Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following: South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey.
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following: South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey.
So good it makes me want to take a permanent break from researching the social services topic
So im assuming the way this topic works is we literally pick combinations of countries that our plan will ake place in, or is this not a finalized version of the topic?
That's definitely the official topic…effff, it seems quite broad to me…
I definitely agree with Ellis. Yes!
This topic is epic win!
And/or? Are you kidding me?
That's a nice looking plan text, now where's the resolution?
@dylan
At least theres not two of them.
re: and/or – Who cares? Very few good policy affs will expand negative PIC ground willfully.
Presumably, some critical teams would prefer to defend the most complete withdrawal possible, so they get the "and" – walk it off.
I would have preferred a narrower topic, because Iraq and Afghanistan are the real issues of the moment. I don't think it's overbroad, but it will be mildly unfortunate if the topic devolves into Okinawa. Emphasis on mildly, though.
Do you think "military presence" includes nuclear weapons?
This topic will yield many awesome articles, like this one from the commander the 40th Soviet Army in Afghanistan.
Guluakov,
I checked the topic paper recently and there is a part where it says the topic is designed to exclude nuclear weapons but doesn't really explain how it is supposed to do that as far as I could tell.
Topic paper? Where can I find that?
@gulakov
Tactical nukes are tasked to specific military forces that specialize in handling them, so withdrawing those forces would, de facto, withdraw those weapons. The topic paper does say that we should distinguish between military forces and weapons systems, but in that portion of the paper, it says (paraphrased) "we should find the best phrasing to focus on forces, not weapons" but it doesn't say that this wording does that, and I remember Stefan explicitly saying that withdrawing TNWs from Turkey would probably be topical, since Turkey was added mid-meeting (although I believe we have TNWs deployed in South Korea as well, and that was always in the topic). It does seem to be impossible to say we should "withdraw the forces, but they need to leave their weapons there." It just makes sense that if the troops leave, they are taking their guns and bombs with them.
I think the topic is too specific. I don't think the list of countries is neccesary.
I wonder what T definitions are going to be read next year…
@gulakov
Since when has the topic paper defined what is T or not T? I'm 100% sure that there is a defintation that includes TNW has "military presence" included in it or at least spefic enough so you can claim that it does. Other then that I like the resoultion its going to be intersting seeing how people deal with forgien poltics and the like after two years of mostly domestic debate.
Re: And/Or
I think that the phrase "and/or" should not result in crazy topicality debates in the end (although it may seem to make the topic vague at first), because from what i've seen, the only internet definitions indicate that "and/or" is used to indicate that one or more of the stated cases may occur.
@Khy -Yes, because resolutions are created to give neg teams T ground…..You are correct-incessent T debates over whether you are within the designated area(which have been marevlous over the last three years btw) no longer exist-only debates over what is a reduction, and what is military and police presence. The horror.
Any body else glad to hopefully see an end to dumb T debates because negs arn't perpaird for your case? Personly I'm glad for the limited area's either your T or not T when it comes to what country your reducing troops/police presents.
re: presence = troops
I haven't done enough research to answer this definitively. Two things might be overlooked.
1. Although some definitions surely say that TNWs = presence, I don't think that's dispositive. Good T cards going both ways may still be bad news for the aff in an offense/defense world. This is probably a question of finding the best court cases and legislative language on this point. Topic parameters should be determined by research, not the paper.
2. Withdrawing the forces would surely withdraw the associated TNWs, but…PIC? Withdraw TNWs, maintain force levels?
US nuclear sharing means that the non-strategic nuclear explosive devices belong to the US, while the military forces (such as the pilots that would fly the bombers that drop these devices on an invading Russian army) are that of the host country. However, in peacetime these explosive devices are controlled by a 125-personnel unit called the MUNSS, which are part of the US Air Force. This unit is split into four active duty squadrons that are stationed in the five NATO countries with which we have nuclear sharing missions, except the Incirlik base in Turkey where we withdrew the MUNSS in 1995. That's why I thought that you'd have to define "nuclear forces" as a military property or as a "military presence", since you could read the topic either as saying reduce "military presence" or just "military", meaning any property thereof.
i think this will be the most widely accepted definition on the topic
http://www.answers.com/topic/presence
US Military Dictionary:presence
n.a group of people, especially soldiers or police, stationed in a particular place
Noah, that's a sweet card from a sweet-sounding source. Unfortunately, answers.com cites Wikipedia a lot of the time and is often random. It would be nice to do a little bit better source-wise, although I'd never chuck that card.
The topic paper merely establishes a starting point for discussion on a topic in order to produce a resolution. There is never an exact match between the paper and the resolution.
As for the discussion above, I noted when writing the paper that it may desirable to exclude nuclear weapons, since nuclear weapons are the college topic. I didn't feel strongly about it, and others favored inclusion, so we didn't attempt to write a resolution that would exclude nuclear weapons.
Certainly the meaning of the term "presence" will be debated, perhaps painfully so. If there was any "goal" in including the term, it was simply to require the affirmative to reduce things of a military nature that the USFG has present in those countries (troops, police, infrastructure, and weapons systems (including missile defenses and nuclear weapons systems).
This is an unrefined statement, seeing as how havent researched this much and only have like 2-3 minutes before class ends but, i believe that any type of militaristic threat to any of these plases will end up with the idea that it causes some type of metaphorical "presence" whether its actually there or not.
we are talking about this in our debate meeting