Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Readiness – 1AC – Retention Scenario (2/5)

Readiness is key to prevent war.

Spencer 00 (Jack, Policy Analyst – Heritage Foundation, The Facts About Military Readiness, 9–15, http://www.heritage.org/Research/MissileDefense/ BG1394.cfm)KM

The evidence indicates that the U.S. armed forces are not ready to support America's national security requirements. Moreover, regarding the broader capability to defeat groups of enemies, military readiness has been declining. The National Security Strategy, the U.S. official statement of national security objectives,3 concludes that the United States "must have the capability to deter and, if deterrence fails, defeat large-scale, cross-border aggression in two distant theaters in overlapping time frames."4 According to some of the military's highest–ranking officials, however, the United States cannot achieve this goal. Commandant of the Marine Corps General James Jones, former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson, and Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Ryan have all expressed serious concerns about their respective services' ability to carry out a two major theater war strategy.5 Recently retired Generals Anthony Zinni of the U.S. Marine Corps and George Joulwan of the U.S. Army have even questioned America's ability to conduct one major theater war the size of the 1991 Gulf War.6 Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military readiness signal to the rest of the world that the United States is not prepared to defend its interests. Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be more likely to lash out against American allies and interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in combat. A high state of military readiness is more likely to deter potentially hostile nations from acting aggressively in regions of vital national interest, thereby preserving peace.

Tech isn’t enough – a large ground force is key to solving all threats.

Peters 6 (Ralph, former Army officer, “The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs,” The Weekly Standard, 2/6,

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/649qrsob.asp)KM

From Iraq's Sunni Triangle to China's military high command, the counterrevolution in military affairs is well underway. We are seduced by what we can do; our enemies focus on what they must do. We have fallen so deeply in love with the means we have devised for waging conceptual wars that we are blind to their marginal relevance in actual wars. Terrorists, for one lethal example, do not fear "network–centric warfare" because they have already mastered it for a tiny fraction of one cent on the dollar, achieving greater relative effects with the Internet, cell phones, and cheap airline tickets than all of our military technologies have delivered. Our prime weapon in our struggles with terrorists, insurgents, and warriors of every patchwork sort remains the soldier or Marine; yet, confronted with reality's bloody evidence, we simply pretend that other, future, hypothetical wars will justify the systems we adore––purchased at the expense of the assets we need. Stubbornly, we continue to fantasize that a wondrous enemy will appear who will fight us on our own terms, as a masked knight might have materialized at a stately tournament in a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Yet, not even China--the threat beloved of major defense contractors and their advocates--would play by our rules if folly ignited war. Against terrorists, we have found technology alone incompetent to master men of soaring will--our own flesh and blood provide the only effective counter. At the other extreme, a war with China, which our war gamers blithely assume would be brief, would reveal the quantitative incompetence of our forces. An assault on a continent-spanning power would swiftly drain our stocks of precision weapons, ready pilots, and aircraft. Quality, no matter how great, is not a reliable substitute for a robust force in being and deep reserves that can be mobilized rapidly.
Adversaries are constantly sizing up U.S. force capabilities – only a bigger military can address threats in Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea

Army Times 6 (Rick Maze, "A bigger military in the long term; It's too late to ease current personnel crisis but not future problems, officials say," 12/11, www.armytimes.com/issues/stories/0–ARMYPAPER–2393732.php)KM

But retired Gen. John Keane, a former vice chief of staff, said it is “self-evident” that the Army and Marine Corps are too small — not just to sustain their commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to remain ready to cope with other contingencies. With almost all deployable Army forces focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, the service’s ability to provide forces that would be able to win a conventional conflict in Korea or elsewhere is atrophying, Keane said in a Nov. 30 interview. “What [Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter] Schoomaker needs right now is a larger Army, which would give him the capability to set aside three or four divisions to focus on conventional war,” Keane said. No such force exists, and its absence is not unnoticed, he said. “Our adversaries know exactly what the readiness is of every one of our divisions. They have people working this full time.”

Readiness – 1AC – Retention Scenario (3/5)

Lack of readiness causes North Korean conflict.
Carpenter 8 (1/9/08 Ted Galen, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16622)

At the same time, U.S. officials must stop letting hope triumph over experience when it comes to dealing with North Korea on the nuclear issue. Those officials also need to consider a fall-back plan if the six-party talks fail to produce an effective and worthwhile solution. Relying on deterrence supplemented by a regional missile defense program may be the most feasible option. Another possibility is to induce China to remove the current ruling elite in its troublesome client state and replace it with a more pliable regime, in exchange for a U.S. promise to end its military presence on the peninsula.