Military 1AC

Plan
Plan the United States federal government should ban military recruitment
and Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps in elementary and secondary
schools.
 Contention 1 Inherency
The Department of Defense creates the JROTC, discriminatory programs that
seek to promote violence in schools
Smith 08 (Sam, reporter for the Progressive Review, JROTC Teaches School Children How to
Kill Each Other, Undernews, http://prorev.com/2008/07OLD/jrotc-teaches-school-children-
how-to.html) JS

Meeting with activists in May, Sherry Ulery, Chief of Teaching and Learning for DC Public
Schools, acknowledged that the school system currently operates live firing ranges in half of the
system's public high schools. The firing ranges, which are affiliated with the Junior Reserve
Officer's Training Corps program uses CO2 - propelled pellet rifles. The U.S. Army has
defended the use of these weapons, insisting they are safe, under proper supervision.
The issue of teaching automatic weaponry in the schools hasn't managed to cause
much of a fuss because it seems most teachers and administrators feel it's better for
the children to learn how to fire automatic weapons in school than it is for them to
learn about them in the streets. San Diego Union Tribune A 14-year-old boy was severely
wounded during a sleepover in Santee early yesterday when another boy shot him in the face
with an air-powered pellet rifle. Anthony Martinez suffered paralysis on the left side of his body,
but doctors expected him to survive, his mother said yesterday. They anticipate he will need
physical therapy to regain full use of his body, she said. . . Anthony graduated from Chet Harritt
School in Santee and is preparing for his freshman year at West Hills High School. His mother
said he is enrolled in the school's ROTC program. Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors
- School boards across the country, from Richmond, CA to Roane County, WV, are saying no to
the Junior Reserve Officers Training Program. They're finding JROTC too controversial, too
likely to promote violence, too expensive, too controlled by Washington, too discriminatory,
and too much at odds with the goal of creating critically-thinking students in gun-free schools.
. . Instead of an alternative to violence, JROTC brings guns into the schools. Often, JROTC
teaches students to use them. Students in a JROTC unit in Long Beach formed a military-style
gang and murdered one of their members. In Detroit, a student shot another student in the
hall of the school on the orders of the student gang (and JROTC) leader. In Arizona, a
camouflage-clad JROTC student murdered 9 Buddhist monks. In SF, CA, a student's
eardrum was broken in a hazing ritual that had gone on, with JROTC instructors'
knowledge, for years. Ninety percent of all JROTC programs train students to fire rifles
or pistols. All of them drill with guns and teach military history, customs, traditions,
and beliefs. In JROTC, too many kids learn, from example, that violence is acceptable. The
Army JROTC text, LET 1 (Leadership, Education, and Training), p. 87, states, "When troops react
to command rather than thought, the result is more than just a good-looking ceremony or
parade. Drill has been and will continue to be the backbone of military discipline." Almost all
schools feel that one of their primary missions is to teach critical thinking. Yet JROTC promotes
unquestioning, amoral obedience. The Navy JROTC text, Naval Science 1, p. 24, calls for "loyalty
to those above us in the chain of command, whether or not we agree with them." The Pentagon
dictates JROTC curriculum, textbooks, and course content. JROTC instructors are often paid
higher net salaries despite not having to meet District qualification standards. JROTC instructors
aren't required to have college degrees. They are not credentialed in the academic subjects that
JROTC claims to teach. Fifty-four percent of JROTC participants nationwide are students of
color. JROTC graduates are recruited directly into the lowest military ranks. The military
targets low-income schools in the same way tobacco & alcohol companies target low-income
communities. The results are equally deadly. Half the military's front-line troops are people of
color. The Army JROTC textbook LET 3, p. 185, trumpets, "Fortunately for the Army, the
government policy of pushing the Indians farther west then wiping them out was carried out
successfully." In addition to this celebration of brutal racism, women are almost invisible in
JROTC textbooks. Veterans with disabilities and gay veterans are excluded from receiving the
Pentagon authorization required to become a JROTC instructor. JROTC Discriminates JROTC
discriminates against students and instructors who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, people with
disabilities and immigrants. Sam Smith, Mission Creep, 1996 - Much of the military's intrusion
[into civilian life] has been accomplished without public notice. For example, the Pentagon has
greatly expanded JROTC programs. Last year, the American Friends Service Committee found
retired military personnel teaching approximately 310,000 students, ages 14 and up, in about
2200 high schools (with another 700 on the docket). As the AFSC pointed out: "Public schooling
strives to promote respect for other cultures, critical thinking and basic academic skills in a safe
environment. In contrast, JROTC introduces guns into the schools, promotes authoritarian
values, uses rote learning methods, and consigns much student time to learning drill, military
history and protocol, which have little relevance outside the military." And what are these
cadets being taught? Says the report: "A comparison of the JROTC curriculum and two
widely used civilian high school civics and history textbooks demonstrates that the
JROTC curriculum falls well below accepted pedagogical standards. Units on citizenship and
history are strikingly different from standard civil texts on these subjects. "For example, . . . the
JROTC text portrays citizenship as being primarily achieved through military service, provides
only a short discussion of civil rights; and downplays the importance of civilian control of the
military. . . . "In comparison to the civilian history text, historical events in the JROTC curriculum
are distorted . . History is described as a linear series of accomplishments by soldiers, while the
progress engendered by regular citizens is marginalized. America's wars are treated as having
been inevitable. "While it claims to provide leadership training with broad relevance, in fact the
JROTC curriculum defines leadership as respect for constituted authority and the chain of
command, rather than as critical thinking and democratic consensus-building . . . Finally, the text
encourages the reader to rely uncritically on the military as a source of self-esteem and
guidance. Further, at a time that schools are trying desperately to discourage violence, the
JROTC is teaching students how to kill more effectively." And just where did the idea come
from for the expansion of military indoctrination in our high schools? From none other than that
very media model of a major modern general: Colin Powell. Following the LA uprising in 1992,
writes Steven Stycos in the Providence Phoenix, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "proposed a
massive expansion of the program. Powell urged the new units be targeted to inner-city youth
as an alternative to drug use and gang membership." In New England the number of students
involved nearly tripled. Was Powell seeking citizen officers to balance the academy-trained
military? Absolutely not. The JROTC students are grunt-fodder. Besides, while referring to ROTC
as "vital to democracy," Powell closed 62 college-based ROTC units during this same period. The
inevitable result was that the proportion of academy-trained officers rose and the role of the
citizen-officer diminished.

Lack of federal oversight ensures aggressive military recruiting USFG key

Lagotte 14(Brian works for the University of Kansas and is the author of Military Recruiting in High
Schools: From School Space to Market Place, Turf wars: school administrators and military recruiting,
Educational policy 28(4) p.562) MRS

My research provides examples near the poles of this continuum and a few examples more near
the center. Stemming from a complete lack of policy supervision one can discover a repeating
pattern of issues in the stories from the media, government reports, NGO reports, academic
reports, and finally, triangulated here with actual interviewees in and around schools. First,
recruiters are too aggressivewith children and administrators. Second, the military
presence, especially when considering the material resources they bring to the school both
large and small, distracts from the educative focus of the school. Students are pulled away
from time dedicated to learning and toward a commodified, packaged military sales experience.
Beyond the larger issue of the military resorting to romanticized, focus-group-refined
marketing campaigns to recruit future soldiers, this article simply argues that the school is not
the proper location to allow recruiters to conduct these practices with no oversight. Finally, it
is a battleword chosen purposely between school-level administrators and recruiters over
the school space. Even success stories of proactive guidance counselors protecting the school
space show exactly how difficult this perspective is to hold in the face of the constant barrage of
recruiting requests. This article data pales in comparison to the project required for true
monitoring of military practices in high schools. But, if one is critiquing a lack of oversight, and
recommending a greater oversight of practices, then he should provide some general sketches
of what this might look like. Therefore, I will highlight three stories of recruiters and
administrators interacting in regards to school visits to look for the themes present in the GAO
researchaggressiveness, harassment, or misinformation. If the samples I provide confirm
these general trends, then I argue that the legislation regarding schools and recruiting should
begin a system of tracking recruiting practices within public schools. Due to the size of the
issue, this research merely shows this evaluation process needs to be established at the
federal level with genuine oversight.
 Advantage 1 - Hegemony
Recruiting is increasing in 2017 puts more pressure on recruiters to meet
goals
Vergun 17 (David, US army, writer, The Army is Hoping $200 Million in Bonuses Will Attract More Recruits, The Army,
https://www.army.mil/article/181701/army_hoping_200_million_in_bonuses_will_attract_more_recruits) DSK
Army Recruiting Command's mission is seeing the "largest
WASHINGTON (Army News Service) --

within-year mission increase ever," said Brig. Gen. Donna W. Martin, USAREC's deputy commander. To make mission this
year, the Army is offering a total of $200 million in enlistment incentive bonuses for "future Soldiers" heading to
Military Occupational Specialties that especially need to be filled, Martin said. The bonuses took effect Jan. 26, and the total amount offered is the
, the number of new recruits required to fill
largest in five years. As a result of the 2017 National Defense Appropriation Act

active end strength has jumped from 62,500 to 68,500. All that increase has to be attained by the end of

September, which is the end of the fiscal year, she added. While the bonuses will likely be a factor in a young person's decision to enlist, Martin
said the heavy lifting will still be done by recruiters pounding the pavement, speaking to

prospects, parents, school faculty and others. "The challenge will be for recruiters to go out and find those young men
and women," Martin said, adding that "they do exist." The problem with today's youth is that so many lead a sedentary life and are obese, she said,
and community leaders
noting that three in 10 cannot meet the minimum Army weight standards. Martin said she hopes veterans

will go out into the schools and encourage administrators not to cut physical education from their required curriculum and to offer
healthier food choices on the school menu. She also hopes these unofficial ambassadors for the Army will mention the many benefits of joining the
Army and the importance of serving their country. NOT LOWERING STANDARDS Despite many young people not meeting the fitness threshold
required, the Army will not lower its standards, Martin said. In fact, with the introduction of the Occupational Physical Assessment Test, or OPAT, in
January, all recruits now have to pass a rigorous physical test that determines which, if any, military occupational specialty the future Soldiers will be
eligible for. Thus far, the OPAT hasn't had a noticeable impact on the success of the recruiting mission, Martin said. In fact, Martin said she welcomes
the institution of the OPAT because it will help determine if the right people will be in the right jobs. That could lower the attrition rates in basic and
follow-on training for jobs with high physical demands. The OPAT could also impact retention and readiness in a good way because, if the right people
are in the right job, that should help lower the stress levels and injury rates later on, according to Martin.

Internal Link 1 is Effectiveness

Young recruits lead to a less effective army they are less intelligent, more
costly, and promote less
Kaplan 8 (Fred, Dumb and Dumber, Slate,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2008/01/dumb_and_dumber.ht
ml) GM
The Army is lowering recruitment standards to levels not seen in at least two decades, and the implications are severenot only for
the future of the Army, but also for the direction of U.S. foreign policy. The latest statisticscompiled by the Defense Department.
and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Boston-based National Priorities Projectare grim. They show that the
percentage of new Army recruits with high-school diplomas has plunged from 94 percent in 2003 to 83.5 percent in 2005 to 70.7
percent in 2007. (The Pentagon's longstanding goal is 90 percent.) The percentage of what the Army calls "high-
quality" recruitsthose who have high-school diplomas and who score in the upper 50th
percentile on the Armed Forces' aptitude testshas declined from 56.2 percent in 2005 to
44.6 percent in 2007. In order to meet recruitment targets, the Army has even had to scour
the bottom of the barrel. There used to be a regulation that no more than 2 percent of all recruits could be "Category
IV"defined as applicants who score in the 10th to 30th percentile on the aptitude tests. In 2004, just 0.6 percent of new soldiers
scored so low. In 2005, as the Army had a hard time recruiting, the cap was raised to 4 percent. And in 2007, according to the new
data, the Army exceeded even that limit4.1 percent of new recruits last year were Cat IVs. These trends are worrisome
in at least four ways. First , and most broadly, it's not a good idea for a host of social, political, and moral
reasons to place the burdens of national defense so disproportionately on the most
downtrodden citizens. Second, and more practically, high-school dropouts tend to drop out of
the military, too. The National Priorities Project cites Army studies finding that 80 percent of
high-school graduates finish their first terms of enlistment in the Army compared with only about half
of those with a General Equivalency Degree or no diploma. In other words, taking in more dropouts is a short-sighted method of
boosting recruitment numbers. The Army will just have to recruit even more young men and women in
the next couple of years, because a lot of the ones they recruited last year will need to be
replaced. Third, a dumber army is a weaker army. A study by the RAND Corporation,
commissioned by the Pentagon and published in 2005, evaluated several factors that affect
military performanceexperience, training, aptitude, and so forthand found that aptitude
is key. This was true even of basic combat skills, such as shooting straight . Replacing a tank gunner
who had scored Category IV with one who'd scored Category IIIA (in the 50th to 64th percentile) improved the chances of hitting a
target by 34 percent. Today's Army, of course, is much more high-tech, from top to bottom . The problem is that when
tasks get more technical, aptitude makes an even bigger difference. In one Army study cited by the
RAND report, three-man teams from the Army's active-duty signal battalions were told to make a communications system
operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of succeeding. Teams with Category IIIB soldiers
(who had ranked in the 31st to 49th percentile) had a 47 percent chance. Those with Category IVs had only a 29 percent chance. The
study also showed that adding a high-scoring soldier to a three-man team increased its chance of success by 8 percent. (This also
means that adding a low-scoring soldier to a team reduces its chance by a similar margin.) Fourth, today's Army needs
particularly bright soldiersand it needs, even more, to weed out particularly dim ones
given the direction that at least some of its senior officers want it to take. When the Army
was geared to fight large-scaled battles against enemies of comparable strength, imaginative
thinking wasn't much required except at a command level . However, now that it's focusing on "asymmetric
warfare," especially counterinsurgency campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, the requirements are different. The crucial
engagementsin many ways, the crucial decisionstake place in the streets, door to door, not by armored divisions or brigades but
by infantry companies and squads. And when the targets include hearts and minds, every soldier's judgment and actions have an
impact. The Army's 2006 field manual on counterinsurgency, which was supervised by Gen. David Petraeus (who is now trying to put
its principles into action as U.S. commander in Iraq), emphasized that successful counterinsurgency operations "require Soldiers and
Marines at every echelon to possess the following"and then the authors recite a daunting list of prerequisites, including a "clear,
nuanced, and empathetic appreciation of the essential nature of the conflict," an "understanding of the motivation, strengths, and
weaknesses of the insurgent," rudimentary knowledge of the local culture, and several other admirable qualities. Some of the
officers and outside specialists who helped Petraeus write the field manual expressed concerns to me, at the time, that the Army
which was just beginning to lower its standardsmight not be up to the demands of this kind of warfare. Given that standards have
dipped quite dramatically sinceand add to that the problems the Army has had in retaining its most talented junior officersthe
concerns now must be graver. It's well-known that the Army might not have enough combat troops to conduct sustained
counterinsurgency campaigns. Now it seems the problem may soon be about quality as well as quantity (brains as well as boots).
The main reason for the decline in standards is the war in Iraq and its onerous "operations tempo"soldiers going back for third and
fourth tours of duty, with no end in sight. This is well understood among senior officers, and it's a major reason why several Army
generals favor a faster withdrawal rate. They worry that fewer young men and womenand now it seems fewer smart young men
and womenwill sign up if doing so means a guaranteed assignment to Iraq. They worry that, if these trends continue,
the Army itself will start to crumble. So, there's a double spiral in effect. The war keeps more
good soldiers from enlisting. The lack of good candidates compels the Army to recruit more
bad candidates. The swelling ranks of ill-suited soldiers make it harder to fight these kinds of
wars effectively. Petraeus and officers who think like him are right: We're probably not going to be fighting on the ground,
toe-to-toe and tank-to-tank, with the Russian, Chinese, or North Korean armies in the foreseeable future. Yet if the trends
continue, our Army might be getting less and less skilled at the "small wars" we're more likely
to fight. So, we're facing two choices. Either we change the way we recruit soldiers (and, by the way, cash bonuses are already
about as bountiful as they're going to get), or we change the way we conduct foreign policythat is, we engage more actively in
diplomacy or, if war is unavoidable, we form genuine coalitions to help fight it. Otherwise, unless our most dire and direct interests
are at stake, we should forget about fighting at all.

Smart soldiers are pivotal to the military mission they perform better,
innovate, and spur development
Gerras and Wong 16 (Stephen and Leonard, professor of behavioral sciences in the
Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College and
research professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College, AMERICAS
ARMY: MEASURING QUALITY SOLDIERS AND QUALITY OFFICERS, War on the Rocks,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/04/americas-army-measuring-quality-soldiers-and-quality-
officers/) JS

After four decades of the great experiment called the All-Volunteer Army, it has become
abundantly clear that recruiting and retaining quality soldiers is a vital prerequisite to the
success of Americas Army. While superior American technology, competent training, and
efficient logistics are undoubtedly critical aspects of battlefield dominance, it is the Armys
resolute reliance on high quality officers and soldiers that has kept the All-Volunteer
Army the worlds premier fighting force. One might assume given the critical national
security role of the Army that consistent, rigorous metrics are part of the accessions effort for
soldiers and commissioned officers. Surprisingly, quality metrics in enlisted accessions are
measured and monitored closely, while quality metrics for officer accessions are uneven and
oftentimes meaningless. Thus, despite the Armys focus on achieving cognitive
dominance on the future battlefield, officer accession quality standards are
inconsistent, sometimes non-existent, and not on par with enlisted accession
standards. American enlisted soldier quality, as defined by the Department of
Defense, is measured by two fairly straightforward indicators: a high school diploma
and performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT ). A high school diploma
is a metric that, at first blush, appears to characterize academic success. Rather than indicating
intellectual ability, however, the high school diploma provides evidence that a potential
soldier has the persistence and stamina to complete an enduring challenge. A diploma is
merely a proxy for perseverance and motivation. It serves as a signal that candidates have the
stick-to-it-iveness required to make it through their basic training and term of enlistment. The
AFQT score, on the other hand, reflects aptitude and trainability. The AFQT score points to a
potential soldiers capacity to learn and master new skills. AFQT scores are percentiles that
are normalized to the American youth population. A score of 60 represents the 60th percentile
and means that 60 percent of the U.S. youth population scored at or below that score. The
Army strives to bring in as many high quality soldiers those having both high school
diplomas and AFQT scores above the 50th percentile as possible. But the Armys
quest for high quality is more than just wanting to populate the ranks with above-average
individuals. In fact, the case for quality is remarkably well supported. Empirical studies have
shown that high-quality soldiers are more likely than low-quality soldiers to complete their
enlistment and will have fewer instances of indiscipline during their time in the Army.
Additionally, the evidence repeatedly confirms that high-quality soldiers those with
higher levels of motivation and aptitude perform better in training and execute
complex military tasks more proficiently . Studies show that high-quality soldiers make
better communication specialists, Patriot air defense missile operators, and Abrams tank
crewmen. If soldier quality is an essential ingredient in fielding a force that will confidently
confront the ambiguity and complexity of future war, how is the Army currently doing in
accessing high-quality soldiers? For fiscal year 2015, Army recruiting numbers show that 60.2
percent of Army enlisted accessions had a high school diploma and an AFQT score of 50 or
better. Although the Army has seen both better and worse years (for example, 76.4
percent high-quality in FY92 and 44.2 percent in FY07), it is important to note two critical
aspects of the Armys focus on high-quality accessions. First, the Army carefully tracks the
quality of its enlisted accessions over time. As a result, quality metrics may prompt senior
leaders to redirect resources or adjust policies in order to ensure recruit quality. Second,
including a normed aptitude score in the definition of quality accounts for societal shifts in
aptitude. Essentially, enlisted soldier quality is inflation-adjusted, allowing comparisons over
time.

Internal Link 2 is Resources

Younger recruits expend resources, increase rates of failure
Kaplan 11 (Fred, Political Science Author, Why Dumb Recruits Cost the Army, Big-Time, Slate,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2006/01/gi_schmo.html) dsk

Three months ago, I wrote that the war in Iraq was wrecking the U.S. Army, and since then the evidence has only mounted, steeply.
Faced with repeated failures to meet its recruitment targets, the
Army has had to lower its standards
dramatically. First it relaxed restrictions against high-school drop-outs. Then it started letting in more applicants
who score in the lowest third on the armed forces aptitude testa group, known as Category IV
recruits, who have been kept to exceedingly small numbers, as a matter of firm policy, for the past 20 years. (There is also a
Category Vthose who score in the lowest 10th percentile. They have always been ineligible for service in the armed forces and,
presumably, always will be.) The bad news is twofold. First, the number of Category IV recruits is starting to skyrocket. Second, a
new study compellingly demonstrates that, in all realms of military activity, intelligence does matter. Smarter soldiers and
units perform their tasks better; dumber ones do theirs worse. Until just last year, the Army had no
trouble attracting recruits and therefore no need to dip into the dregs. As late as 2004, fully 92 percent of new Army recruits had
graduated high school and just 0.6 percent scored Category IV on the military aptitude test. Then came the spiraling casualties in
Iraq, the diminishing popularity of the war itself, and the subsequent crisis in recruitment. In response to the tightening trends, on
Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year's recruits to be
Category IV applicantsup from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s. Even so, in October, the Army had
such a hard time filling its slots that the floodgates had to be opened; 12 percent of that month's active-duty recruits were Category
IV. November was another disastrous month; Army officials won't even say how many Cat IV applicants they took in, except to
acknowledge that the percentage was in "double digits." (These officials insist that they will stay within the 4 percent limit for the
entire fiscal year, which runs from October 2005 through September 2006. But given the extremely high percentage of Cat IVs
recruited in the fiscal year's first two months, this pledge may be impossible to keep. For the math on this point, click here.) Some
may wonder: So what? Can't someone who scores low on an aptitude test, even very low, go on to become a fine, competent
soldier, especially after going through boot camp and training? No question. Some college drop-outs also end up doing very well in
business and other professions. But in general, in the military no less than in the civilian world, the norm turns out to be otherwise.
In a RAND Corp. report commissioned by the office of the secretary of defense and published in 2005, military analyst Jennifer
Kavanagh * reviewed a spate of recent statistical studies on the various factors that determine military performanceexperience,
training, aptitude, and so forthand concluded that aptitude is key . A force "made up of personnel with
high AFQT [armed forces aptitude test] scores," Kavanagh writes, "contributes to a more effective and
accurate team performance." The evidence is overwhelming. Take tank gunners. You wouldn't think
intelligence would have much effect on the ability to shoot straight, but apparently it does.
Replacing a gunner who'd scored Category IV on the aptitude test (ranking in the 10-30 percentile) with one who'd scored Category
IIIA (50-64 percentile) improved the chances of hitting targets by 34 percent. (For more on the meaning of the test scores,
click here.) In another study cited by the RAND report, 84 three-man teams from the Army's active-duty signal battalions were given
the task of making a communications system operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of
succeeding. Those consisting of Category IIIB (who'd ranked in the 31-49 percentile on the aptitude test) had a 47 percent chance.
Those with Category IV personnel had only a 29 percent chance. The same study of signal battalions took soldiers who had just taken
advanced individual training courses and asked them to troubleshoot a faulty piece of communications gear. They passed if they
were able to identify at least two technical problems. Smarts trumped training. Among those who had scored Category I on the
aptitude test (in the 93-99 percentile), 97 percent passed. Among those who'd scored Category II (in the 65-92 percentile), 78
percent passed. Category IIIA: 60 percent passed. Category IIIB: 43 percent passed. Category IV: a mere 25 percent passed. The
pattern is clear: The higher the score on the aptitude test, the better the performance in the field .
This is true for individual soldiers and for units. Moreover, the study showed that adding
one high-scoring soldier
to a three-man signals team boosted its chance of success by 8 percent (meaning that adding
one low-scoring soldier boosts its chance of failure by a similar margin). Smarter also turns out
to be cheaper . One study examined how many Patriot missiles various Army air-defense units had to fire in order to destroy 10
targets. Units with Category I personnel had to fire 20 missiles. Those with Category II had to fire 21 missiles. Category IIIA: 22.
Category IIIB: 23. Category IV: 24 missiles. In other words, to perform the same task, Category IV units chewed up
20 percent more hardware than Category I units. For this particular task, since each Patriot missile costs about
$2 million, they also chewed up $8 million more of the Army's procurement budget. Some
perspective here: Each year the Army recruits 80,000 new troopswhich amount to 16 percent of its 500,000 active-duty soldiers.
Even if 12 percent of recruits were Category IV, not just for October but for the entire coming year, they would swell the ranks of Cat
IV soldiers overall by just 1.9 percent (0.12 x 0.16 = .0192). Then again, viewed from another angle, this would double the Army's
least desirable soldiers. These are the soldiers that the Army has long shut out of its ranks; that it is now recruiting avidly, out of
sheer desperation; and thataccording to the military's own studiesseriously degrade the competence of every unit they end up
joining. No, things haven't gone to hell in a handbasket, but they're headed in that direction. Every Army officer knows this. And
that's why many of them want the United States to get out of Iraq. Correction: Jan. 11, 2006: This story originally misspelled the
name of the military analyst who authored the RAND Corp. report. It is Jennifer Kavanagh. Return to the corrected section.

Economic stability and a clean budget is key to military readiness failure

collapses the economy and causes hotspot escalation
Barno et al 12 (David, retired Lieutenant General of the United States Army. He was head of
Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, You Can't Have It All,
https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/you-cant-have-it-all)

From the perspective of the United States and its Asian allies, China and North Korea represent the most
serious military threats to regional security. China's military modernization continues to
progress, and its foreign policy toward its neighbors has become increasingly
aggressive over the past two years. Meanwhile, the death of Kim Jong Il means that nuclear-
armed North Korea has begun a leadership transition that could lead to greater military
aggressiveness as his son Kim Jong Un seeks to consolidate his power and demonstrate control. In light of these potential
dangers, several Asian nations have asked the United States to strengthen its diplomatic and military presence in the region so it can
remain the ultimate guarantor of peace and security. A bolstered
U.S. presence will reassure allies who
worry about American decline by clearly conveying an unwavering commitment to
Asian security. But while the Asia-Pacific is becoming more important, instability across
the greater Middle East -- from Tunisia to Pakistan -- still makes it the most volatile region in the
world . The Arab Spring unleashed a torrent of political change that has reshaped the
region in previously unfathomable ways. Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons , and it
has threatened recently to close the Strait of Hormuz. Trapped in the middle of the upheaval is Israel, a
permanent ally and key pillar of America's regional security strategy. Meanwhile, U.S.-Pakistan
relations continue to plunge toward a nadir, lessening American influence over a nuclear-armed and terrorist-infested state that is
arguably the most dangerous country in the world. Amid these dangers, U.S.
interests in the greater Middle East
remain largely unchanged: ensuring the free flow of petroleum from a region
containing 51 percent of proven global oil reserves, halting nuclear proliferation, and
guarding against the diminished but still real threat of Islamist-inspired terror attacks.
Protecting these interests will unquestionably require the active involvement of the U.S.
military over the next 10 years and beyond, though this certainly does not mean U.S. troops will necessarily repeat the
intensive counterinsurgency campaigns of the last decade. The administration's new guidance tries to balance America's rightful
new focus on the Asia-Pacific with the continuing reality of deep instability in other areas of the world where U.S. interests are at
stake. Yet implementing this "pivot but hedge" strategy successfully depends largely on how much Congress cuts from the
Pentagon's budget, something that still remains undecided at the start of a divisive presidential election year. The
2011
Budget Control Act, signed as part of last summer's negotiations over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, contains spending
caps that will reduce the Department of Defense's base budget (excluding ongoing war costs in
Afghanistan) by at least $487 billion over 10 years, according to Pentagon estimates. This represents a
decline of about 8 percent compared to current spending levels. Administration officials have
repeatedly described these cuts as painful but manageable. Indeed, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
stated Thursday that these cuts require difficult choices but ultimately involve "acceptable risk." Yet deeper cuts are an
entirely different story. Administration officials are extremely concerned about the Budget Control Act's automatic
spending reduction process known as sequestration, which was triggered in November by the failure of the deficit reduction "super
committee." According to the Congressional Budget Office, this process would roughly
double the cuts to the Pentagon's base budget, resulting in nearly $900 billion in total
reductions. Current law requires these cuts to take effect in January 2013 unless Congress enacts new legislation that
supersedes it. The new guidance says little about what cuts the Department of Defense will make when it releases its fiscal year
2013 budget request next month. But the
Pentagon has made clear that its new guidance and
budget request assume it will absorb only $487 billion in cuts over the next 10 years.
Defense officials have acknowledged that the new guidance cannot be executed if sequestration takes place. When announcing the
new strategy, for instance, Panetta warned that sequestration "would force us to shed missions, commitments, and capabilities
necessary to protect core U.S. national security interests." Sequestration
would likely require the United
States to abandon its longstanding global engagement strategy and to incur far
greater risk in future military operations. If sequestration occurs, the Pentagon will
likely repeat past mistakes by reducing capabilities such as ground forces that provide
a hedge against unexpected threats. A pivot to the Asia-Pacific might remain an executable option under these
conditions, but the U.S. ability to hedge against threats elsewhere -- particularly in the volatile Middle East -- would be diminished.
This is a recipe for high risk in an uncertain and dangerous world . The Pentagon's new
strategic guidance presents a realistic way to maintain America's status as a global
superpower in the context of shrinking defense dollars . But further cuts, especially at the
level required by sequestration, would make this "pivot but hedge" strategy impossible to
implement and would raise serious questions about whether the United States can continue
to play the central role on the global stage.
Internal Link 3 is Enlistment
High school graduates are catastrophic they abandon, spike costs, and never
reenlist
Biddle 11 (Rishawn, editor and author of Dropout Nation, Uneducated to Serve, The American Spectator,
https://spectator.org/38308_uneducated-serve/) dsk

TROOP WITHDRAWALS FROM IRAQ, along with the sluggish economy, has helped the military recruit fewer dropouts and GED
recipients. But it hasnt helped the military in avoiding the high
costs of poorly-educated high school grads.
Aspiring servicemen with low qualifying scores on the ASVAB are more likely to wash out because
they lack strong basic skills and work aptitude. It is one of the reasons why the military
loses as many as a third of enlisted soldiers before they complete their two-year tour, costing
taxpayers as much as $45,000 per recruit. The problems for low-skilled high school students be it they flunk or
sneak in is the same: Abysmal reading and math instruction in schools that begins in kindergarten and manifests its damage by
high school. Twenty-seven percent of American high school seniors including 33 percent of young men who would be potential
enlistees read Below Basic proficiency on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal exam of academic
skills. The potential harm to the nations military readiness especially the
lack of high-quality recruits who can be
brought into the Marines or Army to serve in wartime cant be understated. The economic damage is also

astounding . Since World War II, the military has proven to be a way for kids from poor families including young blacks
and Latinos to make their way into the middle class; 51 percent of all military recruits came from households earning less than
$51,127 a year, just below the median household income, according to a 2008 Heritage Foundation study. But these families attend
the very dropout factories and academic failure mills that are fueling the nations education crisis. As a result, they are
shut
out of the military and out of high skilled blue- and white-collar work and will land
in the ranks of the long-term unemployed. The long-term solutions lie with such efforts as expanding school
choice, passing so-called Parent Trigger laws that allow families to restructure schools, and overhauling the costly and ineffective
system of near-lifetime employment and seniority-based pay that have long protected low-quality teachers at the expense of
students and taxpayers alike. The Pentagon has helped fund military schools in districts in cities such as Oakland and Chicago. It may
take making education a national security issue to spur further reform

Older recruits are more likely to reenlist increases more experienced soldiers
Rostker 14 (Bernard, RAND Associate Dir, Increasing Numbers of U.S. Army Recruits Enlist
Some Years After High School, Rand Corporation,
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2014/04/23.html) GM

More than half of all U.S. Army recruits are choosing to join later in life instead of
immediately after high school graduation, but these older recruits tend to reenlist and be
promoted at greater rates than their younger peers, according to a new RAND Corporation
study. In 1992, older recruits made up only 35 percent of total Army enlistments. Since 2005,
however, the majority of Army recruits have been people who did not enlist immediately
after high school. "We also found that the U.S. military has become a family business for many Americans," said Bernard
Rostker, lead author of the study and a senior fellow at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. In 2008 and 2009, RAND
researchers surveyed 5,373 recruits at the Army's five basic training bases. Among those surveyed, 83 percent of the recruits had a
close family member who served in the military and almost half had a close family member who had retired from the military. In
addition, 38 percent of the recruits had fathers and 6 percent had mothers who served in the military much higher than among
the U.S. population as a whole. The RAND study found that older recruits tend to score higher on
enlistment qualification tests than those who are still in high school, and about one-sixth
have an associate's degree or higher. Older recruits also are more likely to be married. While older recruits
are more likely to leave military service during basic training, once in the service, these older
recruits are more likely to reenlist and are more likely to be promoted. The oldest recruits are
much more likely to be promoted to a noncommissioned officer after four or six years of service, attaining the rank of
E-5 .
At four years, the combined retention and promotion effect is 6 percentage points higher
and at six years, the combined effect is 4 percentage points higher. For slightly younger
recruits those aged 25 to 27 the differences are even larger: 9 percentage points at four
years and 7 percentage points at six years . Among those surveyed, 73 percent of the older recruits said they
remembered recruiters visiting their high schools. Among the reasons given for why they did not enlist directly after high school,
many said they went to college or vocational school or got jobs. However, 38 percent said they just took time off. Of this group, one-
quarter indicated that someone did not want them to enlist and nearly one quarter also indicated that they were concerned about
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When they did enlist, they indicated that the views of others had become less important to their
decision and they were less concerned about the wars, despite the fact that nearly all indicated that they expected to be deployed .

When asked why they decided to join the Army, about a third of those who joined later said
there were "no jobs at home" and about half were of the view that the jobs that were
available were "dead-end jobs." When Rostker and his colleagues compared the older recruits
to a nationally representative group of American youths who did not join the military, they
found that the older recruits were significantly less likely to have attended college a large
proportion were high school dropouts who later passed the GED examination before enlisting
in the Army. They also had less work experience than the comparison group. "For these older
recruits, the Army provided a second chance, " Rostker said. "Joining the Army gave them an opportunity to leave
home and start again even though they understood that in doing so, they were likely to be deployed to a combat zone. But that
didn't deter them. Our findings suggest that these older youths will continue to be a valuable source of future recruits for the
military." To better tap into this market and understand more about how these recruits perform over time, Rostker said the
Army may want to invest some of its recruitment resources on targeting older youths who do
not go to college . The study, "Recruiting Older Youths: Insights from a New Survey of Army Recruits," can be found at
www.rand.org. Other authors of the study are Jacob Klerman and Megan Zander Cotugno. Research for the study was sponsored by
the director of accession policy in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness and was conducted
within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and
development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the
Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies and the defense intelligence community.

Hegemony is the only solution Solves terrorism, global conflicts, and

economic stability
Babones 15 (Salvatore, Associate Professor University of Sydney, American Hegemony Is
Here to Stay: U.S. hegemony is now as firm as or firmer than it has ever been, and will remain so
for a long time to come, The National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/american-
hegemony-here-stay-13089?page=3 and 4] AP

In the twenty-first century, the United States effectively claims a monopoly on the
legitimate use of force worldwide. Whether or not it makes this claim in so many words, it
makes it through its policies and actions, and Americas monopoly on the legitimate use of
force is generally accepted by most of the governments (if not the peoples) of the world. That is
not to say that all American uses of force are accepted as legitimate, but that all uses of force
that are accepted as legitimate are either American or actively supported by the United States.
The world condemns Russian intervention in Ukraine but accepts Saudi intervention in Yemen,
and of course it looks to the United States to solve conflicts in places like Libya, Syria
and Iraq. The United States has not conquered the world, but most of the worlds
governments (with the exceptions of countries such as Russia, Iran and China) and
major intergovernmental organizations accept Americas lead. Very often they ask for it.
This American domination of global affairs extends well beyond hegemony. In the nineteenth
century, the United Kingdom was a global hegemon. Britannia ruled the waves, and from its
domination of the oceans it derived extraordinary influence over global affairs. But China,
France, Germany, Russia and later Japan continually challenged the legitimacy of British
domination and tested it at every turn. Major powers certainly believed that they could engage
independently in global statecraft and acted on that belief. France did not seek British
permission to conquer its colonies; Germany did not seek British permission to conquer France.
Twenty-first-century America dominates the world to an extent completely unmatched by
nineteenth-century Britain. There is no conflict anywhere in the world in which the United
States is not in some way involved. More to the point, participants in conflicts
everywhere in the world, no matter how remote, expect the United States to be involved.
Revisionists ranging from pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine to Bolivian peasant farmers
who want to chew coca leaves see the United States as the power against which they are
rebelling. The United States is much more than the worlds policeman. It is the worlds lawgiver.
The world state of so many fictional utopias and dystopias is here, and it is not a nameless
postmodern entity called global governance. It is America. Another word for a world state that
dominates all others is an empire, a word that Americans of all political persuasions abhor. For
FDR liberals it challenges cherished principles of internationalism and fair play. For Jeffersonian
conservatives it reeks of foreign adventurism. For todays neoliberals it undermines faith in the
primacy of market competition over political manipulation. And for neoconservatives it
implies an unwelcome responsibility for the welfare of the world beyond Americas
shores. In fact, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the United States has become
an imperial world statea world-empirethat sets the ground rules for smooth
running of the global economy, imposes its will largely without constraint and without
consideration of the reasonable desires of other countries , and severely punishes
those few states and nonstate actors that resist its dictates. No one ever likes an empire,
but despite Ronald Reagans memorable phrase, the word empire is not inseparably linked to
the word evil. When it comes to understanding empire, history is probably a better guide than
science fiction. Consider the Roman Empire. For several centuries after the ascension of
Augustus, life under Rome was generally freer, safer and more prosperous than it had been
under the previously independent states. Perhaps it was not better for the enslaved or for the
Druids, and certainly not for the Jews, but for most people of the ancient Mediterranean,
imperial Rome brought vast improvements most of the time. ANCIENT ANALOGIES
notwithstanding, no one would seriously suggest that the United States should attempt
to directly rule the rest of the world, and there is no indication that the rest of the
world would let it. But the United States could manage its empire more effectively,
which is something that the rest of the world would welcome . A winning strategy for
low-cost, effective management of empire would be for America to work with and
through the system of global governance that America itself has set up, rather than
systematically seeking to blunt its own instruments of power. For example, the United States
was instrumental in setting up the International Criminal Court , yet Washington will
not place itself under the jurisdiction of the ICC and will not allow its citizens to be
subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Similarly, though the United States is willing to use UN
Security Council resolutions to censure its enemies, it is not willing to accept negotiated limits
on its own freedom of action. From a purely military-political standpoint, the United States is
sufficiently powerful to go it alone. But from a broader realist standpoint that takes
account of the full costs and unintended consequences of military action , that is a
suboptimal strategy. Had the United States listened to dissenting opinions on the
Security Council before the invasion of Iraq, it would have saved hundreds of billions
of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. The United States might similarly have done
well to have heeded Russian reservations over Libya, as it ultimately did in responding to the use
of chemical weapons in Syria. A more responsible (and consequently more effective) United
States would subject itself to the international laws and agreements that it expects
others to follow. It would genuinely seek to reduce its nuclear arsenal in line with its
commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would use slow but sure police
procedures to catch terrorists, instead of quick but messy drone strikes. It would disavow all
forms of torture. All of these policies would save American treasure while increasing American
power. They would also increase Americas ability to say no to its allies when they demand
expensive U.S. commitments to protect their interests abroad. Such measures would not
ensure global peace, nor would they necessarily endear the United States to everyone
across the world. But they would reduce global tensions and make it easier for
America to act in its national interests where those interests are truly at stake.

US maintains hegemony but without plan it will decline

Dougherty 6-2 (Michael, senior correspondent at Newsweek.com, American doesnt have a
successor, National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448245/donald-trump-
american-leadership-united-states-still-hegemonic) GM
OToole claims I wont say he believes that pulling out of the agreement means that the U.S. has lost the edge on science, at
least symbolically. Want a real measure on science? Look to the education systems. All the best Chinese students in science (and
many from Europe) come to study in American universities. That was true even when America stood outside of the Kyoto protocols.
It will remain true for a good long while. OToole likely knows better, but he cant let respect for himself and his readers get in the
way of a free kick on Trump. (A respectable Irish Times man has to give himself cover for his occasional heresies on rule of Ireland by
Brussels.) There is a frantic, almost panicked desire to see dramatic declines in U.S. power and prestige because its people elected
Donald Trump. The people have to learn their lesson, after all. But the reality-based community has lost touch with the real world.
America remains a hegemonic force: It has the largest and best equipped military that secures
peace and prosperity from Europe to the South China Sea, the most prestigious university
system, the largest consumer market, and it remains the source of so much innovation. The
most powerful and important country on earth is led by Donald Trump. This may be unpleasant, uncomfortable,

and a little scary . The world may hate it. Most days, I do. But it does not mean that the United States
ceases to be powerful and important. An American-led world order might feel queasy with
Donald Trump at the helm. But the deckhand doesnt prove the captain is nuts by chopping
down the main mast himself, or declaring the ship sunk at the first gust of hot air.

Decline of US primacy creates multiple scenarios for conflict

Brzezinski, IR Prof @ JHU, 12
[Zbigniew Brzezinski, Professor @ JHU School of Advanced International Studies, National
Security Adviser for Jimmy Carter, Member of CSIS, Eight nations are on the endangered list,
January 7th 2012, http://www.therecord.com/opinion/columns/article/650388--eight-nations-
are-on-the-endangered-list] JD

With the decline of American global pre-eminence, weaker countries will be more
susceptible to the assertive influence of major regional powers. India and China are
rising, Russia is increasingly imperially minded, and the Middle East is growing ever more
unstable. The potential for regional conflict in the absence of an internationally active United
States of America is real. Get ready for a global reality characterized by the survival of the strongest. 1. Georgia American
decline would leave this tiny Caucasian state vulnerable to Russian political
intimidation and military aggression. The United States has provided Georgia with $3 billion in aid since 1991 $1 billion
of that since its 2008 war with Russia. American decline would put new limitations on U.S. capabilities, and could by itself stir

Russian desires to reclaim its old sphere of influence. What's more, once-and-future Russian President Vladimir
Putin harbors an intense personal hatred toward Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
At stake: Russian domination of the southern energy corridor to Europe, possibly leading
to more pressure on Europe to accommodate Moscow's political agenda; a domino effect on
Azerbaijan. 2. Taiwan Since 1972, the United States has formally accepted the mainland's one China formula while maintaining that neither side shall
alter the status quo by force. Beijing, however, reserves the right to use force, which allows Washington to justify its continued arms sales to Taiwan.

In recent years, Taiwan and China have been improving their relationship. America's
decline, however, would increase Taiwan's vulnerability, leaving decision-makers in Taipei
more susceptible to direct Chinese pressure and the sheer attraction of an
economically successful China. That, at the least, could speed up the timetable for cross-
strait reunification, but on unequal terms favouring the mainland. At stake: Risk of a serious collision with
China. 3. South Korea The United States has been the guarantor of South Korea's security
since it was attacked in 1950 by North Korea, with Soviet and Chinese collusion. Seoul's remarkable economic takeoff
and democratic political system testify to the success of U.S. engagement. Over the years, however, North Korea has

staged a number of provocations against South Korea, ranging from assassinations of its cabinet members to
the 2010 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan. So American decline would confront South Korea with

painful choices: either accept Chinese regional dominance and further reliance on China to rein in the
nuclear-armed North, or seek a much stronger, though historically unpopular, relationship with Japan out of shared democratic values and fear of

aggression from Pyongyang and Beijing. At stake: Military and economic security on the Korean
Peninsula; a general crisis of confidence in Japan and South Korea regarding the reliability of existing American commitments. 4. Belarus Twenty
years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe's last dictatorship remains politically and economically dependent on Russia. One-third of its exports go
to Russia, on which it is almost entirely reliant for its energy needs. At the same time, President Aleksandr Lukashenko's 17-year dictatorship has stood
in the way of any meaningful relations with the West. Consequently, a marked American decline would give Russia a virtually risk-free opportunity to
 Kiev's relationship with
reabsorb Belarus. At stake: The security of neighbouring Baltic states, especially Latvia. 5. Ukraine

Moscow has been as prone to tension as its relationship with the West has been
prone to indecision. In 2005, 2007, and 2009, Russia either threatened to or did stop oil and natural gas from flowing to Ukraine. More
recently, President Viktor Yanukovych was pressured to extend Russia's lease of a naval base at the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol for another

The Kremlin continues to press

25 years in exchange for preferential pricing of Russian energy deliveries to Ukraine.

Ukraine to join a common economic space with Russia, while gradually stripping
Ukraine of direct control over its major industrial assets through mergers and
takeovers by Russian firms. With the U.S. in decline, Europe would be less willing and
able to reach out and incorporate Ukraine into an expanding Western community,
leaving Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian designs. At stake: The renewal of Russian
imperial ambitions. 6. Afghanistan Devastated by nine years of brutal warfare waged by the Soviet Union, ignored by the West for a
decade after the Soviet withdrawal, mismanaged by the medieval Taliban, and let down by 10 years of half-hearted U.S. and allied military operations

and sporadic economic assistance, Afghanistan is in shambles. With 40 per cent unemployment and ranking 215th globally in per
capita GDP, it has little economic output beyond its illegal narcotics trade. A rapid U.S. troop disengagement brought

on by war fatigue or the early effects of American decline would most likely result in
internal disintegration and an external power play among nearby states for influence
in Afghanistan. In the absence of an effective, stable government in Kabul, the country would be dominated by rival warlords.
Pakistan and India would more assertively compete for influence in Afghanistan
with Iran also probably involved. At stake: The re-emergence of the Taliban; a proxy war between
India and Pakistan; a haven for international terrorism. 7. Pakistan Although Islamabad is armed with 21st-
century nuclear weapons and held together by a professional late 20th-century army, the majority of Pakistan is still pre-modern, rural, and largely

defined by regional and tribal identities.Conflict with India defines Pakistan's sense of national identity,
while the forcible division of Kashmir sustains a shared and profound antipathy.
Pakistan's political instability is its greatest vulnerability, and a decline in U.S. power
would reduce American ability to aid Pakistan's consolidation and development. Pakistan
could then transform into a state run by the military, a radical Islamic state , a state that
combined both military and Islamic rule, or a state with no centralized government at all. At stake:

Nuclear warlordism; a militant Islamic, anti-Western, nuclear-armed government

similar to Iran's; regional instability in Central Asia, with violence potentially spreading
to China, India, and Russia. 8. Israel (and the greater Middle East) American decline
would set in motion tectonic shifts undermining the political stability of the entire
Middle East. All states in the region remain vulnerable to varying degrees of internal populist pressures,
social unrest, and religious fundamentalism, as seen by the events of early 2011. If American decline
were to occur with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still unresolved, the failure to
implement a mutually acceptable two-state solution would further inflame the
region's political atmosphere. Regional hostility to Israel would then intensify.
Perceived American weakness would at some point tempt the more powerful states in the
region, notably Iran or Israel, to pre-empt anticipated dangers. And jockeying for
tactical advantage could precipitate eruptions by Hamas or Hezbollah, which could
then escalate into wider and bloodier military encounters. Weak entities such as Lebanon and Palestine
would pay an especially high price in civilian deaths. Even worse, such conflicts could rise to truly horrific levels

through strikes and counterstrikes between Iran and Israel. At stake: Direct Israeli or
U.S. confrontation with Iran; a rising tide of Islamic radicalism and extremism; a
worldwide energy crisis; vulnerability of America's Persian Gulf allies.

Social identity theory and empirical analysis proves unipolarity deters conflict
uncertainty over status triggers instability
Wohlforth, IR Prof @ Dartmouth, 09
[William Wohlforth, Professor of International Relations at Dartmouth College, Unipolarity,
Status Competition, and Great Power War, World Politics, Volume 61, Issue 01, January 2009,
pp. 28-57, http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0043887109000021]
SIT is often seen in a scholarly context that contrasts power-based and identity-based explanations.31 It is thus put forward as a psychological
explanation for competitive behavior that is completely divorced from distributions of material resources. But there is no theoretical justification for

this separation. On the contrary, a long-standing research tradition in sociology, economics, and
political science finds that actors seek to translate material resources into status.
Sociologists from Weber and Veblen onward have postulated a link between material conditions and
the stability of status hierarchies. When social actors acquire resources, they try to
convert them into something that can have more value to them than the mere
possession of material things: social status. As Weber put it: Property as such is not always recognized as a status
qualification, but in the long run it is, and with extraordinary regularity. 32 This link continues to find support in the

contemporary economics literature on income distribution and status competition.33

Status is a social, psychological, and cultural phenomenon. Its expression appears endlessly varied; it is thus
little wonder that the few international relations scholars who have focused on it are more struck by its variability and diversity than by its susceptibility

if sit captures important dynamics of human behavior, and if people

to generalization. 34 Yet

seek to translate resources into status, then the distribution of capabilities will affect
the likelihood of status competition in predictable ways. Recall that theory, research, and
experimental results suggest that relative status concerns will come to the fore when
status hierarchy is ambiguous and that people will tend to compare the states with
which they identify to similar but higher-ranked states.35 Dissatisfaction arises not
from dominance itself but from a dominance that appears to rest on ambiguous
foundations. Thus, status competition is unlikely in cases of clear hierarchies in which
the relevant comparison out-groups for each actor are unambiguously dominant
materially. Applied to international politics, this begins to suggest the conditions conducive to status competition. For conflict to
occur, one state must select another state as a relevant comparison that leaves it
dissatisfied with its status; it must then choose an identity-maintenance strategy in
response that brings it into conflict with another state that is also willing to fight for
its position. This set of beliefs and strategies is most likely to be found when states are
relatively evenly matched in capabilities. The more closely matched actors are
materially, the more likely they are to experience uncertainty about relative rank.
When actors start receiving mixed signalssome indicating that they belong in a higher rank while others reaffirm their
present rankthey experience status inconsistency and face incentives to resolve the

uncertainty. When lower-ranked actors experience such inconsistency, they will use
higher-ranked actors as referents. Since both high- and low-status actors are biased
toward higher status, uncertainty fosters conflict as the same evidence feeds
contradictory expectations and claims. When the relevant out-group is unambiguously
dominant materially, however, status inconsistency is less likely. More certain of their
relative rank, subordinate actors are less likely to face the ambiguity that drives status
competition. And even if they do, their relative weakness makes strategies of social competition an unlikely response. Given limited
material wherewithal, either acquiescence or strategies of social creativity are more
plausible responses, neither of which leads to military conflict. The theory suggests
that it is not just the aggregate distribution of capabilities that matters for status
competition but also the evenness with which key dimensions such as naval, military, economic, and
technologicalare distributed. Uneven capability portfolioswhen states excel in different relevant material

dimensionsmake status inconsistency more likely. When an actor possesses some

attributes of high status but not others, uncertainty and status inconsistency are
likely.36 The more a lower-ranked actor matches the higher-ranked group in some but not all key material dimensions of status, the more likely it
is to conceive an interest in contesting its rank and the more likely the higher-ranked state is to resist. Thus, status competition is more likely to plague

When applied to
relations between leading states whose portfolios of capabilities are not only close but also mismatched. Hypotheses

the setting of great power politics, these propositions suggest that the nature and
intensity of status competition will be influenced by the nature of the polarity that
characterizes the system. Multipolarity implies a flat hierarchy in which no state is
unambiguously number one. Under such a setting, the theory predicts status inconsistency and
intense pressure on each state to resolve it in a way that reflects favorably on itself. In
this sense, all states are presumptively revisionist in that the absence of a settled
hierarchy provides incentives to establish one. But the theory expects the process of
establishing a hierarchy to be prone to conflict: any state would be expected to prefer
a status quo under which there are no unambiguous superiors to any other states
successful bid for primacy. Thus, an order in which ones own state is number one is
preferred to the status quo, which is preferred to any order in which another state is
number one. The expected result will be periodic bids for primacy, resisted by other
great powers.37 For its part, bipolarity, with only two states in a material position to claim
primacy, implies a somewhat more stratified hierarchy that is less prone to ambiguity.
Each superpower would be expected to see the other as the main relevant out-group, while second-tier major powers would compare themselves to
either or both of them. Given the two poles clear material preponderance, second-tier major powers would not be expected to experience status
dissonance and dissatisfaction, and, to the extent they did, the odds would favor their adoption of strategies of social creativity instead of conflict.

For their part, the poles would be expected to seek to establish a hierarchy: each
would obviously prefer to be number one, but absent that each would also prefer an
ambiguous status quo in which neither is dominant to an order in which it is
unambiguously outranked by the other. Unipolarity implies the most stratified
hierarchy, presenting the starkest contrast to the other two polar types. The intensity
of the competition over status in either a bipolar or a multipolar system might vary
depending on how evenly the key dimensions of state capability are distributed a
multipolar system populated by states with very even capabilities portfolios might be less prone to status competition than a bipolar system in which

But unipolarity, by definition, is characterized by one state

the two poles possess very dissimilar portfolios.

possessing unambiguous preponderance in all relevant dimensions. The unipole

provides the relevant out-group comparison for all other great powers, yet its material
preponderance renders improbable identity-maintenance strategies of social
competition. While second-tier states would be expected to seek favorable
comparisons with the unipole, they would also be expected to reconcile themselves to
a relatively clear status ordering or to engage in strategies of social creativity. General
Patterns of Evidence Despite increasingly compelling findings concerning the importance of

status seeking in human behavior, research on its connection to war waned some
three decades ago.38 Yet empirical studies of the relationship between both systemic and dyadic capabilities distributions and war have
continued to cumulate. If the relationships implied by the status theory run afoul of well-established patterns or general historical findings, then there

The clearest empirical implication of the theory is that

is little reason to continue investigating them.

status competition is unlikely to cause great power military conflict in unipolar

systems. If status competition is an important contributory cause of great power war,
then, ceteris paribus, unipolar systems should be markedly less war-prone than
bipolar or multipolar systems. And this appears to be the case. As Daniel Geller notes
in a review of the empirical literature: The only polar structure that appears to
influence conflict probability is unipolarity. 39 In addition, a larger number of studies at
the dyadic level support the related expectation that narrow capabilities gaps and
ambiguous or unstable capabilities hierarchies increase the probability of war. 40 These
studies are based entirely on post-sixteenth-century European history, and most are
limited to the post-1815 period covered by the standard data sets. Though the
systems coded as unipolar, near-unipolar, and hegemonic are all marked by a high
concentration of capabilities in a single state, these studies operationalize unipolarity
in a variety of ways, often very differently from the definition adopted here. An
ongoing collaborative project looking at ancient interstate systems over the course of
two thousand years suggests that historical systems that come closest to the
definition of unipolarity used here exhibit precisely the behavioral properties implied
by the theory. 41 As David C. Kangs research shows, the East Asian system between
1300 and 1900 was an unusually stratified unipolar structure, with an economic and
militarily dominant China interacting with a small number of geographically
proximate, clearly weaker East Asian states.42 Status politics existed, but actors were
channeled by elaborate cultural understandings and interstate practices into clearly
recognized ranks. Warfare was exceedingly rare, and the major outbreaks occurred
precisely when the theory would predict: when Chinas capabilities waned, reducing
the clarity of the underlying material hierarchy and increasing status dissonance for
lesser powers. Much more research is needed, but initial exploration of other arguably unipolar
systemsfor example, Rome, Assyria, the Amarna systemappears consistent with
the hypothesis.43
 Advantage 2 - Exploitation
Scenario 2 is Poverty

Military recruiters strategically target the poor

Savage 4 (Charlie, Globe Staff Writer, Military Recruiters Target High Schoolers Strategically,
The Boston Globe News,
http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/29/military_recruiters_pursue_target
_schools_carefully?pg=full) GM

Those familiar with military recruiting say lower family incomes make McDonough students
more likely to enlist, but that marketing also plays a major role. Richard I. Stark Jr., a retired
Army officer who once worked on personnel issues for the secretary of defense, said he thinks
the targeted hard sell draws in students who otherwise might not join, while failing to find
potential recruits at other schools. "It's hard to imagine that it doesn't influence the proclivities
of those people to make a judgment for themselves about the military," Stark said. "Once you
start [recruiting at a school heavily], it's like a snowball. As more people from the school join
the military, they go back on leave, walk around in their spiffy uniforms, brag about
accomplishments. That generates interest by more recruits." Stark said the recruiting
marketing gap is a problem only insofar as it deprives the military of qualified students from a
full range of high schools and all walks of life. But the recruiting system has drawn more
aggressive critics. Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, says society places
what should be a shared burden of defense only on those poor enough to be induced to risk
their lives for a chance at college or a signing bonus. Those who sign up with the infantry for
five years get $12,000 in cash or a smaller bonus, as well as up to $70,000 in college aid.
"These young people are not 'volunteers,' " Rangel said. "They're not there, because they're
patriotic. They're there they need the money." Sergeant Isaac Horton, McDonough's Army
recruiter, sees it differently. For him, enlisting is a way to improve the lives of young people with
few options. In his pitches to recruits, he uses his life as an example, talking of returning home
to find many of his high school friends either dead or in jail. "If I had to do it over again, I would
do it," Horton said. "Look at the crime rate in D.C. -- I'll take my chances in the military." To
show his displeasure with military recruiting, Rangel filed a bill in early 2003, before the Iraq
invasion, proposing to revive the national draft. Congress killed the measure. Rangel's critique
also has a strong sense of racial grievance, but data suggest that the military is not putting its
energy into high schools attended by poor minority students. Instead of race, the clearest
indicator of how hard a sell a student will receive is class. Generally, recruiters focus on the
lower middle class in places with little economic opportunity. The Defense Department does
not track the socioeconomic background of its recruits, although Rangel has commissioned a
Government Accountability Office study of the matter

Upon enlisting, young recruits create economic implications when they return
Teravainen 14
(Tony, writer for the San Diego Union Tribune, Too many military, veteran families struggling
financially, San Diego Union Tribune,
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sdut-military-families-financial-
poverty-2014nov12-story.html) JS

The military family has been part of the fabric of our nation since the Revolutionary
War. Since the earliest days of the nation, the service and sacrifice of military
members has, by necessity, involved the service and sacrifice of the members of their
families. Yet this week as we celebrated Veterans Day, and even as our country continues
to make great strides in recognizing the service of our military, a crisis has continued to
grow for young active duty and veteran families, a crisis which greatly impacts San Diego.
Bluntly put, younger military families in the lower ranks are continuing to battle to survive
financially to meet basic food and other needs. Adm. William Owens summed up the situation
succinctly when he was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We cannot expect service
members to lay their lives on the line when back home their families have to rely on food
stamps to make ends meet, he said. Stunningly, Adm. Owens made that statement way back in
1994, two decades ago. Today, approximately 10 percent of our nations military members are
stationed in San Diego County. If you do the math, that comes out to about 117,000 active duty
military, and of those, 85,000 are considered to be junior enlisted, those in the lower six pay
grades, E1-E6. Half these young military enlisted members in San Diego are married and have
children. They have families to support and lives to live. Of those junior enlisted members
stationed in San Diego, 50,000 are considered low income by HUD. Thirty thousand rely on
assistance for food regularly. A survey made public in September by the San Diego-based Feed
America food bank confirmed that 27 percent of the food banks clients in the San Diego region
are military, a number that has been growing in recent years. The organization distributes food
monthly at Camp Pendleton to military families. For a young military family of three or four
trying to make ends meet on a base salary that can sometimes be as low as $26,000 a year,
the realities of the statistics hit home every day.

Income inequality makes economic collapse inevitable history proves.

Lansley 12 [Stewart Lansley, visiting fellow at the School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol,
author of The Cost of Inequality: Three Decades of the Super-Rich and the Economy, 2-4-2012,
"Why economic inequality leads to collapse," Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/05/inequality-leads-to-economic-collapse]

During the past 30 years, a

growing share of the global economic pie has been taken by the
world's wealthiest people. In the UK and the US, the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled, setting
workforces adrift from economic progress. Today, the world's 1,200 billionaires hold economic firepower that is equivalent to a third
of the size of the American economy. It
is this concentration of income at levels not seen since the 1920s that
is the real cause of the present crisis. In the UK, the upward transfer of income from wage earners to business
and the mega-wealthy amounts to the equivalent of 7% of the economy. UK wage-earners have around 100bn roughly equivalent
to the size of the nation's health budget less in their pockets today than if the cake were shared as it was in the late 1970s. In the
US, the sum stands at 500bn. There a typical worker would be more than 3,000 better off if the distribution of output between
wages and profits had been held at its 1979 level. In the UK, they would earn almost 2,000 more. The
effect of this
consolidation of economic power is that the two most effective routes out of the crisis
have been closed. First, consumer demand the oxygen that makes economies work
has been choked off. Rich economies have lost billions of pounds of spending power.
Secondly, the slump in demand might be less damaging if the winners from the process of
upward redistribution big business and the top 1% were playing a more productive role in
helping recovery. They are not. Britain's richest 1,000 have accumulated fortunes that are collectively worth
250bn more than a decade ago. The biggest global corporations are also sitting on near-record
levels of cash. In the UK, such corporate surpluses stand at over 60bn, around 5% of the size of the economy. This
money could be used to kickstart growth. Yet it is mostly standing idle. The result is paralysis.
The economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years holds that a stiff dose of inequality
brings more efficient and faster-growing economies. It was a theory that captured the New Labour
leadership as long as tackling poverty was made a priority, then the rich should be allowed to flourish. So have the
architects of market capitalism been proved right? The evidence says no. The wealth
gap has soared, but without wider economic progress. Since 1980, UK growth and
productivity rates have been a third lower and unemployment five times higher than
in the postwar era of "regulated capitalism". The three post-1980 recessions have been deeper and longer
than those of the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the crisis of the last four years. The main outcome of the post-1980
experiment has been an economy that is much more polarised and much more prone to
crisis. History shows a clear link between inequality and instability . The two most
damaging crises of the last century the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great
Crash of 2008 were both preceded by sharp rises in inequality. The factor linking
excessive levels of inequality and economic crisis is to be found in the relationship
between wages and productivity. For the two-and-a-half decades from 1945, wages
and productivity moved broadly in line across richer nations, with the proceeds of rising
prosperity evenly shared. This was also a period of sustained economic stability. Then
there have been two periods when wages have seriously lagged behind productivity
in the 1920s and the post-1980s. Both of them culminating in prolonged slumps . Between 1990 and 2007,
real wages in the UK rose more slowly than productivity, and at a worsening rate. In the US, the decoupling started earlier and has
led to an even larger gap. The significance of a
growing "wage-productivity gap" is that it upsets the
natural mechanisms necessary to achieve economic balance. Purchasing power shrinks
and consumer societies suddenly lack the capacity to consume. In both the 1920s and the post-1980s, to
prevent economies seizing up, the demand gap was filled by an explosion of private debt. But pumping in debt didn't prevent
recession: it merely delayed it. Concentrating
the proceeds of growth in the hands of a small
global financial elite not only brings mass deflation it also leads to asset bubbles . In
1920s America, a rapid process of enrichment at the top merely fed years of
speculative activity in property and the stock market. In the build-up to 2008, rising
corporate surpluses and burgeoning personal wealth led to a giant mountain of
footloose global capital. The cash sums held by the world's rich (those with cash of more than $1m) doubled in the
decade to 2008 to a massive $39 trillion. Only a tiny proportion of this sum ended up in productive investment. In the decade to
2007, bank lending for property development and takeover activity surged while the share going to UK manufacturing shrank. While
the contribution to the economy made by financial services more than doubled over this period, manufacturing fell by a quarter.
Far from creating new wealth, a tsunami of "hot money" raced around the world in
search of faster and faster returns, creating bubbles in property, commodities and
business lowering economic resilience and amplifying the risk of financial breakdown. New
Labour's leaders were right in arguing that the left needed to have a more coherent policy for wealth creation. That is the route to
wider prosperity for all. But the
central lesson of the last 30 years is that a widening income gap
and a more productive economy do not go hand in hand. An economic model that
allows the richest members of society to accumulate a larger and larger share of the
cake will eventually self-destruct. It is a lesson that is yet to be learned.

Economic decline in an interconnected world collapses the global economy,

results in multiple scenarios for war.
Pamlin and Armstrong 15 Dennis Pamlin, Executive Project Manager, Global Challenges
Foundation, Stuart Armstrong, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute,
Oxford Martin School & Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, 2015 (Global Challenges:
12 Risks that Threaten Human Civilization, Global Challenges Foundation, February 2015,
http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/HON301/12-Risks-with-infinite-impact-full-report-1.pdf)

Often economic collapse is accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest and sometimes a
breakdown of law and order. Societal collapse usually refers to the fall or disintegration
of human societies, often along with their life support systems. It broadly includes both quite abrupt
societal failures typified by collapses , and more extended gradual declines of
superpowers. Here only the former is included. The world economic and political system is made
up of many actors with many objectives and many links between them. Such intricate,
interconnected systems are subject to unexpected system-wide failures due to the structure of
the network311 even if each component of the network is reliable. This gives rise to systemic risk: systemic risk
occurs when parts that individually may function well become vulnerable when
connected as a system to a self-reinforcing joint risk that can spread from part to part
(contagion), potentially affecting the entire system and possibly spilling over to related outside systems.312 Such effects have been
observed in such diverse areas as ecology,313 finance314 and critical infrastructure315 (such as power grids). They are characterised
by the possibility that a
small internal or external disruption could cause a highly non-linear
effect,316 including a cascading failure that infects the whole system ,317 as in the 2008-2009
financial crisis. The possibility of collapse becomes more acute when several
independent networks depend on each other, as is increasingly the case (water supply,
transport, fuel and power stations are strongly coupled, for instance).318 This dependence links social and
technological systems as well.319 This trend is likely to be intensified by continuing
globalisation,320 while global governance and regulatory mechanisms seem inadequate
to address the issue.321 This is possibly because the tension between resilience and efficiency322 can even exacerbate
the problem.323 Many triggers could start such a failure cascade, such as the infrastructure damage wrought by a coronal mass
ejection,324 an ongoing cyber conflict, or a milder form of some of the risks presented in the rest of the paper. Indeed the main risk
factor with global systems collapse is as something which may exacerbate some of the other risks in this paper, or as a trigger. But a
simple global systems collapse still poses risks on its own. The productivity of modern
societies is largely dependent on the careful matching of different types of capital 325
(social, technological, natural...) with each other. If this matching is disrupted, this could trigger a
 social collapse far out of proportion to the initial disruption.326 States and institutions
have collapsed in the past for seemingly minor systemic reasons .327 And institutional
collapses can create knock-on effects, such as the descent of formerly prosperous
states to much more impoverished and destabilising entities .328 Such processes could
trigger damage on a large scale if they weaken global political and economic systems
to such an extent that secondary effects ( such as conflict or starvation ) could cause great
death and suffering.
 Contention 2- Solvency
The DoD allows recruiter access in secondary schools more restrictive federal
laws are necessary
Burelli 9 (David, Specialist in Military Manpower Policy, Military Recruitment on High School
and College Campuses: A Policy and Legal Analysis, Congressional Research Service, p. 2-3,
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40827.pdf) GM

In 1982, as part of an effort to address long-standing recruiting concerns, Congress passed

language allowing the Secretary of Defense to collect and compile directory information
pertaining to each student who is 17 years of age or older or in eleventh grade ... or higher
and who is enrolled in a secondary school in the United States or its territories, possessions, or
in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The collection of this information was limited to three
years for any individual, and further limited to name, address, telephone listing, date and place
of birth, level of education, degrees received, and most recent educational agency or institution
attended, and was required to be kept confidential. Nothing in the law required or authorized
the Secretary to require any educational institution to furnish the information. The collection of
this information, or further, the matter of recruiter access to the campuses, however
voluntary, were not without some controversy. For example, in 1998, two high schools broke
with the Portland (OR) School Board by allowing military recruiters on campus. Proponents of
the ban insisted they were opposing the militarys discrimination against individuals who are
gay. Critics contended the school board was merely, and hypocritically, substituting
discrimination against the military in favor of a homosexual rights agenda. In recent years, the
congressional legislative activity concerning the recruiting of high school students has increased.
In 1999, Congress enacted language requesting secondary schools to provide DOD with the
same access to secondary school students, and to directory information concerning such
students, as is provided generally to post-secondary educational institutions or to prospective
employers of those students. Despite this changepreviously, DOD had been allowed to
compile such informationrecruiter access to secondary schools in some cases continued to
meet resistance. The following year (2000), Congress enacted language stating that the
educational agencies concerned shall provide such recruiter access to campus and to directory
information. If a request for this access were denied, this language instructed the services to
send an appropriate designated officer or official to meet with the agency. If, after a meeting,
such access continued to be denied, the services were to notify the designated state official
(such as a Governor) and request access. Should the denial of access continue, the Secretary of
Defense was instructed to notify the Secretary of Education. Upon determination by the
Secretary of Defense that the denial is extended to at least two of the military services
(including the Coast Guard), congressional committees, and the respective Senators and
Representatives of the jurisdictions involved were to be notified. Certain schools could be
excluded from this process: specifically, private schools that maintained a religious objection to
service in the armed forces; or, in the case of a local educational agency, a policy resulting from
majority vote of denying such access. In 2001, Congress strengthened this language by requiring
local educational agencies who are receiving assistance under the ESEA to provide recruiters
with the access to students and directories that had been requested in 1999. In addition, the
language provided that students with parental consent, or the parent alone on behalf of the
student, could opt out of having the students information released. In 2002, the NCLB
amendments to the ESEA stated that as a condition of receiving funds under the act, local
educational institutions were required, upon request, to provide recruiter access to directory
information. Opt-out provisions were included as before, as were exceptions for private schools
with religious objections to military service. It has been reported that certain educational
agencies and others have taken an active role in limiting such access. Primarily, this is done by
sending opt-out forms to students and/or parents. Many educational agencies and secondary
schools, however, have provided recruiter access and access to directory information. Also,
hundreds of thousands of secondary students participate in federally funded JROTC at
affiliated secondary schools. Finally, in 2003, Congress amended the law by removing the
provision that had allowed for a majority vote of the local educational agency to deny
recruiter access or access to directory information thereby removing one impediment to such
access. In 2007, DOD announced changes concerning how it treats information in its military
recruiting database following a settlement with the New York Civil Liberties Union. DOD agreed
to use the database only for recruiting and not to share that data with other government
agencies. DOD also agreed to destroy information on individuals after three rather than five
years and to collect social security numbers only from the Selective Service System. Although
some school districts have attempted to eliminate military recruiting on their campuses, such
efforts have generally been short-lived. For example, in 2009 the San Francisco Board of
Education abandoned its effort to eliminate JROTC from its schools, and a federal court struck
down several laws that would have prohibited military recruiters from contacting minors in
two California cities. More successful efforts to counter military recruitment on school
campuses have relied on less restrictive tactics. For example, in response to a military recruiter
who misled students, public schools in Hawaii will no longer release student contact information
unless a student signs a consent form at and off-campus recruiting station, and, in response to
threatened litigation, a school district in North Carolina will grant campus access to a peace
activist attempting to recruit students to alternative careers.

Aff solves, banning JROTC programs would eliminate recruitment in high

schools
Jones 13 (Ann, book writer and analyst for Truthout and Tomdispatch, America's Child
Soldiers: JROTC and the Militarizing of America, TomDispatch, http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/20657-americas-child-soldiers-jrotc-and-the-militarizing-of-america) JS

When I was their age, growing up in the Midwest, I rose before daybreak to march around a
football field and practice close formation maneuvers in the dark before the school day began.
Nothing would have kept me from that structure, that drill, that team, but I was in a
marching band and the weapon I carried was a clarinet. JROTC has entrapped that eternal
youthful yearning to be part of something bigger and more important than ones own
pitiful, neglected, acne-spattered self. JROTC captures youthful idealism and ambition,
twists it, trains it, arms it, and sets it on the path to war. The U.S. Army Junior Reserve
Officers Training Corps was conceived as part of the National Defense Act of 1916 in the midst
of World War I. In the aftermath of that war, however, only six high schools took up the
military's offer of equipment and instructors. A senior version of ROTC, was made compulsory
on many state college and university campuses, despite the then-controversial question of
whether the government could compel students to take military training. By 1961, ROTC had
become an optional program, popular at some schools, but unwelcome on others. It soon
disappeared altogether from the campuses of many elite colleges and progressive state
universities, pushed out by protest against the war in Vietnam and pulled out by the
Pentagon, which insisted on maintaining discriminatory policies (especially regarding sexual
preference and gender) outlawed in university codes of conduct. When it gave up Dont Ask,
Dont Tell in 2011 and offered a menu of substantial research grants for such institutions, elite
universities like Harvard and Yale welcomed the military back with unbecoming deference.
During ROTCs exile from such institutions, however, it put down roots on college campuses in
states that made no fuss about discrimination, while the Pentagon expanded its recruitment
program in high schools. Almost half a century after Army JROTC was established, the Reserve
Officers Training Corps Vitalization Act of 1964 opened such junior training to all branches of
the military. Whats more, the number of JROTC units nationwide, previously capped at 1,200,
climbed rapidly until 2001, when the very idea of imposing limits on the program disappeared.
The reason was clear enough. In 1973, the Nixon administration discarded the draft in favor of a
standing professional all-volunteer army. But where were those professionals to be found?
And how exactly were they to be persuaded to volunteer? Since World War II, ROTC programs
at institutions of higher education had provided about 60% of commissioned officers. But an
army needs foot soldiers. Officially, the Pentagon claims that JROTC is not a recruiting program.
Privately, it never considered it to be anything else. Army JROTC now describes itself as
having evolved from a source of enlisted recruits and officer candidates to a
citizenship program devoted to the moral, physical, and educational uplift of American
youth. Yet former Defense Secretary William Cohen, testifying before the House
Armed Services Committee in 2000, named JROTC one of the best recruiting devices
that we could have. With that unacknowledged mission in hand, the Pentagon pushed for a
goal first advanced in 1991 by Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the
establishment of 3,500 JROTC units to uplift students in high schools nationwide. The plan was
to expand into "educationally and economically deprived areas. The shoddy schools of the
inner cities, the rust belt, the deep South, and Texas became rich hunting grounds. By the start
of 2013, the Army alone was recycling 4,000 retired officers to run its programs in 1,731 high
schools. All together, Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine JROTC units now flourish in 3,402 high
schools nationwide -- 65% of them in the South -- with a total enrollment of 557,129 kids. Heres
how the program works. The Department of Defense spends several hundred million dollars --
$365 million in 2013 -- to provide uniforms, Pentagon-approved textbooks, and equipment to
JROTC, as well as part of the instructors salaries. Those instructors, assigned by the military (not
the schools), are retired officers. They continue to collect federal retirement pay, even though
the schools are required to cover their salaries at levels they would receive on active duty. The
military then reimburses the school for about half of that hefty pay, but the school is
still out a bundle. Ten years ago, the American Friends Service Committee found that the true
cost of JROTC programs to local school districts was often much higher -- in some cases more
than double -- the cost claimed by the Department of Defense. In 2004, local school districts
were shelling out more than $222 million in personnel costs alone. Several principals who
spoke to me about the program praised the Pentagon for subsidizing the school budget, but in
this matter they evidently dont grasp their own school finances. The fact is that public schools
offering JROTC programs actually subsidize the Pentagons recruitment drive. In fact, a JROTC
class costs schools (and taxpayers) significantly more than would a regular physical education or
American history course -- for both of which it is often considered a suitable substitute. Local
schools have no control over the Pentagons prescribed JROTC curricula, which are inherently
biased toward militarism. Many school systems simply adopt JROTC programs without so
much as a peek at what the students will be taught. The American Friends Service Committee,
Veterans for Peace, and other civic groups have compiled evidence that these classes are not
only more costly than regular school courses, but also inferior in quality.

Recruiters are aggressive because of lack of USFG oversite- Agencies agree

Lagotte 14(Brian works for the University of Kansas and is the author of Military Recruiting in High
Schools: From School Space to Market Place, Turf wars: school administrators and military recruiting,
Educational policy 28(4) p.550) MRS

The second issue, the equality of access to high school campuses, proves controversial because
of the aggressive tactics recruiters employ once on the school grounds. The claim that recruiters
are overly aggressive due to a complete lack of oversight comes directly from the United
States government itself. After the initial years of the new NCLB directives, recruiter
misbehavior reached such a level that the Pentagon publically suspended all recruiting for one
day to acknowledge there was a problem brewing. The Government Accountability Office
(GAO), in response to overly aggressive tactics, which could taint the image of the military
to the general public, investigated the extent to which DOD and the services have visibility
over recruiter irregularities; what factors may contribute to recruiter irregularities; and, what
procedures are in place to address them (Government Accountability Office, 2006). Although
slightly all-encompassing, the GAO definition of recruiter irregularity does serve use: For the
purposes of this report, we define recruiter irregularities as those willful and unwillful acts of
omission and improprieties that are perpetrated by a recruiter or alleged to be perpetrated by a
recruiter to facilitate the recruiting process for an applicant. (Government Accountability Office,
2006, p. 3) Therefore, the problem the GAO identifies is also a leading concern of this
research. Since very few people know the actual practices of recruiters in schools, and
because the NCLB legislation makes no mention about how to monitor these practices, abuse
is prevalent.