CMR DA Answers - American Debate Association | …



CMR DA Answers TOC \o "1-3" \u CMR DA Answers PAGEREF _Toc43360946 \h 1Non Unique PAGEREF _Toc43360947 \h 1Use of Force on Protesters: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360948 \h 1Trump Disrespect: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360949 \h 1Kurd’s/Gallagher/Vindman: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360950 \h 1Milley Apology: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360951 \h 1Civil-Military Divide: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360952 \h 1COVID-19: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360953 \h 1Trump Popularity: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360954 \h 1Trump Popularity: Extensions PAGEREF _Toc43360955 \h 1Tensions Inevitable: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360956 \h 1No Link PAGEREF _Toc43360957 \h 1Generic: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360958 \h 1No Impact PAGEREF _Toc43360959 \h 1Generic: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360960 \h 1Resilient: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360961 \h 1No Spillover: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360962 \h 1Turns PAGEREF _Toc43360963 \h 1Breaking Norms Can Save Them: 2AC PAGEREF _Toc43360964 \h 1Non Unique Use of Force on Protesters: 2AC Trump’s use of the military to clear out protesters greatly damaged CMRSaideman, Carleton University Professor, 6-3-20(Stephen, “CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS ARE BROKEN,” accessed 6-4-20, ) JFNMonday, June 1, 2020, was perhaps not the worst day in American civil-military relations. The US Army didn’t kill, capture or torture citizens (see Lindsay Cohn’s article for some history and the legalities of all of this). But because the events of the day (see below), especially the use of force to create a photo op, broke so many norms of American civil-military relations, it was perhaps the worst day for the crucial relationship since veterans marched on Washington during the Great Depression. Here’s where things have gone very wrong: Secretary of Defense Mark Esper—the person with responsibility for managing the civil-military relationship, the most senior civilian focused on defense—referred to Minneapolis as a “battlespace.” That only makes sense if American citizens are the adversary. It was an awful, awful thing to say, because it means that the US military, regulars, or National Guard are at war with civilians. Esper has tried to walk back his statement, but the damage has been done. Senators and Representatives on the respective Armed Services committees play a key role in overseeing the armed forces. One of the key players on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tom Cotton, called on the US regular troops to enter the fray, holding back nothing, and giving no quarter—which means killing those who surrender. Everyone pointed out this would be a war crime. Given that the GOP has a majority in the Senate, don’t expect much serious oversight coming from there, as Cotton and his peers are unlikely to let the agenda of that committee drift towards doing its responsibilities. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is senior adviser to the President and the Secretary Defense but has no command authority except over the Joint Staff—a group of unarmed staffers (I didn’t see a weapon in my year in the Pentagon on the Joint Staff except by troops from elsewhere guarding the building). Yet, Trump said that General Mark Milley was in command of the effort. Making it appear that way, Milley walked around the aftermath of the ejection of protestors near the White House, wearing his Army Combat Uniforms—the uniform officers wear when engaged in operations, not the usual spiffy uniform worn when advising the President. Even if Milley was not in command, he appeared to be so. The President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, abused his authority to deploy US forces—National Guard and maybe Regular—for a photo op. At the time of writing, we still do not have clarification about who were flying Blackhawk helicopters to attempt to disperse—or intimidate—crowds, but it came clearly at the request of Trump so that he could hold a bible in front of the vandalized church—despite the preferences of those who run that church. Does the President have the authority to do this? According to Lindsay Cohn: mostly, yes. But abuse of power is when one uses their power in ways that are inappropriate—and using the military for a photo op while squelching the first amendment rights of peaceful protesters is clearly very wrong.Trump Disrespect: 2AC Trump’s disrespect of the JCS has tanked CMR Boot, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, 20(Max, “A Few Good Men,” accessed 6-4-20, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2020) JFN A key turning point in the relationship was a July 2017 briefing for Trump held in what’s known as “the Tank,” a secure Pentagon conference room used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Accounts of the meeting are provided by Bergen (who begins his book with it), Snodgrass (who organized it and was present), and Rucker and Leonnig (who offer the juiciest details). Mattis had summoned the president and his senior advisers to explain why the U.S.-led system of security alliances and trade relationships still benefited the United States. It did not go well. All the accounts agree that Trump, who has a notoriously short attention span and a hair-trigger temper, openly fumed during Mattis’s presentation. According to Rucker and Leonnig, the president lashed out at U.S. allies, telling his generals, “We are owed money you haven’t been collecting!” Mattis interjected, “This is what keeps us safe,” but Trump predictably wasn’t buying it. “You’re all losers,” he spat. “You don’t know how to win anymore.” A few minutes later, the president—who had cited bone spurs to evade service in the Vietnam War—told a roomful of decorated generals, “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”Kurd’s/Gallagher/Vindman: 2AC Abandoning the Kurds, restoring Gallagher’s rank and firing Vindman have hurt CMR Boot, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, 20(Max, “A Few Good Men,” accessed 6-4-20, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2020) JFN Beyond his very public break with his generals, Trump’s relationship with the military deteriorated owing to a series of decisions that did not sit well with the armed forces. My conversations with current and former officers indicated that they approved of Trump’s killing of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general who was responsible for hundreds of U.S. deaths in Iraq, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State (or ISIS). But many I talked to were furious when Trump decided last October to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces by moving U.S. military personnel who had long served as a buffer between the Kurds and hostile Turkish forces, despite the fact that the Kurds had fought alongside the United States to defeat ISIS and had lost 11,000 soldiers in the process. That decision, many felt, ran counter to the military’s commitment to comrades on the battlefield. Many in the U.S. military were unhappy that Trump restored the rank of the Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher—who was accused of war crimes in Iraq—and fired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, an Iraq war veteran who had testified about Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine into helping his reelection campaign. Trump had Vindman and his twin brother, also a lieutenant colonel serving on the National Security Council staff, escorted from the White House grounds and then suggested that the military launch disciplinary proceedings against Vindman—something that the army refused to do. Kelly praised Vindman after his firing for doing “exactly what we teach them to do” by refusing to obey an “illegal order” and criticized Trump’s support of Gallagher as “exactly the wrong thing to do.” Officers such as Kelly know how hard it is to maintain discipline and good order when the commander in chief is signaling that war crimes are acceptable but telling the truth is not.Milley Apology: 2AC Trump has lost the military; Milley’s apology proves Kaplan, Slate International Affairs Reporter, 6-15-20(Fred, “How Trump Lost the Military,” accessed 6-15-20, ) JFN Fred Kaplan: He said, I should not have been there. This is a bigger deal than a lot of people who don’t follow this sort of thing might realize. I can’t think of a single other instance when any general officer has apologized for doing something where he’s standing next to the president. It’s a huge, huge thing. As is this whole string of events that’s gone on in the past week involving officers, retired and in some cases active duty, criticizing with various degrees of directness or obliqueness the president and his policies.Civil-Military Divide: 2AC CMR is low now due to the civil-military divide Shinkman, 9-30-19(Paul, “The Joint Chiefs’ Power Surge,” accessed 10-1-19, ) JFNHowever, a bipartisan commission formed by Congress last year expressed deep concern about the growing divide between civilians and their military counterparts at the Pentagon – and the latter group's beefed-up influence. "Civilian voices have been relatively muted on issues at the center of U.S. defense and national security policy, undermining the concept of civilian control," the National Defense Strategy Commission wrote in its final report after studying the latest strategy document then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis created to guide Pentagon policy for the coming years. Without referencing him by name, the report cited Gen. Dunford's "effort to centralize defense direction" and warned of "profound strategic problems" if civilians fail to regain control of managing America's global forces.COVID-19: 2AC Trump’s response to COVID-19 has damaged CMR Stevenson, senior fellow for U.S. defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 5-19-20(Jonathan, “The Commander in Chief’s Following Wanes,” accessed 6-17-20, NYT, p. Nexis Uni) JFN Mr. Trump apparently has been overconfident that his showy, selective and jingoistic approach to civil-military relations would ensure that support. What seems to have escaped him is that Americans in uniform tend to see the military as the federal government’s most capable asset, and frown on bureaucratic ineptitude. The Trump administration’s faltering handling of a deadly pandemic has not sat well with them. In another Military Times poll of active-duty personnel, conducted in March, 51 percent had moderate or strong confidence in the military’s response to the virus, compared to 32 percent in the White House’s actions. More telling, if anecdotal, were the wildly divergent receptions that the Theodore Roosevelt’s crew gave the departing Captain Crozier, who got a rousing ovation, and Mr. Modly, who had impugned the ship’s captain as “na?ve” or “stupid” and was met with sullen dismay.Trump Popularity: 2AC Trump has lost the support and trust of the US military Stevenson, senior fellow for U.S. defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 5-19-20(Jonathan, “The Commander in Chief’s Following Wanes,” accessed 6-17-20, NYT, p. Nexis Uni) JFN Trump started his term with strong support in America’s armed forces. But the respect the president typically gets from the military has cooled. It’s widely believed that the military is predisposed to lean Republican. In 2009, even with George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looking grim, a Gallup poll found that 34 percent of active-duty personnel and veterans were Republicans, versus 29 percent Democrats; in stark contrast, among Americans who had not served in the military, Republicans trailed with 26 percent to the Democrats’ 38 percent. That history suggests that President Trump, with his preference for former generals as senior appointees and eagerness to indulge in a martial strut at every opportunity, would have a leg up with members of the armed forces — and indeed he started his presidency with strong support in the military. But that has changed. According to a Military Times survey conducted last fall, 50 percent of active-service military hold an unfavorable view of the president, compared to only 37 percent when he was elected. Officers especially disfavor him, with only a third indicating approval. It’s not hard to see why. Mr. Trump has treated the military like a political tool, ignoring the chain of command, flouting traditions, and cynically using troops to symbolize his patriotism. His cavalier attitude toward the military has been on conspicuous display during the pandemic. Last month, he said he would recall 1,000 graduating Army cadets to West Point, 50 miles north of New York City, the country’s biggest hot spot, for his commencement address, probably in June. Mr. Trump even said he was looking forward to a “nice and tight” formation of graduates devoid of the social distancing lmposed at the Air Force Academy’s commencement in Colorado Springs, at which Vice President Mike Pence spoke. More egregiously, the acting secretary of the Navy, Thomas B. Modly, with Mr. Trump’s “100 percent” agreement, dismissed Capt. Brett Crozier from command of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt for confidentially requesting its evacuation after a surge of coronavirus infections. More than 1,000 of the Roosevelt’s crew have tested positive for the coronavirus; one has died. These incidents occurred after the broad Military Times survey was completed, and seem likely to reduce Mr. Trump’s approval within the military even more. But they were not surprising, coming after episodes that covered almost the entire spectrum of civil-military relations, from operational decisions to bureaucratic and legal dispensations to policymaking. At every turn, the White House manifested an instrumental, fair-weather — call it transactional — approach to the military.Trump Popularity: Extensions CMR is tanked under Trump Stevenson, senior fellow for U.S. defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 5-19-20(Jonathan, “The Commander in Chief’s Following Wanes,” accessed 6-17-20, NYT, p. Nexis Uni) JFN In that light, the slow-motion train wreck in civil-military relations during Mr. Trump’s presidency makes some sense. Underlying the longstanding Republican tilt within the military is a solid, traditionally conservative sensibility that abhors abrupt and heedless shifts in accepted conduct. But in the last four years, the Republican Party itself has abandoned those norms at Mr. Trump’s behest. Like the majority of Americans, a growing number of soldiers, sailors and Marines see Mr. Trump as unworthy of being their commander in chief.Tensions Inevitable: 2AC CMR tensions are inevitable Gordon, Wall Street Journal Reporter, 6-14-20(Michael, “White House Ties With Military Face Major Test; Respect for military could be imperiled by embroiling it in domestic politics, retired generals have warned,” WSJ, accessed 6-17-20, p. ProQuest) JFN Getting the balance right in civilian-military relations has bedeviled Republican as well as Democratic administrations. President Clinton's push to end a ban on gay people serving openly in the military faced opposition from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell and some of the service chiefs, especially Marine Corps Commandant Carl Mundy Jr. Tensions with the Defense Department emerged during Mr. Trump's first month in office when he used the Pentagon as a backdrop to sign an edict suspending entry to the U.S. by people from a number of Muslim-majority countries. The measure fell outside the Pentagon's mandate. "You know, all the presidents that I worked for liked to use the military as a prop," said Robert Gates, who served in top security positions in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, speaking Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. "I think this president's probably taken that to a new level, but the military has to be very sensitive about being exploited in that way."No LinkGeneric: 2AC Trump decreasing commitments with allies doesn’t tank CMR New York Times, 11-14-19(“Trump and the Military: A Dysfunctional Marriage, but They Stay Together,” ) JFN Nearly three years into the Trump presidency, the Pentagon is learning how to manage a capricious president whose orders can whipsaw by the hour. Top Defense Department officials have acquired their education the hard way, through Mr. Trump’s Twitter bullying of Iran and North Korea, letdown of allies in Syria, harsh attacks on the Atlantic alliance and public support for commandos the military has charged with war crimes. Mr. Trump, top Pentagon officials say, is unpredictable, frustrating and overly focused on spectacles like military parades. But there is much these officials like about the president. They are happy with the annual budget boost he gave them — to $716 billion this year from $585 billion in 2016 — and are pleased he has done away with what they considered micromanaging by Obama White House officials. Mr. Trump has also given commanders in combat zones a far freer hand to conduct raids. And among a big portion of the rank and file, those service members who mirror Mr. Trump’s conservative base, he remains very popular.No Impact Generic: 2AC CMR declines empirically don’t produce disastrous impacts Feaver and Kohn, Professor of Political Science, 05 (Peter Feaver, professor of Political Science and Public Policy and the director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies at Duke University, and Richard H. Kohn, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, 2005, “The Gap: Soldiers, Civilians, and Their Mutual Misunderstanding,” in American Defense Policy, 2005 edition, ed. Paul J. Bolt, Damon V. Coletta, Collins G. Shackelford, p. 339, LMM)Concerns about a troublesome divide between the armed forces and the society they serve are hardly new and in fact go back to the beginning of the Republic. Writing in the 1950s, Samuel Huntington argued that the divide could best be bridged by civilian society tolerating, if not embracing, the conservative values that animate military culture. Huntington also suggested that politicians allow the armed forces a substantial degree of cultural autonomy. Countering this argument, the sociologist Morris Janowitz argued that in a democracy, military culture necessarily adapts to changes in civilian society, adjusting to the needs and dictates of its civilian masters.2 The end of the Cold War and the extraordinary changes in American foreign and defense policy that resulted have revived the debate. The contemporary heirs of Janowitz see the all volunteer military as drifting too far away from the norms of American society, thereby posing problems for civilian control. They make tour principal assertions. First, the military has grown out of step ideologically with the public, showing itself to be inordinately right-wing politically, and much more religious (and fundamentalist) than America as a whole, having a strong and almost exclusive identification with the Republican Party. Second, the military has become increasingly alienated from, disgusted with, and sometimes even explicitly hostile to, civilian culture. Third, the armed forces have resisted change, particularly the integration of women and homosexuals into their ranks, and have generally proved reluctant to carry out constabulary missions. Fourth, civilian control and military effectiveness will both suffer as the military—seeking ways to operate without effective civilian oversight and alienated from the society around it—loses the respect and support of that society. By contrast, the heirs of Huntington argue that a degenerate civilian culture has strayed so far from traditional values that it intends to eradicate healthy and functional civil-military differences, particularly in the areas of gender, sexual orientation, and discipline. This camp, too, makes four key claims. First, its members assert that the military is divorced in values from a political and cultural elite that is itself alienated from the general public. Second, it believes this civilian elite to be ignorant of, and even hostile to, the armed forces—eager to employ the military as a laboratory for social change, even at the cost of crippling its warfighting capacity. Third, it discounts the specter of eroding civilian control because it sees a military so thoroughly inculcated with an ethos of subordination that there is now too much civilian control, the effect of which has been to stifle the military's ability to function effectively Fourth, because support for the military among the general public remains sturdy, any gap in values is inconsequential. The problem, if anything, is with the civilian elite. The debate has been lively (and inside the Beltway, sometimes quite vicious), but it has rested on very thin evidence—(tunneling anecdotes and claims and counterclaims about the nature of civilian and military attitudes. Absent has been a body of systematic data exploring opinions, values, perspectives, and attitudes inside the military compared with those held by civilian elites and the general public. Our project provides some answers.Resilient: 2ACHistory proves US civil military relations are resilient even during times of tension Owens, 1-11-19(Mackubin Thomas, “Trump and U.S. Civil–Military Relations — the Generals Aren’t Always Right,” accessed 9-22-19, ) JFN The fact is that American civil–military tensions are nothing new. Indeed, they can be traced to the beginning of the republic and include Washington at Newburgh, the debate between Federalists and Republicans regarding a military establishment, Andrew Jackson’s unauthorized incursion into Spanish Florida in 1818, the very public debate between Whig generals and a Democratic president during the Mexican War, the tension between Lincoln and General George McClellan during the Civil War, the clash between Andrew Johnson and Congress during Reconstruction, the involvement of prominent military men in the “Preparedness Movement” begun prior to U.S. entry into World War I, General Leonard Wood campaigning in uniform while actively running for the Republican nomination for president in 1920. Of course, we don’t have to go that far back. Current concerns about civil–military relations began in the 1990s during the presidency of Bill Clinton, as he clashed with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell, over such issues as the use of American troops in the Balkans and open homosexuals in the military. During the administration of George W. Bush, we had the “revolt of the generals” during the war in Iraq. We sometimes forget that civil–military tensions during the Obama administration were also acute, fueled by the president’s belief that the military were arrayed against his policies. In their respective memoirs, both of Obama’s first two secretaries of defense, Robert M. Gates and Leon Panetta, remarked on President Obama’s deep distrust of senior military leaders.No Spillover: 2AC Policy disagreements don’t spill over Hansen, Professor of Law at the New England School, 09 (Victor Hansen, Associate Professor of Law, New England Law School, Summer 2009, “Symposium: Law, Ethics, And The War On Terror: Article: Understanding The Role Of Military Lawyers In The War On Terror: A Response To The Perceived Crisis In Civil-Military Relations,” South Texas Law Review, 50 S. Tex. L. Rev. 617, p. lexis, LMM)According to Sulmasy and Yoo, these conflicts between the military and the Bush Administration are the latest examples of a [*624] crisis in civilian-military relations. n32 The authors suggest the principle of civilian control of the military must be measured and is potentially violated whenever the military is able to impose its preferred policy outcomes against the wishes of the civilian leaders. n33 They further assert that it is the attitude of at least some members of the military that civilian leaders are temporary office holders to be outlasted and outmaneuvered. n34 If the examples cited by the authors do in fact suggest efforts by members of the military to undermine civilian control over the military, then civilian-military relations may have indeed reached a crisis. Before such a conclusion can be reached, however, a more careful analysis is warranted. We cannot accept at face value the authors' broad assertions that any time a member of the military, whether on active duty or retired, disagrees with the views of a civilian member of the Department of Defense or other member of the executive branch, including the President, that such disagreement or difference of opinion equates to either a tension or a crisis in civil-military relations. Sulmasy and Yoo claim there is heightened tension or perhaps even a crisis in civil-military relations, yet they fail to define what is meant by the principle of civilian control over the military. Instead, the authors make general and rather vague statements suggesting any policy disagreements between members of the military and officials in the executive branch must equate to a challenge by the military against civilian control. n35 However, until we have a clear understanding of the principle of civilian control of the military, we cannot accurately determine whether a crisis in civil-military relations exists. It is to this question that we now turn.TurnsBreaking Norms Can Save Them: 2AC Breaking CMR norms are sometimes necessary to preserve them over the long term Lee, US Air War College Assistant Professor, 6-3-20(Carrie, “Dear Civ-Mil Community: The (Retired) Generals Are Speaking & We Should Listen,” accessed 6-17-20, ) JFNBut what the civil-military community gets wrong is that by saying any and all involvement is bad for military non-partisanship is also to say that there is no situation in which retired military officers, with three and four decades of service to and leadership of this country, should be allowed to fight for their profession. Instead, we should be thinking about the situations in which retired officers who speak out may actually preserve rather than degrade the norms of non-partisanship. This, I would argue, is exactly one of those times. Civil-military relations are full of behavioral norms; indeed, very little about how civilians and the military are supposed to interact is written into law or otherwise codified. Norms are useful for two distinct reasons. First, they provide the unwritten guidelines to behavior and generate a set of general expectations for “healthy” civil-military interactions. But perhaps even more importantly, the breaking of norms acts as a kind of alarm bell that signals to both the community and the broader public that something is terribly amiss. Deliberately undermining establish norms, especially norms that we think of as critical to the health of the profession, serves as a way to “break glass in case of emergency.” Seen in this light, norms are made to be broken—but only as a last resort. What does this kind of emergency look like? Again, the civil-military community has spent considerable amounts of time and effort exploring the conditions under which active duty officers should resign in protest or otherwise undermine the president. But the debate for retired officers has been less systematically evaluated, in many cases because retired flag officers do not de facto share the same restrictions on speech about the president and policies that the active duty must comply with. Even still, this debate is one that I have in my own classrooms in professional military education every year, in multiple forums: should generals exercise their new-found freedom of speech in policy, or should they stay silent to try and protect the military from appearing partisan—or even just political? This debate always generates fierce discussion amongst my students, and there is rarely consensus even within a small seminar. And it is true that over time, the norm has broken down as an increasing number of retired general officers endorse political candidates and get involved in partisan politics. Even still, however, groups of retired senior officers speaking out against a president or his policies have been relatively rare. Indeed, the exceptions appear to point to a single cause that would prompt groups of retired senior leaders to publicly break with a sitting administration: actions that jeopardize the military’s ability to fight and/or maintain public trust in a significant way. I would argue that we are in such a state of emergency again. The Trump administration has regularly and blatantly politicized the Department of Defense in ways the undermine the military’s ability to fight, recruit, retain, and keep public trust. The president has signed campaign paraphernalia on military bases, denigrated the opposition political party at major speeches in front of the troops, repeatedly refers to senior active duty military commanders as “my generals,” allows partisan media sources to influence decisions in military justice, revokes security clearances in retaliation for public criticism, and recently reached down to relieve a distinguished Navy Captain of command for making the administration look bad. The president’s repeated threats to use the military to establish “law and order”—which emerged in the late 1960s as a dog whistle to white Americans concerned about domestic unrest and civil rights—falls squarely within this pattern. ................
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