PROJECT ECHELON IS CRITICAL TO FIGHTING TERRORISM · Web viewMr Gonzales's appearance before the committee offered senators their first chance to scrutinise the legality of a secret

West Coast Publishing 1Internal Links to Heg/Terrorism

Internal Links to Hegemony, Terrorism, and Readiness

**Things That are Key to Hegemony** .................................................................................... 2 Ground Troops Key to Heg.......................................................................................................................................3Oil Independence Key to Heg...................................................................................................................................4Competitiveness Key to Heg....................................................................................................................................5Low Oil Prices Key to Heg.........................................................................................................................................6High Oil Prices Key to Heg........................................................................................................................................7Refugee Protection Key to Heg................................................................................................................................8Education Reform Key to Heg..................................................................................................................................9Oil Security Key to Heg...........................................................................................................................................10Free Trade Kills Heg................................................................................................................................................11Space Militarization Key to Heg.............................................................................................................................12Recruitment Key to Heg.........................................................................................................................................13Overstretch Kills Heg..............................................................................................................................................14Drones Key to Heg..................................................................................................................................................15Missile Defense Key to Heg....................................................................................................................................16Military Child Car Key to Heg.................................................................................................................................17Forward Deployment Key to Heg...........................................................................................................................18Seabasing Key to Heg.............................................................................................................................................19Naval Power Key to Heg.........................................................................................................................................20Forward Deployment Key to Heg...........................................................................................................................21

**Things That are Key to Winning the War on Terror** ......................................................... 22 Project Echelon Key to War on Terror....................................................................................................................23Surveillance Key to War on Terror.........................................................................................................................24Extraordinary Rendition Key to War on Terror.......................................................................................................25Wiretapping Key to War on Terror.........................................................................................................................26Drones Key to War on Terror.................................................................................................................................27Coast Guard Key to War on Terror.........................................................................................................................28Coast Guard Key to War on Terror.........................................................................................................................29

**Things That are NOT Key to Hegemony** .......................................................................... 30 Economy Not Key to Heg.......................................................................................................................................31Air Power Not Key to Heg......................................................................................................................................32Overstretch Does Not Kill Heg................................................................................................................................33Overstretch Does Not Kill Heg................................................................................................................................34Coast Guard Not Key to Heg..................................................................................................................................35

**Things That are NOT Key to Winning the War on Terror** ................................................. 36 Air Power Not Key to War on Terror......................................................................................................................37Coast Guard Not Key to War on Terror..................................................................................................................38Coast Guard Not Key to War on Terror..................................................................................................................39

**Readiness** ....................................................................................................................... 40 Readiness Good – War...........................................................................................................................................41Readiness Good – Deterrence................................................................................................................................42Readiness Good – Hegemony................................................................................................................................43Readiness Good – Threats......................................................................................................................................44Readiness Good – Terrorism..................................................................................................................................45Readiness Good – Military Success........................................................................................................................46


A2: Readiness – Not Important..............................................................................................................................47


**Things That are Key to Hegemony**


Ground Troops Key to Heg

1. FUTURE WARS WILL BE WON BY GROUND TROOPS – POLICIES THAT DE-EMPHASIZE GROUND TROOPS SET THE STAGE FOR MILITARY DISASTERFrederick W. Kagan, professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, July/August 2006. FOREIGN AFFAIRS, p. Vol. 85, No. 4, p. 97.

Three hundred forty-five million dollars can, roughly speaking, buy one F-22 Raptor -- the U.S. military's new stealth fighter plane -- or pay the average annual cost of 3,000 soldiers (although it would cost far more to equip, maintain, and deploy either the fighter or the troops). The soldiers are a better investment. Yet U.S. military personnel, pundits, and policymakers have been downplaying the importance of ground forces since 1991. Even today, in the face of ongoing, manpower-intensive counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is emphasizing long-range strike capabilities over land forces. The recently released 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and the president's budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 both reaffirm this priority. The administration has maintained this emphasis despite the fact that the long-term neglect of U.S. ground forces has caused serious problems in the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns. If not corrected, moreover, this neglect will cause even worse problems in the future. War is fundamentally a human activity, and attempts to remove humans from its center -- as recent trends and current programs do -- are likely to lead to disaster.

2. ONLY GROUND OCCUPATION CAN WIN WARS – BOMBING CAMPAIGNS CANNOT PRODUCE ENEMY SURRENDERSFrederick W. Kagan, professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, July/August 2006. FOREIGN AFFAIRS, p. Vol. 85, No. 4, p. 97.

Why has airpower alone almost always failed to force enemies to surrender? The reason is actually fairly simple. The destruction or partial destruction of a military, by itself, places a state's ability to perform its core functions at risk, but it does not destroy that ability permanently. Militaries can be rebuilt. Shattered infrastructure can be repaired. Even losses in population can be made good over time. State leaders canny enough to think in such terms -- as many U.S. opponents have been -- are not readily persuaded to surrender simply by the partial destruction of their militaries. The occupation of an enemy's land with ground forces is a different story entirely. A state under aerial bombardment need only survive until the bombardment stops. A state under occupation, however, risks never regaining control of its territory. Worse still, an occupying force can usurp the basic functions of a state by, for example, governing territory and reorganizing the mobilization of resources to achieve different objectives. Occupied or partially occupied states may not be able to reverse such reorganizations. This is especially true of authoritarian governments, which cannot survive without the physical control of their populations.

3. Troops are a key signal of strengthJames Thomason, Senior Analyst in the Strategy, Forces and Resources Division @ Institute for Defense, 2002, “Transforming US Overseas Military Presence: Evidence and Options for DoD Volume I: Main Report,” Institute for Defense Analyses, IDA Paper P-3707, July

Richard Haass - Also writing in the mid-1990s, Richard Haass, then of the Brookings Institution, alluded explicitly to what he viewed as the use of US forces deployed and stationed forward in a deterrent role and, implicitly at least, to their value in that role [Haass, 1999]. Force is used every day [by the US] for deterrence; examples include maintaining strategic nuclear forces on some kind of alert, stationing large numbers of forces in Europe and Korea, and the US Navy sailing the high seas to signal US interests and a readiness to act on their behalf. [p. 20] Haass, like Dismukes, alluded to the importance of appropriate signaling behavior in successful deterrence: The movement and use of military forces is obviously a critical component of a deterrent strategy. Forces can be positioned, deployed, and/or exercised to signal the existence of interests and the readiness to respond militarily if those interests are either threatened or attacked….Deterrence can be the purpose behind long-term deployments, such as the US military presence on the Korean Peninsula or in Europe since the end of World War II.


Oil Independence Key to Heg

1. High oil demand undermines U.S. hegemonySoeren Kern, Senior Analyst, the US and Transatlantic Dialogue, Elcano Royal Institute, June 23, 2006, Fundación Real Instituto Elcano, http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/analisis/1002.asp, accessed 4/12/08

As the US demand for oil rises, so does America’s exposure to trouble in the world’s volatile oil-producing regions. Some analysts argue that all that is needed is more oil production, although that will only come about with more investment, which requires ever higher levels of security in unstable parts of the world. Others say that reducing American dependence on oil would be the single greatest multiplier of US power in the world.

2. Only a shift away from oil-dominated security can maintain U.S. leadershipSoeren Kern, Senior Analyst, the US and Transatlantic Dialogue, Elcano Royal Institute, June 23, 2006, Fundación Real Instituto Elcano, http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/analisis/1002.asp, accessed 4/12/08

The underlying premise of American energy policy is that access to secure, reliable and affordable energy sources is fundamental to national economic security. But most of the world’s oil is concentrated in places that are either hostile to American interests or vulnerable to political upheaval or terrorism. Indeed, from Iran to Iraq and China to Russia, oil lies at the heart of many of America’s most pressing foreign policy challenges. This implies that until the United States moves beyond a petroleum-based economy, oil security will continue to be one of the primary drivers of US foreign and military policy.

3. U.S. dependence on foreign oil drives up prices and constrains U.S. leadershipMatt Piotrowski, Staff Writer, March 14, 2007, Oil Daily, Energy Intelligence Group, p. np.

Energy independence is a "myth" but there are ways of managing the consequences of oil dependency, said a group of experts gathered on Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. One major consequence of the US dependence on oil is the shift of power to producer countries. High prices have emboldened many unstable regimes and limited US influence in all regions abroad. But it is not only US dependence on oil, but also China's, India 's and Western Europe's dependence that has given producer countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran the upper hand in the geopolitical spectrum (OD Mar.9, p1).

4. Our dependence on foreign oil directly undermines U.S. national security, economy, and the environmentJosef Braml, Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook on International Relations at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin, Autumn 2007, The Washington Quarterly, p. 118.

The superpower's dependency on foreign oil has markedly increased during the past decades. In 1950 the United States was still self-reliant, running on its own resources. Fifty years later, more than 60 percent of the oil consumed in the United States is delivered from abroad, and the trend shows no signs of abating in the future. Reliance on foreign-sourced fossil fuels poses a threat to U.S. national security and creates economic vulnerabilities as well as environmental challenges.

5. Continued dependence on foreign oil will undermine U.S. hegemony through counterbalancingJosef Braml, Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook on International Relations at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin, Autumn 2007, The Washington Quarterly, pp. 118-119.

If the United States continues its overreliance on fossil fuels, it will become increasingly dependent on producing nations that are unstable and that pose a risk to its interests and could come into conflict with other consumer states. Although the United States can still count on Canada and Mexico, which are its two most important petroleum providers, its tense relationship with Venezuela illustrates the challenges in securing energy resources even in its own backyard, let alone the Middle East and other volatile areas. Some observers of petropolitics go as far as to describe an "axis of oil" (Russia, China, and eventually Iran)


at work that is "acting as a counterweight to American hegemony" and will deprive the United States of its oil supplies and strategic interests.


Competitiveness Key to Heg

1. Competitiveness is critical to US leadershipBruce Jentleson, Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University, The Globalist, August 6, 2007, Accessed May 16, 2008, http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=6364

The Business Roundtable tellingly uses the term “atrophy” to express its concern about what has been happening to U.S. scientific and technological superiority. And the National Intelligence Council points to science and technology as the key uncertainty for whether the United States will remain the world’s “single most important actor.” The declining competitiveness of the U.S. automotive industry — which for a century was a driving economic engine and the country’s defining cultural symbol — is telling. 2007 has been the year Toyota ended General Motors’ reign as first in worldwide sales.

2. Collapse of competitiveness destroys leadershipShirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., 2007, “Falling Short,” http://www.rpi.edu/homepage/quietcrisis/index.html

There is a quiet crisis building in the United States — a crisis that could jeopardize the nation’s pre-eminence and well-being. The crisis has been mounting gradually, but inexorably, over several decades. If permitted to continue unmitigated, it could reverse the global leadership Americans currently enjoy. The crisis stems from the gap between the nation’s growing need for scientists, engineers, and other technically skilled workers, and its production of them. As the generation educated in the 1950s and 1960s prepares to retire, our colleges and universities are not graduating enough scientific and technical talent to step into research laboratories, software and other design centers, refineries, defense installations, science policy offices, manufacturing shop floors and high-tech startups. This “gap” represents a shortfall in our national scientific and technical capabilities. The need to make the nation safer from emerging terrorist threats that endanger the nation’s people, infrastructure, economy, health, and environment, makes this gap all the more critical and the need for action all the more urgent. We ignore this gap at our peril. Closing it will require a national commitment to develop more of the talent of all our citizens, especially the under-represented majority — the women, minorities, and persons with disabilities who comprise a disproportionately small part of the nation’s science, engineering, and technology workforce. For the United States to remain competitive in a vibrant global innovation and research environment, it must have access to the best minds. The nation’s technological strength depends entirely on its ability to attract, educate, recruit, and retain the best science and engineering workers.


Low Oil Prices Key to Heg

1. US hegemony will collapse because of high oil prices and failure to transition to renewables – this is the most likely scenarioHazel Henderson, sustainable development consultant and author of “Beyond Globalization”, July 7, 2002, Daily Times, Accessed Online May 14, 2008, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_7-7-2002_pg3_5

The most likely end to US hegemony may come about through a combination of high oil prices (brought on by US Middle East policy) and deeper devaluation of the dollar, which is expected by many economists. The scenario might run as follows:• US global over-reaching in the “war on terrorism”, combined with historically high US trade deficits, leads to an intensifying run on the dollar. This and the stock market doldrums make the US less attractive to the world’s capital.• More developing countries follow the lead of Venezuela and China in diversifying their currency reserves away from dollars and into euros, keeping the two currencies close to parity.• OPEC acts on some of its internal discussions and decides (after concerted euro buying on the open market) to announce at a future meeting in Vienna that it will re-denominate its oil in euros, or even a new oil-backed currency of their own. A US attack on Iraq sends oil to 40 dollars per barrel.• The Bush administration’s efforts to control the domestic political agenda backfires. Damage over the intelligence failures prior to 9/11 and warnings of new terrorist attacks precipitate a further drop in the stock market.• All efforts by Democrats and the energy-progressive 57 percent of Americans to shift energy policy toward renewables, efficiency, standards, higher gas taxes, etc., are blocked by the Bush administration and its fossil fuel industry supporters, leaving the US vulnerable to energy supply and price shocks.

2. High oil prices will hurt superpower credibilityMichael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies @ Hampshire College and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, May 10, 2008, Asia Times, Accessed May 11, 2008, http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=296228819

Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel of crude oil roared past US$110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the US will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

3. Loss of credibility provokes challengesShen Dingli, deputy director of the Centre for America Studies affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai, November 22, 2005, China Institute, Accessed May 8, 2008, http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/chinainstitute/nav03.cfm?nav03=43894&nav02=43871&nav01=43092

Riding on the soaring petrol price, which now fluctuates around US$60 a barrel compared with US$28 in 2003, some oil producing countries have managed to reach a height of prosperity and are turning oil into a diplomatic weapon, which poses a challenge to the US hegemony, or "leadership," as some Americans put it.

Iran, Russia and Venezuela, whose petroleum deposits rank among the top seven in the world, are the most assertive in this regard.

4. This would effectively short-circuit US hegemony – we risk being encircled by oil monopolyW Joseph Stroupe, editor in chief of GeoStrategyMap.com, an online global affairs magazine specializing in strategic analysis and forecasting, March 31, 2004, Asia Times, Accessed May 8, 2008, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FC31Dj02.html

If we simply stand back from a distance and observe the clear overall pattern of these energy-resource developments, we can see a distinct and indisputable blueprint emerging. It is a blueprint of economic encirclement of the US by means of an oil/gas monopoly. A monopoly over the very lifeblood of


industrialized nations, namely oil and gas, is at the same time an effective throttle on the economic wealth of a nation, even of a superpower.


High Oil Prices Key to Heg

1. Energy independence would not isolate us from threats to our hegemonyPeter Kiernan, Middle East and energy analyst in DC, July 1, 2006, Asia Times, Accessed May 28, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG01Ak02.html

Even if "energy independence" in the US were to be achieved, it would not be insulated from tensions in oil-producing countries or the actions of hostile states, especially in the Middle East. The US is actually less dependent on Persian Gulf oil than Europe and Japan, but the tankers that sail through the Strait of Hormuz are the lifeblood of the global economy, and would be even if the US didn't import any oil. This fact has been the key motive for the US maintaining its dominant security role in the Persian Gulf. Even if "energy independence" in the US were to be achieved, it would not be insulated from tensions in oil-producing countries or the actions of hostile states, especially in the Middle East. The US is actually less dependent on Persian Gulf oil than Europe and Japan, but the tankers that sail through the Strait of Hormuz are the lifeblood of the global economy, and would be even if the US didn't import any oil. This fact has been the key motive for the US maintaining its dominant security role in the Persian Gulf.

2. Oil is priced in dollarsBulent Gokay, Professor and Research fellow @ Cambridge, June 2, 2007, Accessed May 8, 2008, http://www.in-spire.org/articles/ei02062007_Neo-Gramscian_US_Hegemony.pdf

Thereafter, even when oil prices might increase, the additional revenue would be denominated in U.S. dollars, which all importing countries would be required to use for this purpose. This would create a dependable demand for U.S. currency regardless of other economic factors and would act as an interest-free loan to the United States when it was repatriated as investments in dollar securities, such as U.S. Treasury notes, U.S. stock and mutual funds, and U.S. public and corporate bonds.

3. High prices help to finance extension of US hegemonyEmre Iseri, Ph.D. Candidate @ Keele University’s School of Politics, June 2, 2007, Accessed May 8, 2008, http://www.in-spire.org/articles/ei02062007_Neo-Gramscian_US_Hegemony.pdf

The global demand for dollars that followed the 1975 U.S. - OPEC agreement ensured that the U.S. not only would keep her currency strong in international markets, but also held the price of imports to the U.S. down, which then supported the U.S. domestic economy. This enabled the U.S. government to borrow massive amounts of capital, and sustain its trade deficit, without fear of another dollar crisis, such as the one in 1971. Thereafter, petro-dollars became one of the pillars of U.S. dominance in international finance, but without any necessary consent by other states that lived under U.S. hegemonic power. This marked a fundamental shift in the way that U.S. hegemony was constructed and presaged additional shifts away from a consensual form of hegemonic internationalism through the exercise of institutional power, particularly with regard to the use of international finance.


Refugee Protection Key to Heg

1. U.S. leadership on refugee issues is key to global leadershipGil Loescher, Senior Fellow for Forced Displacement and International Security for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1993, Beyond Charity, p. 196

The United States is still the only nation whose leadership most other nations are willing to follow, and it is the country most capable of setting up various measures to direct international efforts toward a constructive goal. Therefore, American leadership is vital in galvanizing collective ef¬forts to resolve many of the complex humanitarian problems of the post— Gold War era. While addressing American domestic needs is important, governmental willingness to deal with regional and international insta¬bilities, such as ethnic conflicts and mass refugee movements, is critical to America’s prospects—particularly if the United States wants to play an effective role internationally. Moreover, without active American involve¬ment, the international community will be limited to reactive, damage ¬control measures in response to humanitarian crises. As we move toward the twenty-first century, the United States, along with other donor coun¬tries, must make every effort to provide the financing, commodities, and other resources that alone can enable the UN to meet the expectations invested in it.

2. Refugee protection is key to US leadershipZoe Lofgren, U.S. Representative, 2005, Stanford Law & Policy Review, p. 377.

Immigration to the United States has defined and shaped America. Constantly renewed by people tough and resilient enough to "get up and go," America is the quintessential entrepreneurial society. As a nation of immigrants, the ability of Americans to unite legally with family members in United States has been a primary goal of our laws for many decades. As the beacon of freedom for the world, American refugee and asylum policies have stood as concrete proof of American commitment to freedom and, as a symbol, have gained credibility for American commitment to freedom in a skeptical world. The United States, as a world leader in technology and scientific advancement, has been the beneficiary of immigrants seeking to study and innovate in a free land. All of these historic strengths have been affected and, I believe, diminished by the changes wrought by the new majority in the federal government in the last decade.


Education Reform Key to Heg

Education reform is key to restore US leadership.Cleveland Ferguson III, Assistant Professor of Law at Florida Coastal School of Law, Spring 2007, Tulsa Journal of Comparative & International Law, pp.266-267

Children in the United States, however we view them, need at minimum a national discussion that leads to their needs being completely and immediately met. Without national leadership the effect of local government efforts will be uneven at best. The United States needs a national approach, one led and inspired by the President (and carried out by his or her policy makers) that leads to more than a mere call for uniform standards. The president's leadership must lead to similar national action that created mechanisms for the physical protection and preservation of its national security. Further, the world's pursuit of the MDGs could use the voice and the resources of the United States and its President. Many students, celebrities, non-profits, and at least one local government are responding to the transnational call. In this interdependent world we can ill afford not to help, if not lead. If the United States is to maintain and win back its international credibility, it cannot accept as truth that its people are only moved by the tragedies that affect them immediately or personally, but instead that its compassion compels it to act on behalf of those whose face is represented only by the numbers recorded in governmental reports. If the collective global future of the United States is to flourish, it must consider the least of its society and ensure that those who cannot protect themselves nor provide for themselves are not abandoned to despair and hopelessness, thus relegated to Stalin's "statistic." It is not likely that the United States can otherwise maintain its credibility abroad without meeting the needs of its children at home irrespective of failing to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Education reform key to US competitiveness and leadershipValerie Powers, March 13, 2010 “President Obama proposes rehab of 'No Child Left Behind',” http://www.examiner.com/x-15109-Davenport-Early-Childhood-Parenting-Examiner~y2010m3d13-President-Obama-proposes-rehab-of-No-Child-Left-Behind

Amid concerns that the nation's fledgling educational system is in dire need of reform, President Obama unveiled plans on Saturday to overhaul the current 'No Child Left Behind' program. The President's focus is on preparing students for college and meaningful careers after graduation. A new school accountability system, which may be in place within four years, would reward schools for excellence and demonstrating progress. "Through this plan we are setting an ambitious goal: All students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career - no matter who you are or where you come from," Obama shared during his weekly address. "Achieving this goal will be difficult. It will take time. And it will require the skills, talents and dedication of many: principals, teachers, parents, students. But this effort is essential for our children and for our country." The current "No Child" law, which was signed into place in 2002 by former President Bush, mandates that all students participate in standardized testing to measure academic progress both on an individual level, and a school-wide level. States currently set their own expectations for academic goals; however, federal funding is placed at risk if they fail to show marked progress. Critics of the current law have suggested that some states intentionally set their standards low, so that states can report remarkably high progress, which enables them to access federal funding with ease. Obama's plan would retain annual testing in reading and math but raise expectations for students and place more emphasis on academic growth and development than the No Child Left Behind law's current pass-fail approach. "So, yes, we set a high bar - but we also provide educators the flexibility to reach it," Obama explained. President Obama admitted that the plan will face some criticism, but he explained that the nation has lost ground on education over the last few decades "risks our leadership as a nation," and, "consigns millions of Americans to a lesser future."


Oil Security Key to Heg

1. STABLE OIL SUPPLIES ARE KEY TO US MILITARY POWER PROJECTIONCharli Coon, Senior Policy Analyst, Energy and Environment, The Heritage Foundation, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, September 25, 2001, http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/EM777.cfm, date accessed July 10th 2003.

Sufficient and reliable supplies of energy are essential for the nation's military in times of peace, but they are especially so when it engages in military action. For example, Greenwire reported on September 17 that the 582,000 soldiers in the Persian Gulf War consumed 450,000 barrels of petroleum products each day. It takes eight times more oil to meet the needs of each soldier today than it did during World War II. Further, the Department of Defense accounts for about 80 percent of the U.S. government's energy use, of which nearly 75 percent is for jet fuel. It is essential that Washington pursue a diverse supply of oil to meet its security needs.


Free Trade Kills Heg

1. FREE TRADE COLLAPSES AMERICAN LEADERSHIPWilliam R. Hawkins, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, TRADE ALERT, April 14, 2003, accessed May 21, 2003, http://www.tradealert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=799

Great Britain lost its place in the world by its own volition. By adopting "free trade" and a laissez-faire attitude towards the process of economic advancement, it acted as if the outcome of commercial competition did not matter. The British historian Correlli Barnett has described those of "Cobdenite views" who were responsible for this debacle. They were "mostly Oxbridge humanists" who wrote "not so much operational studies as wordy prize essays offering every intellectual distinction except clear strategic choice or decision." This untenable behavior can be seen again in the pronouncements of the U.S. Trade Representative and various high officials in the Commerce Department, not to mention the bevy of analysts at corporate-financed think tanks in Washington who work overtime trying to explain why a $500 billion American trade deficit doesn?t matter. In an interdependent world, where it is not possible to simply withdraw and live in peaceful isolation, the struggle for economic progress is the most important factor in global affairs. Even defeat in world wars may not change the long-term outcome of this material contest, as the examples of Germany and Japan demonstrate. The 21st century will see the further spread of science and industry, which is the real meaning of the buzz word "globalization." With the passing of the "Marxist moment" those parts of the world which had been paralyzed by the inferior communist model will have a chance to grow with the more natural and vibrant process of capitalism, tailored to their various circumstances. The result will be the rise of a new crop of major nations vying for their place in the international system, the power to control their destiny and the largest share of the world?s wealth they can manage to grab. Foremost among these new rivals is China. At the National People's Congress in Beijing last month, Zhu Rongji, in his farewell address as China's premier, declared that China's goal was to build "large internationally competitive companies or enterprise groups that have distinctive main lines of business and possess their own intellectual property rights and name brands." Beijing is investing strongly in education and is now graduating more electrical engineers than the United States. It is offering incentives to bring back home the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students who have gone to the best universities in the West to learn about leading-edge technologies. And it continues to demand technology transfers from the many foreign firms which have been investing in China. China's embrace of capitalism is not that of laissez-faire. Take the case of the steel industry. Despite the fact that there is substantial overcapacity worldwide, which has led to such massive dumping into the American market as to imperil the survival of most U.S. steel mills, the Chinese have been heavily investing in new, efficient steel-making capacity. Domestically produced steel is expected to replace imports, which had been rising to meet the demands of a growing country. But China's leaders do not want to import anything of strategic value that they can make themselves. The ability to produce high quality hot-rolled products within China at low costs will also make the steel-using segments of Chinese industry more competitive, both at home and overseas. And, of course, Chinese steel mills are expected to flood the already saturated global marketplace with exports.

2. FREE TRADE UNDERMINES THE U.S. ECONOMY AND OUR LEADERSHIPWilliam R. Hawkins, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, TRADE ALERT, February 28, 2003, accessed May 21, 2003, http://www.tradealert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=775

The problem is not that Sachs sees the handwriting on the wall and wants to turn away, but that the Bush Administration, which understands better than most the political and military challenges ahead, has not yet realized that neoclassical economics must be abandoned. If America is to maintain the robust industrial base and sound finances necessary for world leadership in turbulent times, it must reconcile its defense and economic policies to expand domestic manufacturing and high-tech investment while ending the debilitating trade deficits. Unfortunately, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, in his rush to conclude free trade agreements with anybody who will sign up, is apparently still stuck in the dreamworld of the 1990s. Even the events of September 11 and the worldwide War on Terror in response have not served as a wake up call to him on the necessity of reintegrating our economic and national security interests.


Space Militarization Key to Heg

1. SPACE WEAPONS MUST BE PURSUED TO MAINTAIN U.S. MILITARY SUPERIORITY Jack Spencer, policy analyst for Defense and National Security in the Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, Executive Memorandum No. 755, June 22, 2001, p. online, accessed June 30, 2001, http://www.heritage.org/library/execmemo/em755.html.

In January, the U.S. Department of Defense held a futuristic war game session in Colorado Springs and concluded that America's weaknesses in space could invite attack. That same month, the bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by now-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, warned that America faces the possibility of a "Space Pearl Harbor" attack because it cannot protect its interests in space. Such a warning demands action. The United States operates over 300 active satellites, nearly half the total number in space; 60 percent are commercially operated, 20 percent are military, and the remaining 20 percent are government-civilian. As this dependence on satellites grows, hostile nations will find it increasingly attractive to target them in order to disrupt U.S. daily life and military operations. America's space assets gave it an unparalleled advantage during the Persian Gulf War, and many nations are working to gain similar capabilities. While Russia has been in space longer than America, both Iran and North Korea are developing space programs, and other nations like India and China are pursuing well-established programs. As more nations gain access to space, monitoring that access and guaranteeing that it will be used peacefully become more difficult. Commercial launches by Russia, China, Ukraine, and international efforts account for almost 30 percent of launches worldwide. A growing number of nations and companies are offering space services--everything from launching satellites to giving other nations, groups, or individuals access to their existing satellites or satellite reconnaissance. During the Gulf War, the French company SPOT Imaging agreed not to give Iraq access to its satellite imagery. In the future, nations may not be so easily compelled by U.S. interests. The Secretary of Defense, who has only begun to define the Administration's space policy, must ensure that the new policy guarantees reliable, cost-effective, and assured access to space.

2. SPACE MILITARY SUPERIORITY WILL BE CRITICAL IN FUTURE WARSJack Spencer, policy analyst for Defense and National Security in the Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, Executive Memorandum No. 755, June 22, 2001, p. online, accessed June 30, 2001, http://www.heritage.org/library/execmemo/em755.html.

Space Access and National Security. America's commercial, civil, and military reliance on space inevitably will draw attacks from hostile powers that see its undefended capability as an Achilles heel, as Chinese military writings make clear. Adversaries will target America's military satellites to destroy critical infrastructure, and civilian systems to disrupt American life. Exploding a nuclear warhead in space would obliterate satellites nearby and release enough radiation to destroy other satellites in low-Earth orbit within months. Hostile nations that have ballistic missiles could explode warheads filled with pellets, sand, or shrapnel within 100 meters of a satellite, destroying it on impact. Currently, over 20 nations possess or are developing ground-based lasers capable of disrupting satellite signals. Reportedly, a British satellite was thrown out of orbit by invading computer hackers (the British government denies this account).Much as air dominance has been vital in warfare since World War II, space control or even space dominance may prove decisive in future wars. Whether the United States needs to protect its assets in space, deny access to others, or repair or replace vital components of its space networks, it must rapidly deploy the satellites and tools necessary to do so. One of the first steps in ensuring U.S. pre-eminence in space is to develop low-cost and reliable means of putting satellites into orbit. The most promising way to achieve this is to develop a reusable launch vehicle with civil, military, and commercial uses.

http://www.heritage.org/library/execmemo/em755.html

http://www.heritage.org/library/execmemo/em755.html


Recruitment Key to Heg

Consistent and increasing recruitment is key to hegemonyWilliam Perry, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, and John Shalikashvili, January 2006, The National Security Advisory Group, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/us-military_nsag-report_01252006.pdf Accessed April 18, 2009

If recruiting trends do not improve over the next year, the Army, both active and reserve, will experience great difficulty fully manning its planned force structure and providing the needed rotation base for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fewer than needed recruits and first-term reenlistees could result in a significant “hollowing” and imbalance in the Army. There is already a deficit of some 18,000 personnel in the Army’s junior enlisted grades. Even if it meets its recruiting and retention goals, the Army is expected to be short some 30K soldiers (not including stop loss) by the end of FY06. This will undermine unit readiness, exacerbate PERSTEMPO strains, and jeopardize the Army’s ability to populate its planned force structure. These factors will create tremendous internal pressures to begin drawing down the level of Army forces in Iraq by next spring, whatever the conditions on the ground may be.

Recruiting problems undermine the quality of the militaryNick Turse, Assoc. Editor @ TomDispatch, 9-14-2006, “12 Pentagon Steps to a Misfit Military,” http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/121072/

In the latter half of the Vietnam War, as the breakdown was occurring, American troops began to scrawl "UUUU" on their helmet liners -- an abbreviation that stood for "the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful." The U.S. ground forces of 2007 and beyond, fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other war du jour may increasingly resemble the collapsing military of the Vietnam War, the band of criminal misfits sent behind enemy lines during World War II in the classic Vietnam-era film, The Dirty Dozen, or the janissaries of the old Ottoman Empire. With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, even ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, and the Pentagon pulling out ever more stops and sinking to new lows in recruitment and retention, a new all-volunteer generation of UUUU's may emerge -- the underachieving, unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable, unhealthy, undesirable, unloved, uncivil, and even un-American, all led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful. Current practices suggest this may well be the force of the future. It certainly isn't the new military Donald Rumsfeld's been promising all these years, but there's no denying the depth of the transformation.


Overstretch Kills Heg

Overstretch will destroy US HegLuis Carlos Montalvan, 4-23-2010, “Multilateralism is Essential for Peace,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/luis-carlos-montalvan/multilateralism-is-essent_b_550332.html

Unilateralism is the wrong approach for American Diplomacy. There is nothing to suggest its efficacy since 9/11. There is nothing to suggest its usefulness for future conflict. In allowing the US to go it alone, America's partners and allies risk the havoc and catastrophic consequences that will accompany "Imperial Overstretch." The residue of overstretch will include loss of US leadership in the world, an economy whose decline affects billions of dollars in international markets, and certainly emboldens rogue states. The whole world will pay the price if we let unilateralism pervade this century. As the bloodiest 100 years in recorded history, the 20th Century is replete with examples of how policy and practice intersect to foment war. The proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the constantly mutating dynamic of terrorism inform our current, dangerous reality. Amidst this backdrop of destruction, there are lessons for those who are looking for them. Seeds of peacemaking and conflict resolution were planted which we must germinate in order to halt and then reverse the trend toward violence and chaos. Perhaps the 21st Century could be the first 100 years in which nations invest more in building peace than in making war.

Failure to reduce overseas military commitments will destroy US empireChalmers Johnson, 7-31-2009, “Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire,” American Empire Project, http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2009/07/three-good-reasons-to-liquidate-our-empire.html

However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.

US military overstretch will destroy US hegemonyChalmers Johnson, 7-31-2009, “Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire,” American Empire Project, http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2009/07/three-good-reasons-to-liquidate-our-empire.html

According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan. These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible. We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)



Drones Key to Heg

Maintaining US tech dominance and heg requires use of dronesChristopher Rogan, PhD Candidate at West Point, 3-29-2010, “INCREASING THE COMBAT POWER OF THE SQUAD ON PATROL: THE POTENTIAL OF THE SOLDIER-PORTABLE DRONE AS A TACTICAL FORCE MULTIPLIER,” http://www.usma.edu/dmi/dss/Docs/Theses/Rogan%20Thesis.pdf

Another important consideration is the international technological race for drones and unmanned combat vehicles. American, and to some extent, Israeli, drones have dominated news coverage for the past decade, but what about America’s strategic competitors? Countries such as Russia, Belarus, George, India, Pakistan, China, and Iran have conducted significant research and development into drone technology. Furthermore, other nations have investigated electronic ways of interfering with drones—Iraqi insurgents were able to find a flaw in the Predator’s programming that allowed them to tap into the drone’s live feed and watch what American commanders were watching. The drone will not be a technology limited solely to the United States or its allies; it will be a technology used by all nations, and as such the United States must stay ahead of the curve in order to protect its national security interests abroad.

UCAVs are key to U.S. airpower dominance – that’s key to overall hegCol. Robert Chapman, chief of the Saudi Arabia Division (Pentagon), 6-3-2002, “Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles: Dawn of a New Age?”, Aerospace Power Journal http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj02/sum02/chapman.html

The Department of Defense (DOD) has recently accelerated efforts to develop unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV)- aircraft that can launch, attack, and recover without crew members aboard. Advocates contend that an array of technologies has now matured to the point that fielding an operational UCAV is both feasible and desirable. UCAV proponents project significantly lower acquisition costs, as well as operations and support costs. Such projections are particularly attractive in the current fiscal environment, in which all military services urgently need to replace aging capital equipment. Proponents further contend that a reusable vehicle capable of delivering precision munitions could significantly lower the cost per target killed below that of the current generation of standoff weapons. Background: Why a UCAV? Over the last decade, the combined airpower of the US military has proved instrumental in favorably deciding military actions in Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo. American airpower in all its forms constitutes a unique and decisive military advantage no other nation can match. However, growing concern exists within the national security community that this advantage may be eroding. A number of potential adversaries are pursuing advanced weapons systems that could deny or restrict America’s future ability to project combat power abroad. Of particular concern are increasingly lethal integrated air defense systems (IADS) and mobile surface-to-surface missile systems. Many analysts believe that the United States must develop means to counter those threats if it is to maintain its ability to project decisive combat power abroad. UCAVs could offer one option to combat the worldwide proliferation of these access-impeding weapons. Potential Advantages Although airmen have long recognized the promise of UCAVs, thus far they have remained beyond the grasp of developers.1 Recent advances in technology, however, have prompted many national security planners to reevaluate UCAV feasibility. Cost per Target Killed. Advocates assert that UCAVs employing direct-attack munitions could reduce costs per kill well below that of current standoff systems- cruise missiles, for example. During Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour joint military operation ordered by the president in December 1998 to destroy military and security targets in Iraq, Navy ships fired more than 325 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and Air Force B-52s launched more than 90 AGM-86C conventional air launched cruise missiles (CALCM).2 These weapons carry warheads weighing 1,000 pounds and 2,000 pounds, respectively.3 Alternatively, proponents argue that reusable UCAVs could achieve the same effect at far less cost by delivering 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) guided by the Global Positioning System (GPS) (table 1). UCAV proponents argue that the cost-per-kill contrast becomes even greater when one considers procurement, operating, and support costs of the associated launch platforms. The cost implications for future military operations will merit examination once detailed UCAV data becomes available.


Missile Defense Key to Heg

Missile defense is key to effective nuclear deterrenceBruno Tertrais, Lecturer at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, Special Assistant to the Director of Strategic Affairs at the French Ministry of Defence, April 2001, “US MISSILE DEFENCE: Strategically sound, politically questionable

Will the deployment of strategic defences affect the credibility of the very concept of deterrence in general and of the US nuclear deterrent in particular? The answer is: it depends, because the relationship between deterrence and defences is complex. Five decades of controversy over US strategic defences have revealed three conceptions: • First, strategic defences can be a substitute for deterrence, in cases where deterrence cannot work. This would be the case if deterrence “malfunctioned” in a time of crisis, for example if the capability to launch a missile fell into the wrong hands. Or missile defences can be a substitute for deterrence in the event of an accidental launch. • Second, they can be a complement to deterrence. This would be the case if the threat is too modest to require a nuclear response. Nuclear deterrence may not be plausible if the threat is only a few conventional warheads. The third and final phase of the Clinton administration’s NMD plans probably would not have been able to intercept more than about 50 warheads by 2012: it is hard to believe that an attack of more than 50 detonations on the US, even if they were conventional, would not warrant a nuclear response. • Third, strategic defences can be considered as an element of deterrence. A potential aggressor could be deterred by the rational calculation that its strike would not reach the US territory: it is deterred by the promise of “denial” instead of the threat of “punishment”. Thus it can be argued that the existence of an ABM system around Moscow contributes to the deterrence of an attack on the Russian capital region. Therefore a willingness to deploy strategic defences does not necessarily reveal a lack of faith in nuclear deterrence, or a cultural shift based on the idea that nuclear weapons are “immoral”. Such defences should not be seen as an alternative to deterrence, but rather as an additional insurance policy or a “second line of defence”. If deterrence is the safety belt, interception is the airbag.

NMD development key to check future threatsJeff Kueter, president of the George Marshall Institute, May 2004, “Missile Defense: A Continuing National Priority,” Marshall Policy Outlook

However, there are other challenges to the security of the United States and the number and nature of these challenges will fluctuate as time passes. This state of unpredictability has come to define the post-Cold War security environment. Countering terrorism is the priority of today, but tomorrow’s priorities may be much different. Effective defense planning must look beyond today’s threats because of the long lead times involved in developing systems to deal with future threats.

BMD is essential to maintain extended deterrencePatrick M. O’Donogue, Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, September 2000, “THEATER MISSILE DEFENSE IN JAPAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE U.S.-CHINA-JAPAN STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP,” http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB66.pdf

Advocates maintain that TMD provides a bulwark for U.S. extended nuclear deterrence against newly emerging “rogue states,” against emerging and established limited ballistic missile threats, and against chemical and biological threats for which nuclear deterrence alone does not offer sufficient deterrence. Second, TMD protects coalitions from intimidation.


Military Child Car Key to Heg

Military child care is key to both recruitment and retention – solves the internal links to hegemonyGail Zellman et al., PhD in Social and Clinical Psychology, 2008, “Options for Improving the Military Child Care System,” http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2008/RAND_OP217.pdf

An important reason for this choice may be found in the widespread understanding that child care availability and quality can affect key DoD goals of readiness, retention, and possibly recruitment. Some military members with young children need or want child care for their children. For some of these families, access to child care may affect the ability of the military member to show up for duty. This need may be particularly true for dual-military and single-parent families, which lack a parent who can be counted on to provide backup care. Moreover, military families may need care at times when civilian care is difficult to find or simply not available. Military members are often required to report for duty on nights and weekends. They may be called to duty on short notice; they may have irregular shifts or shifts that do not correspond with the typical workday. Concerns about the quality of child care may affect a parent’s ability to concentrate on their job. If quality is assured, the parent can more comfortably focus on the work at hand. Deployments pose an additional set of issues for military families with young children. Spouses who work outside the home may need additional child care support to manage life as a working parent while the military member is deployed. Spouses who do not work outside the home may need access to child care at various times of the day in order to get household chores done or simply to have some respite. The needs of families affected by deployment may be quite different from the needs of other military families. Ultimately, child care can become an important retention issue—particularly at a time of active deployment. If families become frustrated with military life because of a lack of child care options that meet their needs, they may decide to leave the military entirely. Child care support may also factor into the decision of recruits—particularly older recruits who already have families or may be thinking about having families. The above discussion suggests reasons why DoD, as an employer, might need or want to provide additional support to members with young dependents in the interests of recruitment, readiness, and retention. Furthermore, it suggests reasons why DoD might want to provide reliable high-quality child care that is flexible enough to meet the demands of military life rather than simply giving families additional cash to spend as they wish. Indeed, DoD does already provide higher pay to military members with dependents, as discussed above. By offering an additional benefit that directs families with young children to spend a certain amount of money on a limited set of child care providers who meet military quality standards, DoD may be able to ensure that the child care that families use is reliable and flexible (hence contributing to readiness), that the care is of high quality (hence contributing to readiness, retention, and possibly recruitment), and that spouses of deployed military members actually do get the additional support they need during times of deployment (hence contributing to retention).


Forward Deployment Key to Heg

Forward presence is key to successful coercion and bargaining – limits aggressionMichael A. Allen, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at SUNY-Binghamton, 2-15-2010, “Deploying Bases Abroad: An Empirical Assessment,” http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/3/6/9/p313697_index.html

The analysis within the Harkavy books suggest one initial hypothesis that would normally act as a control variable in other studies: distance. Given that the rival for the United States during the Cold War was on the other side of a globe encourages the United States to deploy bases that are far from its own territory and closer to the Soviet Union. This impetus is also bolstered by the traditional borders of the United States containing two oceans and having its two neighbors be strong and stable allies during the Cold War. As such, we would expect the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: The further away a country is from the United States, the higher the likelihood the United States will deploy a base in its territory. The proximity of a state to the United States is an attractive variable for defensive and offensive reasons. Defensively, it allows for the interception of forces prior to reaching the United States and force potential conflicts to remain distant. Offensively, it allows the United States to adequately project its military power into areas where conventional armies would normally require months to arrive. Having some semblance of a force already deployed within a distant region makes coercion in bargaining with other states more credible.

Presence is key to political influence – undergirds all other presenceJames Thomason, Senior Analyst in the Strategy, Forces and Resources Division @ Institute for Defense, 2002, “Transforming US Overseas Military Presence: Evidence and Options for DoD Volume I: Main Report,” Institute for Defense Analyses, IDA Paper P-3707, July

In several studies conducted midway through the 1990s, Bradford Dismukes of the Center for Naval Analyses argued on behalf of a forward military presence posture over one centered in the United States and deployed only as needed [Dismukes, 1994]. “The posture of overseas presence is superior to one centered on forces in CONUS in capacity to support the objectives of the national strategy.” [p. 49] “CONUS forces are indeed influential, including in the deterrence of adversaries who know that forces overseas can be augmented by forces from CONUS…. But…that is not to say that CONUS-based forces would be as effective in either deterrence or military action as forces overseas.” [p. 38] “Military power is but one of many instruments available to US policy makers. The fact that what follows focuses on the manifestation of military power in the form of forces forward does not indicate that it is the leading instrument. It is not. In today’s world, primacy rests with the economic and political. But military power in the form of overseas presence is an essential component of US policy without which political and economic means of influence will not remain effective .”

Forward deployment is the only way to make conventional deterrence credibleMichael S. Gerson, Research analyst @ Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research center, where he focuses on deterrence, nuclear strategy, counterproliferation, and arms control, Autumn 2009, “Conventional Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age,” Parameters

Conventional deterrence also plays an important role in preventing nonnuclear aggression by nuclear-armed regimes. Regional nuclear proliferation may not only increase the chances for the use of nuclear weapons, but, equally important, the possibility of conventional aggression. The potential for conventional conflict under the shadow of mutual nuclear deterrence was a perennial concern throughout the Cold War, and that scenario is still relevant. A nuclear-armed adversary may be emboldened to use conventional force against US friends and allies, or to sponsor terrorism, in the belief that its nuclear capabilities give it an effective deterrent against US retaliation or intervention.15 For example, a regime might calculate that it could undertake conventional aggression against a neighbor and, after achieving a relatively quick victory, issue implicit or explicit nuclear threats in the expectation that the United States (and perhaps coalition partners) would choose not to get involved. In this context, conventional deterrence can be an important mechanism to limit options for regional aggression below the nuclear threshold. By deploying robust conventional forces in and around the theater of potential conflict, the United States can credibly signal that it can respond to conventional aggression at the outset, and therefore the opponent cannot hope to simultaneously achieve a quick conventional victory and use nuclear threats to deter US involvement. Moreover, if the United States can convince an opponent that US forces will be engaged at the beginning of hostilities—and will therefore incur the human and financial costs of war from the start—it can help persuade opponents that the United States would be highly resolved to fight even in the face of nuclear threats because American blood and treasure would have already been expended.16 Similar to the Cold War, the deployment of conventional power in the region, combined with significant


nuclear capabilities and escalation dominance, can help prevent regimes from believing that nuclear possession provides opportunities for conventional aggression and coercion.


Seabasing Key to Heg

Seabasing is key to hegemonyGeneral Edward Hanlon, US Marine Corps. Feb 26, 2004. FDCH Testimony.

The inherent mobility, security, and flexibility of naval forces provide an effective counter to emerging military and political limitations to overseas access. Seabasing provides the dynamic access, speed of response, flexibility, and persistent sustainment capabilities necessary to execute combat operations ashore, allowing us to initiate maneuver in the seaspace to enable and conduct joint operations ashore at a time and place of our choosing. Seabasing is not new to the Navy - Marine Corps Team; we have projected power from the sea for many decades. However, the new transformational capabilities that we seek in Seabasing will allow us to conduct the initial Reception, Staging, Onward movement, and Integration of our combat forces at sea, rather than in a permissive shore location. Critical to our Seabasing concept is the Maritime Prepositioning Force of the Future which will provide the capabilities of At Sea Arrival and Assembly, Selective Offload, and Reconstitution at Sea. But, we must also continue to retain the advantage in joint forcible entry operations provided by our amphibious assault ships, such as will be provided by the LPD-17 and LHA(R). As we face an uncertain future characterized by unreliable access to host nation or allied support and increasingly sophisticated anti-access and area denial technologies, we believe that Seabasing will exist not only as another operational capability, but as the preferred means of deploying, employing, and sustaining joint forces in distant anti-access environments throughout the globe.


Naval Power Key to Heg

Naval power ensures US hegemonyRobert Kaplan, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, 12-17-2008 “A Gentler Hegemony,” p. np

That is akin to where we are now, post-Iraq: calmer, more pragmatic and with a military -- especially a Navy -- that, while in relative decline, is still far superior to any other on Earth. Near the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy had almost 600 ships; it is down to 280. But in aggregate tonnage that is still more than the next 17 navies combined. Our military secures the global commons to the benefit of all nations. Without the U.S. Navy, the seas would be unsafe for merchant shipping, which, in an era of globalization, accounts for 90 percent of world trade. We may not be able to control events on land in the Middle East, but our Navy and Air Force control all entry and exit points to the region. The multinational anti-piracy patrols that have taken shape in the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden have done so under the aegis of the U.S. Navy. Sure the economic crisis will affect shipbuilding, meaning the decline in the number of our ships will continue, and there will come a point where quantity affects quality. But this will be an exceedingly gradual transition, which we will assuage by leveraging naval allies such as India and Japan. Then there are the dozens of training deployments around the world that the U.S. military, particularly Army Special Forces, conducts in any given week. We are all over Africa, Asia and Latin America with these small missions that increase America's diplomatic throw-weight without running the risk of getting us bogged down. Aside from Iraq and Afghanistan, our military posture around the world is generally light, lethal and highly mobile.


Forward Deployment Key to Heg

Forward deployment crucial to the maintenance of US hegemony.Report of the National Defense Panel, December 1997, “The World in 2020: Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century,” http://fas.org/man/docs/ndp/part01.htm

The cornerstone of America's continued military preeminence is our ability to project combat power rapidly and virtually unimpeded to widespread areas of the globe. Much of our power projection capability depends on sustained access to regions of concern. Any number of circumstances might compromise our forward presence (both bases and forward operating forces) and therefore diminish our ability to apply military power, reducing our military and political influence in key regions of the world. For political (domestic or regional) reasons, allies might be coerced not to grant the United States access to their sovereign territory. Hostile forces might threaten punitive strikes (perhaps using weapons of mass destruction) against nations considering an alliance with the United States. Thus, the fostering and nurturing of allies and alliances, as well as our ability to protect our allies from such threats, will be an important factor in our future ability to project combat power anywhere in the world.

The magnitude of the link is huge - Shifts in deployment spill over to other key components of hegemony.Overseas Basing Commission, 5-9-2005, Report of the Commission on Review of the Overseas Military Facility Structure of the United States, http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/obc.pdf

A shift of this magnitude affects significantly the overall strategic posture of the United States — political relations with allies and friends, deterrence of aggression against U.S. interests, conduct of military operations, shaping of the international environment in ways favorable to the United States, and so on. Thus, any assessment of basing cannot be separated from its related parts (e.g., domestic as well as overseas basing, alliance relationships, mobility lift capabilities, access to energy sources, etc.) nor from broader considerations of security strategy (e.g., the likely nature of current and emerging threats, economic impacts, political and policy implications, and so on). Accordingly, we determined that fulfillment of our duties demanded more than a mere critique of the proposed overseas basing posture. Mindful of the emphasis in the directive of PL 108-132 to consider “...any other issue related to military facilities overseas...” the Commission elected to cast its review in the context of overseas basing as it relates to the totality of U.S. security strategy.


**Things That are Key to Winning the War on Terror**


Project Echelon Key to War on Terror

1. ECHELON’S CONTRIBUTION TO ANTI-TERRORISM OUTWEIGHS ABUSE CLAIMSSusan Brenner, Professor of Law at the University of Dayton, September 9, 2004. OVERVIEW OF CYBER-TERRORISM, accessed 10/30/05, http://cybercrimes.net/Terrorism/overview/page5.html

If it truly exists, Echelon is most certainly one of the world’s most powerful weapons. It could easily and effectively be utilized in the fight against terrorism, drug cartels, and other criminals. However, many entities, including the European Union, have made allegations that the Echelon system is being abused, often used to capture domestic, economic, and commercial data. This data, according to the detractors, in then used to undercut commercial transactions or influence political entities. Among the various charges: The NSA has been accused of forwarding data captured by Echelon to American contractors, enabling those contractors to undercut foreign bidders on expensive contracts: operators have been accuse of using Echelon hardware to monitor domestic phone calls for personal reasons; a French lawyer is bringing a class action lawsuit against the governments of the United States and Britain, claiming Echelon has been used to steal trade secrets and undercut commercial transactions. However, despite the alleged abuses, Project Echelon is clearly a formidable weapon against terrorism and cyber-terrorism.

2. ECHELON PROVIDES INTELLIGENCE ESSENTIAL TO COMBATING TERRORISMCrispin Black, former British government intelligence agent, April 7, 2004.THE LONDON GUARDIAN, p. 2.

So how are we doing so far? In many ways, the news is good. The raids in the home counties on March 30, and the rumours of the thwarting of a chemical attack that emerged yesterday, suggest that our security services are able to acquire actionable intelligence on which to act. Source information is rightly highly classified, but the March 30 swoops, which netted not only men but bomb-making material, indicate either good signals intelligence (better than the "chatter" we so often hear about), or a very good human source. To an extent this is hardly surprising. The US and UK, in concert with other English-speaking allies, operate the most powerful interception system on the planet. Codenamed Echelon, this system of listening stations and computers is able to "sniff" millions of messages a day for hints of terrorists communicating with each other. We should remember that the majority of the UK's Islamic community is just like everyone else - they condemn terrorism and would alert the authorities to suspicious groups or individuals. And there will always be men prepared to keep their eyes and ears open in return for money or the promise of a helping hand with the immigration or welfare authorities.

3. PREVENTING TERRORISM JUSTIFIES ECHELON Erin L. Brown, nqa, 2003.COMMLAW CONSPECTUS, 1 CommLaw Conspectus 185, p. 200-201.

In light of the recent terrorist attacks on the United States, the evaluation of privacy matters must be conducted in a new context. The NSA is not asking Americans to put their privacy rights by the wayside, but it does hope to prove that its interception capabilities are not as broadly sweeping as one may imagine. The prospect that one's private communications have a slim chance of interception by a government agency should be weighed against the benefit of the existence of technological surveillance such as ECHELON. For law-abiding citizens, the benefits of a secure nation far outweigh the infrequent risks to one's individual expectation of private communications. Despite certain intrusions into United States citizens' privacy rights, there are adequate judicial, statutory and administrative safeguards that protect Americans from an abuse of governmental power and secrecy. If the NSA is to continue to serve the nation by providing and protecting vital information, we must "embrace change and resume our place on the forward edge of technology."


Surveillance Key to War on Terror

1. MODERN COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS ARE FERTILE GROUND FOR CRIMINALSOrin S. Kerr, Associate Professor, George Washington University Law School, 2003.NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 97 Nw. U.L. Rev. 607, p. 610.

Unfortunately, communications networks also provide a stage for the commission of criminal acts. Networks can be used by criminals to contact co-conspirators, deliver threats, further frauds, or engage in countless other criminal activities. When communications networks are used to further crimes, the network itself becomes a crime scene. Telephone records, stored emails, and undelivered packages can contain important clues for law enforcement. Much like a physical neighborhood, the networks themselves become surveillance zones, complete with criminals seeking to evade detection and police trying to catch them.

2. NEW TERRORIST ACTIVITIES ARE BEING PLANNED ON THE INTERNETFaye Bowers, staff writer, July 28, 2004.THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, p. 3.

One Al Qaeda website offers chilling details on how to conduct private and public kidnappings. It points out the number of cells essential to target and and hide victims. It details how to handle hostages - force them to taste the food first, for instance. It gives advice on negotiating tactics (gradually kill the hostages if "the enemy" stalls) and on releasing captives (be alert to tracking devices planted in the ransom money). The Al Qaeda site, called Al Battar, which means The Sword, is posted on the Internet twice a month. It's one of several websites that the terrorist group and its supporters built after the US successfully routed them from Afghanistan in late 2001. And it is one of some 4,000 websites that, experts say, now exist to carry on a "virtual" terror war - and plan actual attacks. "When I began tracking terrorist websites seven years ago, there were 12 sites in my database," says Gabriel Weimann, an Israeli communications professor who researches terrorist websites at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. "After [Al Qaeda members] were chased from the camps, they went to the Internet. They began adding two a day, going up to 50, then a hundred, to thousands." The rapid proliferation of the terror sites provides a dilemma for intelligence officials and terror experts alike. Should sites be shut down or be monitored for information that might help thwart attacks or provide information about how the groups are evolving strategically? Intelligence officials say they try to monitor the sites. For one thing, it wouldn't be easy to close them down. Not just because they are ubiquitous, but because they know they are targeted for shut-downs or being monitored. "I think it is impossible to shut them [terrorist websites] down completely," says Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terror at the RAND Corp. in Washington. "As a terrorism analyst, it is extremely valuable to have access to the sites."

3. INTERNET SURVEILLANCE IS PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT IN ANTI-TERRORISMOrin S. Kerr, Associate Professor, George Washington University Law School, 2003.NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 97 Nw. U.L. Rev. 607, p. 636-37.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, pressure built on the Bush Administration to propose antiterrorism legislation. Just days after the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft contacted various divisions within DOJ and sought recommendations for legislative changes that could help fight the war on terrorism. One area that surfaced as a promising arena was Internet surveillance law. The DOJ had been clamoring for changes to the antiquated surveillance laws for years, and the September 11th attacks provided an obvious opportunity to update the laws. The link between the surveillance laws and terrorism was not direct because the September 11th attacks did not directly implicate the Internet. However, terrorists groups such as Al-Qaeda were known to favor the latest Internet technologies to communicate with each other, which meant that updating the Internet surveillance laws could assist law enforcement in terrorism-related cases. In any event, the obviously antiquated surveillance laws provided one of the few areas in which new laws were both clearly needed and could conceivably help the Justice Department fight terrorism. Further, the events of September 11th changed the political climate considerably, softening the opposition that had successfully blocked DOJ efforts to amend the Internet surveillance statutes in the previous Congress.



Extraordinary Rendition Key to War on Terror

1. RENDITIONS PROVIDE VALUABLE INTELLIGENCE AND KEEP AMERICA SAFEMichael Scheuer, Former CIA official, March 11, 2005. THE NEW YORK TIMES. p. 23.

Second, the rendition program has been a tremendous success. Dozens of senior Qaeda fighters are today behind bars, no longer able to plot or participate in attacks. Detainee operations also netted an untold number of computers and documents that increased our knowledge of Al Qaeda's makeup and plans. Third, if mistakes were made, like the alleged cases of innocent detainees, they should be corrected, but the C.I.A. officers who followed orders should not be punished. Perfection is never attainable in the fog of war, and any errors should not distract from the overwhelming success of the program. All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women of the agency who executed these presidentially requested and approved operations, often at the risk of their lives. Unfortunately, rather than receiving thanks, the C.I.A. officers are again learning the usual lesson: to follow orders, make America safer and prepare to be abandoned and prosecuted when the policy makers refuse to defend their own decisions.

2. RENDITION DISRUPTS TERRORIST PLOTS AND SHATTERS CELLSEleanor Hill, former Department of Defense Inspector General, October 8, 2002.FEDERAL DOCUMENT CLEARING HOUSE POLITICAL TRANSCRIPTS, p. np.

Several counterterrorism efforts do, however, deserve mention -- first, the early creation of a special unit to target Bin Laden. Well before Bin Laden became a household name, or even well-known to counterterrorist specialists, the CTC created a unit dedicated to learn more about Bin Laden's activities. This unit quickly determined that Bin Laden was more than a terrorist financier. And it became the U.S. government's focal point for expertise on and operations against Bin Laden. Later, after the 1998 Embassy attacks made the threat clearer, the FBI and the NSA increased their focus on Al Qaida and on Islamic extremism. Second -- innovative legal strategies -- in the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Department of Justice creatively resurrected the Civil War-era charge of "seditious conspiracy," enabling the U.S. government to prosecute and jail individuals planning terrorist attacks in America. Aggressive renditions -- working with a wide array of foreign governments, the CIA helped deliver dozens of suspected terrorists to the United States or allied countries. These renditions often led to confessions and disrupted terrorist plots by shattering cells and removing key individuals.

3. RENDITIONS ARE SUCCESSFUL AT INCAPACITATING AL QAEDA LEADERSHIP Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, Staff Writers, December 26, 2002. THE WASHINGTON POST, p. A1.

In a speech on Dec. 11, CIA director George J. Tenet said that interrogations overseas have yielded significant returns recently. He calculated that worldwide efforts to capture or kill terrorists had eliminated about one-third of the al Qaeda leadership. "Almost half of our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months," he said. Many of these successes have come as a result of information gained during interrogations. The capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations, according to U.S. intelligence and national security officials. All four remain under CIA control. Time, rather than technique, has produced the most helpful information, several national security and intelligence officials said. Using its global computer database, the CIA is able to quickly check leads from captives in one country with information divulged by captives in another. "We know so much more about them now than we did a year ago -- the personalities, how the networks are established, what they think are important targets, how they think we will react," said retired Army general Wayne Downing, the Bush administration's deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism until he resigned in June. "The interrogations of Abu Zubaida drove me nuts at times," Downing said. "He and some of the others are very clever guys. At times I felt we were in a classic counter-interrogation class: They were telling us what they think we already knew. Then, what they thought we wanted to know. As they did that, they fabricated and weaved in threads that went nowhere. But, even with these ploys, we still get valuable information and they are off the street, unable to plot and coordinate future attacks."



Wiretapping Key to War on Terror

1. DOMESTIC WIRETAPPING IS A KEY TOOL FOR SURVEILLING TERRORISTS Suzanne Goldenberg, Staff Writer at The Guardian (London), February 7, 2006.THE GUARDIAN(LONDON), pg. 22.

The US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, yesterday strongly defended the Bush administration's domestic spying as an "early warning system" for the 21st century, and said the president did not break the law when he ordered surveillance of Americans without court oversight. In hearings before a sceptical Senate judiciary committee, Mr Gonzales worked hard to advance the administration's argument that the inherent powers of the presidency carried greater weight than legislation whereby the monitoring of US phones and email can be conducted only under the review of a special court, albeit one which operates in secret. Mr Gonzales's appearance before the committee offered senators their first chance to scrutinise the legality of a secret order by President George Bush in 2002 to monitor, without resort to court oversight, the email and telephone calls of Americans suspected of communicating with al-Qaida. Only eight senators were told of the order. Since the National Security Agency's domestic spying became public knowledge last December, after a story in the New York Times, the administration has vigorously defended the surveillance as a tool to fight terror.

2. NSA SPYING IS VITAL TO AMERICA’S SECURITYJulie Hirschfeld Davis, Staff Writer at The Baltimore Sun, December 18th, 2005.THE BALTIMORE SUN, pg. A-1.

President Bush acknowledged yesterday that he had personally authorized domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency and said he would continue to do so, defending the surveillance as crucial to fighting terrorism and scolding those who had revealed it. Facing backlash from lawmakers and civil libertarians, Bush confirmed news accounts that he had granted the NSA power to spy in the United States without warrants, while he said making the surveillance public had compromised Americans' security. "This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists," Bush said in a defiant address from the Roosevelt Room of the White House during a rare live broadcast of his weekly radio address. "It is critical to saving American lives."

3. WIRETAPPING HAS ALREADY FOILED TERRORIST ATTACKS AND IS KEY TO STOPPING ANOTHER 9/11Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Staff Writer at The Baltimore Sun, December 18th, 2005.THE BALTIMORE SUN, pg. A-1.

The secret wiretaps - a notable departure for the NSA, whose task is spying on foreign communications - are legal and constitutional, Bush said, responding to critics who have questioned their propriety. Bush said that he authorized the surveillance more than 30 times, that it was reviewed about every 45 days by top legal officials, including his counsel and the attorney general, and that fresh intelligence assessments were part of each review. He also said the surveillance had been disclosed to congressional leaders in more than a dozen briefings. "The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," Bush said. "And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."


Drones Key to War on Terror

Drones are an essential tool in preventing terrorismGreg Bruno, Staff Writer at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Micah Zenko, Fellow for Conflict Prevention @ CFR, 6-2-2010, "Raising the Curtain on U.S. Drone Strikes,” http://www.cfr.org/publication/22290/raising_the_curtain_on_us_drone_strikes.html

Predator drones have been credited with the removal of top al-Qaeda and Taliban figures from the tribal areas of Pakistan, the most recent example being the apparent killing of Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al-Qaeda's No. 3. How critical are these unmanned strikes to the mission in the Afghan-Pakistan war zone? Unmanned drone strikes are an essential tool for killing terrorists who provide guidance and operational support for international terrorism. The apparent killing of al-Yazid represents an important small victory, given his connections to terrorist plots abroad, and his declarations last summer that al-Qaeda would use nuclear weapons against the United States (RFE/RL). Such targeted killings, however, are only one element of national power that is part of the Obama administration's six-month-old Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy.

Drones are the most effective military optionKalsoom Lakhani, Staffwriter, 7-20-2009, "Drone Attacks: Bombs in The Air Versus Boots on The Groundm," Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kalsoom-lakhani/drone-attacks-bombs-in-th_b_241439.html

U.S. intelligence officials have called the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones, "their most effective weapon against Al Qaeda." This belief seems to be manifested in the increased frequency of drone attacks in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Although the Bush administration authorized only a handful of such strikes in 2007, the Wall Street Journal reports there were more than 30 attacks in 2008. So far in 2009, attacks are up 30 percent from last year, with Newsblogging noting there have been 27 drone attacks, "of which only two occurred before Obama took office." Obama's administration officials have claimed that drone strikes in Pakistan have killed nine of the 20 top Al Qaeda officials. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann echoed in an article last month, "It is possible to say with some certainty that since the summer of 2008, U.S. drones have killed dozens of lower-ranking militants and at least ten mid-and upper-level leaders within Al Qaeda and the Taliban."

Drones are key to lasting success in the War on Terror – alternative options failKenneth Anderson, Visiting Fellow on the Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law and Professor of Law at American University, 3-8-2010,“Predators over Pakistan,” The Weekly Standard, http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/predators-over-pakistan

Targeting terrorists and militants with Predator drone strikes is one campaign promise President Obama has kept to the letter. Missiles fired from remote-piloted “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs) at al Qaeda and Taliban leadership steadily and sharply increased over the course of 2009. Senior U.S. military and intelligence officials have called them one of the most effective tactics available to strike directly at al Qaeda and the Taliban. Indeed, CIA director Leon Panetta says that drones are “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership.”


Coast Guard Key to War on Terror

1. COAST GUARD SEARCHES ARE KEY TO STOPPING TERRORIST CARGOGeorge James, staff writer, May 26, 2002.THE NEW YORK TIMES, p. 14-NJ-1.

Each day, thousands of cargo ships and tankers from around the globe glide into and out of ports from Delaware Bay to Napatree Point in Rhode Island -- each with the capacity to be the vehicle of the next terrorism disaster. In the Port of New York and New Jersey alone, about 11,000 vessels haul three million shipping containers and nearly 30 million gallons of oil and petroleum products every year. And with the Memorial Day weekend here, and the summer boating season about to get into full swing, pleasure craft by the thousands will be slicing through the region's ocean and bays, coves and inlets -- some undoubtedly under the questionable control of weekend sailors keeping the summer sun at bay with a six-pack not far from the helm. Other craft may be under the control of far more dangerous hands. Yet the Coast Guard -- the long-ignored relation of the military establishment that now finds itself on the nation's front line in this new kind of war on terrorism -- is finding itself stretched thin. Only time will tell if the Coast Guard will be called on -- and prove itself able -- to prevent a terrorism attack in this country's ports and waterways.

2. PORTS PRESENT MULTIPLE TERRORIST OPPORTUNITIESKeith Darce, business writer, September 15, 2002.TIMES-PICAYUNE, p. 1.

In New Orleans, the nation's fourth-largest port in terms of tonnage, maritime officials have thought up a wide range of terrorist attack possibilities. A terrorist might commandeer a tanker loaded with oil and run the vessel into a loaded cruise ship docked in downtown New Orleans. He might sink a ship in the middle of the river, blocking a crucial transportation artery for the nation's economy. Or he might ram a vessel into a crowded downtown area, such as Woldenberg Park, and detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" on the edge of the French Quarter. Those scenarios seemed remote, if not absurd, to most maritime officials in the city before the Sept. 11 attacks. Now, anything seems possible. "In training, we used to rule out scenarios that seemed unrealistic," Branch said. "We can't do that anymore. We have to take the blinders off. We have to start thinking outside the box. We have to look at vessels as (potential terrorist) targets. We have to look at vessels as weapons." U.S. Customs Service Special Agent Scott Illing of New Orleans said ports in southeastern Louisiana offer a large number of potentially attractive terrorist targets. "We're definitely at risk," he said. "We are a major port. We have a large oil industry and a large shipping container industry. Are we a higher risk than the rest of the country? I don't think so," he said.

3. THE COAST GUARD HAS BECOME A CRITICAL ANTI-TERROR FORCEJayEtta Hecker, director of Physical Infrastructure Issues from the U.S. General Accounting Office, April 1, 2003.TESTIMONY BEFORE HOUSE TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE, FEDERAL DOCUMENT CLEARINGHOUSE POLITICAL TRANSCRPITS, p. np.

As one of the agencies being merged into the new department, the Coast Guard must deal with a myriad of organizational, human capital, process, and technology challenges and, at the same time, carry out its expanding mission responsibilities. But the Coast Guard, even as a separate entity, was rapidly reinventing itself in many respects in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. After the attacks, the Coast Guard's priorities and focus had to shift suddenly and dramatically toward protecting the nation's vast and sprawling network of ports and waterways. Cutters, aircraft, boats, and personnel normally used for traditional missions--such as drug and migrant interdiction, fisheries enforcement, and marine environmental protection--were shifted to homeland security functions, which previously consumed only a small part of the agency's operating resources. As we have recently reported,2 the Coast Guard has begun restoring activity levels for many of its traditional missions, but doing so is a work in process.


Coast Guard Key to War on Terror

1. THE COAST GUARD IS VITAL IN PREVENTING TERRORIST THREATSGeorge Bush, The President, PUBLIC PAPERS OF THE PRESIDENTS, “Commencement Address at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London,” May 26, 2003, p. np.

Coast Guard Academy life is demanding, and it should be because you are entrusted with solemn responsibilities in peace and in war. America counts on the Coast Guard to enforce maritime law, to secure our waterways and ports, to rescue those in distress, and to intercept illegal drugs. In this new century, we will count on you even more. The men and women of this class are the first ever to graduate into the Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with protecting the American people against terrorist attacks. You are bringing a long tradition of duty to this new and urgent tasks. Terrorists who seek to harm our country now face your ''Shield of Freedom.'' Every citizen can be grateful that the Coast Guard stands watch for America. The Coast Guard is also playing a vital role in America's strategy to confront terror before it comes to our shores. In the Iraqi theater, Coast Guard cutters and patrol boats and buoy tenders and over a thousand of your finest active duty and reserve members protected key ports and oil platforms, detained Iraqi prisoners of war, and helped speed the delivery of relief supplies to the Iraqi people. Many have returned safely to port, and many remain on duty in the Persian Gulf. All have helped to liberate a great people, and all have brought a great credit to the uniform of the United States Coast Guard.

2. THE COAST GUARD IS KEY TO HOMELAND SECURITY OPERATIONSPeter Buxbaum, staff writer, AVIATION WEEK’S HOMELAND SECURITY & DEFENSE, “Support Growing in Congress for Faster Pace on Deepwater,” March 26, 2003, p. 7.

Since Sept. 11, the Coast Guard has taken on substantial homeland security responsibilities, in addition to its traditional marine safety missions. The report notes that acceleration of Deepwater would help the Coast Guard meet those new responsibilities. "The various, multi-mission assets that comprise the Integrated Deepwater System [IDS] will allow the Coast Guard to push America's borders out with a layered defense critical to Maritime Domain Awareness, a key element of homeland security," the report said. "Accelerating the IDS provides the Coast Guard the means to make homeland security improvements sooner."

3. THE COAST GUARD IS VITAL FOR HOMELAND SECURITYTara Meissner, staff writer, HERALD TIMES REPORTER, March 22, 2003, p. 1A.

Lt. Dean Jordan, from the Milwaukee station noted Homeland Security was always a mission of the Coast Guard, though the organization's No. 1 priority prior to Sept. 11 was search and rescue. Its No. 1 priority since is search and rescue and Homeland Security, he added. "The Coast Guard has always protected American shores, but unfortunately in today's world with terrorist activity, that threat is higher," Jordan said. During this critical time, the Coast Guard will focus its efforts and limited resources on saving lives and protecting America by increasing its patrol operations with cutters, aircraft, and boats, and are closely monitoring maritime activity.

4. PORT SECURITY IS CRUCIAL FOR HOMELAND SECURITYAbraham McLaughlin, staff writer, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, “New US Security Mantra: Keep Bad Guys Out,” June 24, 2002, p. 2.

It may be the biggest reorganization of government since 1947, but President Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department - which Congress continues to hash over this week - is, at its core, simply a plan to try to gain ironclad control of America's borders, ports, and airports. Of the department's 170,000 expected employees, more than 90 percent will handle border and transportation security - controlling who travels in the country and what they take with them. And more than 60 percent of its projected $ 37.5 billion budget for 2003 will go toward border, port, and airport security. These facts highlight a homeland-security philosophy that aims to "keep the bad guys out" - which some observers say may not be proactive enough, since it won't attempt to disrupt terrorist plots hatched overseas. Yet on a practical level, it reflects a


calculation by the Bush team that only so much reorganization is possible at once - and that merging all or part of other agencies such as the CIA or FBI simply isn't doable ... yet.


**Things That are NOT Key to Hegemony**


Economy Not Key to Heg

Economic decline hurts rival great powers moreNiall Ferguson, Prof of History at Harvard, 9-30-2008, “Geopolitical Consequences of the Credit Crunch,” http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/ArticleItem.aspx?pageid=195

But commentators should always hesitate before they prophesy the decline and fall of the United States. America has come through disastrous financial crises before -- not just the Great Depression but also the Great Stagflation of the 1970s -- and emerged with its geopolitical position enhanced. Such crises, bad as they are at home, always have worse effects on America's rivals. The same is proving to be true today. According to the Morgan Stanley Capital International index, the U.S. stock market is down around 18 percent to date this year. The equivalent figure for China is 48 percent, and for Russia -- the worst affected of the world's emerging markets -- it is 55 percent. These figures are not very good advertisements for the more regulated, state-led economic models favored in Beijing and Moscow. Moreover, because investors continue to regard the U.S. government's debt as a "safe haven" in uncertain times, the latest phase of the financial crisis has seen the dollar rally, rather than sag further.

Economic crisis won’t undermine hegemony.Tommy Koh, chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore, 10-7-2009, “Why the US Will Still Be No.1 in 2039,” The Straits Times, http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/ips/docs/pub/pa_tk_st_Why%20the%20US%20will%20still%20be%20No%20%201%20in%202039_071009.pdf

Until recently, no one doubted that the US was the world's sole superpower and the unquestioned leader of the world. A series of reverses and self-inflicted wounds have, however, caused thoughtful individuals, in Asia and elsewhere, to ask whether the US is a declining power. At a recent meeting in Japan, a respected Japanese public intellectual asked whether we were witnessing the end of Pax America and the beginning of Pax Sinica. I would argue that such scepticism about the US is mistaken. In my view, the US will remain No. 1 in 2039, 30 years from now. My optimism is based upon the following reasons. First, I believe that the US economy will bounce back from the current downturn and remain the most vibrant and competitive economy in the world in 2039. The US economy was on the brink of disaster last year. Decisive action by two consecutive administrations as well as Congress saved the economy from collapse. It is in the American tradition to face up to problems, accept the painful medicine of reform and bounce back. The US was prepared to allow two American icons, Lehman Brothers and General Motors, to fail. Post-crisis, I expect that Wall Street will be better regulated, that Detroit will produce more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly automobiles, that the US will become a world leader in clean and renewable energy technology and businesses, and the American people will spend less and save more. Economic competitiveness in the 21st century will be increasingly driven by innovation, creativity, design, marketing, information technology and talent. These are areas in which the US excels. It is likely to continue to do so in 2039.


Air Power Not Key to Heg

1. OVER-RELIANCE ON AIR POWER CRUSHES OVERALL MILITARY EFFECTIVENESSVox Day, novelist and columnist, February 20, 2006.WORLDNET DAILY, accessed 10/30/06, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48904

For the history of strategic bombing is a history of complete failure. Every USAF strategist since the the Air Force was called the Army Air Corp has either been deluded or deceitful about the ability to win a war from the air. With one notable exception, the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aerial bombardments have never won a war. There are numerous historical examples. Goering assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could bomb the British into submission. Five years later, Germany surrendered. Knowing how little the Pearl Harbor raid could accomplish, Adm. Yamamoto wisely advised the Japanese generals against it, but he was overruled, much to Japan's eventual detriment. The USAF dropped 6.1 million tons of explosives on 5 million sorties against North Vietnam that not only left the North Vietnamese undefeated, but apparently didn't even retard their economic development. NATO's 78-day air war against Serbia did not stop the ethnic cleansing taking place there, nor, as was later learned, did it significantly degrade Serbian military capabilities. Air power has always been overestimated by its advocates. A crucial tactical element, it is strategically toothless. In August 1941, at the request of President Roosevelt, the U.S. Air War Plans Division created a strategic document laying out the design for "an unremitting and sustained air offensive against Germany" called AWPD-1. The strategy "assumed that airpower could achieve strategic and political objectives in a fundamentally new way." However, the AWPD planners might as well have been writing fiction. Despite launching 98,400 sorties against German industrial targets, including a 7-day bombing campaign called Big Week which utilized 3,800 heavy bombers operating around the clock, German aircraft production actually rose 279 percent from two years before. And this was despite having the benefit of Britain's earlier, failed strategic bombing campaign to serve as an example.

2. AIR POWER IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR CONTROLLING TERRITORY OR ACHIEVING OUTRIGHT MILITARY VICTORYMary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, January 2003.INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Vol. 79, No. 1, p. 6-7.

It is argued that the one area where superior military technology conveys an advantage is in the air. The Americans do have the capacity to destroy or evade all known air defences. Through the use of precision guided munitions (PGMs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), they can destroy targets at long distance with a high degree of accuracy, as we saw in the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. But this is not the same as controlling territory or achieving outright military victory. In the Gulf War, the United States and its allies did succeed in liberating Kuwait with a massive deployment of force; if undertaken today, it would occupy some 80 per cent of American army divisions because of the decline in active duty manpower. In the former Yugoslavia, US air attacks could not prevent the acceleration of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; as Wesley Clark, then SACEUR, put it at the time, ‘air power alone cannot stop para-military murder on the ground.’ On eof the problems was that it was very difficult to lure Serb forces into the open where they were vulnerable to air attack, as was done to the Iraqis in the Gulf War. In the end, Milosevic capitulated, Kosovo was liberated, and the refugees returned home; but the experience left a legacy of hatred within Kosovo and undoubtedly contributed to the persistence of embittered anti-Western nationalism in Serbia today. In the case of Afghanistan, the American effort succeeded in toppling the Taliban, with the help of the Northern Alliance and, at a crucial moment, some of the Pashtun warlords. In the critical battle for Mazar-I-Sharif, Taliban forces were stranded in the open, and, altogether in the course of the war, thousands of Taliban troops were killed from the air. But the war effort did not succeed in capturing Osama bin Laden or many al-Qaeda leaders, or in stabilizing Afghanistan.


Overstretch Does Not Kill Heg

( ) Overstretch doesn’t hurt US hegemony – the US has overwhelming powerBradley A. Thayer, Professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies of Missouri State University. 2007. American Empire: A Debate. Pg. 24-25.

Thus, the economy is well placed to be the engine of the American Empire. Even the leading proponent of the “imperial overstretch” argument, Yale University historian Paul Kennedy, has acknowledged this. Imperial overstretch occurs when an empire’s military power and alliance commitments are too burdensome for its economy. In the 1980s, there was much concern among academics that the United States was in danger of this as its economy strained to fund its military operations and alliance commitments abroad. However, Kennedy now acknowledges that he was wrong when he made that argument in his famous book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, because of the robustness of American economic and military power. Indeed, if there is any imperial overstretch, it is more likely to be by China, France, Britain, India, Russia, or the EU—not the United States. Reflecting on the history of world politics, Kennedy submits that the United States not only has overwhelming dominance but possesses such power so as to be a historically unique condition: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing. I have returned to all of the comparative defense spending and military personnel statistics over the past 500 years that I compiled in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and no other nation comes close,” not even an empire as great as the British, because “even the Royal Navy was equal only to the next two navies. Right now all the other navies in the world combined could not dent American maritime supremacy.”32 Moreover, Kennedy recognizes that the steady economic growth of the American economy, and the curbing of inflation, means that “America’s enormous defense expenditures could be pursued at a far lower relative cost to the country than the military spending of Ronald Reagan’s years,” and that fact is “an incomparable source of the U.S. strength.”33 When Kennedy, who was perhaps the strongest skeptic of the economic foundation of America’s power, comes to acknowledge, first, that no previous empire has been as powerful as America is now; and, second, that its strength will last because of the fundamental soundness of its economy, then, as Jeff Foxworthy would say, “You might be an empire....” And it is one that will last a considerable amount of time. As with its military might, the economic foundation of the American empire is sound for the projected future.

US has overwhelming hard power with or without troops – massive defense spendingStephen Brooks, Assistant Prof of Govt at Dartmouth, and William Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt Dartmouth College, 2008, “World Out of Balance,” p. 27.

“Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing,” historian Paul Kennedy observes: “I have returned to all of the comparative defense spending and military personnel statistics over the past 500 years that I compiled in the The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and no other nation comes close.” Though assessments of U.S. power have changed since those words were written in 2002, they remain true. Even when capabilities are understood broadly to include economic, technological, and other wellsprings of national power, they are concentrated in the United States to a degree never before experienced in the history of the modern system of states and thus never contemplated by balance-of-power theorists. The United States spends more on defense than all the other major military powers combined, and most of those powers are its allies. Its massive investments in the human, institutional, and technological requisites of military power, cumulated over many decades, make any effort to match U.S. capabilities even more daunting than the gross spending numbers imply. Military research and development (R&D) may best capture the scale of the long-term investments that give the United States a dramatic qualitative edge in military capabilities. As table 2.1 shows, in 2004 U.S. military R&D expenditures were more than six times greater than those of Germany, Japan, France, and Britain combined. By some estimates over half the military R&D expenditures in the world are American.11 And this disparity has been sustained for decades: over the past 30 years, for example, the United States has invested over three times more than the entire European Union on military R&D.


Overstretch Does Not Kill Heg

Strong economy and control of the commons ensures US heg – overstretch is irrelevantStephen Brooks, Assistant Prof of Govt at Dartmouth, and William Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt Dartmouth College, 2008, “World Out of Balance,” p. 27.

These vast commitments have created a preeminence in military capabilities vis-à-vis all the other major powers that is unique after the seventeenth century. While other powers could contest U.S. forces near their homelands, especially over issues on which nuclear deterrence is credible, the United States is and will long remain the only state capable of projecting major military power globally.0 This capacity arises from “command of the commons”—that is, unassailable military dominance over the sea, air, and space. As Barry Posen puts it, Command of the commons is the key military enabler of the U.S. global power position. It allows the United States to exploit more fully other sources of power, including its own economic and military might as well as the economic and military might of its allies. Command of the commons also helps the United States to weaken its adversaries, by restricting their access to economic, military and political assistance. Command of the commons provides the United States with more useful military potential for a hegemonic foreign policy than, any other offshore power has ever had.° Posen’s study of American military primacy ratifies Kennedy’s emphasis on the historical importance of the economic foundations of national power. It is the combination of military and economic potential that sets the United States apart from its predecessors at the top of the international system (fig. 2.1). Previous leading states were either great commercial and naval powers or great military powers on land, never both. The British Empire in its heyday and the United States during the Cold War, for example, shared the world with other powers that matched or exceeded them in some areas. Even at the height of the Pax Britannica, the United Kingdom was outspent, outmanned, and outgunned by both France and Russia. Similarly, at the dawn of the Cold War the United States was dominant economically as well as in air and naval capabilities. But the Soviet Union retained overall military parity, and thanks to geography and investment in land power it had a superior ability to seize territory in Eurasia. The United States’ share of world GDP in 2006, 27.5 percent, surpassed that of any leading state in modern history, with the sole exception of its own position after 1945 (when World War II had temporarily depressed every other major economy). The size of the U.S. economy means that its massive military capabilities required roughly 4 percent of its GDP in 2005, far less than the nearly 10 percent it averaged over the peak years of the Cold War, 1 950—70, and the burden borne by most of the major powers of the past.’5 As Kennedy sums up, “Being Number One at great cost is one thing; being the world’s single superpower on the cheap is astonishing.”


Coast Guard Not Key to Heg

1. COAST GUARD IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONStephen L. Caldwell, Acting Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, June 15, 2006.OBSERVATIONS ON AGENCY PERFORMANCE, OPERATIONS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES, accessed 8/18/06,http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06448t.pdf#search=%22%E2%80%9CObservations%20on%20Agency%20Performance%2C%20Operations%20and%20Future%20Challenges%22

Three organizational changes appear to be helping the Coast Guard adjust to added responsibilities. First, according to agency officials, a realigned field structure will allow local commanders to manage resources more efficiently. Second, according to the Coast Guard, a new response team for maritime security is expected to provide greater counterterrorism capability. Finally, new and expanded partnerships inside and outside the federal government have the potential to improve operational effectiveness and efficiency. While some progress in acquisition management has been made, continued attention is warranted. Within the Deepwater program, additional action is needed before certain past recommendations can be considered as fully implemented. Also, the program recently had difficulties in acquiring Fast Response Cutters to replace aging patrol boats.

2. COAST GUARD IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONStephen L. Caldwell, Acting Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, June 15, 2006.OBSERVATIONS ON AGENCY PERFORMANCE, OPERATIONS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES, accessed 8/18/06,http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06448t.pdf#search=%22%E2%80%9CObservations%20on%20Agency%20Performance%2C%20Operations%20and%20Future%20Challenges%22

For the Rescue 21 program, deficiencies in management and oversight appear similar to those that plagued the Deepwater program, leading to delays and cost overruns, and demonstrating that the Coast Guard has not translated past lessons learned into improved acquisition practices. Two additional future challenges also bear close attention: deteriorating buoy tenders and icebreakers that may need additional resources to sustain or replace them, and maintaining mission balance while taking on a new homeland security mission outside the agency’s traditional focus on the maritime environment.

3. COAST GUARD NEEDS NEW EQUIPMENT TO SOLVE PROBLEMSJames Jay Carafano, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, July 7, 2006LEARNING KATRINA’S LESSONS: COAST GUARD MODERNIZATION IS A MUST, accessed 8/16/06, http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/bg1950.cfm

Equipment limitations plagued the Coast Guard throughout the response and recovery effort. Communications proved particularly challenging, as the service had limited assets. The Integrated Support Command New Orleans and Station Gulf Port were completely destroyed. The Coast Guard offset this shortfall somewhat by prepositioning cutters with Deepwater communications upgrades outside of New Orleans before the storm. This strengthened and helped to maintain command and control, enabling the Coast Guard both to perform its missions and to work in conjunction with other federal, state, and local agencies.

4. COAST GUARD SHIPS ARE AGING TOO QUICKLY TO HELPJames Jay Carafano, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, July 7, 2006LEARNING KATRINA’S LESSONS: COAST GUARD MODERNIZATION IS A MUST, accessed 8/16/06, http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/bg1950.cfm

As the Coast Guard fleet continues to age, it will have greater difficulty providing the surge capacity needed for large-scale disasters. Likewise, the service needs new capabilities so that it can provide the command, control, communications, and surveillance required to organize and integrate other responders to meet all the maritime needs of catastrophic disaster response.



**Things That are NOT Key to Winning the War on Terror**


Air Power Not Key to War on Terror

1. AIR POWER CANNOT FORM THE BASIS OF EFFECTIVE COUNTER-INSURGENCY EFFORTSWilliam B. Danskine, Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Summer 2005.AIR & SPACE POWER JOURNAL, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. ebsco.

Unfortunately, US military doctrine for counterterrorism does not receive the attention it deserves. Although mentioned in the National Security Strategy and based on a significant amount of historical experience in counterinsurgency warfare, this doctrine does not enjoy full acceptance in terms of its practical application. An aggressive counterinsurgency (and counterterrorism) strategy implies a level of activity and involvement in a host nation's internal struggles that makes many senior military leaders uncomfortable. The US military establishment seems trapped in the Cold War paradigm. Counterinsurgency does not represent the type of conflict the Air Force prefers to fight. Based on a state-versus-state conflict paradigm, our doctrine assumes the adversary has a static, hierarchical organizational structure and prescribes applying force to key nodes to disrupt enemy functions. Similarly, it assumes that the threat of overwhelming force will deter potential state adversaries. As noted earlier, the Air Force emphasizes the employment of ISR for near-real-time support of military strikes on infrastructure targets rather than for support of the multidimensional effects-based operations that an effective counterterrorism strategy requires. Unfortunately, the global war on terrorism includes very few statecentric enemies. Terrorist groups "present little in the way of infrastructure that could be targeted by a retaliatory strike." Without knowing what the enemy wants and how he functions, we will have difficulty with effects-based targeting.

2. TERRORIST NETWORKS ARE LARGELY INVULNERABLE TO AIR CAMPAIGNSAlan J. Vick, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, et. al., 2006.AIR POWER IN THE NEW COUNTERINSURGENCY ERA, p. 110-111.

First, because insurgent movements lack large industrial, transportation, communications, or military centers, they are largely invulnerable to classic air campaigns. It is true that, in some cases, insurgents have been supported by outside powers that possess these traditional attributes. As discussed in Chapter Four, these states are theoretically vulnerable to a more-traditional application of air power (or coercive threats to use it), but this has rarely been done.4 Rather, in most cases the counterinsurgent government lacked the air capabilities necessary to credibly threaten such action or was itself deterred by the escalatory risks associated with such a move. More typically in the post–Cold War era, insurgents receive support from diasporas, other nonstate actors, or states that are geographically removed or sufficiently covert about their support to avoid direct confrontation with the government fighting the insurgency.5

3. EVEN ARMY LEADERS RECOGNIZE THE FUNDAMENTAL INADEQUACIES OF AIR POWER IN COMBATTING TERRORIST GUERILLASThomas R. Searle, Captain, U.S. Air Force, Fall 2004.AIR & SPACE POWER JOURNAL, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. ebsco.

One reason the US military is so good at conventional war is that it knows how to achieve decisive effects with airpower and space power. But we have not mastered the use of these tools against terrorists and guerrillas. In fact, a number of our military people have trouble seeing how airpower and space power can contribute to operations short of major combat. For example, soon after the Army's 3rd Infantry Division captured Baghdad, the division released its Air Force air support operations squadron to redeploy, believing that the air-liaison element had nothing to offer at that point. Worse yet, the Airmen left because they were not sure how airpower and space power could contribute.[ 1] Some Airmen, even now, believe that airpower and space power are irrelevant in the fight against the most serious military threat our nation faces. Before we disband the US Air Force and find better uses for its resources, this article will suggest ways to make airpower and space power effective against our new enemy.


Coast Guard Not Key to War on Terror

1. COAST GUARD CAN NOT PREVENT A TERRORIST ATTACK BECAUSE THEY USE OUTDATED DETECTION TECHNOLOGYU.S Newswire, July 11, 2006.DEMOCRATS DEMAND REAL SECURITY AT PORTS AND BORDERS, accessed 8/18/06, http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=69023

Flaws in radiation detection equipment. The radiation- detection technology currently used by the Coast Guard and CBP to guard our ports is not adequately capable of detecting a nuclear weapon or a lightly shielded dirty bomb. According to Stephen Flynn: "...this is because nuclear weapons are extremely well- shielded and give off very little radioactivity. If terrorists obtained a dirty bomb and put it in a box lined with lead, it's unlikely radiation sensors would detect the bomb's low levels of radioactivity. The flaws in detection technology require the Pentagon's counter proliferation teams to physically board container ships at sea to determine if they are carrying weapons of mass destruction. Even if there were enough trained boarding teams to perform these inspections on a regular basis-and there are not-there is still the practical problem of inspecting the contents of cargo containers at sea. Such inspections are almost impossible because containers are so closely packed on a container ship that they are often simply inaccessible. This factor, when added to the sheer number of containers on each ship-upwards of 3,000-guarantees that in the absence of very detailed intelligence, inspectors will be able to perform only the most superficial of examinations."

2. PREVENTING TERRORISM IMPOSSIBLE WE MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE AFTERMATHMike O’Sullivan, writer, June 28, 2006.REPORT: LIMITING IMPACT OF TERROR ATTACK ON US PORTS ESSENTIAL, accessed 8/18/06, http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/news/2006/06/sec-060628-voa01.htm

A new study says security measures should focus on economic recovery after a possible terrorist attack on a U.S. port. The report by the Public Policy Institute of California says attacks cannot be prevented, but preparations can minimize their financial impact, and discourage would-be attackers. The study by a team of economists and maritime security experts notes that the nation's 361 seaports together handle 40 percent of U.S. international trade. The report says an attack on a major port could cause serious disruptions through the US economy. "There is an over-emphasis on prevention of an attack at a port, and perhaps not enough emphasis on what happens in response to an attack on the port," said Jon Haveman, a contributing author and co-editor of the report. He says a key theme emerges in the study of port security. The report says recovery plans should focus on reducing economic panic and restoring supply chains. Haveman says the government needs better ways to prioritize shipments to get essential goods moving . Essential shipments might include car parts heading for San Francisco, where a major auto plant - a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota - produces hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. The report says if terrorists were to blow up highway and rail bridges at the joint ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the attack could eliminate half of the ports' capacity and lead to an economic loss of $45 billion. Haveman calls that a serious toll, but says it is one that the U.S. economy can handle. He says advance planning is difficult. At the Los Angeles-Long Beach port, it involves coordinating 15 separate government agencies. But he says advance planning is essential. "That makes fundamental sense in its own right, and it also makes sense as a deterrent, because if we can eliminate the economic consequences of an attack or substantially reduce them, then we're less likely to have the attack in the first place," he said. He says the goal of terrorists is to disrupt the economy, and that preparations to limit the impact of an attack will decrease the risk of having one.


Coast Guard Not Key to War on Terror

1. THERE IS NO STOPPING ANOTHER TERRORIST ATTACK ON OUR PORTSErik N. Nelson, Staff Writer, Jun 29, 2006.OAKLAND TRIBUNE, accessed 8/18/06,http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060629/ai_n16519684

A terror attack on the Port of Oakland or another of the nation's 361 ports cannot be avoided with any certainty, a new study has concluded, so the nation's port security focus should shift more toward recovering from such an attack quickly. "We're currently devoting a vast amount of our resources toward preventing an attack," said Jon Haveman, program director at the Public Policy Institute of California. "To be a little fatalistic about it, unless we impose draconian measures, there's still going to be a significant probability that terrorists will get their material through." That material might consist of a radioactive "dirty" bomb, a chemical weapon "or in a worst-case scenario, a nuclear weapon," said Haveman, who edited "Protecting the Nation's Seaports: Balancing Security and Cost" along with institute research fellow Howard Shatz. To prepare for that possibility, "we need to be spending more money overall, and a larger share of that needs to be devoted to response and recovery," Haveman said. The study notes that the Coast Guard estimated it would cost $7.3 billion for the country to meet federal port security requirements. When the study was written, the federal government had provided only $780 million to help attain the new standards. The study looked at the nation's busiest port complex, home of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, and examined what would happen to the U.S. economy if it were attacked. The study also examined different methods of preventing attacks, the effectiveness of government security programs and ways of financing those efforts.

2. THERE ARE CURRENTLY STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS IN MARITIME SECURITY THAT THE COAST GUARD CAN NOT SOLVE FORAlwyn Scott, Seattle Times business reporter, July 25, 2006.THE SEATTLE TIMES, p. lexis.

Port officials nationwide know about this hole and say they are doing what they can. A new federal driver-identification system is planned over the next two years as one effort to secure "the land side."In congressional testimony last year concerning that system and other port-security measures, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Craig Bone said "we must know and trust those who are provided unescorted access to our port facilities and vessels." A national coalition of maritime officials that includes the ports of Seattle and Tacoma says that currently, this is "a vital missing link in the chain of maritime security."But meanwhile, port operators aren't taking seemingly simple steps such as checking the "condo" sleeping unit behind the driver's cab, where bunk beds could accommodate half a dozen men with equipment.

3. COAST GUARD IS NOT MANAGED WELL ENOUGH TO PREVENT A PORT ATTACKSiobhan Gorman, Sun Reporter, March 14, 2006.THE BALTIMORE SUN, p. lexis.

Homeland Security has also done little to assess the effectiveness of local port-security plans, the GAO has found. It recommended that the Coast Guard assess the procedures at different ports by secretly testing security controls, as is often done with airport security, but the Coast Guard balked. Administration aides list various measures the president has put in place since Sept. 11, 2001, to screen containers abroad and work with companies to safeguard cargo. But on Friday, Baker, the homeland security official, acknowledged the need to do more. He said the administration would be accelerating its long-languishing program to create ID cards for port workers, with an announcement of details expected in the next few weeks. Some people who have worked with the administration on port security complain that Bush has yet to outline a comprehensive port-security strategy, putting off key decisions and leaving the private sector to fill in holes.



**Readiness**


Readiness Good – War

1. A DECLINE IN READINESS INVITES AGGRESSION AGAINST THE U.S.Jack Spencer, policy analyst for defense and national security at the Heritage Foundation, September 15, 2000.HERITAGE FOUNDATION REPORTS, p. 1.

Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military readiness signal to the rest of the world that the United States is not prepared to defend its interests. Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be more likely to lash out against American allies and interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in combat. A high state of military readiness is more likely to deter potentially hostile nations from acting aggressively in regions of vital national interest, thereby preserving peace.

2. MILITARY READINESS DETERS ATTACKS FROM ROGUE NATIONSIvo Daalder and James Lindsay, senior fellows of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, 2003. POWER AND COOPERATION: AN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE AGE OF GLOBAL POLITICS, p. 319.

Maintaining a robust military provides a powerful deterrent to rogue state attacks. U.S. political and economic pressure can be wielded against potential proliferators, and preemption can defeat attacks before they occur.

3. MILITARY READINESS DETERS AGGRESSION AGAINST THE U.S.Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, senior fellows of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, 2003. POWER AND COOPERATION: AN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE AGE OF GLOBAL POLITICS, p. 302.

Today, an equally ambitious statement of American power and priorities stands at the heart of George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy: “Our [military] forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”50 In other words, the United States can best achieve its objectives if it prevents others from acquiring the power to oppose it when interests clash.

4. READINESS IS KEY TO DETERRING AGGRESSION AND PREPARING FOR TWO CONFLICTSTHE WHITE HOUSE, 1998, NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES, accessed April 26, 2004, www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-9810.pdf

We must maintain superior military forces at the level of readiness necessary to effectively deter aggression, conduct a wide range of peacetime activities and smaller-scale contingencies, and, preferably in concert with regional friends and allies, win two overlapping major theater wars. The success of all our foreign policy tools is critically dependent on timely and effective intelligence collection and analysis capabilities.

5. READINESS IS KEY TO FIGHTING TWO FRONTSBen Macintyre, staff writer, THE TIMES, November 11, 1999, p. np.

Under US military doctrine, the armed forces should be capable of waging significant wars on two fronts at the same time, but the experience of the Kosovo conflict raised serious doubts about the practicality of that rule, prompting a more rigorous assessment of military readiness.


Readiness Good – Deterrence

1. US ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THREATS IS KEY TO MILITARY SUPERIORITYHarvey Sapolsky, professor of public policy and organization at MIT, Eugene Gholz, instructor at the institute of public policy at George Mason University, and Allen Kaufman, professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, July/August 1999. FOREIGN AFFAIRS, p. np.

NO ONE knows what security challenges the United States will face in the next century. To meet the challenges of the Cold War -- America's longest and most complex struggle -- the United States created a set of institutions and societal relationships that let it prevail without sacrificing its way of life. As the new century approaches, those very institutions and relationships are at risk. Many now believe that because of America's towering technological advantages, which were displayed so effectively in the 1991 confrontation with Iraq, no enemy will dare oppose U.S. forces with conventional weapons. Instead, future attacks will likely be "asymmetric," involving terrorism, sabotaging U.S. communications and financial systems, and poisoning cities' water supplies. Such assaults cannot defeat the United States but may cause panic and make appeasement tempting. The interest in asymmetric threats reflects not only an awareness of the United States' relative strength but also a recognition that victory in war can stem from the ability to surprise as well as from the exercise of power. During the Cold War, the U.S. national security system overcame many more symmetrical than asymmetrical surprises. The Soviets' first nuclear tests, the invasion of South Korea, the Chinese entry into the Korean War, Sputnik, and the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane -- to name just a few -- were all symmetrical actions, but surprises nonetheless. America's sustained ability to meet all types of challenges and to generate some surprises of its own was obviously important to its Cold War triumph. This ability will be no less important to America's future security, which makes the rush to dismantle the institutional framework that underlay the Cold War victory so foolishly dangerous.

2. READINESS IS KEY TO PEACE THROUGH DETERRENCETHE WHITE HOUSE, 1998, accessed April 26, 2004, THE WHITE HOUSE, 1998, NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES, accessed April 26, 2004, www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-9810.pdf

Deterrence of aggression and coercion on a daily basis is crucial. Our ability to deter potential adversaries in peacetime rests on several factors, particularly on our demonstrated will and ability to uphold our security commitments when they are challenged. We have earned this reputation through both our declaratory policy, which clearly communicates costs to potential adversaries, and our credible warfighting capability. This capability is embodied in ready forces and equipment strategically stationed or deployed forward, in forces in the United States at the appropriate level of readiness to deploy and go into action when needed, in our ability to gain timely access to critical regions and infrastructure overseas, and in our demonstrated ability to form and lead effective military coalitions.

3. MILITARY READINESS IS VITAL TO PREVENT NUCLEAR WARCenter for Military Readiness, ISSUES BRIEFING COVERS CURRENT CMR TOPICS, March 4, 2003, accessed April 22, 2004, http://cmrlink.org/activities.asp?docID=177

Speakers at the afternoon CMR Issues Briefing were exceptionally informative on a variety of current issues. Conversations sparked by their presentations carried over to the reception immediately following on the top floor of the Reserve Officers Association Building. Former Marine officer and attorney Adam Mersereau, the author of several articles published by National Review Online (NRO), discussed the readiness of America’s armed forces after years of budget cuts, operational stress, and demoralization during the past decade. He also called for an all-out effort to combine America’s superior technology with the will to build a larger force capable of deterring the most horrendous possibilities, including nuclear war.


MILITARY READINESS DA

Readiness Good – Hegemony

1. LOSS OF READINESS COLLAPSES HEGEMONYJack Spencer, Policy Analyst for Defense and National Security at the Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation, January, 2001.HERITAGE FOUNDATION WEBPAGE, accessed 4/20/06, www.heritage.org

Moreover, regarding the broader capability to defeat groups of enemies, U.S. military readiness has been declining. The National Security Strategy, the Administration's official statement of national security objectives, concludes that the United States "must have the capability to deter and, if deterrence fails, defeat large-scale, cross-border aggression in two distant theaters in overlapping time frames." According to some of the military's highest-ranking officials, however, the United States cannot now achieve this goal. Former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson says that, "from a Navy perspective, we never were sized for two MTW's [major theater wars]. We are sized to do the daily business that we are asked to do as a forward presence rotational force." General James Jones, Commandant of the Marine Corps, explains that "the Marine Corps is not, by its size, a two MTW force." Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Ryan says that "The Air Force...is not a two MTW force either. Our lift force, many of our special assets -- bombers, tankers, and airlift assets -- are not enough for two MTWs." The U.S. military's high commitment to operations other than warfare further diminishes its credibility. According to General Shelton: "Rapidly withdrawing from a commitment like Bosnia or Kosovo to support a major theater war would require a quick decision by the National Command Authorities to allow time for units to withdraw, retrain, redeploy, and be used effectively. This could mean the late arrival of some forces for MTW employment. The inability of the U.S. military to carry out its military endeavors would be devastating. It would tell America's allies that the United States cannot fulfill its security commitments -- news that will weaken its alliances. The result is that normally reliable allies will be less eager to give America access to already diminished forward basing areas. This makes the U.S. military, already dependent on those areas, less effective, which further degrades overall military power."

2. READINESS IS KEY TO U.S. LEADERSHIPGordon Adams, former director at the Office of Management and Budget, September 14, 2000.NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER, p. np.

What are we to be ready for? And clearly, there are a series of things that are involved in what the vice president has called forward engagement and American leadership around the world, in which your military capability is an essential tool. It's not your only tool, but it's a tool you have to marry up to your diplomacy, to your intelligence, in order to deal with what the military calls "full spectrum of contingencies."

3. U.S. LEADERSHIP PREVENTS GLOBAL NUCLEAR WARZalmay Khalilzad, analyst from the Rand Corp., Spring 1995.WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, p. np.

Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.


Readiness Good – Threats

1. US ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THREATS IS KEY TO MILITARY SUPERIORITYHarvey Sapolsky, professor of public policy and organization at MIT, Eugene Gholz, instructor at the institute of public policy at George Mason University, and Allen Kaufman, professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, July/August 1999.FOREIGN AFFAIRS, p. np.

NO ONE knows what security challenges the United States will face in the next century. To meet the challenges of the Cold War -- America's longest and most complex struggle -- the United States created a set of institutions and societal relationships that let it prevail without sacrificing its way of life. As the new century approaches, those very institutions and relationships are at risk. Many now believe that because of America's towering technological advantages, which were displayed so effectively in the 1991 confrontation with Iraq, no enemy will dare oppose U.S. forces with conventional weapons. Instead, future attacks will likely be "asymmetric," involving terrorism, sabotaging U.S. communications and financial systems, and poisoning cities' water supplies. Such assaults cannot defeat the United States but may cause panic and make appeasement tempting. The interest in asymmetric threats reflects not only an awareness of the United States' relative strength but also a recognition that victory in war can stem from the ability to surprise as well as from the exercise of power. During the Cold War, the U.S. national security system overcame many more symmetrical than asymmetrical surprises. The Soviets' first nuclear tests, the invasion of South Korea, the Chinese entry into the Korean War, Sputnik, and the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane -- to name just a few -- were all symmetrical actions, but surprises nonetheless. America's sustained ability to meet all types of challenges and to generate some surprises of its own was obviously important to its Cold War triumph. This ability will be no less important to America's future security, which makes the rush to dismantle the institutional framework that underlay the Cold War victory so foolishly dangerous.

2. READINESS IS KEY TO PEACE THROUGH DETERRENCETHE WHITE HOUSE, 1998. accessed April 26, 2004, www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-9810.pdf

Deterrence of aggression and coercion on a daily basis is crucial. Our ability to deter potential adversaries in peacetime rests on several factors, particularly on our demonstrated will and ability to uphold our security commitments when they are challenged. We have earned this reputation through both our declaratory policy, which clearly communicates costs to potential adversaries, and our credible warfighting capability. This capability is embodied in ready forces and equipment strategically stationed or deployed forward, in forces in the United States at the appropriate level of readiness to deploy and go into action when needed, in our ability to gain timely access to critical regions and infrastructure overseas, and in our demonstrated ability to form and lead effective military coalitions.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-9810.pdf

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-9810.pdf


Readiness Good – Terrorism

1. Military Readiness is key to deal with international crisis like bombings and disastersMackenzie Eaglen, Senior Policy Analyst for National Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, October 31, 2008, Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/Research/Features/NationalSecurity/bg2205.cfm, Accessed April 24, 2009

In addition to a reduced ability to respond quickly to crises here in the United States, there are many second-tier effects of low readiness levels in the military. Regional combatant commanders beyond Central Command—which includes Iraq and Afghanistan in its area of responsibility—have seen their personnel and equipment diverted to these two countries over the past several years. Admiral Timothy Keating, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, recently noted that current mission demands have hindered his ability to respond to an unforeseen crisis in the military's largest geographical command region because 30,000 ground forces that are typically under his control are in the Middle East instead.

2. Military readiness is critical to prepare foreign nations for a terror attackMackenzie Eaglen, Senior Policy Analyst for National Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, October 31, 2008, Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/Research/Features/NationalSecurity/bg2205.cfm, Accessed April 24, 2009

Similarly, since 9/11 the U.S. has worked diligently to train and equip foreign militaries in counterterrorism as well as other security and stability operations. The U.S. military participates in the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, the Regional Strategic Initiative, the DOD Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, and the Building Global Partnerships Train and Equip program carried out under section 1206 authority, under which DOD may spend appropriated funds to train and equip foreign militaries to undertake counterterrorism or stability operations.

3. Upgrading military readiness is key to preventing terrorism and ensuring democracyJim Talent is a distinguished fellow in military affairs at the Heritage Foundation, March 5, 2007, National Review, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/022007b.cfm Accessed April 24, 2009

The world today is, on balance, at least as dangerous as it was at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. is no longer in danger of a massive nuclear attack, nor is a major land war in Europe likely, but the threats we face are no less serious. America is engaged in a war against terrorism that will last for years. The danger of a rogue missile attack is greater than ever. China is emerging as a peer competitor much faster than most of us expected, and Russia's brief experiment with democracy is failing. The "operational tempo" of American conventional forces -- the number, intensity, and duration of their deployments -- has increased since the end of the Cold War. Yet the forces were almost twice as big in 1992 as they are today. The active-duty Army was cut from 18 divisions during Desert Storm to ten by 1994 -- its size today. The Navy, which counted 568 ships in the late 1980s, struggles today to sustain a fleet of only 276. And the number of tactical air wings in the Air Force was reduced from 37 at the time of Desert Storm to 20 by the mid-1990s. Modernization budgets also were cut substantially during the Clinton years, and procurement budgets were cut much further than the cuts in force size and structure warranted. In essence, the Clinton administration took a "procurement holiday" where the military was concerned. The contrast in the average annual procurement of major equipment in two periods -- 1975 to 1990 and 1991 to 2000 -- is startling. For example, the Pentagon purchased an average of 78 scout and attack helicopters each year from 1975 to 1990, and only seven each year from 1991 to 2000. An average of 238 Air Force fighters and five tanker aircraft were procured each year from 1975 to 1990, as against only 28 and one per year, respectively, from 1991 to 2000. These dramatic reductions had profound implications. When older platforms are not replaced, readiness levels drop, and the cost of maintaining inventory climbs rapidly. By the end of the Carter years, the force had gone "hollow"; by the end of the Clinton years, it had begun to "rust," badly. The George W. Bush administration has increased procurement budgets, but nowhere near enough to make up for the 1990s. The average age of Air Force aircraft in 1973 was just nine years. Today, the average aircraft is 24 years old and aircraft-modernization funding has dropped by nearly 20 percent over the last 22 years.


Readiness Good – Military Success

1. A LARGER NUMBER OF TROOPS WILL PREVENT CRISES AS WELL AS INFLUENCE GOVERNMENTSDr. Conrad C. Crane, Director of the US Army Military Institute at USAWC, May 2002, Strategic Studies Institute http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub216.pdf Accessed April 24, 2009

The coalitions forming to combat different aspects of terrorism include a number of new partners and will provide even more opportunities for military-to-military contacts along with other assurance and security cooperation activities. These will remain an especially important responsibility for Army forces. Neglect of this mission area will have serious implications for the conduct of the National Security Strategy envisioned by the QDR Report. Problems will fester and lead to crises that could have been prevented or defused in their early stages. The chance to gain or maintain forward bases essential for rapid response will be lost. U.S. leverage to influence regional governments and their militaries will be lessened. Without an active American presence, coalitions will be weakened and allies will feel insecure. All of these repercussions will encourage military competition and embolden potential adversaries.

2. A LARGE, ROBUST AND HIGHLY READY MILITARY IS CRITICAL TO PREVAILING IN THE WAR ON TERRORAdam Mersereau, Attorney and Former Marine Corps First Lieutenant, May 24, 2002, National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-mersereau052402.asp, accessed April 24, 2009

But are President Bush and his advisers correct? Have our wits and technology rendered total war a thing of the past? Can we simultaneously win the war on terrorism and protect our other global interests by talking tough and carrying a small stick? I don't think so. In the long run, to fight and possibly win the war on terrorism while deterring wars in Taiwan, Korea, and elsewhere will require a massive military machine capable of forcing our will upon our enemies and potential enemies. A small force specializing in limited warfare simply cannot achieve that end. Fighting limited wars against populous, culturally driven enemies is like trying to hold back the tide. It is Sisyphean. By definition, limited war can achieve only limited results. If we are going to win a total victory in the war on terrorism while deterring other major wars around the globe, we will first have to rid ourselves of our aversion to total war.

3. READINESS IS THE CRITICAL ELEMENT IN WARTIME SUCCESS FOR MILITARIESJames L. George, former Congressional staff member for national security affairs, April 29, 1999, CATO http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa342.pdf, accessed April 24, 2009

Readiness is defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) as the ability of forces to deploy quickly and perform initially in wartime as they were designed to do.1 Readiness is considered one of the most important elements of military capability. Even though readiness is actually only one of four elements of overall military capability, its importance renders it the subject of most of the current debates on defense. Depending on how it is counted, at least one-third of the current defense budget is spent on the readiness—or the operations and maintenance—portion of the budget. That percentage reaches well over 50 percent if other related items such as personnel costs are included. Besides generally better equipment, perhaps nothing separates the U.S. armed forces from other military forces more than their high state of readiness. Many military experts would consider the latter more important than the former. Few people have really questioned the concept of readiness since World War II and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. During the Cold War, with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact quite literally poised next door to strike into Western Europe with little or no warning, readiness was an important issue—especially after the sneak attack by the North Koreans on South Korea in 1950. The importance of readiness has been illustrated time and time again: smaller, well-trained Israeli forces easily defeated larger, ill-trained Arab armies; a small, elite British force far from home defeated Argentinean conscripts in the Falklands; and well-trained, U.S.-led forces easily vanquished Iraq, which, at least on paper, looked like a formidable force. Readiness is certainly important. In fact, if military leaders had a choice between firstrate equipment and first-rate readiness, most would probably choose the latter.


A2: Readiness – Not Important

1. MORALE INDICATORS ARE INACCURATEGordon Trowbridge, staff writer, January 9, 2006.ARMY TIMES, p. 24.

Richard Kohn of the University of North Carolina said taking an accurate snapshot of morale is difficult because military members are likely, by culture and temperament, to believe high morale is essential in wartime. "I don't put a great deal of stock in morale readings," he said. "Military units maintain very high levels of cohesion and positive attitude simply because it's mission-essential."

2. THE IMPACT OF MILITARY READINESS IS EXAGGERATEDJames George, former congressional staff member for national security affairs, , April 19, 1999.CATO INSTITUTE WEBPAGE, accessed April 26, 2004, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-342es.html

Readiness, the capability to respond quickly to a conflict with the appropriate force, is considered one of the most important elements in defense planning. From one-third to well over one-half of the defense budget goes toward maintaining readiness. Few people questioned the need for readiness, especially after the attack by North Korea against South Korea in 1950 and during the Cold War, when the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was poised to quickly thrust into Western Europe without much warning. However, with the Cold War over, the notion of "tiered readiness"—with some units less ready than others and the increased use of reserve forces—has been suggested. Opponents cite two major examples in arguing against any decreases in readiness: Task Force Smith, which was a green U.S. Army unit fairly easily routed by the North Koreans at the start of the Korean War, and the Hollow Force of the 1970s when, for example, ships could not get under way for lack of experienced crew and spare parts. A closer look shows that readiness was only one of many factors behind the rout of Task Force Smith and the Hollow Force. Moreover, a broader examination shows those examples to be as much cases "for" as "against" tiered readiness. With no major threats on the horizon until at least 2015, only those forces needed for crisis response or an initial response to a Major Theater War are needed. Other forces could be placed in the reserves, eliminated, or placed in an inactive "mothball" status. This means that more emphasis should be placed on maintaining the readiness of the reserve force.

Documents

PROJECT ECHELON IS CRITICAL TO FIGHTING TERRORISM · Web viewMr Gonzales's appearance before the committee offered senators their first chance to scrutinise the legality of a secret