up fierce resistance
in recent days, but their efforts to keep Iraqi troops from sealing what will be ISIS' biggest defeat
yet look to be coming to an end. An announcement is imminent, Brigadier-General Robert Sofge told AFP
by phone. I dont want to speculate if its today or tomorrow but I think its going to be very soon, he added. The militants that
remain in Mosul are fighting to the death in a tiny area of just two blocks of the Old City next to the Tigris, Sofge
said, and
those that remain are desperate. FLEEING WITH SHAVEN HEADS AND BEARDS Some were trying to
blend in with fleeing civilians by shaving their beards and changing their clothes, others were playing dead then detonating explosive
vests as Iraqi forces close in. Women have blown themselves up amid throngs of displaced civilians. They are doing as much
damage as they can during these final moves, Sofge said. The battle for Mosul first began on Oct 17, 2016 and the fight grew
tougher when Iraqi forces entered the warren of narrow alleys in densely populated Old City. Slowing the advance toward the final
holdouts, IS have placed booby traps and bombs in structures they occupied. The enemy has strung IEDs (improvised explosive
devices) all over the place, in every place, in every closet, in one case under a crib, said Sofge. A
final victory in Mosul
would mark an epic milestone for the Iraqi security forces, who had crumbled in the face of an
ISIS onslaught across Iraq in 2014. CELEBRATION AND PRIDE They deserve every bit of a celebration and pride and
sense of accomplishment that a military force can feel, Sofge said, offering a congratulations in advance in a great battle. This
fight in Mosul is not like anything modern militaries have done in our life time. You have to go
back to World War II to find anything thats even close. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared on
Twitter late last month that we are seeing the end of the fake (ISIS) state. That claim came after Iraqi forces
retook what remained of Mosuls Great Mosque of al-Nuri and the adjacent Al-Hadba (The Hunchback) minaret. ISIS leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself caliph at the mosque in his only public appearance in 2014. But ISIS blew the two landmarks up
on June 22, in what Abadi said was an official declaration of defeat. In Mosul on Saturday, jubilant Iraqi interior ministry forces
whose mission has been declared over were seen flashing V-for-victory signs and posing for selfies in front of each other holding
up ISIS' notorious black flag upside down. But others were not celebrating as the fighting continued, and distraught women and
children emerged covered in dust and clutching what few belongings they could carry. One
group of militants tried to
escape across the Tigris from west Mosul but were killed by the Iraqi forces, a senior commander said on
Saturday. Some of them tried to cross to.... the far bank (of the river), but we have forces there, said Staff Lieutenant-General
Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior commander in Iraqs elite Counter-Terrorism Service. The militants wanted to go back, but security
forces fired on them and killed them, he said, without specifying how many died. Iraqs Joint Operations Command said 35 ISIS
members were killed and six captured when they tried to escape the advance of our forces in Mosuls Old City.

ISIS is no threat to the west

Wilkinson 17
(Will, International relations writer and foreign policy expert at Vox, May 3, 2017, Dont lose
sight of how strange and dangerous the Trump administrations anti-Islam worldview is, Vox,
Date Cut: 7/8/17, https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/3/15528360/islam-jihad-sharia-
trump-bannon-isis-radical)SB
The combined military budget of the nine biggest-spending Muslim-majority countries came to
about $186 billion in 2015. The United States alone more than tripled that, spending $596 billion
in 2015. And the NATO countries combined a good proxy for the West spent $892 billion.
Of course, most Muslim-dominant countries are friendly to the United States. The biggest
spenders Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iraq, and Algeria are all either
allies or friendly to the US and Europe. Turkey is in fact a member of NATO. Of Muslim countries,
only Pakistan has nuclear capabilities, and its weapons are aimed at India. Iran, the biggest
predominantly Muslim country officially hostile to the United States, spends less on its military
than Canada. The most populous Muslim-majority country in the world, Indonesia, maintains
close and friendly relations with the United States and spends just a little more than Mexico on
defense. Geopolitical power, hard and soft, is largely a function of economic strength. The
combined GDP of the 57 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is about
$7 trillion. Thats less than half the GDP of the United States alone. The European Unions GDP is
roughly the size of Americas. In sum, the combined economy of the US and the EU is nearly five
times larger than the combined economy of all Muslim-majority countries. But this is an
exceedingly silly exercise. It shows only that even if the entire Muslim world were hostile to the
United States, and unified in that hostility, it would not pose much of a threat. But how many
radical anti-US Muslims are there? Not many. Again, the vast majority of the worlds 1.7 billion
Muslims live in countries with which the US is friendly. None of this is to deny that
fundamentalist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS have basically declared war on the entire world.
Nor is it to deny that ISIS is a traveling horror show of deranged murder-cultists who rule
despotically over a sizable patch of territory. And it's certainly not to say that terrorists
animated by an extremist version of Islam don't kill plenty of people, and will continue to
some Americans included. It's just to say that from the perspective of empirically grounded risk
assessment, this barely ranks as a minor threat to American or Western life and limb. The threat
to European or American civilization is zilch. ISIS came to life because the American invasion of
Iraq and Afghanistan weakened those states and destabilized the region, making it possible to
conquer some territory with motivated troops and a bunch of Ford F-150s mounted with
machine guns and rocket launchers. ISIS doesnt have tank brigades, doesnt have a navy,
doesnt have an air force, and is not going to get much further than its gotten. ISIS poses a
terrifying existential threat to people in bits of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but that's it. The
threat the group poses to anybody else is sporadic terrorism, which is the weapon of choice
when you don't have real geopolitical power. An American is more likely to die from a lightning
strike than an act of terrorism committed by a Muslim and that estimate takes into account
the 3,000 deaths on 9/11. You might argue that Americans are more likely to die beneath a
toppled bookshelf than in a jihadists suicide attack because of aggressive anti-terror policies.
Im not so sure about that. Americas war on terror produced the regional destabilization that
allowed ISIS to get a footing. In any case, if it is truly the case that the risk of death by Islamic
terrorism can be reduced to approximately zero through official anti-terror zeal, that suggests
the threat is manageable indeed, that it is being managed.
 No ISIS Threat Funding
ISIS has no money
AP 17
(Associated Press, 2/17/17, ISIS is going broke, New York Post, 7/8/17,
http://nypost.com/2017/02/17/isis-is-going-broke/) jbb
The Islamic State group is hemorrhaging money with every piece of territory it loses, according
to a new analysis that found that the groups business model is on the path to failure. The
analysis released Saturday by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and
Political Violence and the accounting firm EY found that the self-proclaimed caliphates financial
resources have been drained substantially since the days beginning in mid-2014 when it captured banks, oil wells and entire warehouses of weapons as it amassed land. The
report found that Islamic State revenue has declined from up to $1.9 billion in 2014 to at most
$870 million in 2016. One of the mistakes thats been made in the past when we were talking about Islamic State was talking about it purely as a terrorist organization. It is a terrorist
organization but it is more than that. It holds territory, said Peter Neumann, director of the center at Kings College London. That also means it has a lot more expenses. It needs to fix

roads. It needs to pay teachers. It needs to run health services. It needs to pay for these things
that al-Qaida never had to.

ISIS losing territory and income

Riley 17
(Charles. Europe Digital Editor for CNNMoney. CNNMoney.com is a financial news and
information website, operated by the CNN division of Time Warner. The website was originally
formed as a joint venture between CNN and Time Warner's Fortune and Money magazines.
Since the spin-off of Time Warner's publishing assets, CNNMoney now operates as a subsidiary
of CNN.com and is no longer tied to these magazines. ISIS is losing Mosul and most of its
income 6/29/2017 http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/29/news/isis-finances-territory/index.html
DOA: 7/8/2017 QM)
ISIS is in retreat and its sources of income are drying up. Analysts and security experts at IHS
Markit estimate that the terror group's earnings have plunged by 80% over the past two years
as territorial losses starved it of oil and tax revenue. ISIS brought in $16 million per month in the
second quarter of 2017, a sharp decline from $81 million a month during the same period in
2015, according to IHS Markit's Conflict Monitor, which draws on interviews, Islamic State
documents, the United Nations, and Syrian opposition sources. The report underscores just how
much has changed for a group that became the world's richest terrorist organization by taxing
the people in its territory, selling oil on the black market, smuggling stolen archeological
artifacts and demanding kidnapping ransoms. "Territorial losses are the main factor contributing
to the Islamic State's loss of revenue," Ludovico Carlino, senior Middle East analyst at IHS
Markit, said in a statement. The analysts said that average monthly oil revenue is down 88%
from 2015, while income from taxation and confiscation has fallen by 79%. Three years since the
group declared a self-styled Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is reeling from losses across its
so-called caliphate. Related: As Iraqi troops near, ISIS leaves death and destruction in Mosul It is
fast losing its grip on Mosul, its biggest hub in Iraq, and its de-facto capital in Syria -- Raqqa -- is
all but surrounded. IHS Markit estimated that ISIS has lost 60% of its land since January 2015,
with its holdings now reduced to a territory the size of Belgium. "Losing control of the heavily
populated Iraqi city of Mosul, and oil rich areas in the Syrian provinces of Raqqa and Homs, has
had a particularly significant impact on the group's ability to generate revenue," said Carlino.
 No ISIS Threat AT Recruitment
Losses in Syria make it harder for ISIS to recruit
Cockburn 17
(Patrick Cockburn is an award-winning writer on The Independent who specialises in analysis of
Iraq, Syria and wars in the Middle East, 3/24/17, Isis's losses in Syria and Iraq will make it
harder for it to recruit another Khalid Masood, Independent, 7/8/17,
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/khalid-masood-westminster-attack-isis-syria-iraq-hard-
to-recruit-a7647856.html) jbb
Objectively speaking, the hazard posed by terrorism to the United States is popularly perceived to be far

more dangerous than it actually is. Regardless of the statistics and facts, public fears persist at high levels, impelling political posturing and irresponsible policymaking. Even
including the 9/ 11 attacks (which proved to be an aberration, not a harbinger), an Americans chance of being killed within the United States by a terrorist of any motivation over the last few decades is about one

an Americans chance of being

in four million per year. For industrial accidents, its one in 53,000, homicides, one in 22,000, auto accidents, one in 8,200. Since 9/11,

killed by an Islamist terrorist is about one in 40 million per year. There was great alarm, of course, in the wake of 9/11, when the
intelligence community was certain that an even more destructive second-wave attack was imminent and when it informed reporters that between 2,000 and 5,000 trained al-Qaeda operatives were on the
loose in the United States. In the ensuing 15 years, not only has no second wave taken place, and not only did those thousands of trained operatives never materialize, but al-Qaeda has singularly failed to
successfully execute an attack in the United States. True, there have been several dozen disconnected plots by homegrown would-be Islamist terrorists in the United States since 9/11, some of them inspired by al-
Qaeda. However, few of them have been successful. Even those tragic few that have resulted in violence have caused limited damage in totalon average, some seven deaths per year. Most of the plots have
been disrupted, but even if they had been able to proceed further, it seems clear that most of the plotters were pathetic. When these cases areexamined, the vast majority of the offenders turn out to have been
naive, amateurish, inept, and gullible. Their schemes, when unaided by facilitating FBI infiltrators, have been incoherent and clumsy, their capacity to accumulate weaponry rudimentary, and their organizational
skills close to non-existent. The judge at one trial described the antics of one plot leader as buffoonery that was positively Shakespearean in its scope. It is a characterization that could be applied much more

The new demon group is the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also called ISIS).
broadly.

Alarmed exaggeration is again both rampant and unwise. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has insisted that the threat ISIS poses cannot be overstated
effectively proclaiming hyperbole on the subject to be impossible. And Sen. Jim Inhofe, born before World War II, has claimedthat were in the most dangerous position weve ever been in and that ISIL is

Outrage over the tactics of ISIL is certainly justified, as is concern about the menace it
rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city.

But fears over the danger the group poses to domestic security in the United States
presents in the Middle East.

have been overblown to unjustified proportions to the detriment of our politics. ISIL does not
deserve as much credit for great military prowess as many people are willing to grant them. The
groups ability to behead defenseless hostages certainly should not justify the pervasive fear of terrorism afflicting so many Americans. The unique circumstances that contributed to its most important military
advance, the conquest of the city of Mosul in Iraq in 2014, are unlikely to be repeated. ISILs original idea was to hold part of the city for a while in an effort, it seems, to free some prisoners. The defending Iraqi
Army, trained by the American military at enormous cost to U.S. taxpayers, simply fell apart, abandoning both its weaponry and the cityitself to the tiny group of seeming invaders. After its fortuitous advances of
2014, the vicious groups momentum has been substantially halted and reversed. It has alienated just about everybody, and, on close examination, its once highly vaunted economic capacity particularly of the
smuggling of oil and antiquities may end up proving to be as illusory as its military prowess. It has cut pay for its fighters in half, and it has to work hard to keep people from fleeing its lumpen caliphate. This
degradation will likely continue. ISIL has two avenues by which it might be able to inflict damage within the United States. The first is from militants who have gone to fight with the group and then sent back to do

very little of that has occurred so far, and it is far more likely to happen in Europe than
damage. However,

in the United States. The second avenue involves the possibility that potential homegrown terrorists will become inspired by ISIL propaganda or example. The group has
and will surely continue to take credit for mayhem caused by people with little or nothing to do
with it. ISIL could still provide inspiration to death cult sycophants in the United States and
elsewhere, but this is likely to decline as the groups military progress in the Middle East, once
so exhilarating to would-be jihadists, is stifled. There are signs this process is already well under
way. In 2015, there were 14 ISIL-inspired plots in the United States. Thus far in 2016, there have been but two. And there has been
a pronounced decline in the number of Americans seeking to go abroad to join the group. There has also
been a trendy concern about the way ISIL recruits using social media. However, as several analysts have pointed out, the foolish willingness of would-be terrorists to spill their aspirations and their often childish
fantasies on social media has been, on balance, much to the advantage of the law enforcement officials seeking to track them.
 No ISIS Threat Airstrikes
No Threat airstrikes have dismantled the organization
Ackerman and Rasmussen, 17
(Spencer and Sune, correspondents in both the U.S and Kabul, April 14th 2017, 36 Isis militants
killed in US 'mother of all bombs' attack, Afghan ministry says, Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/13/us-military-drops-non-nuclear-bomb-
afghanistan-islamic-state 7/8/17, ) ML
Up to 36 suspected Islamic State militants were killed in Afghanistan when the US dropped the
largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat, the Afghan defence ministry said on Friday. To
target what the military described as a tunnel complex used by the Isiss Afghanistan affiliate, the US for the
first time used what the military colloquially calls the mother of all bombs, the GBU-43/B. Dawlat Waziri, an Afghan ministry
spokesman said of Thursdays strike: No civilian has been hurt and only the base, which Daesh used to launch attacks in other parts
of the province, was destroyed. Designed for destroying underground targets but not itself a deep-earth penetrator weapon, the
GBU-43/B has the explosive yield of more than 11 tons of TNT. The massive bomb is dropped from air force planes and detonates
before reaching the ground, resulting in an enormous blast radius. Only the Massive Ordnance Penetrator GBU-57, which has never
been used in war, is a larger conventional weapon. The psychological effect on survivors or observers is considered an added impact
of the weapon. Asked whether he had authorized the bombing, Donald Trump said: Everybody
knows exactly what
happened. What I do is I authorize my military. We have the greatest military in the world and
theyve done a job as usual. We have given them total authorization and thats what theyre
doing and frankly thats why theyve been so successful lately. Did this bombing send a message to North
Korea? I dont know if this sends a message; it doesnt make any difference if it does or not, the president said. North Korea is a
problem, the problem will be taken care of. He implied that China was working very hard on this issue. Army Gen John W
Nicholson, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement that the GBU-43/B
was the right munition to use against the Islamic State in Khorosan, or Isis-K. As Isis-Ks losses
have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense. This is the
right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against
Isis-K, Nicholson said. The blast detonated at 7.32pm local time in the Achin district of the eastern province of Nangarhar,
according to the US military. Advertisement Sarab, a local resident from Asadkhel in Achin, close to the mountain where the
bomb targeted Isis tunnels, said he saw a giant flame before the blast made the ground shake. It was the biggest blast I have ever
heard, he said. Sarab added that the targeted area had recently been completely occupied by Isis fighters. There is no way that
civilians were still living there, he said. a parliamentarian from Nangarhar, Esmatullah Shinwari, said locals had told him one teacher
and his young son had been killed. One man, the MP recounted, had told him before the phone lines went down: I have grown up
in the war, and I have heard different kinds of explosions through 30 years: suicide attacks, earthquakes different kinds of blasts. I
have never heard anything like this. Phone connections are regularly interrupted in Achin and there were no immediate indication
of casualties. Haji Ghalib Mujahed, a local veteran commander, said he felt tremors all the way to Bati Kot, a neighbouring district
where he is now the administrative chief. According to the most recent estimates from the US military in Afghanistan, there are
between 600 and 800 Isis-K fighters in the country. Most of them are based in southern Nangarhar province, including in Achin. An
American special forces soldier was killed last week in Achin while fighting Isis-K, but a US military spokesman in Kabul, Capt William
Salvin, said there was absolutely no connection between that death and Thursdays bombing. Nicholsons command said it took
every precaution to avoid civilian casualties, without defining those steps, but gave no word on the impact to Afghan civilians.
The military said it used the GBU-43/B to minimize the risk to Afghan and US forces fighting
Isis-K in Achin. Following the bombing, US and Afghan forces began clearing operations in the
targeted area. An Afghan army soldier told the Guardian, as he was driving toward the targeted
area: The explosion felt like a big earthquake, even in the surrounding districts. Why are liberals now cheerleading a
warmongering Trump? Owen Jones Read more Trump has said practically nothing about Afghanistan, either as candidate or
president. Nicholson told Congress in February that he wanted a few thousand more troops to bolster the 8,400-strong force
Barack Obama left to wage Americas longest war, now in its 16th year. Advertisement Trump on Wednesday said he would dispatch
his national security adviser, HR McMaster, to meet with Nicholson and conduct a policy review. As a three-star army general on
active duty, McMaster is outranked by Nicholson, making it difficult for McMaster to resist Nicholsons recommendations. The US
military is currently facing widespread concerns that its accelerated bombing campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Yemen are increasing
civilian casualties. A 17 March strike on a building in Mosul is currently under investigation after killing scores of Iraqis. US allies have
also felt the brunt of escalated US airstrikes. On Thursday, the Pentagon revealed that its Syrian allies in a Kurdish-led ground force,
the Syrian Democratic Forces, requested an airstrike on an errant position erroneously believed to be held by Isis. The 11 April strike
killed 18 fighters belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces themselves. Air Force statistics released on Thursday show that
March 2017 was the most intense month of the US-led bombing campaign against Isis in Iraq
and Syria, a war nearly three years old. US warplanes fired 3,878 munitions in March, topping
January 2017s previous high of 3,600. In Afghanistan, US warplanes fired 203 weapons in
March, the highest volume since October. Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan installed in 2001 by the
US and backed by the international community, tweeted that the bombing meant Afghans needed to stop the USA. Trump
said on the campaign trail that he would bomb the shit out of Isis. Advertisement His spokesman, Sean Spicer, said on Thursday
the use of the GBU-43/B showed the US takes the fight against Isis very seriously and in order to defeat the group we must deny
them operational space, which we did . Describing the bombing at his regular White House press briefing, he told reporters: At
around 7pm local time in Afghanistan last night the United States military used a GBU-43 weapon in Afghanistan. The
GBU-43 is
a large, powerful and accurately delivered weapon. We targeted a system of tunnels and caves
that Isis fighters used to move around freely, making it easier for them to target US military
advisers and Afghan forces in the area. He refused to answer further questions about the bomb at his regular press
briefing, referring journalists to the Department of Defense. Additional reporting by David Smith in Washington

U.S strikes against ISIS are effective and at an all time high
D.O.D, 5/27
(Department of defense , May 27th 2017, U.S., Coalition Continue Strikes Against ISIS in Syria,
Iraq, D.O.D, https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1196009/us-coalition-continue-
strikes-against-isis-in-syria-iraq/, 7/8/17) ML

Coalition military forces conducted 18 strikes against ISIS targets in Syria: -- Near Abu Kamal, a strike
engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle. -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, four strikes destroyed four ISIS well heads and an ISIS
boat. -- Near Raqqa, 12 strikes engaged
11 ISIS tactical units and destroyed seven vehicles, five fighting
positions, three tunnels, an ISIS headquarters and an ISIS staging area. -- Near Abu Kamal, Syria,
a strike destroyed an ISIS media center. Also on May 23 near Raqqa, two strikes destroyed three
command and control nodes. On May 24, also near Raqqa, four strikes engaged an ISIS tactical
unit and destroyed six fighting positions, a mortar system and a vehicle. Strikes in Iraq Coalition
military forces conducted eight strikes against ISIS targets in Iraq, coordinated with and in
support of the Iraqi government: -- Near Rutbah, a strike destroyed a bunker. -- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed a mortar
system and an ISIS storage container. -- Near Mosul, two strikes damaged 19 ISIS supply routes and destroyed a vehicle bomb. --
Near Rawah, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an observation post. -- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIS
media center. -- Near Qaim, two strikes destroyed two ISIS media centers. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve These
strikes
were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIS
terrorist group and the threat it poses to Iraq, Syria, the region and the wider international
community. The destruction of targets in Syria and Iraq further limits ISIS' ability to project
terror and conduct operations, officials said. The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber,
rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned
targets, officials noted. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike,
they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same
geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For
example, task force officials explained, a single
aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is a strike, but so is multiple aircraft
delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a
compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike
assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said. The task force does not report the number or type of
aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points
against a target.
 No ISIS Threat Global Coalition
Global coalition is very effective against ISIS
D.O.S, 17
( Department of state, March 22nd 2017, The Global Coalition - Working to Defeat ISIS, D.O.S,
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/03/268609.htm, 7/8/17)ML

Since its formation in 2014, the Global Coalition has worked diligently to reduce the threat ISIS
poses to international security and our homelands. Coalition members are united in common
cause to defeat ISIS through a robust approach, including working by, with, and through local
partners for military operations; supporting the stabilization of territory liberated from ISIS; and,
enhancing international cooperation against ISIS global objectives through information sharing,
law enforcement cooperation, severing ISIS financing, countering violent extremist recruitment,
and neutralizing ISIS' narrative. The Coalition is also engaged in broad-based civilian efforts to
provide humanitarian aid to communities suffering from displacement and conflict, and
supporting stabilization efforts in territory liberated from ISIS. The Coalitions combined efforts
have diminished ISIS military capability, territorial gains, leadership, financial resources, and on-
line influence. The 68-member Global Coalition is the largest international coalition in history. It
is a diverse group, in which each member makes unique contributions to a robust civilian and
military effort. THE MILITARY CAMPAIGN Twenty-three Coalition partners have over 9,000
troops in Iraq and Syria in support of the effort to defeat ISIS. Working by, with, and through our
local partners, the Coalition has made significant progress in denying ISIS safe haven and
building the military capacity of those engaged in direct action against ISIS. Coalition operations
have liberated 62 percent of the terrain ISIS once controlled in Iraq and 30 percent in Syria,
including key cities in both countries. The number of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria is at its lowest
level since the group declared its caliphate, down by more than half since its peak in 2014.
Coalition air assets have conducted more than 19,000 strikes on ISIS targets, removing tens of
thousands ISIS fighters from the battlefield and killing over 180 senior to mid-level ISIS leaders,
including nearly all of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's deputies, his so-called ministers of war,
information, finance, oil and gas, and his chief of external operations. Beyond fighters, these
precision airstrikes are targeting ISIS external attack plotters, military commanders,
administrative officials, facilitators, and communicators, as well as its energy assets, command
and control facilities, and bulk cash storage facilities. The Coalition has supported our Iraqi
partners to achieve significant progress in the fight to retake Mosul. Iraqi Security Forces
officially liberated eastern Mosul on January 24, 2017 and now are making significant territorial
gains in the western portion of the city. To date, Coalition efforts have trained nearly 90,000
Iraqi Security Forces members, including Iraqi Army soldiers, Counterterrorism Services soldiers,
Kurdish Peshmerga, federal police and border security soldiers, and tribal volunteers. Coalition
members have also donated some 8,200 tons of military equipment to our Iraqi and local Syrian
partners in the fight against ISIS. With the support of the Coalition, our Syrian partners have
liberated over 14,000 square kilometers of terrain in Syria, including more than 7,400 square
kilometers of territory since isolation operations around Raqqa began on November 5. We are
now pressuring ISIS in Raqqa, its external operations headquarters, from where ISIS is plotting
against Coalition member interests around the globe. Turkish-led and Coalition-supported
operations have also cleared more than 2,000 square kilometers of territory, including removing
ISIS off the remainder of the Turkey-Syria border, cutting off a critical transit route for foreign
fighters to Europe. As part of these efforts in Syria, the Coalition has helped train thousands of
Syrians who have joined the fight to defeat ISIS
 No ISIS Threat - AT Nukes
ISIS cant steal nukescountries keep them locked away
Nesbit 4/18/16 (Jeff Nesbit was the National Science Foundation's director of legislative and
public affairs in the Bush and Obama administrations; former Vice President Dan Quayle's
communications director; the FDA's public affairs chief; and a national journalist with Knight-
Ridder and others. He's the executive director of Climate Nexus and the author of more than 24
books. His next book, "Poison Tea" with Thomas Dunne Books at Macmillan (April 5), chronicles
the secretive, 20-year alliance between the world's largest private oil company and the planet's
largest tobacco companies to systematically build the Tea Party movement. Could the Islamic
State Group Get a Nuclear Weapon? US News, accessed 7.8,
https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/articles/2016-04-18/could-the-islamic-state-
group-get-a-nuclear-weapon)
Is nuclear terrorism now a real threat? It's a question that security experts and think tanks alike are asking in earnest in the wake of the Paris and
Brussels bombings carried out by suicide bombers connected to the Islamic State, or ISIS. "Paris was a warning," reads the forward to the latest issue of
Islamic State group's propaganda magazine, Dabiq. "Brussels was a reminder. What is yet to
come will be more devastating and more bitter by the permission of Allah." Experts wonder whether the
Islamic State group could legitimately secure the elements needed to carry out an act of nuclear terrorism. The jihadist group clearly has the means,
and the ability, to carry out conventional weapons attacks outside the Syrian conflict. It may be planning more such attacks in Europe, say counter-
terrorism experts. "Other Islamic State cells are highly likely to be in existence across Western Europe, preparing and organizing further operations, and
awaiting direction from the group's central leadership to execute," Matthew Henman, the head of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center in
London, told the New York Times. But
bombs that explode and kill dozens of innocent bystanders are one
thing. An act of nuclear terrorism, even with a dirty bomb, is something entirely different. First the
good news: The world has made considerable progress in the past few years on efforts to secure
vulnerable nuclear weapons-usable material, according to a recent special report on nuclear terrorism in the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists. There is a lot less of this material available. "More than half of the countries 30 of 57
that have had weapons-usable nuclear material on their soil eliminated it, in nearly all cases with U.S.
help," academic researchers Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, Nickolas Roth and William Tobey wrote in their special report for the Bulletin.
"Securityfor nuclear weapons and materials at scores of sites around the world has been
dramatically improved. Essentially every country that still has nuclear weapons or weapons-
usable nuclear materials has tightened its security requirements over the past two decades."

ISIS cant build a bomb experts agree

Ewen 5/23
MacAskill, Ewen, and Nick Hopkins. "Bomb-making guides are online, but getting them to work is not easy | Ewen MacAskill and Nick Hopkins." The
Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 23 May 2017. Web. 08 July 2017. <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/23/bomb-making-guides-
are-online-but-getting-them-to-work-is-not-easy>.
Security specialists agree it is easy to find step-by-step instructions on the internet on how to make a bomb in a kitchen using
ingredients easily available on most high streets. But there is no such agreement on how easy it is to build a bomb that will detonate
at the time of the killers choosing. The intelligence agencies are scouring records to see whether Salman Abedi looked on the
internet for details on how to build a bomb. Information is openly available online in spite of regular police attempts, in cooperation
with internet companies, to close them down. The Guardian has seen a 30-slide guide about how to build a bomb posted on
Facebook. Although it was removed by moderators, it had been on the site for some time - and reappeared again weeks later. While
sophisticated explosives such as Semtex are difficult to come by, would-be terrorists have long relied on
more household materials such as certain fertilisers which can be ground down into a fine powder that is highly combustible or even
certain hair products. Al-Qaida first published details of how to build a bomb in a kitchen in 2010 and Isis
has since followed suit, with step-by-step guides published online. The Al-Qaida, Isis and other plans are designed to be
simple to follow. But Raffaello Pantucci, a counter-terrorism expert at the Royal United Service Institute thinktank based in
London, says it is as not as easy as it seems and some degree of expertise is required. You need to look
back at the history of bomb attempts in Britain to see it is littered with people who failed, Pantucci
said. To make a bomb you have to have confidence it will go off and to go off when you want it to requires a certain
degree of training and practice. He said that even those trained overseas in places such as Pakistan had seen their
bombs fail to go off. Until police have solid evidence that Abedi made the bomb himself, they have to keep looking in case
there were associates who provided him with a bomb or showed him how to make it. The government has tried to make it harder
over the last few years to buy the household or gardening ingredients, including asking sellers to inform the police of anything
suspicious.
 No ISIS Threat AT CBW Attacks
No impact too hard to make and deploy
Price 16 (Brian K, 20 year military vet, "Why dont terrorist organisations use chemical or bio-
weapons instead of bombs?", 12/13/16, Accessed 7/8/17, https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-
terrorist-organisations-use-chemical-or-bio-weapons-instead-of-bombs) SS
As others have already pointed out, developing a chemical or biological weapon is extremely difficult . It

takes experts in those fields as well as suitable facilities for their development. It also takes considerable time and
money.
The most successful to date was Aum Shinrikyo who actively recruited scientists with this type of know how. These
scientist did not leave their jobs to hang out in Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. They remained in their laboratories in Japan. Which
means they had access to some of the most advanced scientific equipment available. With this know how and access, they were able
to produce Sarin to attack the Tokyo subway. In
a confined space with a large number of people, practically
the ideal location for the use of chemical weapons, they killed all of 12 people and seriously injured 50
more.
For comparison, the average suicide bomber kills 10 people. Very often they kill more . A truck
bomb can kill hundreds of people.
And thats with technology and know how that is about the high school level. Anybody can trigger a suicide vest.
Almost anyone can build one.
Which isnt to say that other terrorist groups havent attempted to build chemical and/or biological weapons of their own. Most
groups consider the psychological impact of the weapons of far greater importance than the practical impacts. So even if you kill less
people than you would with an IED, the resultant terror (and press coverage) would be substantial. Al Qaedas Pursuit of
Weapons of Mass Destruction
When the US invaded Afghanistan, it found AQs attempts at developing Anthrax and Ricin. They found animals and empty cages
and the found videos showing their experimentation. The Indonesian terrorist Hambali was one of their leaders in this effort and
they also recruited
several scientists (mostly graduate students) to develop these weapons. While they had
some very minor successes, they could never produce to the level required for actual
employment. (Afghanistan, especially under Taliban rule, was about the worst place to attempt any type of scientific endeavor.
This is why chemical factories in other countries, such as the Sudan, get bombed or why the WMD threat in Iraq was considered such
a threat.)
ISIL attempted to get around this problem by using a far simple chemical for its weapons, chlorine. Chlorine bombings in Iraq (back
when they were still AQI) and Islamic State 'using chlorine gas' in Iraq roadside bombs - BBC News
This has nothing to do with an ethical limitation on what terrorists will use and everything to do with how difficult it is to produce
compared to how useful it actually is. In the end, explosives
are easier to get (or manufacture), they are easier
to employ, and they kill more people than chemical or biological weapons with considerably less
risk of the weapon causing literal blow back.

ISIS doesnt have the capabilities to deploy a CBW Attack

Johnson 6/14/17 (Natalie, Bachelors in PoliSci and Journalism, ISIS Weapons Capabilities
Significantly Degraded in Iraq Stronghold, http://freebeacon.com/issues/isis-weapons-
capabilities-significantly-degraded-iraq-stronghold/, date accessed 7/8/2017) am
American-led coalition forces have severely degraded the Islamic State's weapons capabilities in
West Mosul, leaving the terrorist group reliant on small arms and human shields to conduct counterattacks, a senior U.S.
general operating in Mosul said Wednesday. Maj. Gen. Joseph Martin, the commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq, said Iraqi
Security Forces and U.S-led partner troops have stripped ISIS of their larger weapons capabilities,
including suicide-born improvised explosive devices (IEDs), drone platforms, and indirect fighter platforms. The number of ISIS
fighters left in Mosul has also dropped significantly, with fewer than 1,000 militants believed to be remaining in the city versus an
estimated 8,000 eight months ago. "They're basically fighting now with rifles, machine guns, snipers, and of course the endless or
limitless exploitation of the human element in Mosul," Martin told reporters during a Pentagon briefing streaming from Baghdad.
"Those are their weapons right now, that's all they've got left." Martin also said ISIS's attempts to develop chemical
weapons has proved "insignificant operationally." He said the Iraqi, U.S., and partner forces are
equipped with the necessary protection equipment and are adequately trained on how to counter
chemical weapons should they confront them. ISIS has seen its chemical weapons capabilities severely
decline over the past year in Iraq and Syria, according to a report published Tuesday. The reduction of chemical attacks carried
out by ISIS in Syria is due in large part to the U.S.-led operation in Mosul, where the terrorist group maintains its sole chemical
weapons cell, according to analysts with London-based defense consultancy IHS Markit, which authored the report. Though there
have been nine chemical incidents in Iraq since January, U.S. military officials have said the attacks have little impact on the
battlefield. Martin said he could not offer a timeline on when the operation in West Mosul would be complete, but said the collapse
of ISIS control there was "inevitable." "They're surroundedthey've got no way out," he said. "It's a matter of time till we'll be down
to zero [ISIS fighters] in West Mosul." U.S.-led coalition forces launched operations to retake Mosul from ISIS militants in October.
Iraqi forces retook Eastern Mosul in January, and life has moved toward a sense of normalcy with the return of residents and
businesses. ISIS still maintains strongholds in cities west of Mosul and along the Euphrates River. Martin said coalition forces would
move to liberate those areas once West Mosul is recaptured, but declined to offer a timeframe.

No CBW impact weak tech and empirics prove no escalation

Windrem and Connor 15 (Robert, American Studies MA @ Seton Hall, and Tracy, "Could
ISIS Strike the West With Chemical Weapons?", 11/19/15, Accessed 7/8/17,
www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/could-isis-strike-west-chemical-weapons-n466431) SS
France's prime minister has raised the terrifying specter of ISIS carrying out chemical or biological weapons attacks on the West, but
international investigators have so far confirmed only a single use of mustard gas by the terror
gang in the Middle East.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which enforces a global treaty, announced earlier this month that it had
determined with "utmost confidence" that a "non-state actor" used the outlawed agent outside Aleppo, Syria, in August, likely killing
a baby.
U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News that ISIS was the non-state actor. The OPCW is continuing to investigate other suspected
uses of chemical weapons by ISIS.
ISIS trackers say its current arsenal includes weapons that are easily scavenged: mustard gas in Syria, which stockpiled hundreds of
tons before agreeing to dispose of it two years ago, and chlorine that could be obtained from any water treatment facility in
territory it has seized.
That seemed to be confirmed in a Tumblr post in August by high-profile ISIS fighter Israfil Yilmaz.
"Its only acceptable when the regime or any other group uses chemical warfare against us?" he wrote.
"The regime uses chemical warfare on a regular basis these days, and nobody bats an eye yet when IS
captures it from them and uses it against them its all of a sudden a huge problem?
"Fight them the way they fight you."
The Associated Press reported Thursday that Iraqi and American intelligence officials believe ISIS is hell-bent on ramping up a
chemical weapons program with help of scientists in the territory that forms its so-called caliphate.
An Iraqi politician, citing intelligence reports, told the AP that ISIS has recruited chemical experts Chechnya, Southeast Asia and Iraq,
including some who once worked for Saddam Hussein. NBC News has not been able to confirm that assessment.
It's a nightmare scenario, as illustrated by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls' warning to Parliament that bullets and bombs could
be replaced by something less tangible but just as deadly.
"We must not rule anything out," Valls said.
But intelligence officials in Washington caution that intent is a far cry from capability ,
particularly when it comes to more sophisticated weapons like nerve gas.
"We know they are pursuing chemical weapons, but we haven't seen anything beyond mustard
and chlorine," said Patrick Martin, an Iraq expert with the Institute for the Study of War, a
military research think tank in Washington.
He said that even with mustard gas, the damage has been limited because it's essentially just
added to warheads and mortars.
"They don't deploy it on wide scales," Martin said. "Their delivery systems aren't that
sophisticated."
Solvency
ESAs Dont Solve
 No Solvency wont participate
School choice programs are unpopular among military families. They prefer
public schools.
Strauss 4/4 (Valerie, Education reporter for Washington Post, April 4, 2017, At Fort Bragg,
DeVos talks up school vouchers for military families. Not everybody is thrilled, The Washington
Post, Accessed June 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2017/04/04/at-fort-bragg-devos-talks-up-school-vouchers-for-military-families-not-
everybody-is-thrilled/?utm_term=.cbe4c7fb7042) BA
The Fayetteville Observer quoted DeVos as saying that the Trump administration is looking at
policies that would give military families flexibility in choosing a high school for their children: I
think there are a number of opportunities first of all to really support the implementation of the (DOD schools) curriculum that are transferrable from base to base, school to
school. I heard from parents and educators alike how important that is when a child moves from school to school to be able to know they can transition well. Ive also heard a bit
more about the challenge when, particularly students at this base, experience when they go into high school they go to a variety of area schools that not necessarily all of them
work for every child, and so looking at policies that would perhaps empower parents to be able to choose the right setting for their child. Sen. Tim Scott has some legislation
introduced in that regard and well be looking at supporting policies like that. Scott (R-S.C.) has introduced a bill in the Senate called the Creating Hope and Opportunity for
Individuals and Communities through Education (CHOICE) Act, which would fund, among other things, vouchers for students who live on U.S. military bases, as well students
with disabilities and those from low-income families. Those vouchers would permit families to use them for tuition and other fees at private schools. The bill would fund up to
$8,000 annually for elementary school and up to $12,000 for high school. The Observer quoted Hampton PTA President Jennifer
Hamner as saying that the consensus of parents at Fort Bragg was that they liked the Defense
Department schools on the military base and want a high school to be added. She said Its concerning the
difference in standards. I feel like public, private and charter schools need to be playing by the same rules. I think a lot of it is, were pretty
happy with and making sure the public system is up to snuff for our military children. The
National Association of Federally Impacted Schools and a subgroup called the Military Impacted
Schools Association issued a statement expressing strong concerns about DeVoss comments,
saying that military families want more investment in public schools, not vouchers. Kyle Fairbairn,
executive director of the Military Impacted Schools Association said: Rather than distributing
scarce resources in the form of a new voucher program, the Federal Government should be
making good on its obligation to all federally impacted school districts. The CHOICE Act would set
back education for military-connected students, period. Hilary Goldmann, executive director of the National Association of Federally
Impacted Schools, said: On the first week of the Month of the Military Child, NAFIS believes Secretary DeVos should be focused on

investing in public schools those in which the majority of military-connected children attend
instead of praising a bill that would drain dollars away from those schools. The CHOICE Act fails to
recognize the fact that public school districts that educate military connected students, including
Blue Ribbon Schools, are devoted to and successful in meeting the academic and emotional
needs of this unique student body. Supporting military families and the unique needs of military-connected students is a top priority for public
school districts and states. For example, the Military Interstate Childrens Compact, that has been adopted by all 50 states and Washington, D.C., addresses educational
transition challenges encountered by military families including enrollment, placement, attendance, eligibility and graduation. The Compact only applies to public schools.
Impact Aid is the Federal governments tax payment for educating military-connected students attending public schools around the country. The program is funded at less than
60 percent of the need formula established in law. NAFIS is concerned about the consequences a voucher program would have on the Impact Aid program and the tax burden on
residents in federally impacted communities.
 No solvency open enrollment
Lack of open enrollment policies prevents aff solvency. Establishing an open
enrollment policy would solve.
Vergakis 1/24 (Brock, Reporter for Pilot Online, January 24, 2017, Lack of quality school
choices are hurting military families. Is open enrollment a solution? Pilot Online, Accessed June
26, 2017, https://pilotonline.com/news/military/local/lack-of-quality-school-choices-are-
hurting-military-families-is/article_f3a0c931-791b-55b5-98b1-df94252dbd24.html) BA
The Arlington-based Lexington Institute examined the performance of schools in four states with large concentrations of military
personnel: Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri and Colorado. The think tanks report found wide disparities in the academic
performance of school systems with large numbers of military-connected children, and
recommends allowing students to enroll in nearby school divisions, which Virginia prohibits. Open
enrollment laws provide some valuable flexibility for families connected with a military installation
to cross district boundaries to take advantage of other opportunities that can better meet their
needs, the report says. The report notes that children in Virginias schools tend to outperform other states, but thats limited to certain school
divisions like Virginia Beach and Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. The quality of the schools available vary greatly
from neighborhood to neighborhood and school district to school district, and thats a challenge
for military leaders, Don Soifer, one of the reports authors, said in a telephone interview. State data shows that children
in Norfolk, which is home to the worlds largest Navy base, lag far behind state averages in
terms of fourth-grade English and eighth-grade math scores on standardized tests. Students in
Newport News and Suffolk, which also have high numbers of military-connected students, also
lag behind state averages. Soifer said it can be difficult for a military family dealing with the stress of moving to find a school that works
well for them in an area they dont know. In the immediate Hampton Roads region, there are 10 schools whose performance falls within the lowest
five percent of schools statewide, which is one-third of the states totals, the report says. Given Virginias constraints on school choice, this means
military families may need to live multiple school districts away from their base posting in order to find schools that meet their standards. A 2013
Hampton Roads Transit presentation showed that only 19 percent of Norfolk Naval Station employees live in Norfolk, while 23 percent live in Virginia
Beach, 12 percent live in Chesapeake and 5 percent each live in Portsmouth, Hampton and Newport News. The presentation showed that the median
commute time to the base for Norfolk residents was 25 minutes, compared with 45 minutes for all employees. Soifer said that while Virginia is
generally viewed as a positive place to be stationed because students in school systems like Virginia Beach perform well, not everyone can choose to
live in the best-performing divisions. Soifer noted some people are required to live on the base theyre assigned to. Others simply may not be able to
afford to live in neighborhoods with the best schools. We say that open enrollment can definitely have benefits,
Soifer said. To change the system entirely is a tricky question. There are a lot of concerns. An awful lot of families in Norfolk would choose to enroll in
Virginia Beach if they had that ability, not just military. In April, Norfolk held a military child convening where there was a focus on getting military
families and veterans to choose Norfolk instead of neighboring communities. Far fewer military-connected children attend Norfolk Public Schools than
are eligible, likely due in part to the high numbers of Norfolk schools that have lost state accreditation, the report says. Six of the citys 45 tested
schools have been denied accreditation based on test pass rates. A city presentation on the convening said large numbers of military families
assigned to facilities in Norfolk choose to live elsewhere largely due to perception of access to quality schools. The report also faults Virginia for
making it difficult for military-connected children to enroll in magnet schools or prestigious governors schools for academically or artistically gifted
students. Military
relocations dont neatly follow a school calendar or coincide with application
deadlines, the report says.These timing challenges are heightened by the states lack of an
open enrollment policy among districts to facilitate public school choice and less than ten
public charter schools.
 No solvency Vouchers Bad [generic]
Numerous problems with vouchers
NSBA( national school board association), 15
(NSBA, represents more then 90,000 schools, January 2015, Issue brief, 6/26/17,
https://www.nsba.org/sites/default/files/012015_Vouchers_Issue_Brief.pdf,) ML
NSBA POSITION NSBA opposes private school vouchers and urges Congress to reject using any
federal funds for a national voucher program, including any special education vouchers for
military children and/or specific subgroups of students; as well as to oppose any amendments to
make vouchers part of a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) or the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The majority of the public rejects private
school vouchers (63 percent), according to the 2014 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll. Vouchers and
tuition tax credits siphon scarce resources, time and attention from our nations public schools,
which educate more than 50 million students. We urge Congress to work with NSBA to improve,
not weaken, the nations public schools. TALKING POINTS Why are vouchers bad public policy?
Vouchers abandon public schools and drain away critical dollarsVouchers divert attention,
commitment and dollars from public schools to pay private school tuition for a few students,
including many who already are in private school. Vouchers eliminate public accountabilityIn
stark contrast to the strong requirements faced by public schools, private voucher schools do
not have to meet ESEA standards including the hiring of highly qualified teachers, the
assessment and accountability requirements, nor do they have to accept all students.
Vouchers does not raise student achievement for allResearch and evaluations have found
little or no difference in voucher and public school students performance. Vouchers leave
behind many students, including those with the greatest needsVouchers leave behind many
disadvantaged students because private schools may not accept them or do not offer the special
services they need. Students with disabilities and English language learners are underserved in
voucher schools. Special education vouchers do not improve education for special education
studentsStudents with disabilities attending a private school with a voucher would not
necessarily receive all of the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) services they currently receive in
public schools. Not all private schools are bound to follow the same inclusion practices and
parents are not entitled to the same procedural safeguards as they are under IDEA.

Empirically proven pilot programs failed

NSBA( national school board association), 15
(NSBA, represents more then 90,000 schools, January 2015, Issue brief, 6/26/17,
https://www.nsba.org/sites/default/files/012015_Vouchers_Issue_Brief.pdf,) ML
WASHINGTON, D.C. VOUCHERS The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship is the only federally-funded
voucher program. Although federal evaluations have repeatedly revealed no significant
differences in academic achievement between voucher students and D.C. public school
students, and the program has been plagued with many of the accountability shortcomings
found in other voucher programs, it continues to receive funding. The Government
Accountability Office (GAO) released a scathing report in November 2013 that revealed
numerous accountability problems in the programs management by the D.C. Children and
Youth Investment Trust Corporation. It found that the execution of the voucher program has
been rocky, with inadequate safeguards over the millions of dollars in federal funds, insufficient
information for parents and a student database that is riddled with incomplete information,
the Washington Post reported on November 15, 20131 . Another GAO report in 2007 also found
serious accountability flaws in the program. At one point, prior to the reauthorization of D.C.
vouchers in April 2011, the program only served those children who were currently enrolled
with no new students so that they would be permitted to continue through until graduation
from high school. Because of House of 1 Lyndsey Layton (2013, November 15). D.C. school
voucher program lacks oversight, GAO says. The Washington Post. Retrieved from
 No Solvency spend the money elsewhere
They will use the money on other things
Hacker and Garret, 17
(Holly and Robert, Education reporters for the dallas times, January 24th 2017, Texas could help
fund your kids' private education if you pull them from public schools , dallas times, june 27th
2017, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/01/24/texas-pay-pull-kids-public-
schools) ML
Arizona started with savings accounts for special-needs children and has added other types of
students since, including those in D- and F-rated public schools, Native American children on
tribal lands, and children of active-duty military families. This year, about 3,300 students have an
education savings account for amounts ranging from $3,000 to $30,000, depending upon the student,
according to Arizona education officials. Arizona doesnt require academic testing of students with savings accounts, so its hard to
compare them with their peers in public schools, Cunningham said. A 2013 survey by the Friedman Foundation for Educational
Choice a pro-voucher group now known as EdChoice found that 71 percent of Arizona parents who had ESAs were very
satisfied with them. Last year, the Arizona Republic newspaper found that parents of disabled children from wealthy and high-
performing schools were much more likely to use the program, as compared with their peers from poorer schools. State money for a
sock monkey Parents have also found ways to abuse the system, the Arizona state auditor found last year. Two parents in
Arizona's education savings account program misspent money on a sock monkey and other non-
education items, a state audit found. (iStock) In 2011, for instance, two parents spent money
from their savings account on non-educational items, including a snow globe, a sock monkey
doll and a board game based on The Walking Dead, the popular TV show about zombies. The
parents had bought more than $3,600 of books and other approved materials, then returned
them for store gift cards. The bookstore alerted state officials to the suspicious purchases. The education department
wouldnt have caught the fraud on its own, according to the state auditor report. It recommended more staffing and oversight. The
audit also found the education department had recovered only a fraction of more than
$100,000 in misspent funds.
 No Solvency Plan =/= School Choice
Tons of alt causes to lack of school choicemoney isnt oneand only states
can solve
Mesecar and Soifer 17
(Doug and Dan, Lexington Institute Adjunct Scholar Doug Mesecar has served as a senior official
at the U.S. Department of Education, as well as with leading education companies and in
Congress, Don Soifer is Executive Vice President of the Lexington Institute and directs the
institutes education policy program, Better Serving Those Who Serve: Improving the
Educational Opportunities of Military-Connected Students, Lexington Institute, 6/26,
http://forstudentsuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Lexington-Institute-Military-
Report.pdf)///NG
Many state laws, including Missouris and Virginias, do not allow open enrollment to a nearby
school district, so a family must attend school in the district where they live. Families able to live
off-base often make schools a top priority in deciding where to live, sometimes pursuing long commutes
and non-public options. Open enrollment laws provide some valuable flexibility for families connected
with a military installation to cross district boundaries to take advantage of other opportunities that can better meet their
needs. Charter schools, especially those on-base, can also provide a valuable public educational opportunity offering school models
designed to meet the specific needs of military families. Virtual school options, like the Virtual Virginia Initiative, can help bridge
learning gaps from one state to another, or allow for mastery-based approaches around times of transition. Supporting access to
non-public, including faith-based, schools, for families for whom that is a priority is an approach which has proven popular in some
jurisdictions. Where
these opportunities are not available, access to specialty offerings for older
students, like Advanced Placement courses, can be improved through use of technology in
smaller districts that may lack qualified teachers. The National Math and Science Initiative, a national organization
based in Dallas, has proven to be a valuable resource to districts serving military-connected students through its support of college-
readiness programs. In September 2016, the Initiative awarded $400,000 to Missouris Knob Noster School District, allowing
Superintendent Jerrod Wheeler to establish seven new Advanced Placement courses that will benefit military-connected
students.38In addition, better supporting parents of special-needs students, and particularly those on the autism spectrum, would
be valuable, which is advocated by Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets IV, commander of Whiteman Air Force Base, and his wife. A lack of
quality local options, with limited ability to make other choices, means qualified military personnel request transfers away, which
the military will usually honor, costing qualified personnel. State
decision makers must continue to strengthen
the rigor, specificity, and comparability of content standards. For military-connected students,
educational interruptions are a profound obstacle to classroom success. Rigorous and comparable
content standards, especially in core subjects, are important to minimizing the disruptive impact of transition issues. Many states
are already heading in this direction by incorporating Common Core State Standards or standards that are markedly similar. Within
states, education agencies and districts must ensure standards are implemented with fidelity; professional development for teachers
and access to high-quality curricular resources are necessary to ensure every student can reach their full potential under more
rigorous standards. Best practices addressing the types of resources that are most helpful for military-connected students must be
developed, analyzed, and shared across and within states. States must commit to fully implementing the
Interstate
Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children. The Compact is designed to resolve
recognized education transition issues, but is not intended to impact curriculum or local standards of education. It
addresses mobility-related challenges by helping states to harmonize and adapt state laws to include transfer of records, course
placement, graduation requirements, exclusion from extracurricular activities, redundant or missed entrance or exit testing,
entrance age variations, and more. While
all 50 states have adopted the Compact, few have truly
integrated it into their state policymaking and systems of support like Virginia.39 States could, for
example, work toward a common transcript program, with common qualification for high school progress and credit. For the
Compact to be effective, and therefore improve the experiences of military-connected youth, the spirit and effort around the
Compact must be fully embraced by all states. Districts should provide military-connected students with high-quality personalized
learning opportunities. Military-connected students coming to a new school can face challenges in quickly getting up to speed. The
right educational support interventions as part of a traditional educational experience can yield improved results, but often over the
course of many years. Military-connected students seldom have that kind of time. Nationally, some of the most impressive gains in
student outcomes in recent years have come in districts and schools that thoroughly integrate computers and state-ofthe-art
software to support teachers trained in individualizing the learning experience for all students.41 Leveraging technology, and
supporting teachers with strategies and actionable information on where students are in relation to state standards, personalized
learning can cut through lost time and angst. Providing students access to their digital content at home outside of school hours is
also an option military families are often quick to utilize. Every student particularly those that are military connected would
benefit from the systematic integration of technology tools by teachers to customize instruction to each students individual needs
and pace. Statesand districts must leverage the Every Student Succeeds Acts requirement for a
military student identifier to improve the educational experience of military-connected
students. The new federal requirement for a military student identifier means all states will have to improve their
identification of, and reporting on, military-connected students in order to better meet those
students needs. Without data, decisions about military-connected students, and the programs,
staff, and funds that support them, are operating on intuition alone. With data about the numbers,
locations, and academic performance of militaryconnected students, states and districts will be better equipped to address needs
and improve policies. States have a valuable opportunity to analyze student performance using this new identifier to support plans
of action informed by the information it provides. Currently, the military student identifier in ESSA applies to students with a parent
who is a member of the Armed Forces on active duty. However, there are more than 500,000 military-connected school-aged
students of the National Guard and Reserve components in all fifty states. The parents of these children deploy domestically and
globally in response to our nations call. Regardless of the reason for parental absence, these children live with continual stressors
and transition adjustments that their civilian classmates do not experience and they should be included in the military student
identifier as well. As Christi Ham, chairwoman of Military Families for High Standards, observed earlier this year, Knowing where
military-connected students are and what kind of education they are receiving provides federal, state and local leaders with
information necessary to direct resources to the schools that teach them an important milestone in ensuring that these students
have the same chance to succeed as every other student.42
 ESAs Bad (Generic)
ESAs destroy public schools and provide no proof of how money is spent
NEA 2016
(2016 Policy Brief: Education Savings Account, National Education Association, 6/27/17,
https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/20406_Policy%20Brief_rev2.pdf)//XB
Even the most thoughtfully designed programs have failed to achieve meaningful positive
effects on student achievement Furthermore, there is no evidence that competition improves
the performance of public schools. Meanwhile, these programs divert scarce resources from
public schools and offer taxpayers virtually no oversight for how that money is spent,
undermining principles of accountability, equity, and democracy.

ESAs cause some schools to go underfunded which ruins education

NEA 2016
(2016 Policy Brief: Education Savings Account, National Education Association, 6/27/17,
https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/20406_Policy%20Brief_rev2.pdf)//XB
Each account created for a student represents a loss of funds for schools in the district in which
that student resides (whether the student attended public school or not). School districts cannot
reduce their fixed costs (e.g., utilities, debt services, maintenance, and transportation) at a rate
that matches the funding losses. ESAs would, therefore, inevitably lead to staff reductions and
larger class sizes, and the elimination of discretionary programs such as music, art, and sports.

ESAs are under monitored and that allows for misuse of funds, and schools
operating in improper places
NEA 2016
(2016 Policy Brief: Education Savings Account, National Education Association, 6/27/17,
https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/20406_Policy%20Brief_rev2.pdf)//XB
Although parents must commit to provide their children an education in certain minimum
subjects as a condition of receiving funds, ESA programs impose no standards to ensure the
quality of that education. Private schools and other providers are held to none of the
curriculum, licensure, or accreditation standards that public schools are required to meet. The
textbooks, curriculum, tutoring, or supplemental materials parents can purchase with taxpayer
funds are subject to no state oversight. Nor are ESA-funded students required to participate in
state assessments. States also exercise little fiscal oversight over ESAs and the vendors paid
through these accounts. Few accounts are audited, and the procedures for recovering misspent
funds are vague and potentially more costly.Since vouchers were first introduced in 1990, we
have become too familiar with stories of voucher schools operating in strip malls, run-down
buildings lacking valid certificates of occupancy, and even in public parks. ESAs offer no
assurance of greater accountability. If anything, they offer less. Our students deserve better, as
do the taxpayers who fund these programs.

ESAs only benefit rich families and promote racism and ableism in the private
school sector
NEA 2016
(2016 Policy Brief: Education Savings Account, National Education Association, 6/27/17,
https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/20406_Policy%20Brief_rev2.pdf)//XB
Research indicates that voucher programs increase social, economic, and racial stratification.
ESAs promise to reinforce that result by being of greater utility to affluent families and to
students who do not have disabilities, limited English proficiency, or other disadvantages. Data
from both Nevada and Arizona confirm that these programs appeal more to affluent families
and also favor those in urban and suburban settings over rural districts, which frequently lack
sufficient population to make choice feasible.9 Accordingly, ESAs represent tax transfer
programs that divert the taxes paid by taxpayers in rural districts to subsidize the private school
education of children in urban districts. Even where choices exist, it is the private schools that
exercise that choice. Private schools may reject applicants based on academic record, language
proficiency, disability, homelessness, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation (of students
and parents), and other criteria. Despite legal prohibitions, many still also practice de facto
discrimination based on race. Even if accepted, private school students forfeit due process and
other constitutional and statutory rights guaranteed in public schools. Students with special
needs forfeit their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when they
accept a voucher. Private schools may decline to provide services taken for granted in public
schools, such as compensatory programs for disadvantaged students, bilingual education, free
and reduced price lunch, and counseling. As Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe noted in his
message vetoing an Education Savings Account, Our goal is to support and improve public
education for all students, not to codify inequality.
Offcase
 Topicality Tax Credits =/= Funding
Funding is financial assistance to non-government entities and does not include
tax credits
*a voucher is a tax credit*
US legal, no date
(US Legal, accessed 6/28, https://definitions.uslegal.com/g/government-funding)///NDG
Government funding refers to financial assistance received by non government entities in the form
of federal, state, or local government grants, loans, loan guarantees, property, cooperative agreements, food commodities, direct
appropriations, or other assistance. However,
government funding does not include tax credits,
deductions, or exemptions. The following is an example of a case law on government funding: Government funding of a
private entity, however, no matter how extensive, is insufficient to transform otherwise private conduct into state action. [Young v.
Halle Hous. Assocs., L.P., 152 F. Supp. 2d 355 (D.N.Y. 2001)].
 Topicality ESAs include Post Secondary Education
ESAs arent topical parents can use the money for college
Leo Doran February 28, 2017 What Can Congress Learn From State Models for School Choice
Legislation? http://www.insidesources.com/state-models-school-choice-legislation/
An education savings account, or an ESA, is similar, but offers more flexibility to the parents.
When parents get an education savings account, they are awarded a yearly sum that can be
mixed and matched to address their childrens educational needs. Those funds can be used all at
once for private school tuition like a voucher, or a part can be used for private tutoring, another
part for online courseware, and the rest saved for a later expense like college .
 Spending // Misc
Military Funding trades off with Education funding
Benjamin 6/22 (Medea, co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK and the co-
founder of the human rights group Global Exchange, nominated to receive the Nobel Peace
Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. She
received numerous prices, including: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship
of Reconciliation, the Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial, the Gandhi Peace Award, and the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Award. She is the author of eight books, including Kingdom of
the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection and Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, June
22, 2016, Why Does Donald Trump Insist On More Military Spending? The Washington Post,
Accessed June 26, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-does-donald-trump-insist-
on-more-military-spending_us_594c28afe4b0c85b96c657c6) BA
If you think we spend too much on our military as it is (more that the next eight countries combined), you might be shocked to hear President Trump has asked for
an increase in military spending by 10 percent, or $54 billion. Where is all this money going to come from? What will it be used for?
Since Republicans are not known for wanting to raise taxes, the money has to come from cuts to
other allocations in the budget. On the chopping block are funds that would go to the
Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal programs agencies
that serve the needs of the American public. If Donald Trump really wants to take an America First approach, why is he slashing our domestic budget and putting money into a
We engage in wars that never seem to end, are tax
war machine that only continues to inflame tensions around the world?

dollars are squandered, innocent lives are lost in the process and these military interventions
are certainly not making us more safe at home. We are involved in military operations all over
the world. Many of these conflicts are not easily summarized, but lets take a look at some of Americas conflicts and where they stand, through the prism of this
proposed military spending increase. Iraq What did we get out of invading Iraq? Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. For that, we lost almost 4,500 American lives, and
over 30,000 were wounded. We dont keep track of the Iraqis we killed, but the estimates. Major combat operations ended in 2011, but our service members still get killed there
and for the Iraqi people, the war rages on. Under Saddam Husseins brutal regime, sectarian violence was minimized. When we removed him it exploded, and the unintended
consequence is that we unleashed sectarian violence. Another unanticipated result of our invasion of Iraq was the creation of ISIS. It was at the US prison in Iraq called Camp
Bucca where embittered Sunni prisoners, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, created ISIS. Now we are spending billions trying to defeat the very force we helped to create.
Afghanistan We invaded in late 2001 and are still there. It is Americas longest war, and there is no end in sight. We removed the Taliban government, eventually killed Osama
bin Laden found in allied Pakistan and set up a government that is at least officially friendly toward us, but there is now a resurgence of the Taliban. For that, we lost
2,300 service members with about 17,600 wounded. It is not uncommon for our service members to be killed by Afghan soldiers who are supposed to be working with us. Again,
this is all paid for by the United States taxpayer. And the bill is about the shoot up even more, with the Trump administration sending another 4,000 troops to join in this endless
war. Syria Syria has been reduced to ruins by not only us, but also by Russia, ISIS, the Syrian government and other warring factions within and without. The Trump
administrations recent cruise missile attack on the Assad regime forces, followed by the U.S. shooting of a Syrian fighter jet and Iranian drones, puts the U.S. military at even
greater risk of direct confrontation not only with Assad but Iran and Russia. The number of Syrians killed, wounded and forced to flee their homes is astronomical, while the idea
of a political solution seems more and more remote. Lost Blood and Treasure The National Priorities Project, using information
obtained from the United States budget, has drawn some conclusions about how much we pay
for these wars. We pay $615,482 per hour for ongoing operations against ISIS. Afghanistan costs
us $4 million per hour (without counting the new troops being sent there), and the remaining
operations in Iraq cost us $117,000.00 per hour. It has concluded we pay $8.36 million per hour
for all the wars since 2001. What else could we do with all that money? The National Priorities Project illustrates
how it could be spent to help our own people and our own economy: Millions of teachers could
be hired. Millions of jobs could be created in poverty-stricken communities. Our ailing infrastructure could be remodeled and rebuilt. Scholarships could
be funded for students who cant afford college. Our military veterans could receive the care they deserve. The list goes
on. Americans are tired of war, yet Donald Trumps budget sends an unfortunate but clear message. He is willing to cut funds that help the
poor, protect the environment, and promote the arts things that generally keep us happy and safe in order to fund a never-

ending, ever-growing war machine. Hes taking money from Meals on Wheels to buy billion-dollar bombers.
 Politics Plan Unpopular

Nevada ESAs prove they incite fiery political backlash starting from the
local level
Rindels & Valley 6/9
(Michelle Rindels, Jackie Valley, The Nevada Independent Staff, Education: the education examination: What did lawmakers do for
students, teachers this session?, 6/9/17) JPARK
This time two years ago, lawmakers had closed the book on what Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval had christened The Education
Session. They left Carson City after passing a tax package worth more than $1 billion and approving more than two dozen new
education programs, from interventions such as Victory Schools to Read by Grade 3 to social workers in schools. They set in motion
controversial policies that shook up schools in the state, including the reorganization of the Clark County School District and an
Achievement School District that converts underperforming schools into charters. This session, the movement in education has been
more subtle. A push to reinstate the polarizing , sweeping Education Savings Accounts program from
2015 was toned down to a one-time, $20 million expansion of a tax credit-funded program called Opportunity Scholarships, for
example. Eldorado High School graduating students during commencement ceremony at the Orleans Arena on Thursday, June 8,
2017. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Critics
say the Legislature this time around was less focused in its approach
to education. Although Sandoval proposed spending as much of a $140 million budget surplus as possible on the weighted
funding formula, lawmakers instead spread the money around to a variety of projects: $28 million for an additional raise for state
employees, $25 million for the UNLV medical school, $17 million for an IT system for the Clark County School District and host of
other smaller appropriations. But some say the session, in which many of the 2015 initiatives were reauthorized and expanded, was
a confirmation that the state is on track to help lift itself from the bottom of the national education rankings pile. The 2015 session
was remarkable, historic, and I think the 2017 session just confirms that were on the right course, said state Superintendent Steve
Canavero. So Im kind of glad its not splashy. We came in and stayed the course. No ESAs , but a weighted funding
formula sooner As the 2017 legislative session opened, Republicans boldly declared that they wouldnt
vote for a budget that didnt include funding for a controversial voucher-style program. A handful
of them abandoned that promise, ending a partisan standoff and also hope of restarting the program anytime soon. Education
Savings Accounts died in an endgame compromise that funneled $20 million to the tax credit-
funded Opportunity Scholarship program and greenlighted a 10 percent excise tax on recreational marijuana. It was a
whirlwind turn of events for the divisive school choice-related issue that didnt receive its first hearing until last week. At the end of
the day, the way the session ended, I didnt want to essentially shut down Nevada government, Gov. Brian Sandoval told reporters
Monday. And you know we worked really hard on trying to come up with a compromise with the Democrats on the ESAs, but at
some point it became very clear that the Democrats werent going to support that. Eldorado High School graduating students
during their commencement ceremony at the Orleans Arena on Thursday, June 8, 2017. Photo by Jeff Scheid. ESAs,
created
during the 2015 legislative session, would have given families public dollars to put toward
private school tuition or other qualifying education expenses. Hailed by school choice advocates as the most expansive program of its kind in the country,
ESAs ran into a legal roadblock when the Nevada Supreme Court ruled the funding mechanism was unconstitutional. But Sandoval pledged $60 million toward the program in his State of the State address this year, positioning the Republican-backed program to be a
key issue in a Democrat-controlled Legislature. He said he was 100 percent committed to reviving it. There were some moments I felt like we could ge t it done, he said on the last day of session, when it became clear the program was a no-go. So what led to its
failure? We ran a very big, aggressive program, and it also involved a little bit of luck, said Chris Daly, lobbyist for the Nevada State Education Association that had been perhaps the purest opposition throughout the fight. I can remember being in meetings with
labor allies or other community allies that people said Hows it going? Theres going to be a deal. And I was the one who would say, Well, not so quickly. Ultimately, a rupture in negotiations four days before the session ended proved to be too much for ESAs.
Republicans thought Democrats would be willing to pass a $45 million version of the program, funded with tax credits and a one-time $20 million loan to get the program started, with award sizes on a need-based sliding scale. They appeared to misunderstand the
demands of Democrats, thinking that the majority party would take the deal in exchange for the governor signing three bills that favored unions. Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford said that was never all his party wanted, and negotiations only soured further when
Republicans sought to add two more requests to the pot that Democrats pass bills allowing for appointed school boards and that they name a Republican appointee to the Legislative Commission. Sen. Aaron Ford at Gov. Sandovals State o f the State address on
Jan. 17, 2017. Photo by David Calvert Some elements of the Republican caucus seemed a little recalcitrant or greedy or what have you. I think there might have been a deal but ultimately the Republicans couldnt get there, Daly said. Either they underestimated
the value of protecting public education by stopping vouchers for our side, or they overplayed it. The negotiations never returned to such favorable terms. David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which participated pro bono on a legal team
representing parents who brought a lawsuit against ESAs, chalked it up to pushback from a unified coalition that consisted of parents, teachers and other public school proponents. The Education Law Center worked alongside a local group, Educate Nevada Now, in
the fight against the voucher-style program. There was a lot of engagement by grassroots public school parents and advocates to lead the movement against vouchers, he said. Their message to lawmakers: Our public schools are inadequately funded. Everyone

knows it. Its no secret. The ESA defeat comes as the school choice movement heats up nationwide. President Donald Trump and Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos
have made no qualms about their intent to expand school choice a concept that
generally relies on plucking public funds to help families pay for other education options. The
defeat of ESA vouchers in
Nevada has incredible national importance, Daly said. This was a huge national win in some
respects maybe even bigger on that stage than it is in this state. The issue incites fiery debate,
with opponents saying it undermines public schools and often leaves vulnerable children worse off. Supporters, however, argue it
gives families including those in the middle- and low-income brackets the ability to determine their childrens educational
destiny and find a learning environment that suits their needs. Having
a state like Nevada saying no to vouchers
is a real message to Washington, Sciarra said. It is a setback for them because they are looking for
more states to expand. Some Nevada Republicans vowed to continue the fight for school choice. So did the leader of
EdChoice, a national organization dedicated to advancing school choice. I dont think the legislators listened to parents, said
Robert Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice. I think this is a bipartisan failure not simply a Republican or Democrat failure.
School Choice Rally Hundreds of students, with parents and teachers, braved temperatures in the 20s to show their support for
school choice, part of National School Choice Week, at the capital. January 25, 2017. Photo by Tim Dunn/Special to the Nevada
Independent. Enlow said he expects the thousands of Nevada families who were on ESA waiting lists to continue pressuring
lawmakers to fund the program in 2019. He also lobbed some of the blame on Sandoval, saying he wished the Republican governor
would have stayed true to his word and flexed his leadership muscle to ensure the school-choice program moved forward.
Nevada may have had a hiccup, but it certainly didnt stop the momentum, Enlow said. Weighted
funding formula
While ESAs may be on the back burner for the time being, lawmakers did reach a compromise
on the so-called weighted funding formula, which allots state money to students based on his or her needs.
Lawmakers deemed full implementation of weights unrealistic this session, given the estimated $1.2 billion price tag. The deal: SB178, sponsored by
Democratic Senators Mo Denis and Joyce Woodhouse, puts $36 million each year of the next biennium toward underperforming or higher-need students. It was signed into law on Thursday. Because wide-scale implementation of the weights wasnt financially
feasible yet, the bill gives an extra $1,200 per child to the neediest students in the most underperforming schools a compromise centered around equity that drew broad support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle as well as education leaders and
advocates. Its a start. They have more work to do, Clark County School Trustee Carolyn Edwards said. Im glad they made the start. They could have delayed on this. Her sentiments echo that of a parent-led group, which put the weighted funding formula at the
top of its wish list this session. Anna Slighting, a HOPE for Nevada board member, said the parents involved in the organization applaud the move toward weights. We feel like that is a good next step, she said. Its definitely not fulfilling the need in its entirety, but
at least its signaling the legislators are willing to go in that direction. A key component of the compromise is that it didnt dismantle existing Zoom and Victory schools, which receive extra state funding for programs to serve their respective large populations of
students learning English and living in poverty. But SB178 begins the transition of allotting extra money directly to at-risk students rather than specific schools. Fourth-grade students sit on the floor during a math lesson at Richard C. Priest Elementary School in North
Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 21, 2017. The Clark County School District included the school in its Turnaround Zone after being one of the lowest-performing elementary schools in the state. Photo by Jeff Scheid. Brent Husson, president of Nevada Succeeds, which
bills itself as the business voice for education, said the state next needs to tackle how to better identify students who need more services. As it stands now, the weighted funding targets students who are learning English or receive free or reduced-price lunch. But
thats not always a clear indicator of an at-risk child. Take, for instance, this situation: A third-grader living in poverty may be excelling academically, while his peer who comes from a wealthier family may be reading below grade level. In that case, who should receive
extra funds? Id like to get to the point where the money follows the student based on where they are (academically) relative to where they should be, he said. SB178 directs the state to revisit a study it performed in 2012 that led to the weighted funding formula,
with an eye toward targeting academically needy students. The battle over state bucks ESAs and weighted student funds wasnt the only prickly education issue this session. Heres a look at how others fared: The Clark County School District reorganization

State Board of
Lawmakers passed AB394 in the waning hours of the 2015 legislative session. The measure tasked an interim committee with developing a plan to reorganize the Clark County School District . The
Education approved the plan that emerged last fall, setting in motion the implementation
process. The goal: Turn the district organizational structure on its head, giving schools more power over their budgets and
instructional decisions. The reorganization spawned lawsuits and inflamed tensions among lawmakers, consultants hired to carry out
the reorganization and school trustees who cried foul, saying their concerns werent taken into account. In late April, the four
legislative leaders sponsored AB469, a bipartisan measure that codified the reorganization regulations into state law in an attempt
to quash the ongoing litigation. It worked. The school district swiftly dropped its lawsuit. Clark County School District Superintendent
Pat Skorkowsky addresses Eldorado High School students during their commencement ceremony at the Orleans Arena on Thursday,
June 8, 2017. Photo by Jeff Scheid. But that didnt alleviate trustees concerns, hence the introduction of a trailer bill in late May.
AB516, sponsored by Democratic Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson and Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford, sought to delay the
reorganization by one year and give the district more flexibility in shifting unrestricted funds from central services down to schools.
After the bill dropped, the school district and trustees quickly denied asking for the reorganization to be delayed. By that time,
though, the bill already had become the target of ridicule, with Senate Republican Leader Michael Roberson dubbing it nothing more
than a CCSD wish list. The bill died days later without ever receiving a hearing. School Trustee Kevin Child, who has been forthright
with his concerns regarding the reorganization and has been labeled uncooperative by those involved, said he was disappointed the
trailer bill was brushed aside so quickly sans a public conversation. We
need to change certain things about this
law, he said. What about the equality in this law? You have to look. Every school is different.

Plan is controversial- kills PC

Resmovits, Joy 6/30
(Staff writer)"Trump repeats his push for a school voucher program. But how would it be
accomplished?" Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2017. Web. 30 June 2017.
<http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-essential-education-updates-southern-dont-
publish-trump-fleshes-out-his-1488333343-htmlstory.html>.
President Trump announced steps toward creating a national school voucher program during his
speech to Congress on Tuesday night. "I am calling upon members of both parties to pass an
education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African
American and Latino children," Trump said. "These families should be free to choose the public,
private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them." Trump campaigned on
the idea of creating a nationwide, $20-billion school voucher program. And he chose DeVos, a
voucher advocate , to lead the Department of Education. Vouchers and tax credits use public
money to let families attend private schools, which are often religious schools. The strategy
appeals to a conservative base in urban areas, because it advances free-market philosophies and
brings religious instruction into school, but does less well in rural areas, where private schools
are sparse. Democrats tend to see vouchers as a third rail in politics, since they raise questions
about the separation of church and state and involve little regulation of the use of public
money. In California, ballot initiatives to create voucher programs failed twice.
Plan unpopular with head officials and a program already exists that helps
military families with schools
Strauss, 17
(Valerie, Covers education for the Washington Post, April 17th 2017, At Fort Bragg, DeVos talks
up school vouchers for military families. Not everybody is thrilled. Washington Post, 6/26/17,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/04/04/at-fort-bragg-devos-
talks-up-school-vouchers-for-military-families-not-everybody-is-
thrilled/?utm_term=.baaa1d2c239c) ML
The Observer quoted Hampton PTA President Jennifer Hamner as saying that the consensus of
parents at Fort Bragg was that they liked the Defense Department schools on the military base
and want a high school to be added. She said:Its concerning the difference in standards. I feel
like public, private and charter schools need to be playing by the same rules. I think a lot of it is,
were pretty happy with and making sure the public system is up to snuff for our military
children. The National Association of Federally Impacted Schools and a subgroup called the
Military Impacted Schools Association issued a statement expressing strong concerns about
DeVoss comments, saying that military families want more investment in public schools, not
vouchers. Kyle Fairbairn, executive director of the Military Impacted Schools Association said:
Rather than distributing scarce resources in the form of a new voucher program, the Federal
Government should be making good on its obligation to all federally impacted school districts.
The CHOICE Act would set back education for military-connected students, period. Hilary
Goldmann, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, said:
On the first week of the Month of the Military Child, NAFIS believes Secretary DeVos should be
focused on investing in public schools those in which the majority of military-connected
children attend instead of praising a bill that would drain dollars away from those schools.
The CHOICE Act fails to recognize the fact that public school districts that educate military
connected students, including Blue Ribbon Schools, are devoted to and successful in meeting
the academic and emotional needs of this unique student body. Supporting military families
and the unique needs of military-connected students is a top priority for public school districts
and states. For example, the Military Interstate Childrens Compact, that has been adopted by
all 50 states and Washington, D.C., addresses educational transition challenges encountered by
military families including enrollment, placement, attendance, eligibility and graduation. The
Compact only applies to public schools. Impact Aid is the Federal governments tax payment for
educating military-connected students attending public schools around the country. The
program is funded at less than 60 percent of the need formula established in law. NAFIS is
concerned about the consequences a voucher program would have on the Impact Aid program
and the tax burden on residents in federally impacted communities
 Politics Plan Unpopular Teacher Unions
Plan unpopular Teachers Unions
By Arianna Prothero on June 9, 2015 What's the Difference Between Vouchers and Education
Savings Accounts?
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2015/06/school_vouchers_education_savings
_accounts_difference_between.html
A story I wrote on education savings accounts offers a good example: "Created in 2011, Arizona's ESA program was, in many ways,
the outcome of a protracted legal battle over the state's original voucher program, which was ruled unconstitutional by the Arizona
Supreme Court in 2009 because it provided public dollars directly to private schools, and to private schools only. In that decision, the
court left open the possibility that a voucher-like program could be structured to remove that conflict. 'They left us a trail of
breadcrumbs to follow,' said Matthew Ladner, who worked at the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy
and advocacy organization whose legal arm also helped defend the ESA program. 'I took the hint from that, and we published a new
paper at the Goldwater Institute basically calling for an account-based choice program for special needs kids that would have
multiple uses including private schools,' he said." But that
doesn't mean those programs can't be challenged.
State teachers' unions have led the legal charge against tax-credit and ESA programs in several
states. They generally argue that no matter how circuitous the route, state governments are still
directing money toward private and sometimes religious institutions and away from public
schools. Here are some examples of recent lawsuits: Union-Backed Court Challenges to School Choice Hit Snags in Florida,
Louisiana Alabama's Private School Choice Program Ruled Constitutional

Trends from limited state ESAs prove their argument

Posted to Education by Leo Doran February 28, 2017 What Can Congress Learn From State
Models for School Choice Legislation? http://www.insidesources.com/state-models-school-
choice-legislation/
Among school choice advocates, the ESA idea is replacing the idea of traditional vouchers said
Cunningham. Proponents of choice like giving parents more flexibility in cobbling together
education services for their children. So far, however, in states where ESAs have been adopted,
parents tend to use the accounts in a similar way to how they use vouchers for private
school tuitionsaid Cunningham. This dynamic has led some school choice opponents, like the
teachers unions, to argue that education savings accounts and vouchers are actually one in the
same.
 Politics AT: No Link Congress Doesnt Do the Plan
The plan is a top priority for DeVos references our solvency advocate
Ryland 17
(Commentary By Anne Ryland, 2-8-2017, "Here Are 10 Priorities for Betsy DeVos," Daily Signal,
http://dailysignal.com/2017/02/08/here-are-10-priorities-for-betsy-devos/) JPARK
After weeks of protest and feet-dragging from the left and special interest groups, the
Senate on Tuesday finally
confirmed Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Now in her new role, DeVos will have an opportunity
to work with Congress to advance education choice as appropriate, to limit federal
intervention in education, and to reform higher education in a way that creates options for
students and lowers costs. Here are 10 reforms DeVos should work to achieve in conjunction
with Congress and the new administration: 1. Support reauthorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >> The highly successful D.C.
Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to low-income children to attend a private school of choice, should not
only be supported through reauthorization and full funding, but also be expanded to enable more children living in the district to
participate. 2. Expand choice in the District of Columbia. Work to make education funding in the district entirely student-centered
and portable, making D.C. an all-choice district. 3. Education savings accounts for military-connected
children . Explore the possibility of directing Impact Aid funds from both the Department of
Defense and the Department of Education to military-connected children in the form of
education savings account options. >>>For a full explanation of each proposal, read Lindsey
Burkes report . 4. Education savings accounts for children attending Bureau of Indian Education schools.
Native American children attend such low-quality schools that Politico ran a piece titled How Washington Created Some of the Worst Schools in America. Bureau
of Indian Education schools are unique among K-12 government-run schools because the funding for these schools is almost entirely federal. They are directly funded through a combination of Department of Interior, Department of Education, and Department of
Agriculture funds, with the bureau itself operating one-third of the schools and the other two-thirds being tribally operated. No student should be trapped in a failing school because of their ZIP code. Parents of students who attend Bureau of Indian Education
schools should be made eligible for education savings accounts to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services and therapies, curricula, textbooks, and a host of other education-related services, products, and providers. 5. Transform Title
I into a student-centered support system. Complex Title I funding formulas dictate how the government allocates resources for low-income children. These formulas should be consolidated and streamlined to use a straightforward set per pupil allocation. States
should then be given the opportunity to let students use Title I funding to pay for local college classes, public and private school courses, online courses (public and private), SAT prep courses, and a host of other education-related services and courses. 6. Allow K-12
expenses to be 529-eligible. Across the country, states have led the way in expanding education choice options for families. DeVos and federal policymakers can support this momentum by allowing K12 education expenses to be classified as allowable expenditures
under 529 college savings plans, which are allowed to grow tax-free and insulated from federal tax penalties if put toward higher education expenses. 7. Allow states to opt out of programs under the Every Student Succeeds Act through the A-PLUS proposal. Work
with Congress to advance policies contained in the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) proposal, which would allow states to completely opt out of programs under the Every Student Succeeds Act and to put dollars toward any education purpose
allowed under state law. The A-PLUS approach directs educational accountability to those with the most at stake in student and school success: parents and taxpay ers. This approach would also relieve the burden on states to demonstrate compliance with the
myriad federal program requirements and regulations associated with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which could substantially reduce administrative costs. State and local leaders would determine how to best allocate resources to improve educational quality, and

states would no longer be constrained by the dictates of federal programs . 8. Eliminate dozens of formula and competitive grant programs. Formula-
funded programs are larger programs whose funding is predetermined by a formula embedded in law. DeVos should work to elimina te these formula-funded programs and almost all competitive grant programs under the Every Student Succeeds Act. This would
help streamline the law, stop the education spending spree, and curtail federal meddling in local school policy. Specifically, Congress should eliminate many of the programs that fall under Titles II, III, IV, and V, as well as the Preschool Development Grants found in
Title IX (established under the Every Student Succeeds Act). Many of these programs are redundant, ineffective, and perpetuate high levels of spending. President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law in December 2015, replacing over 10
years of federal education policy established by the No Child Left Behind Act. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Newscom) President Barack Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act into law in December 2015, replacing over 10 years of federal education policy
established by the No Child Left Behind Act. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Newscom) 9. Rescind regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act. During the Obama administration, the Department of Education wrote regulations under the Every Student
Succeeds Act that narrowed flexibility for states with regard to things like accountability indicators and reporting requirements. These regulations were at odds with Congress intent, and the House of Representatives has now passed a resolution of disapproval of
the accountability regulations written under the Every Student Succeeds Act. DeVos should support Congress as it moves to rescind these new regulations is in order to bring implementation of the law into line with what Congress intended. This will bring needed
relief to states from the federal mandates created through these regulations. 10. Ease the cost of college by making space for private lending. In order to decrease loan burdens and place pressure on colleges to rein in college costs, the PLUS loan program should be

DeVos confirmation as education secretary presents her with a

eliminated. This will make way for more flexible private funding alternatives.

unique opportunity to work with Congress to scale back federal intervention in education, and
to advance increased choice for parents and families when appropriate. These 10 policy
priorities are a great place to start.
 State ESAs CP
ESAs at the state level solve
Lindsey M. Burke is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education and Director of the Center for
Education Policy, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage
Foundation and Anne Ryland is a Research Assistant in the Center for Education Policy. Dakota
Wood, Senior Research Fellow for Defense Programs in the Center for National Defense, of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The
Heritage Foundation, 2017 June 2, "A GI Bill for Children of Military Families: Transforming
Impact Aid into Education Savings Accounts," Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/education/report/gi-bill-children-military-families-transforming-
impact-aid-education-savings
Recommendations for State Policymakers Create education choice options for all children,
including military families. By adopting universal ESAs, states can empower as many students as
possible with as many education options as possible. In the event a state wants to establish an
education choice option specifically for children of members of the armed forces, they should
allow all military-connected children to receive their share of state per pupil funding in the form
of an ESA. In conjunction with the policy of transitioning the federal Impact Aid program into ESAs outlined above, a military-connected student could
access both their state per pupil funding and federal Impact Aid funds in the form of parent-
controlled ESAs, significantly increasing their educational purchasing power.

Isolated Examples prove that ESAs on the state level resolve concerns around
education for military kids
Jonathan Butcher serves as Education Director for the Goldwater Institute 2015 December 1
Military Kids Are Given The Chance At A Great Education
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/en/work/topics/education/education-savings-
accounts/giving-children-from-military-families-the-chance-/
The terrible events in Paris recentlycoming just off of the heels of our annual Veterans Day holidayremind us how much we owe
our men and women in the U.S. military. Their sacrifices for their own safety at home and abroad often come at the expense of their
families and is a powerful expression of bravery. The children of military parents have multiple challenges. Not
only are their parent(s) putting themselves at risk for the safety of our nation, but life
in the military often means
multiple stations around the country and even overseas. These children can expect to move from
school to school frequently. According to the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), nearly 60
percent of the children in military families are of school-age. The average military family will
move 6-9 times during a childs K-12 experience. For military families, finding a high-quality
education often means starting a new search for a good school with every move. Yet in Arizona,
education savings accounts are available automatically to children of military parentsand the idea is spreading to the
other states that have enacted the flexible accounts. In this way, families can continue to use the
same or similar educational providers even if they move across the state. Lawmakers in Nevada,
Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, and Arizona have made education savings accounts available to
thousands of children in these states. Families and students can use the accounts to take classes online, save for
college, pay private school tuition, or find a personal tutor, among other uses. Eligible students must attend a public school before
they can apply to use an account. Yet in an effort to help our men and women in uniform, the Goldwater Institute and our allies
including the American Federation for Children partnered with Rep. Sonny Borrelli (a former Marine) in 2014 to make children from
active duty military families exempt from this requirement. As
these students move from place to place, the
accounts can allow them to remain in the same or find similar private schools, online classes, or
even public school services even if they live in a different neighborhood. In the 2015-16 school year,
nearly 275 of the 2,400 Arizona children using accounts are in military families.
 National Draft / Conscription CP
A draft is still needed to bridge the moral gap between citizens and troops
assumes all their solvency deficits
Barno & Benshael 16
(David Barno and Nora Bensahel, xx-xx-xxxx, "Why We Still Need the Draft," War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/02/why-we-still-need-the-draft/) JPARK
The recent political fracas over women and the draft is making headlines around the country and has become a campaign issue in
the Republican presidential primaries. But this debate raises even more profound questions about the need for and value of
the draft more broadly. Put simply, Selective Service is the only remaining thread in American society that
ties all U.S. citizens to their military. It links the American people to the nations wars, and the
risks of military service in those wars, through the fundamental responsibility of defending the
country when needed. It also continues to serve an often-overlooked but nevertheless important role in protecting
American security. Many Americans are questioning whether the draft remains relevant in the 21st century. Todays U.S.
military is widely considered the most advanced, the most powerful, the best-led, and the most
capable military in the world. The all-volunteer force has proved both successful and resilient since it was established in
1973, to include the harshest test thus far of its capabilities the last 15 years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the stresses
of repeated deployments to highly demanding combat environments, it remained largely well disciplined and effective. Some
members of Congress believe that this remarkable performance means that the United States should abolish the draft. Rep. Mike
Coffman (R-Colo.), who recently co-sponsored a bill that would do exactly that, explained his position by saying that the all-
volunteer military has given us the most elite fighting force in the history of the country. But those who see the draft as an
ineffective or irrelevant artifact of the past are wrong. Three myths dominate their thinking. We will never again need a draft. Why
are we even having this conversation? No one can predict the future of war. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once
quipped, since the Vietnam War, the United States has a perfect record of predicting the next war: we have never once gotten it
right. As we wrote last month, the U.S.
military must remain prepared to fight a really big war that might
require a much larger force which could well require a draft . Even though that scenario remains unlikely, the
consequences of being unable to wage such a war could prove disastrous. The Selective Service System also helps serve as a deterrent and a symbol of
national will. Deterrence is not only a function of current power; it also includes the nations potential power when galvanized military, economic,
diplomatic, and even social. Maintaining the mechanism to implement conscription means that in times of crisis, the United States can send an
indisputable signal of national resolve by choosing to start a draft, even one of modest size. Draftees dilute the quality of the force and diminish military
effectiveness. This inaccurate perspective is a clear legacy of Vietnam. By the end of that war, the U.S. military was plagued by drug abuse, racial
tensions, and serious indiscipline. Many military personnel equate these maladies with conscription despite the fact that as one of us can personally
attest, these problems also plagued much of the first decade of the all-volunteer force. The militarys experience with large draft armies in 1917, 1941
and 1953 further demonstrates that this perspective is simply wrong. Draftees performed remarkably well during those wartime periods, perhaps
because they were serving in conflicts widely supported by the American people. We now refer to the draftees who served in World War II as The
Greatest Generation. There is no reason to expect that would automatically be any different in the future. And even though only 29 percent of those
recently surveyed said that the United States should have a military draft, public opinion could shift quickly especially in the aftermath of an attack
on the United States (terrorist or otherwise) that were to kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans (let alone millions). Wars are way too
complicated today for anyone but long-serving professionals. Draftees will be useless or worse, disruptive. Conscription in the future could look very
different than the draft calls of Vietnam or Korea, which were designed to provide more infantrymen for the fight. The changing shape of future wars
may require conscripting the nations best experts at code writing, hacking, and cyber security to rapidly build a world-class cadre of cyber warriors.
There might be an immediate need to put financial experts and market analysts into uniform to help protect the nation from potentially disruptive
economic warfare. Or the military might need to mobilize social media gurus who can help understand and then undercut the insidious messaging of
highly sophisticated adversaries aiming to inflame and radicalize populations at home and abroad. These targeted conscripts might also be drafted to
be reservists, splitting time between uniformed and civilian jobs and leveraging skills from both. This 21st-century, cutting-edge human capital is
unlikely to be found in todays military yet may prove crucial in a future major war. These points show that the draft has both a current and future
practical role in the nations defense. Abolishing Selective Service would strip an important arrow from the quiver of American defenses. The prospect
of a future draft even a modest, targeted one serves as a quiet but important hedge against an unknowable future filled with ever-changing
threats to the nation. The United States must always retain an emergency way to respond to existential threats, and if necessary, mobilize parts or all of
society in response. Yet
there is an even more profound reason to maintain the Selective Service
system: It plays a very important role in linking the American people to military service. Without the
possibility of a draft, however remote, the American people will never again have any personal exposure, no intimate skin in the
game in the weighty national decision to go to war. The gap between the American people and their military is
growing ever larger, which is the less talked-about downside to the success of the all-volunteer
force. Relying on self-selected volunteers to carry the nations burden of going to war has slowly become an accepted norm,
somewhat like the roles of firefighters and police. Most Americans believe it is perfectly acceptable for those
who volunteer to fight for the nation to do so others need not concern themselves, and dont.
They have effectively outsourced war to others the sons and daughters of military families, rural youngsters from the south and
west, high school students looking toward generous G.I. Bill benefits all volunteers admirably wanting to serve their country. But
this outlook is deeply unhealthy for the nation. It
is morally wrong to shift the nations only exposure to
large-scale mortal risk in defending our society onto only a handful of fellow citizens. That
responsibility belongs to all of us. It is a fundamental tenet of the American experiment in
democracy that all citizens share the burdens of defending the nation in times of crisis. We let
that long-held touchstone of American citizenship disappear at great risk. Once gone, the will and
ability to mobilize the larger nation to fight even when necessary would be immensely
hard to resurrect, both practically and philosophically. Selective Service preserves a slender
thread connecting the American people to the force of arms, to societys momentous and
always-deadly decision to go to war. Maintaining mechanisms for a draft also provides a strategic shock absorber so
that the country can mobilize parts or all of society in an existential crisis. Absent the possibility of a draft, Americans will grow ever
more distant from the military, from the debates by their elected leaders on the use of force, from the need to think about
Americas changing role in a dangerous world, and most importantly, from personally sharing the risks of war.
The distance
today between those who fight and those who ultimately send them to war has grown
substantially in the last decade and a half. Maintaining Selective Service is a small but important way to
ensure it grows no wider.

Solvency deficits are myths

Barno, Security MA, & Bensahel, PhD, 16 (David, Lt. Gen., Distinguished Practitioner in
Residence @ School of International Service at American University, Nonresident Senior Fellow
@ Brent Scowcroft Center, Nora, Distinguished Scholar in Residence @ School of International
Service at American University, Nonresident Senior Fellow @ Brent Scowcroft Center, "Why We
Still Need the Draft", 2/23/16, Accessed 6/30/17, https://warontherocks.com/2016/02/why-we-
still-need-the-draft) SSN
***italics = the myths
But those who see the draft as an ineffective or irrelevant artifact of the past are wrong . Three

myths dominate their thinking.

We will never again need a draft. Why are we even having this conversation? No one can
predict the future of war. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once quipped, since the Vietnam War, the United
States has a perfect record of predicting the next war: we have never once gotten it right. As we wrote last month, the U.S.
military must remain prepared to fight a really big war that might require a much larger force which could well
require a draft . Even though that scenario remains unlikely, the consequences of being unable to wage such a war could
prove disastrous. The Selective Service System also helps serve as a deterrent and a symbol of
national will . Deterrence is not only a function of current power; it also includes the nations potential power when galvanized
military, economic, diplomatic, and even social. Maintaining the mechanism to implement conscription means that
in times of crisis, the United States can send an indisputable signal of national resolve by choosing to
start a draft, even one of modest size.
Draftees dilute the quality of the force and diminish military effectiveness . This inaccurate
perspective is a clear legacy of Vietnam. By the end of that war, the U.S. military was plagued by drug abuse, racial
tensions, and serious indiscipline. Many military personnel equate
these maladies with conscription despite
the fact that as one of us can personally attest, these problems also plagued much of the first decade of
the all-volunteer force. The militarys experience with large draft armies in 1917, 1941 and 1953
further demonstrates that this perspective is simply wrong . Draftees performed remarkably
well during those wartime periods, perhaps because they were serving in conflicts widely supported by the American
people. We now refer to the draftees who served in World War II as The Greatest Generation. There
is no reason to
expect that would automatically be any different in the future. And even though only 29 percent of those
recently surveyed said that the United States should have a military draft, public opinion could shift
quickly especially in the aftermath of an attack on the United States (terrorist or otherwise) that were to kill tens or even
hundreds of thousands of Americans (let alone millions).
Wars are way too complicated today for anyone but long-serving professionals. Draftees will
be useless or worse, disruptive . Conscription in the future could look very different than the
draft calls of Vietnam or Korea, which were designed to provide more infantrymen for the fight.
The changing shape of future wars may require conscripting the nations best experts at code
writing , hacking , and cyber security to rapidly build a world-class cadre of cyber warriors .
There might be an immediate need to put financial experts and market analysts into uniform
to help protect the nation from potentially disruptive economic warfare . Or the military might need
to mobilize social media gurus who can help understand and then undercut the insidious
messaging of highly sophisticated adversaries aiming to inflame and radicalize populations at home and
abroad. These targeted conscripts might also be drafted to be reservists, splitting time between uniformed and civilian jobs and
leveraging skills from both. This 21st-century, cutting-edge human capital is unlikely to be found in todays
military yet may prove crucial in a future major war .
These points show that the draft has both a current and future practical role in the nations defense.
Abolishing Selective Service would strip an important arrow from the quiver of American defenses. The prospect of a future
draft even a modest, targeted one serves as a quiet but important hedge against an unknowable future
filled with ever-changing threats to the nation. The United States must always retain an emergency way to respond to
existential threats, and if necessary, mobilize parts or all of society in response.
 Readiness Advantage CP
The United States federal government should:
1 increase military and military staff compensation
2 increase funding for all military readiness and operating accounts,
including property maintenance
3 provide adequate funding for spare parts and depot maintenance
4 increase funding and enterprise management for the Military Health
System

The first three planks solve retention and readiness

Wilson & Hanlon 99
(Jerre Wilson and Michael E. O'Hanlon, 1-15-1999, "Shoring Up Military Readiness," Brookings,
https://www.brookings.edu/research/shoring-up-military-readiness/) JPARK
Todays U.S. military is about one-third smaller and one-third less expensive than it was at the end of the Cold War. Even so, on a unit-by-unit basis it is as good as the U.S. armed forces of Ronald Reagans presidency. It is far from hollow; its readiness to carry out a
wide range of operations from warfighting to peacekeeping to deterrence remains quite good on the whole. But there are important gaps and holes in readinessas well as generally downward trends that if left unchecked could seriously degrade the caliber of the
U.S. armed forces within a fairly short time, particularly if the militarys global workload continues unabated. Most can be resolved, or at least significantly mitigated, through carefully targeted funding increases totaling perhaps $10 billion a year for the next several
years. Although that amount of money is significant by any normal measure, it would do no more than allow the Pentagons budget to keep up with inflation, and it pales next to the $100 billion cut in annual defense spending that has been achieved since 1990.
Without annual increases of $10 billion, the U.S. armed forces will not fall apart, but they will continue to declineand the decline may not remain gradual forever. POLICY BRIEF #43 What is going on in the U.S. defense debate? Just last year, nearly everyone seemed
in agreement about how to structure and fund U.S. armed forces for the foreseeable future. The 1997 balanced-budget deal eliminated what small differenceabout 1% in total dollarshad previously existed between congressional Republicans and the White House
on their five-year defense spending plans. Then, in September 1998, congressional Republicans and the Joint Chiefs of Staff clashed publicly over the readiness of todays U.S. military and the truthfulness of previous testimony that the Chiefs had delivered to
Congress. The tenor of that debate helped persuade President Bill Clinton to support congressional demands that nearly $9 billion be added to the 1999 defense budget. However, only about $1 billion of those funds are intended to redress existing readiness
problems. (Another $2 billion, for the Bosnia mission, are designed to prevent readiness problems from getting worse; without them, that operation would need to be funded by raiding Pentagon accounts for training and equipment maintenance.) Foreign Policy
Tools: Budget, Aid, Defense, Force In our view, it is desirable that modest increases in defense spending of about $10 billion should continue in 2000, 2001, and 2002but that they should all focus on readiness. If additional missions like those in Bosnia and Kosovo
are undertaken, a further $1 billion to $3 billion a year may also be needed for contingency purposes. Although a new quadrennial defense review and defense strategy will take effect after 2002, some more immediate and narrow issues obviously need to be
addressed before then. As a practical matter, defense-spending increases of this size are not increases at all. They simply allow the defense budget to keep up with inflation. At present, the balanced-budget accord projects modest real decreases in defense spending
through 2002. Some will argue that if only excess military bases were closed and other economies made in the Pentagons ways of doing business, added money would become available for readiness. That is correctbut only eventually. In the short term, closing
bases actually costs money. Two more rounds of closures, if authorized, would save only about $3 billion a year when completed, which would not be enough to solve todays readiness problem even if the savings were attainable immediately. If additional funds are
not provided, the U.S. armed forces will not fall apart. But if we keep up present levels of global engagement and deterrence by simply tightening belts and trying to make do with available funds, shortages of key personnel may worsen, and equipment will continue
to deteriorate. In that event, fewer U.S. forces will be prepared to deploy and fight on short order. Units are already under manned and underequipped when they arrive at advanced combat training facilities. That means they are not extracting proper benefit from
their exercises and are not as combat-ready as they once were. If trends continue much longer, the United States will find it difficult to maintain a robust two-war strategy. Forces needed for a second possible war will require many months of training before
deploying. It might take even longer to acquire enough spare parts to make much of their equipment operational. Even those who consider the current two-war strategy more than ample should be concerned; left unchecked, these trends could eventually cut into
our ability to sustain a vigorous one-war strategy while conducting missions in places like Bosnia. Worse yet, at some point a threshold may be reached where declines in military standards accelerate. The biggest danger here is that the people making up the U.S.
armed forces will become discouraged by the blend of rising demands and a lack of support. If compensation and training and maintenance standards continue to decline while workloads and deployments away from home remain heavy, good people may leave the
armed forces in droves. At that point, the military truly could become hollow. Once lost, top-caliber people would take at least 5 to 10 years to replace. Ready for What? Readiness refers to the U.S. militarys prompt ability to pick up, deploy, and do what it is asked
to do: fight, or keep the peace, or alleviate humanitarian suffering, or make a show of force in a crisis. That is a broad set of missions. But they all make sense in a world where we have to deter immediate threats, hold together alliances, and try to save innocent
lives. Moreover, the experience of the last decade suggests that, if properly supported, U.S. troops are up to the challenge. Since the concept of readiness encompasses so much, it may help to state clearly what it does not include. Most important, it generally does
not refer to the weapons acquisition process. Most major weapons developed or contracted for today will not be in the operational inventory for 3 to 10 years, so they cannot influence near-term readiness. Nor should debates over readiness be confused with
debates over strategy. The latter, like the 1997 quadrennial defense review (QDR) process, should be asking if the overall size and capabilities of the U.S. military are appropriate. Readiness, by contrast, focuses more narrowly on the caliber and upkeep of individual
units and troops and reflects how well those units measure up to their own potential. Under the 1997 QDR, the U.S. armed forces must remain prepared for overlapping wars in the Persian Gulf and Korea, maintain about a quarter million troops based or deployed
overseas at a time, and conduct various operations such as keeping peace in the Balkans and containing Saddam Hussein. These missions are similar to those set forth in the countrys first post Cold War defense plan, the B ush administrations base force concept,
and are reiterated in the Clinton administrations 1993 bottom-up review. Those who say that North Korean and Iraqi military capabilities have been atrophying over the 1990s are rightbut those facts have already been largely incorporated into U.S. military
strategy, which now plans to handle the same set of missions with a quarter million fewer active-duty troops than the Bush administration thought necessary. Still, as noted, our purpose here is not to revisit this debate, which is due to resume in two years in any
event, but to consider more narrow and mundane readiness issues, such as spare parts and military pay. Another defense spending debate is likely to heat up around 2001 or 2002 this one over new weaponry. During most of the 1990s, the United States has been
able to get by spending only about $45 billion a year procuring new equipment. That is down about 50% from the 1980s average and reflects the fact that the Reagan defense buildup left us with large stocks of advanced weaponry. This procurement holiday will have
to end in the next decade, however, since Reagan-era equipment will begin to wear out. The Joint Chiefs have stated that annual procurement spending must increase to at least $60 billion. Certain other experts, such as analysts at the Congressional Budget Office,
believe that it may take $70 billion a year or more (in 1998 dollars) to buy all the equipment now on the Pentagons books. Must real defense spending go up after 2002? It is difficult to say. On the one hand, further personnel cuts, base closures, and other reforms
will free up funds for weapons modernization. Cumulatively, these changes could make available $10 billion a year. But annual procurement spending needs to increase by perhaps $25 billion under existing plans. Those plans may be revised. Even then, procurement
spending will surely need to increase somewhatif only to fund new production runs of existing weaponry so that equipment remains safe and reliable. The military relies on a wide range of indices to keep a careful eye on readiness. All are keyed to answering the
following questions: Does the military have enough of the right kinds of people in the right jobs? Do those people have serviceable equipment on hand? And are they being provided the resources and training opportunities needed to ensure that their skills measure
up to requisite warfighting standards? What readiness measures seem to be telling us today is that the U.S. armed forces remain very good, but also quite strained and stretched. Most of their specific problems concern military personnel, with several also showing
up in equipment and infrastructure. Troubling Trends The navy fell short of its numerical recruitment goals in 1998. Overall, some 200,000 recruits are needed annually, which is down about one-third from the Cold War. Whereas the other three services achieved at
least 99% of their goals, the navy enlisted only 88% (or 7,000 sailors short) of the number it sought. Largely as a result, those navy ships not on deployment are considerably less ready for combat than in recent years: specifically, only 50% of nondeployed ships are
considered ready for most or all possible missions, down from 70 percent a decade ago. Similar problems afflict other services, meaning that many stateside units would require weeks or in some cases months of preparation before being fully deployable for war.
More and more people are leaving the services before completing their first tours. In the 1980s, 28% of recruits departed before completing their first three years of service, whereas recent figures are around 35%. This trend increases the number of personnel gaps
and the general sense of flux in many units. Pilot shortages are becoming serious. The air force is now 1,000 pilots short of its official goals. If current trends remain unchanged, it will be about 1,400 pilotsor 10%short of its goals by September 1999, and the
problem will only keep getting worse. Current shortages can be coped with by leaving some desk jobs normally taken by pilots unfilled, but that may be only a temporary solution given worsening trends. Other services are experiencing pilot shortages, too, in large
part because of competition from a strong and high-paying civilian airline industry, fatiguing and tedious missions to patrol the skies of Iraq, the Bosnia no-fly-zone operation, and other taxing demands. Some types of equipment are in their worst shape in a decade.
For example, the mission capable rates or availability rates of air force aircraft have declined just below 75%, after being around 80% in the late 1980s and 85% in the early 1990s; and aggregate mission capable rates for marine corps equipment have dropped from
90% to 85% in the last five years. Funds for the upkeep of bases are inadequate. This recent trend puts commanders in a Catch-22 situation. They must either let bases deteriorate or they must raid operating accounts and cut back on training to maintain facilities. In
the army, many units have been forced to reduce tank training hours by about 20% as a result. This means, among other things, that some large exercises at the battalion level and above have been canceled. Good News The force has never been better educated or
more experienced. About 99% of all enlisted personnel have graduated from high school, and 94% of all officers have graduated from collegeboth all-time highs. Recruits remain skilled and well educated. About 94% of recruits in 1997 and 1998 had high school
diplomas, and 68% scored above the national average on the armed forces aptitude test. These numbers are still slightly better than 1980s levels, although they have declined somewhat since the early to mid-1990s (when they averaged almost 97% and 73%,

respectively). Peacetime casualty rates are at an all-time low. In the last ten years, accidental death rates per 100,000 troops (including operational, training, and off-duty causes)

have dropped by about one-quarter. Overall safety rates improved in 1998 for the third consecutive year and are now their best ever in most services. These trends reflect well on the quality of equipment but even more on the caliber of the men and women of the
armed forces who are operating and maintaining the equipment. Training funds remain robust for first-to-fight units. Although operations like those in Bosnia and Iraq can interrupt training, Pentagon budgets are still providing adequate resources for units based in
key regions overseas or slated to rapidly reinforce those forward units in the event of a crisis. Some QDR initiatives should bear fruit soon. For example, the air force is adding 5,000 people to low-density/high-tempo specialties such as security forces, civil
engineering units, communications units, and AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft crews. Recognizing that todays frequently deployed forces often need time at home even more than extra training, the Pentagon has scaled back joint-service

exercises by about 25%. Similarly, downturns in the mission-capable rates of key equipment should soon be at least partly redressed by increases in funding for spare parts that began in 1997 . Solutions Current trends
suggests a mixed picture of U.S. military readiness. Todays soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines remain as good
if not better than they have ever been on an individual basis. But, collectively, military readiness has slipped somewhat and is still
slipping. Some steps to reverse these trends have already been taken and should mitigate the
problems to a degree. But more needs to be done . Increase military compensation . Recent
conflicting reports illustrate the difficulty in comparing the pay of military personnel to civilians of similar age and with similar
educational backgrounds and skills. But we feel confident that military salaries and pensions should increase in any event. Todays
young military personnel are held to very high standards of competence and discipline and
typically spend many weeks or months away from home each yeardemands not matched in
many parts of the civilian economy. Moreover, the market is speaking: young people are showing less propensity to
enlist in the armed forces than they used to and are leaving the military after shorter terms of service than before. These realities
need to be addressed. Two important issues are at stake here: pay and pensions . In the wake of the 1986 reforms in the
military pension system, those who leave the service after 20 years? time will earn roughly 25% less in retirement pay than they
would have before. Our
preferred approach to improving military compensation would combine the
full restoration of the pre-1986 retirement system with a modest across-the-board real pay
increase and larger raises for targeted specialties. It would cost about $3 billion annually. Fund all
readiness and operating accounts, including property maintenance, at 100% of projected need.
In the case of the army, recent funding has totaled only 84% of expected requirements for base operations and 59% for real
property maintenance. Closing
these gaps would require $1.3 billion a year. Generalizing this approach
to all services might cost $3 billion to $4 billion annually in all. Provide adequate funding for
spare parts and depot maintenance . To take another example from the army, depot maintenance funding meets
only 80% of the expected need of the active-duty force for key combat systems and 50% of the need for other equipment. The air
force anticipates shortfalls in spare parts and depot maintenance funds of about $400 million a
year from 2000 through 2002. Fixing these problems across the active-duty force would require some $1 billion a year
over five years. We also strongly support a prompt resumption of the base closure process . With
national unemployment very low today, the timing could not be better for what is inevitably a painful process in certain
communities. An additional two rounds of base closures would cost about $2 billion a year over
roughly a five-year period (but would permanently save $3 billion a year thereafter). Altogether,
these various initiatives would require a grand total of about $10 billion a year above the
current Pentagon budget plan. We urge the Clinton administration to add these amounts to its
2000, 2001, and 2002 budget requests, and the Congress to approve the increases (or add the
funds itself if the president does not). That amount translates roughly into holding the line
against inflation in future military spending levels, rather than allowing real defense spending to
decline further between now and 2002, as forecast under the 1997 balanced-budget accord. So
our proposal would not constitute an increase in defense spending at all. Its dollar magnitude
amounts to only 10% of the savings that have been achieved in the annual defense budget since
the end of the Cold War. This is a small price for a military that has been doing so much to
advance American and allied interests from Iraq to Korea to the Taiwan Straits to Bosnia,
indeed, to many places all over the world.

The fourth plank solves increased military healthcare enterprise guarantees

effective retention
Bipartisan Policy Center 17
(Bipartisan Policy Center, March 2017, Building a F.A.S.T Force: A Flexible Personnel System for a Modern Military
Recommendations from the Task Force on Defense Personnel) JPARK
Preamble The health of service members and their families is vital to the U.S. militarys ability to accomplish its mission. The charge of the Military Health System is to maintain and improve health, whether by delivering lifesaving battlefield medicine in theater or by
providing routine care stateside. In addition, the Military Health System serves as an important employee benefit, providing health care for dependents of current service members, as well as military retirees and their families. In FY 2016, the Unified Medical
Program budget was $48 billion, roughly $1 out of every $12 in the defense budget that year, and the system covered an estimated 9.4 million eligible beneficiaries, including 5.4 million retirees and their family members.89,90 Yet, the Military Health System is not
sustainable as currently designed and operating. Health care is a must-pay bill, and escalating costs threaten resources needed for training, manning, equipping, and modernizing the force. Inefficient use of health care dollarswhether due to underutilized

military-readiness needs . The

infrastructure, inappropriate use of services, absence of a rational personnelmanagement plan, or other organizational deficienciesdiverts scarce resources from other

sustainability of military health care is a key challenge that policymakers must continue to
address as part of personnel reforms because it is inherently connected to readiness and
service-member compensation . Reforms must also be considered in the context of U.S. health
care delivery and payment systems that are in the midst of significant changes resulting from the Affordable Care Act, changes
to Medicare, health-system and payer consolidation, and other efforts to address escalating costs and quality improvement. The Military Health System has considerable strengths. C ombat-casualty and rehabilitative care have become more effective than ever,
saving countless lives; the fatality rate among wounded individuals was 9.3 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared with 23 percent during the Vietnam War.91 Most service member s are satisfied with the health care services they receive at home.92 TRICARE
as the benefit is known to service members, military retirees, and dependentsfeatures a comprehensive benefit package and very low out-of-pocket beneficiary costs for coverage and for receiving services, compared with typical employer-sponsored health plans.
Health care services are delivered to TRICARE beneficiaries using a combination of military treatment facilitiesstaffed by uniformed and defense-civilian health care providersand purchased services from private-sector, civilian providers. In short, the Military
Health System delivers an extraordinary volume of high-quality services to a large population with diverse needs in sometimes dangerous and chaotic conditions. Along with these str engths, military health care also faces challenges in financial sustainability,
readiness, quality, and the patient experience. Lawmakers have recognized these challenges and, as part of the FY 2017 defense-authorization law, provided department leadership with new authorities and direction to improve military health care.93 Going forward,
the Military Health System must change if it is going to: continue meeting military-readiness needs, especially to maintain a high level of trauma-care capability; become a learning organization that continuously improves the delivery of high-value care, meaning
higher-quality outcomes, a better patient experience, and increased efficiency; resolve access problems in certain geographic areas and specialties; and contain system-wide cost growth so that the resource use of the Military Health System does not threaten other
military-readiness needs. Just as importantly, the health of service members and their families is not only affected by TRICARE. Pentagon leadership should embrace the challenge of promoting healthful lifestylesespecially opportunities to make good nutritional
choices and stay active on U.S. military propertyand be held accountable for high 85 bipartisanpolicy.org rates of separation due to failure to meet physical standards. Wellness, both physical and psychological, are of such importance that responsibility must

First and foremost is how to maintain a high level of

extend beyond the official health care system and throughout the department. Readiness and the Medical Force

military readinessthe primary purpose of the Military Health System as the U.S. military is
decreasingly engaged in the large-scale, intensive combat that was common over the last 15 years. Perhaps the most pressing
problem is how to maintain a ready medical force after this transition. In the past, trauma and combat-casualty skills have degraded
during peacetime, resulting in preventable deaths and injuries when conflict returns. Absent significant changes to the strategy and
operations of the Military Health System, this unwelcome trend will repeat itself. A new model must be established, in partnership
with civilian trauma centers, to enable military health care providers to continue to regularly serve trauma-care patients. This
transformation must be achieved in a way that enhances the capability of TRICARE to maintain the medical readiness of the general
service-member population. Modernization of the Military Health System Back home, the
Military Health System has
been slow to adopt some of the improvements that private-sector health care organizations
have used to improve the quality of care delivered, enhance the patient experience, and contain costto promote high-value care, in other words. For example, in the private sector, many health systems have established regional centers of
excellence, to which patients needing certain specialty care are referred. This approach allows specialty care to be delivered at the volumes necessary to promote both quality and efficiencyenabling providers to become highly experiencedto offer patients the
latest technologies for examination and treatment, and to ensure that care standards are met. Yet, the military has not adopted this approach, maintaining a network of dispersed specialists who typically see care volumes too low to maintain maximum proficiency.
The absence of modern innovations extends beyond the military health care delivery system to the design of the payment system. While TRICARE continues to pay civilian health care providers using volume-based, fee-for-service reimbursement, many private-sector
providersand other government programs, such as Medicareare adopting advanced payment models that are intended to encourage care coordination and promote provider accountability for health outcomes, the patient experience, and cost. For example,
shared-savings arrangements enable health care providers to keep a portion of any savings compared with a cost-growth target, but only if they meet standards for quality outcomes and patient satisfaction. Timely Access to Health Care TR ICARE beneficiaries are,
overall, more satisfied with their health plan than civilians.94 This satisfaction is likely a result of the programs broad coverage of benefits and low out-of-pocket contributions from beneficiaries. However, beneficiary satisfaction is lower when asked specifically
about health care.95 One area where TRICARE consistently underperforms private-sector health plans is in timely access to care.96 These access problems extend to both routine appointments and specialty care, such as mental health, and access can be more
challenging for reservists and military retirees who do not live near an installation with bipartisanpolicy.org 86 military treatment facilities. A recent survey of Air Force personnel even showed that, for a small but significant minority, difficulty obtaining access to care
was a top reason to separate from the service.97 Ironically, despite this evidence, TRICARE beneficiaries access health care at a much higher rate than the commercially insured population does.98 While some of this might be due to health care needs resulting from
more than 15 years of war, much of it could simply be inappropriate overuse caused by poorly coordinated care in a system that lacks strong enterprise management. Cost in an Era of Constraints As noted above, substantial resources$1 out of every $12 in the
defense budgetare devoted to the Military Health System. Escalating health care cost growth threatens the sustainability of military health care and risks diverting scarce resources from other military-readiness needs. More than half of TRICARE beneficiaries are
military retirees and their family members.99 The department does not have complete data on how much it costs for TRICARE to serve military retirees, which is likely in the tens of billions annually. Health care is, without question, an important part of the military
retirement benefit and will remain so, yet it is striking that most TRICARE beneficiaries are outside of the core readiness mission. Further, the department does not know whether retirees and dependents view TRICARE as their main source of health care coverage or
as supplemental to another health plan, such as from a current employer. The high service utilization of TRICARE beneficiaries, as compared with civilian utilization, also has cost implications, and if some of that usage is inappropriate or duplicative, then there is an
opportunity to yield savings that could be reinvested in other military-readiness priorities. In an era of limited budgets, cost is an important dimension that has implications for readiness and quality as well. Health, Wellness, and Readiness For most Americans, health
care services are not the most important determinant of health. Instead, personal behaviors and environmental factors substantially affect health. The availability and cost of healthful foods, the presence or absence of opportunities to remain active at work and at
home, and individual choices about diet, exercise, tobacco use, and sleep are all important contributors to health. Just as the United States is struggling as a nation with obesity and chronic health conditions that result in part from poor nutrition and sedentary
lifestyles, military readiness is adversely affected by the national wellness crisis. Too many service members are forcibly separated for failing to meet weight and physical-ability standards, which should spur questions about whether the military is doing enough to
foster an environment that promotes healthful lifestyle choices. Additionally, over the past decade, awareness has increased of the need for service members and their families to address mental- and behavioral-health needs as an essential ingredient in overall
wellness. Fortunately, policymakers have made substantial new resources available to expand mental-health services. Use of behavioral-health care by service members and dependents has grown substantially in recent years, from 1.1 million encounters in 2003 to
3.3 million encounters in 2014.100 A recent review found that mental-health care in the military is too fragmented, limiting its effectiveness.101 Pentagon leadership has an opportunity and an imperative to rationalize and improve the effectiveness of military

mental- and behavioral-health services. 87 bipartisanpolicy.org Goals for Reforms The Military Health System must achieve better enterprise
management : to align with and represent the best of the broader U.S. health care system; to
balance value, quality, safety, and access for the best beneficiary experience; to
foster the processes and tools
necessary for continual improvement across all of these criteria; to offer worldwide availability of care for
all beneficiaries competitive with private-sector health care benefits and focused on health and wellness; and to best achieve the
twin purposes of the system, which are a medically ready force and a ready medical force:
service members and their
families who are resilient and physically, mentally, and medically ready to complete and support the
mission; military health care personnel who are sufficiently skilled and experienced to deliver the full spectrum of health care
Recommendations Establish better enterprise management of
services during times of crisis and war.
the military health care system to improve access to high-quality, modern, and efficiently
delivered health care services. A recent report from the National Academy of Medicine, presenting recommendations for
the military and civilian trauma-care systems, noted that military trauma care is: Virtually the same statement could be made about
the Military Health System as a whole. While some functions, such as the operation of TRICARE payment systems, are concentrated
at the Defense Health Agency, the management of individual military treatment facilities and supervision of providers has been left
to each individual service. The result is a system that is difficult to manage and in which no one is ultimately accountable for
delivering on readiness, quality, access, cost, and patient experience goals. This
arrangement fosters a system that is
not amenable to the kind of system-wide improvement efforts that have the potential to deliver
higher readiness, better care, and lower costs . In addition to the National Academy of Medicine, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission also

recommended consolidation of authority for the Military Health System.103 unclear in its leadership structures, with no single locus of combined responsibility and authority for maintaining the readiness and assuring the performance of military trauma care teams
and of the system as a whole. No one appears to be responsible for setting goals for the readiness of the medical force or for its performance, nor do those line commanders who ultimately control resources in the field uniformly claim or reliably accept responsibility
for monitoring and ensuring that standards of trauma care are being met on the battlefield.102 bipartisanpolicy.org 88 Lawmakers have recognized this problem and, as part of the FY 2017 defense-authorization law, consolidated authority over military treatment
facilities within the Defense Health Agency and employed several new authorities to facilitate system reorganization and improvement.104 In many ways, centralization of authority within the Defense Health Agency is the keystone to other reforms; without central
authority and accountability, better enterprise management would be impossible to achieve and many, if not most, of the task forces recommendations would be futile. This does not mean that the system should not also be responsive to the needs of individual
services; it can and must. This will not be the first time that a mission-critical function is centralized across the department. For example, the Defense Logistics Agency serves the supply-chain needs for everything from food to fuel and building materials for all four
services. The Potential for Partnerships The current division of responsibilities between the military direct-care system and the purchased-care network is suboptimal for many reasons. Uniformed health care professionals devote substantial time to services that are
not central to readiness, such as pediatric care. Specialists in many military treatment facilities do not serve sufficient v olumes of patients in order to maintain a high level of proficiency. And military surgeons working in the direct-care system during peacetime
obtain very little experience with trauma-care patients, threatening the readiness mission. Whats more, expensive infrastructure could be utilized more efficiently. F or example, the Military Health System operates 55 inpatient hospitals and medical centers.105 The
Veterans Health Administration operates 168 medical centers.106 Hundreds more outpatient sites are operated by each. These facilities are in various stages of modernization and have many overlapping locations. For example, Jacksonville, Florida, has a new
Veterans Health Administration hospital that is near a modernized military treatment facility. Is this the best, most-efficient use of taxpayer resources? Many military hospitals are also near civilian medical centers. When nearby facilities are underutilized,
consolidating services and modernizing efforts under a single facility have great potential for savings, quality, and readiness improvements. A 2016 Blue Star Families survey showed that active-duty families who use civilian providers have higher satisfaction with
quality and timeliness of care.107 A better approach, one thats reflected in the recommendations of MCRMC and several provisions in the FY 2017 defense authorization law, would be to rethink which services should be delivered by military health care providers in

. The Military Health System would partner with civilian health

military facilities and which could be better served by private-sector civilian providers

systems and the Veterans Health Administration to create a win-win-win result for all three
organizations. In the Military Health System, care, quality, and access would improve for
TRICARE beneficiaries, and readiness would improve for uniformed medical personnel. For example,
military surgeons and trauma nurses might be stationed on long-term, three-year periods at civilian trauma centers, obtaining
invaluable experience that would maintain their readiness to deploy in wartime and deliver top-quality combat-casualty and trauma
care. The civilian medical centersmany of them in lower-income communities would, at no cost to them, benefit from extra
health care professionals and the expertise from military trauma-care professionals returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Civilian
health providers would have the opportunity to serve more military patients, such as for pediatric care, and the military would save
on facility and staffing costs, and also potentially free uniformed end-strength for non-medical purposes. The
Pentagon
should make full use of the new authorities provided by the FY 2017 defense authorization to
develop these partnerships in ways that would improve readiness , the quality and timeliness of
care, and efficiency. 89 bipartisanpolicy.org Modern Health Care Delivery Practices The Pentagon has been slow to establish
a highly integrated health care system, which excels both at promptly providing patients with the proper level of care while also
deploying subspecialists in the places where they can be most effective. To achieve this, the Military Health System must adopt
many innovations that are increasingly common in civilian health care delivery systems to ease access to services and to improve the
quality of care. Lawmakers included provisions to advance these innovations in the FY 2017 defense-authorization law. Approaches
will differ depending on geography and other circumstances. For example: telehealth services would help to extend access to
beneficiaries who do not live in close proximity to military treatment facilities or purchased-care network providers; and moving
certain specialty-care services from local military treatment facilities to regional centers of excellence would allow sufficient patient
volumes for specialists to maintain maximum proficiency, would facilitate the maintenance of best-practice standards of care, and
would allow faster adoption of new technology and treatments. Integration must extend beyond military health care providers.
While a specialty center of excellence might be run from a military treatment facility in an area with a substantial military presence,
in other parts of the country a partnership with a civilian or veterans medical center might be more efficient and effective.
Centralize personnel-management authority for health care personnel under the Defense Health Agency. The Defense
Department does not currently have a human-resources management plan for attracting and
retaining the necessary personnel to maintain medical-force readiness including physician and non-physician health care

professionals, such as nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, and community-health workers. The FY 2017 defense-authorization law provision to consolidate Military Health System management in the Defense Health Agency will help, but this reform must be
coupled with a personnel-management strategy and plan that should align with other efforts to integrate care with other health systems and modernize t he delivery system. For example, if the department shifts certain medical services to civilian health systems, the
Military Health System would likely need fewer providers of that type; to maintain key positions related to readiness, the department might use other tactics recommended below, such as greater reliance upon the reserve component. Because medical reservists
continue in private practice, they maintain competency and can be called upon when surge capacity is needed. One possible approach could be targeted use of medical-school debt repayment to attract key specialties to the reserves based on current needs. Other
changes in personnel policies, such as the creation of alternative promotion pathways, will likely be needed to implement a new personnel plan. For example, the National Academy of Medicine panel and BPC listening tour each heard from military health care
providers who left practice because promotion (and pay increases) required transitioning to management activities. This is not necessarily the best way to use highly skilled and competent providers, especially those who would prefer to remain in clinical practice.
The department should offer a clinical-practice promotion pathway to allow high-performing military doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants to continue delivering patient care. bipartisanpolicy.org 90 Improve civilian-military permeability for health care
providers through a more-effective use of the reserve component to better meet staffing needs. The reserve component has struggled to recruit medical professionals, filling roughly one-third of the surgical slots, for example.108 Mobilization is too difficult and
uncertain under current reserve-component contracts. A more-straightforward contract, such as one that indicates that X percent of time will be devoted to military service and the rest will be devoted to civilian work, might attract more specialists to the reserves.

For example, since most of the peacetime trauma-care expertise is located at civilian trauma centers, one approach to acquiring greater military trauma-care capabilities would be to recruit more civilian trauma-care physicians and nurses into the reserves .
Clear expectations about the time commitment (when not activated) and targeted offers of
benefits, such as higher-education loan repayment, could help to acquire these key specialties
for the readiness of the medical force. Civilian-military permeability would be further advanced
by implementing training and readiness requirements that meet national standards for all military medical technicians.
This change would promote a high level of competence among military health care professionals, align with the provision in th e FY 2017 defense-authorization law to adopt common health care quality measures, and enhance the militarys ability to attract qualified
professionals with existing credentials to active duty or to the reserves. It would also improve the transition for separating service members and perhaps encourage some departing active-duty service members to seek employment using their civilian credentials as
they continue to serve through the reserve component. Establish pilot programs to test use of commercially insured health plans to offer health benefits to reserve-component service members and their families, military retirees and their dependents, and the
dependents of active-duty service members. MCRMC recommended that health care benefits for military retirees and dependents of active-duty service members be delivered through a new system of commercially insured health plans. Given that the U.S. health
insurance system is in flux and that there is a high level of uncertainty surrounding potential cost savings from delivering TRICARE benefits using private-sector health plans, the task force suggests a more-cautious exploration of this idea. Rather than immediately
transitioning large populations of TRICARE beneficiaries to commercially insured health plans on a mandatory basis, the Military Health System would develop and run voluntary pilot programs to test this approach. The population of reserve-component members
and their families is probably the most logical group to begin with, since reservists are more likely to live far from military treatment facilities, are generally more familiar with commercially insured health plans from their experiences with civilian employers, and
already contribute a significant share of the cost of the existing TRICARE Reserve Select option. Private-sector health plans might offer these reservists better access to care through more-established provider networks in areas with little military presence. In fact, the
FY 2017 defense-authorization law includes a provision to allow the Defense Department to partner with the Office of Personnel Management, which operates the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, to launch a pilot to provide commercially insured health
plans to reservists and their family members. Participation would be optional for service members. 91 bipartisanpolicy.org Developing additional, voluntary demonstration programs could extend this approach for military retirees and dependents of active-duty
service members. For example, private-sector health plans for retirees might be tested in areas with a high concentration of military retirees but with few or no military treatment facilities. A pilot program for dependents of family members could also include a test
of the basic allowance for health care that MCRMC proposed. Offer a new TRICARE option for dependents of service members to leverage employer contributions and reduce TRICARE costs. Dependents of service members who are working may have access to
employer-sponsored health insurance, yet they are unlikely to enroll in or use workplace health insurance that has out-of-pocket costs much greater than those available in TRICARE. As a result, TRICAREand by extension, the defense budgetlikely covers most
health care costs for family members who have alternative sources of coverage. The FY 2017 defense-authorization law includes a provision to create a new TRICARE option for military retirees, who could receive reimbursement for out-of-pocket costs related to
enrollment and use of workplace health insurance. A similar option, which could be selected during the open-enrollment period that will be established according to the new defense-authorization law, should be made available to dependents of active-duty service
members. The task force recommends that dependents who decline TRICARE coverage should be able to receive up to $250 per mont h to put toward premiums and cost-sharing (e.g., for copayments and deductibles) related to their other health insurance coverage.
Increase TRICARE enrollment fees for military retirees to cover 20 percent of the cost of coverage beginning in 2038 so that current service members are grandfathered in. Since the current TRICARE benefit was implemented, retiree contributions to the cost of their
health care have declined precipitously in real terms. As part of the FY 2017 defense-authorization law, Congress made modest changes to these out-ofpocket costs that would only affect future retirees, beginning in the late 2030s. These enacted changes will still
result in TRICARE enrollment fees and cost-sharing that are far lower than those included in workplace health insurance, to which many military retirees have access. The modifications to TRICARE costs proposed in this recommendationwhich would only affect
future service members who retire more than two decades from nowwould improve the long-term sustainability of the TRICARE program, encourage working-age military retirees to enroll in workplace health insurance for which they are eligible, and honor the
expectation that current service members and military retirees have regarding retiree health benefits. MCRMC proposed to increase TRICARE enrollment fees for military retirees to 20 percent of the cost of coverage. This proposal should be enacted with two
modifications: (1) the change should only apply to military retirees who enter initial service in 2018 or later so that the s oonest retirees would be affected by this change would be calendar year 2038; and (2) the enrollment-fee change should apply to both TRICARE
coverage for non-Medicare-eligible retirees and TRICARE For Life coverage for Medicareeligible retirees. bipartisanpolicy.org 92 Collect and publish da ta, by service and base, on the number and percentage of service members who leave service due to health-related

. The
connection between wellness and readiness can be easily missed. While a
issues, and use data to target interventions

traumatic injury or illness has obvious implications for readiness, nutrition, tobacco use, sleep
habits, sedentary lifestyles, and failure to manage chronic conditions all have the potential to
adversely impact preparedness. Addressing these challenges requires a new style of leadership
that helps service members to make the connection between health and performance. Current, accurate data that helps
demonstrate this relationship and assists leaders in targeting their efforts to improve force wellness is critical. In order to
design and implement the best policies for improvements to the physical health of service
members, the department should create a centralized database with metrics relevant to health
outcomes that affect retention, such as results of service members fitness tests, height and weight measurements, use of tobacco products, unmanaged chronic

conditions, and any personnel actions taken based on these outcomes (e.g., separations, remedial fitness training, etc.). Currently, some of this information is collected at the service level and not uniformly transmitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The
Defense Health Agency does collect various population-health information, but it does not necessarily do so in a form that would allow it to be connected to separations. With the high degree of variation among bases and across services, identifying which locations
are best promoting health and wellness among service members will aid Pentagon leadership and lawmakers in identifying the most promising health-promotion strategies. Implement evidence-based programs and policies that promote healthful behaviors among
service members, encompassing physical, nutritional, and mental health. Similar to the fragmentation of programs seen in mental-health care, services and programs to promote healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco cessation, adequate sleep, and other
behavioral components of maintaining a healthy and ready force are largely provided at the installation level. Through Operation Live Well and the Healthy Base Initiative, the Pentagon has begun to recognize and evaluate these programs, but the department has
not yet undertaken a systematic review or assessment of the wellness programs offered across all bases and facilities. Building on findings from Operation Live Well and the Healthy Base Initiative, the department has an opportunity to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of existing efforts and to increase the impact of the most promising programs. Improving health promotion for servicemen and women also has the potential to impact the health of military families, an important source of recruitment for future service
members. In order to identify the most effective programs, the Pentagon should conduct a similar review process of health and wellness programs as it did for mental-health programs.
The second and third planks increase combat readiness that solves better
than force size
Dickstein 6/7
(Corey Dickstein, 4-7-2016, " Army: Increasing combat readiness more important than increasing force
size ," Stars and Stripes, https://www.stripes.com/news/army-increasing-combat-readiness-more-important-than-increasing-
force-size-1.472384#.WVgPeojysdw) JPARK
WASHINGTON The Army would like more soldiers, but only if Congress provides ample funding to
train them properly, the services top general said Wednesday, warning that insufficiently
prepared troops would lead to a hollow Army. The Armys $166.1 billion fiscal year 2018 base budget request
called for maintaining 476,000 active-duty soldiers authorized by Congress for 2017 because the service is primarily focused on
building the combat preparedness of that existing force, Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, told the Senate Appropriations
subcommittee for defense. The Army expects to reach 476,000 troops by adding about 10,000 soldiers by October. In this
budget, we have asked to flat line the end strength in the base budget, Milley said. However, if more
money became available and we were able to make sure we could maintain the readiness, we do have an additional request
which would increase the end strength capacity of the force. That request, known as an unfunded requirements list, includes an
additional $3.1 billion that would support adding 17,000 soldiers, including 10,000 to the active-duty force. Unfunded requirements
lists are submitted privately to Congress to guide lawmakers on additional needs that were not requested in the presidents official
budget proposal. But Milley warned lawmakers that the Army needs to increase its combat readiness more than it needs more
soldiers. Only about one-third of the Armys combat units are prepared for war now, he said. The goal is for two-thirds to be
prepared at any given time. The service plans to do that by increasing home-station training and rotations at major training centers,
such as the Armys National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California and Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk in Louisiana.
A hollow force only puts the Army and the nations security at risk, Milley said. Combat is very unforgiving and it is even more
unforgiving on armies that are not manned, trained, equipped and well-led. The Army remains the busiest of the military services,
Milley said. There are some 180,000 soldiers deployed in about 140 countries across the world. The Army fills roughly half of all
combatant commanders requests for troops and provides 70 percent of the personnel who respond to unexpected emergencies
across the globe, he said. And that burden could grow. Milley told Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that he supported adding additional
troops to Afghanistan. The White House is weighing whether to send up to 5,000 more troops to the 8,400 now deployed in support
of the 16-year war there. The bulk of additional troops would likely come from the Army. The bottom line is in the next decade, I
see the demands on the Army as more not less, Graham said. But he and other senators were critical of Trumps budget request,
which increased defense spending by about $54 billion but significantly cut social programs and funding to other departments,
including the State Department. Graham was particularly critical about the cut to diplomacy or soft power. Therein
lies the
problem with this budget, he said. I appreciate the increase in defense [spending], but the
cuts are real and they will affect the ability of this nation to defend itself, too. Milley agreed. The
conduct of war is not just a military undertaking, the general said. Armies dont go to war.
Nations go to war. For the United States, it is a whole-of-government approach of not only the military forces, but we need
the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, [the Department of] Commerce.

Compensation solves internal problems that increases employment and

retention
Bipartisan Policy Center 17
(Bipartisan Policy Center, March 2017, Building a F.A.S.T Force: A Flexible Personnel System for a Modern Military
Recommendations from the Task Force on Defense Personnel) JPARK
A-6: Establish pay bands for all defense civilian employees. As part of expanding the defense secretarys
authority over Pentagon civilian employees, a simplified job-classification system should be established for professional and
administrative positions, which would condense the GS system into a smaller number of pay bands to more closely align with the
knowledge and work that most defense-civilian employees currently perform. These pay bands should be designed to enable
Rationale One of
employees to progress based on their technical expertise, not just on the number of people they supervise.
the main problems with the General Schedule civilian personnel system is the inability to reward
high performers while also failing to hold low performers accountable. Pay bands allow for more
customization of civilian pay tables, which form the foundation for effective performance incentives. High
performers can be rewarded with meritbased pay raises within a predetermined pay band. Low
performers can be held accountable with reduced opportunities for increased cash
compensation. By more closely aligning the pay and compensation systems of civilian employees
with the actual work they are performing, the department can become a more-attractive
employer to prospective employees.

Compensation increases individual performance

Bipartisan Policy Center 17
(Bipartisan Policy Center, March 2017, Building a F.A.S.T Force: A Flexible Personnel System for a Modern Military
Recommendations from the Task Force on Defense Personnel) JPARK
S-2: Replace the military pay table to ensure compensation is commensurate to increased
responsibility and performance. Congress should direct the department to establish a new pay table (to completely
replace the existing pay table) that is based on rank (i.e., time-in-grade) rather than on time (i.e., time-in-service). The pay
table would include a base pay for each rank, incremental pay raises based on time served at
that rank, and an additional incentive pay for certain occupational specialties to sufficiently
compensate high demand skills and experience. The final component of this pay table would be the new
retirement systems midcareer retention bonus for selected personnel. The new pay table should be designed to keep overall
compensation constant. As new personnel authorities are implemented, it is likely that the overall manpower profile of the force will
change (i.e., lateral entry could yield more midlevel officers while also requiring fewer junior or senior ranking officers). This new
time-ingrade-based pay table would facilitate efficiency, performance, and readiness improvements to promote a more-flexible
Rationale The current military pay table is based on rank and cumulative time-in-service.
force.
The time-in-service model is ill equipped for new personnel authorities like lateral entry,
permeability, and shorter- or longer-than-traditional career lengths. For example, under the current
system, a new lateral-entry major with less than two years of total time-in-service would earn less than a captain with four years of
total experience.
A time-in-gradebased pay table ensures that each rank comes with a substantial
increase in pay, which reflects the increased level of responsibility inherent with promotions.
While this reform by itself should have neutral effects on overall military spending, it is
necessary to support the use of proposed and existing authoritiessuch as lateral entry and
variable career lengthsthat could result in better performance and lower long-term costs
 Neoliberalism Links
The plan expands neoliberal militarism forward deployment actualizes
threats and creates unending cycles of intervention
Morrissey, Geography PhD, 10 (John, PhD @ Exeter, Senior Lecturer in Geography @ NUI
Galway, "Closing the neoliberal gap: risk and regulation in the long war of securitization",
11/30/10, Accessed 6/29/17,
https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/bitstream/handle/10379/5995/Antipode_Paper_2.pdf) SSN
Various social theorists have explored in recent years how discourses of fear , insecurity and risk
feature prominently and constitutively in everyday governmentalities and reproductions of the
state (Bernstein 1996; Campbell 1992; Giddens 1999; Lupton 1999; Mythen and Walklate 2006). Ulrich Becks formulation of how
modernity can be characterized as a risk society has been a particular source of reflection across various
disciplines (Beck 1992, 1999; cf OMalley 1999). And while Michel Foucault did not write extensively on risk, his work on
governmentality has been especially influential in some of the most important recent theorizations of the subject (Braun 2008; Dean
1999; Foucault 1979, 1991, 2007; OMalley 2004). In the context of the war on terror, risk
has played a key role in the
legitimization of state governmental and military strategies of securitization (Cooper 2008; Dillon 2008).
Claudia Aradau and Rens Van Munster (2007:108), for instance, have shown how it is through the perspective of risk
management that securitization is so seductively seen to function by the deployment of
technologies to manage dangerous irruptions in the future. George W. Bushs declaration of the war on terror in 2001
was predicated on specific notions of insecurity and risk management; and that war had already begun, of course, some years earlier
when Bill Clinton dispatched bombing raids on Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1998, Clinton
warned the world about the risks
of inaction, which outweighed the risks of action; a key political rhetoric subsequently used by
Bush in launching the pre-emptive strikes on Iraq in 2003 (Beck 2009; Heng 2006; OMalley 2006). Five years later,
Bushs 2008 National Defense Strategy was concluded with a specific section entitled Managing Risk. Therein, future challenges
risk is underlined along with other identified risks as a critical element to be planned for in the strategic projection of US foreign
policy (US Department of Defense 2008:20-23). Military strategies of securitization from future challenges risk are
justified additionally by neoliberal beliefs that securitization practices simultaneously function to
correct, to reconstruct, to close the gap of global security, economic freedom and indeed civilization (Simmons
and Manuel 2003; Knights 2006; OHanlon 2008; Kaplan 2009). This binary neatly coupling the identification of
risk with the idea that military reconstruction is necessary results in a therapeutic and persuasive
geopolitical argument about permanent interventionism . It is at this point that temporality becomes an
important register. From its genesis, CENTCOMs temporal gaze has been directed to emerging and future danger. Such a focus is
militarily to be expected of course given that its theater engagement strategy has consistently entailed pre-emptive strategies of
deterrence and containment (US Central Command 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2009). A logic of military preemption, in other words,
has long been registered in CENTCOM circles. The logic of preemption has attracted considerable academic interest in recent years.
Randy Martins (2007) Empire of Indifference usefully deploys the concept to theorize the dual political and economic calculus of risk
that has featured so centrally in recent US military interventionism. 14 Echoing Naomi Kleins argument about event-based disaster
capitalism, Martin places particular emphasis on the import of the event and the risk of future events and argues that
preemption is the temporality of their securitization, the future made present (Martin 2007:18; Klein 2007). For Martin, when
such temporality drives foreign policy, [p]otential threats are actualized as demonstrations of
the need for further intervention. Melinda Cooper (2007) too has argued that US involvement in Iraq is based on
a mode of intervention that is curiously indifferent to its own success or failure, since both eventualities open up a
market of future risk opportunities where even hedges against risk can be traded for profit .
And as Deborah Cowen and Neil Smith (2009:42) point out, the everyday rationale for the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
may well be pragmatic military geography, but viewed more broadly, both can be seen as market war[s] par

excellence in which hundreds of corporations have feasted at the trough of billion-dollar

contracts committed to destruction and failed reconstruction. For Cooper (2007), the war on terror has
served to provoke a certain unity of purpose amongst various denominations of militant Islamism, crystallizing alliances that would
otherwise have lain dormant, and the pre-emptive action on the part of the US military has succeeded in generating relations at a
distance and risk opportunities where none existed before. In other words, as Martin (2007:98) argues: Fighting terror unleashed
it elsewhere, just as well-placed put or call (sell or buy) of stock would send ripples of price volatility through the market. Drops in
price can be hedged against, turned into derivatives, and sold for gain. The terror war converts both wins and losses into self-
perpetuating gain. But the gain is only for the few of course, and while the argument is compelling in terms of capturing the
mercenary impulses of security contract firms like Blackwater (Scahill 2007), it is perhaps a little too neat to encapsulate the multiple
urges of CENTCOM strategists and planners. However, the notion of CENTCOM consciously signing up to a foundational aleatory
contract to securitize the neoliberal gap in the Persian Gulf certainly bears up to scrutiny. One can arguably trace that aleatory
contract back to the signing of the Roosevelt-Aziz pact in the immediate post-WWII period, which can be read as an early
designation of the link between economic and security interests in advancing US hegemony in the Middle East (Painter 1986). In
the 1970s, a series of crises solidified this link: oil supply disruptions; Saudi unease over Horn of Africa crises; the removal of the
Shah in Iran; and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) was

created in Oct. 1979 with crisis management as its foundational remit (and CENTCOM, of course, as
permanent successor to the RDJTF, effectively took over the management of that ongoing crisis in 1983). In 1980, the Carter
Doctrine the geopolitical pre-scripting for CENTCOMs initiation as a permanent regional command posited the entire Middle
East and Central Asia region as a vital strategic space for the global political economy: The region which is now threatened by Soviet
troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: it contains more than two-thirds of the worlds exportable oil. The Soviet
effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of
Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow. President Carter emphasised the potentially grave
situation in the Middle East and made the case for the necessity of resolute action, not only for this year but for many years to
come.12 He was, in effect, sketching the idea of preemptive military action and a long war. The opening salvo in that long war
occurred with little media attention in the summer of 1987. The Iran-Iraq War was still raging and in what became known as
Operation Earnest Will CENTCOM forces were forward deployed for their first major intervention; the
operation would define the commands role thereafter. The Reagan administration, fearing an escalation of regional economic
volatility, ordered CENTCOM warships to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and ensure freedom of navigation by
reflagging them with American ensigns. Such a clear-cut geoeconomic intervention, according to President Reagan, was to
demonstrate U.S. commitment to the flow of oil through the Gulf. 13 And that commitment was considerable: at the height of
what became known as the Tanker War in 1987, at least 48 US Navy combat vessels were operating on full alert in the Persian Gulf
and northern Arabian Sea. Reagans successor, George Bush, continued Central Commands neoliberal
policing role in emphatically checking Iraqi regional ambition in 1991; in the Gulf Wars aftermath, he spoke of the
commands triumph in securing global economic health (Morrissey 2009b). After the war, a more permanent
ground presence of CENTCOM forces in Saudi Arabia and a proactive weapons prepositioning programme across
the Arabian Peninsula signalled a new hands-on US deterrence policy to fulfil its policing role in the
region. And this shift in command engagement strategy was confirmed by a number of CENTCOM-commissioned reports in the early
1990s (Lesser 1991; Pelletiere and Johnson II 1992). Stephen Pelletiere and Douglas Johnsons Oil and the New World System:
CENTCOM rethinks its Mission, for example, scripted the commands role thus: [US Central Command] has a crucial mission to
perform guarding the flow of oil In effect, CENTCOM must become the Gulfs policeman, a function it will perform with mounting
patrols (1992:v, 26).

The privatization of military recruitment advances the growing neoliberal

agenda to impose itself on society
Jennifer Mittelstadt 11
"Neoliberalism in the American military and its impact on civilians." OpenDemocracy. N.p., 7
Dec. 2012. Web. 29 June 2017. <https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/jennifer-
mittelstadt/neoliberalism-in-american-military-and-its-impact-on-civilians>.
Many Democrats in the United States Congress enthusiastically support the looming cuts to the U.S. defense budget. They note the
enormous costs of protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the imprudence of lavishly funding an American military
already unmatched the world over. For many sound reasons, they view the reduction of the defense budget in broad strokes as
positive. But details of present defense budget cuts contain specific proposals that ought to give them and many Americans
pause. Folded into the current military spending cuts is a neoliberal agenda to privatize and outsource
the retirement and health care benefits of military personnel and their families. Americans may consider
these proposals of minimal concern, and of interest only to military personnel, veterans, and
their families. But their implications reach far wider: they are part of a comprehensive neoliberal
plan to privatize virtually all government social welfare programs and entitlements. Promulgated by
free-market advocates at the Heritage Foundation, corporate interests on the Defense Departments Defense Business
Board, and the private Business Executives for National Security, current military health and retirement
proposals seek to replace existing government programs with privately-held, market-based healthcare and
pension programs. They closely mirror free-market proposals for Social Security, pension privatization, and health care
privatization in the civilian sector. Instead of using the current government-contracted HMO/PPO model, called TriCare, military
personnel and their families would receive health care vouchers allowing them to either purchase whatever health care plan they
chose from an array of private sector providers. Instead of earning defined retirement benefits pensions soldiers, sailors, airmen
and marines would each pay into privately held 401K programs or simply take a lump sum of cash. In a win-win for corporate
advocates, cuts to what they call the excessive and burdensome human side of the military will simultaneously fund greater
spending on expensive weapons and communications systems. And under
the pretext of providing choice to
military personnel, the programs decrease total benefits and increase private sector access to
government funds and the money of military personnel. Americans have largely missed this
story of military neoliberalism. When they discuss military outsourcing and privatization, they think of military service
providers in American wars the mercenaries of Blackwater (now Xi) and DynCorps on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. But
privatized pension and health care proposals have a longer, deeper, and ultimately more powerful history. Fordecades, the
far bigger and costlier story of neoliberalism in the military has lain not on battlefields, but on
military posts and bases across the world, where the banal military support sector everything from
housing, installation management, and recreation to generating pay checks, performing maintenance, and writing reports has
been and continues to be sold off to the private sector. Military contracting for services grew steadily from the
late 1980s onward, outstripping military contracting for products (weapons, materiel) traditionally the bulk of military contracts
in the late 1990s. By the time the first stories of contractors on the battlefields broke in 2002, the military was nearly ten years
into the process of outsourcing and privatizing everything from its hotels and recreation centers, to its housing and maintenance, to
its health care. The transfer of these military services from the public realm to the private had its origins in free market policy circles,
beginning with economist Milton Friedman, who helped found the all-volunteer force in 1973. At the time, free-marketers
advocated ceasing all military-provided, government-run support for soldiers (and their families), from health care to housing to the
Post Exchange, with some going so far as to call the Armys supports socialist. Instead, they proposed that soldiers use their
salaries to purchase any support they wished in the market. The military scoffed at the notion of fulfilling soldiers needs
through the private sector. At that time, support services were deemed central to the success of the volunteer force to its
recruitment, retention, and its readiness. American society did not provide (and still does not provide) generous social benefits to all
citizens in the manner of many European nations, so the military argued successfully that military provision of these services would
cement soldier and family loyalty to the new institution. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pentagon and the services constructed a
formidable architecture of support covering everything from health to housing, childcare to counseling. It was nearly all managed by
government personnel.

The US military is neoliberal

Schwartz 11 (Michael, PhD and professor at Stony Brook State University, Received January
2011, Accepted August 2011, Military Neoliberalism: Endless War and Humanitarian Crisis in
the Twenty-First Century, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Accessed June 29,
2017, http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=swb)
BA
My concern is with a particular subset of this literature that understands many of these interventions as extensions of
neoliberal economic globalization. This understanding finds expression in the analyses that see the recent wars,
especially the invasion of Iraq, as efforts to extend neoliberal policies into new political domains.13
David Harvey, who called the invasion of Iraq an attempt at violent imposition of neo-
liberalism, expressed this viewpoint succinctly (2003:216). The draconian measures undertaken by L. Paul Bremer, almost
immediately after his ascension to leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, were attempts, in Harveys interpretation, to do by main
force what the U.S. has been trying to do globally for the previous 30 years.14 Immanuel Wallerstein
adds texture to this
argument by analyzing the war as having broader significance than the simple imposition of
neoliberalism in Iraq, seeing it instead as an attempt to halt the political and economic decline
of the United States with a demonstration war (2003). Katharine Bjork (2010) developed this logic more
fully, labeling the war in Iraq as a punitive war. In reviewing U.S. interventions during the
twentieth and twenty-first century, Bjork defined punitive wars as an effort to extend sovereignty into previously independent (or
non-compliant) regions. The underlying objective of punitive wars is to compel the abandonment of rival sovereignty claims and to prepare the way for
securing the allegiance or just the capitulation of populations subjected to punitive actions; and to prepare the way for a thoroughgoing imposition of a
more comprehensive colonial order. (Bjork 2010) Such wars are therefore undertaken in situations where not only military control is in question, but
more fundamentally the moral or cultural claims on which sovereignty is premised are at issue. In Bjorks analysis, such wars utilize what she calls
demonstrative or exemplary violence, as in the case of the Shock and Awe campaign in Iraq. This
sort of punitive strategy
involves targeting whole communities and ignoring distinctions between combatants and
civilians, and is justified as an effort to discipline, to impose order, to pacify, or even as
tutelary, to teach a lesson. Harlan Ullman, the military theorist who developed shock and awe, offered a similar interpretation by first
posing, then answering, his own rhetorical question in a British Guardian interview: How do you influence the will and perception of the enemy, to get
them to behave how you want them to? So you focus on things that collapse their ability to resist (Burkeman, 2003). To illustrate this strategic
orientation in the Iraq war as a whole, Bjork
quotes then Secretary of State Colin Powells justification for the
brutality of the U.S. assault on the insurgent city of Falluja: Weve got to smash somebodys ass quickly.There has to
be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power. 15 This demonstration
element as critical to punitive war draws the analysis back to the globalized neoliberal project.
Toby Dodge, in three illuminating articles detailing the logic that informed the invasion of Iraq, argues that this demonstration element applied
beyond Iraq to the Middle East as a whole. The on-the-ground military dimension of the U.S.-led campaign aimed at breaking down the comparative
autonomy from neo-liberal policy among Middle East countries: The autonomy built up by the Baathist regime over 35 years of rule allowed it to defy
the institutions of the international community and resist the application of 13 years of coercive diplomacy. Conversely, if it could be removed, if the
full force of US military might could be displayed in one of the most important states in the region, then the rest of the Arab regimes could be made to
submit fully to US hegemony. (Dodge, 2006:466-7)16 This thread of analysis,
which originates in the consideration of
neoliberalism as an expression of the economic stance of the newly ascendant transnational
capitalist class, and the framework within which post-Soviet U.S. foreign policy (and that of its allies)
developed, leads to framing the military intervention in Iraqand other recent interventions
incorporating on-the-ground kinetic military operations as part of t he nexus of neoliberal
reform . Dodges synthesis of punitive war into the tool box for opening otherwise resistant economies to multinational trade and capital
investment constitutes an analytic finishing touch for this thread of analysis. These
analyses, bringing neoliberal reform into
the full purview of military goals, provide a dynamic explanation for the overarching ideology expressed in the National Security
Stategy enunciated by Presidents Bush and Obama. At the same time, it stays within the boundaries of previous analyses, which view of military action
as extension of politics. The
military role is to overthrow a sitting government and enable the
establishment of a more congenial regime that could or would enact neoliberal economic reforms, among many others.
In Dodges analysisand that of others sharing his orientationthe militarys role remains one of politics by other means. I will argue later that this
role expanded during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to include a more direct role of the military in enacting neoliberal reform.

School choice is neoliberal

Blakely 17 (Jason, an assistant professor of political philosophy at Pepperdine University. He is
the author of Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism: Reunifying
Political Theory and Social Science, April 17, 2017, How School Choice Turns Education Into a
Commodity, The Atlantic, Accessed June 29, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/author/jason-
blakely/) BA
Making educational funding portable is part of neoliberalism a much wider political movement that began in the 1970sknown to scholars as which

In the neoliberal view, if your public institutions and spaces dont

views the creation of markets as necessary for the existence of individual liberty.

resemble markets, with a range of consumer options, then you arent really free. The goal of
neoliberalism is thereby to rollback the state, privatize public services, or (as in the case of
vouchers) engineer forms of consumer choice and market discipline in the public sector. DeVos
is a fervent believer in neoliberalizing education spending millions and devoting herself to of dollars on

voucher schooling.
political activism for the spread of -system reengineered by
In a speech on educational reform from 2015, DeVos expressed her long-held view that the public-school system needs to be

the government to mimic a market. The failure to do so, she warned, would be the stagnation of an education system run monopolistically by the government: We are the beneficiaries of start-ups,
ventures, and innovation in every other area of life, but we dont have that in education because its a closed system, a closed industry, a closed market. Its a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As long
as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia, or Uber. We wont see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students. Many Americans now find DeVoss
neoliberal way of thinking commonsensical. After all, people have the daily experience of being able to choose competing cons umer products on a market. Likewise, many Americans rightly admire entrepreneurial pluck. Shouldnt the intelligence and creativity of

school of choice is only

Silicon Valleys markets be allowed to cascade down over public education, washing the system clean of its encrusted bureaucracy? What much fewer people realize is that the argument over

the latest chapter in a decades-long political struggle between two models of freedomone
based on market choice and the other based on democratic participation. Neoliberals like DeVos
ignore the political ramifications of the
often assume that organizing public spaces like a market must lead to beneficial outcomes. But in doing so, advocates of school of choice

marketization of shared goods like the educational system. The first point to consider when
weighing whether or not to marketize the public school system is that markets always have
winners and losers. In the private sector, the role of competition is often positive. For example, Friendster, the early reigning king of social networks, failed to create a format that people found as useful and attractive as Facebook.
The result was that it eventually vanished. When businesses like Friendster fail, no significant public damage is done. Indeed, it is arguably a salutary form of w hat the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction, which is a feature of market

What happens to a community when its public schools are

innovation. But should all goods in a society be subjected to the forces of creative destruction?

defunded or closed because they could not compete in a marketized environment? In Detroit
two decades of this marketization has led to extreme defunding and
(where DeVos played a big role in introducing school choice)

closing of public schools; the funneling of taxpayer money toward for-profit charter ventures;
economically disadvantaged parents with worse options than when the neoliberal social
experiment began; and finally, no significant increase in student performance. Indeed, some zones of Detroit are now educational deserts where parents and children have to travel exorbitant miles and hours for their children to

neoliberalization is hardest on the poor.

attend school. On the whole, Market choice does, however, favor those who already have the education, wealth, and wherewithal to plan, coordinate, and

big beneficiaries of school of choice are often the rich.

execute moving their children to the optimal educational setting. This means the For instance, when Nevada

As money is pulled from failing

recently passed an aggressive school-of-choice system the result was that the vast majority of those able to take advantage of it came from the richest areas of Reno and Las Vegas.

schools and funneled into succeeding ones, wealth can actually be redistributed by the state up
the socioeconomic ladder. Education is not simply another commodity to buy and sell on a
market. Market competition in schools opens a vicious cycle in which weak and
the context of thus the possibility for

low-performing communities are punished for their failings and wealthy communities receive
greater and greater funding advantages. Americans should ask themselves a basic question of justice when it comes to the education system: Should it be organized around a model in which the

neoliberalization has been one of the biggest

more you win the more you get, and the more you lose the less you are given? Markets are by their nature non-egalitarian. For this reason,

factors contributing to the growing inequalities and diminishment of the middle and lower
classes.

Their demands for more troops all falls under the military economic cycle which
uses neoliberal logic to profit off of war when it comes to the logic of
appropriating another countrys resources, their epistemology is used to call
other countries we steal from dangerous, rather than us this is evident in
their war impacts with other countries
Rufanges 15
(Jordi Calvo Rufanges works for the War Resisters' International which is an international anti-
war organization with members and affiliates in over thirty countries. War Resisters'
Internationals headquarters are in London, UK. War profiteering: the neoliberal militarism
http://www.wri-irg.org/en/node/25229 12/26/15 DOA: 6/29/17
War profiteering is explained with the military economy cycle which is based - as is most sectors
of the economy - on neoliberal logic, the free market, privatization and reduction of regulations.
It causes attitudes strictly related to personal enrichment and maximizing the economic benefit
in the defense industry, forming the so-called neoliberal militarism. Moreover war profiteering
goes beyond arms and defense sector. War needs lots of resources, not only weapons and
armies, also logistics, transport, food, cleaning, translation services and private security. There
are also wars for greed, which is not only power but also resources: oil, coltan, diamonds and
whatever can be bought and sold in a market. Economic profits are part of war and wars are
also made for profit.Framework of war profiteering: the military economic cycle The military
economic cycle responds to an economic view of defense economics, also referred to as the
'arms cycle'. In any case both names refer to the cycle that describes the route that weapons
production takes, from the decision to take military public budget to cover the alleged need for
weapons to their final use. The real beginning of the cycle starts in the arguments and
discourses that legitimize the need for arms and armies depending on the identification of
threats to a country's security and defense to justify high levels of militarization and armaments.
Thus, security doctrines developed by governments - directly influenced by research defense,
security, conflict and peace centers, popularly known as think tanks - establish a certain level of
armaments and militarization development of a given society. Besides the occasional or
permanent influence of think tanks on the policies of a country, the need to maintain armed
forces depends on the culture of defense, militarized education, military and arms history and
tradition, and tolerance for weapons in a society. We also have to consider the role of civil
society and the fact that social movements may also determine levels of armaments and
militarism. The assumption of the need for maintaining armed forces opens the way to a
political decision strictly related to the military or arms economic cycle, decisions on the military
budget that appoints certain measures to objectives of discourses, doctrines and other views on
the defense needs of a country. Military spending includes research and development (military
R&D) of new weapons and their production in the defense industry, which is financed partly by
public budget. Hence, when it comes to military spending, military R&D, companies and military
industries and arms purchases, we have to pay attention not only to the defense budgets of the
states, but also to budgets of other ministries such as industry. Together they finance the whole
military business cycle. The other elements that form a part of the cycle are the arms trade,
which also includes financial institutions that hold the entire cycle, as well as shareholders of
military enterprises that finance the industry operations and the arms trade.

The affirmative attempts to pass their poorly constructed plan without

attempting to analyze the history behind neoliberalism in the military they
attempt to fund the military and give people services for a short while, but then
restrict those funds when they have enough people in the military, in order to
put them into a spot of either being in the military or risk having no job, a lot of
this is why so many military people are always homeless
Mittelstadt 12
(Jennifer Mittelstadt. Jennifer Mittelstadt is a historian at Rutgers University who writes about
social policy and the military in the United States. Neoliberalism in the American military and
its impact on civilians https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/jennifer-
mittelstadt/neoliberalism-in-american-military-and-its-impact-on-civilians 12/7/12 DOA:
6/29/17)
Americans have largely missed this story of military neoliberalism. When they discuss military
outsourcing and privatization, they think of military service providers in American wars the
mercenaries of Blackwater (now Xi) and DynCorps on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. But
privatized pension and health care proposals have a longer, deeper, and ultimately more
powerful history. For decades, the far bigger and costlier story of neoliberalism in the military
has lain not on battlefields, but on military posts and bases across the world, where the banal
military support sector everything from housing, installation management, and recreation to
generating pay checks, performing maintenance, and writing reports has been and continues
to be sold off to the private sector. Military contracting for services grew steadily from the late
1980s onward, outstripping military contracting for products (weapons, materiel) traditionally
the bulk of military contracts in the late 1990s. By the time the first stories of contractors on
the battlefields broke in 2002, the military was nearly ten years into the process of outsourcing
and privatizing everything from its hotels and recreation centers, to its housing and
maintenance, to its health care. The transfer of these military services from the public realm to
the private had its origins in free market policy circles, beginning with economist Milton
Friedman, who helped found the all-volunteer force in 1973. At the time, free-marketers
advocated ceasing all military-provided, government-run support for soldiers (and their
families), from health care to housing to the Post Exchange, with some going so far as to call the
Armys supports socialist. Instead, they proposed that soldiers use their salaries to purchase
any support they wished in the market. The military scoffed at the notion of fulfilling soldiers
needs through the private sector. At that time, support services were deemed central to the
success of the volunteer force to its recruitment, retention, and its readiness. American
society did not provide (and still does not provide) generous social benefits to all citizens in the
manner of many European nations, so the military argued successfully that military provision of
these services would cement soldier and family loyalty to the new institution. In the 1970s and
1980s, the Pentagon and the services constructed a formidable architecture of support covering
everything from health to housing, childcare to counseling. It was nearly all managed by
government personnel for the benefit of military personnel, protected from the rising tide of
conservative campaigns to cut social spending. While Friedman and his acolytes failed to
transfer military services to the private sector in the 1970s and the 1980s, free market
advocates in the 1990s succeeded. Members of the Defense Science Board and the Business
Executives for National Security the same groups proposing current privatization of military
pensions used the occasion of the post Cold War drawdown and the slumping economy to
introduce corporate boardroom practices such as cutting overheads, increasing efficiencies, and
improving quality as budgetary coping mechanisms for a sharply reduced spending regime.
Vice President Al Gores Reinvention of Government pushed these further, introducing
widespread outsourcing practices throughout federal agencies. President Clinton then
appointed Wall Street financiers like Joshua Gotbaum from investment firm Lazard Frres to
lead a special outsourcing office in the Pentagon. Together, the policies of the Clinton era
resulted in a historically unprecedented transfer of military support services from the public to
the private sector. The contracting out of the Pentagons support coincided with neoliberal
efforts to combat dependency in the military. Policies forcing recipients of public assistance
programs to achieve independence largely through mandating employment requirements
had been gaining ground in conservative and neoliberal policy debates in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. They also took hold in the military, where in the early 1990s the military retrenched
its support for soldiers and their families. As the Army pulled back on spending for support
services and contracted out services, for example, it also instituted programs to teach soldiers
and their spouses self-sufficiency. At the same time, the Army reframed its generous benefits
and social services as efforts not to provide support and quality of life, but endeavors to
promote readiness and self-reliance. The Army went so far as to change its motto from The
Army Takes Care of Its Own, to The Army Takes Care of its Own so that They Can Learn to Take
Care of Themselves. Soldiers and their families faced demands not to depend on the military,
even when the military deployed personnel for military action.