Gop will pick up seats now but won’t achieve a filibuster proof majority – increasing Trump’s approval rating flips it
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1NC CMR DACivil-military relations on the brink now – TrumpLodge 7/21 (Fritz Lodge is an international producer at The Cipher Brief, 7-21-2017, “Civilians and the Military Under Trump,” Cipher Brief, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/civilians-and-military-under-trump-1091, accessed 7-22-2017) ml In the wake of retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn’s resignation as National Security Advisor on Monday over his communications with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., President Donald Trump is considering three former military officers to replace Flynn. This follows a notable pattern of the new president’s reliance on retired military personnel in top national security positions. In addition to Flynn’s replacement, Marine General John Kelly now serves as Secretary of Homeland Security, and General James Mattis was confirmed as Secretary of Defense after receiving a special congressional waiver due to his retirement from the Marine Corps less than seven years ago. Taken together, these appointments make for one of the most military-heavy cabinets since President Ulysses S. Grant. For many, this reliance on former top brass is a positive sign that Trump – whose national security experience is slim at best – wants to surround himself with competent and knowledgeable leaders. However, critics worry that this overreliance on military figures could shut out civilian voices in foreign policy decision-making, and wonder what it will mean for principles of civil American civil-military relations. For the most part, this debate has focused on the issue of civilian control over the military, particularly how the appointment of General Mattis as Secretary of Defense might undermine that principle. The traditional concept of civilian control imagines a strict separation of roles between civilian and military leaders. The elected civilian leader provides strategic policy guidance informed by political and diplomatic imperatives, while the armed services exert military force to achieve that policy and advise the White House on military matters through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This basic framework encourages a military class that emulates the apolitical professional – some, like General George Marshall, decline even to vote – and has pushed most presidents to install civilian chiefs at the Department of Defense (DOD) as a means, both practical and symbolic, of establishing civilian control. However, according to Don Snider, a professor of Political Science at West Point, “the issue of [civilian] control is a red herring.” Focusing only on civilian control of the military, says Snider, throws civil-military relations “into a state of tension and division, but that is not the point.” The true goal of civil-military relations is to build trust between and meld the respective expertise of military and civilian leaders in order to produce the most effective strategic outcomes. With that goal in mind, the ideal state of U.S. civil-military relations is not defined by strictly separated civilian and military spheres, it is a blended model in which political leaders have knowledge of how the military operates, and military officers are competent in political and diplomatic affairs. By this logic, Mattis’ confirmation as secretary of defense is not, in and of itself, a repudiation of the tenets of civilian control. Nevertheless, as a recently retired flag officer, the new defense secretary will face several challenges managing the DoD as an institution, especially when it comes to maintaining the Pentagon’s own civil-military balance. In addition to some two million servicemen and women, the DoD employs 742,000 civilian personnel. Thus, says Kathleen Hicks, former Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Policy for the DoD, Mattis will need to demonstrate that “he values the input and advice of his civilian staff.” Historically secretaries of defense often sideline the civilian employees of the DoD in favor of military staff, but according to Hicks this would be doubly dangerous for Mattis. First, because it would deprive the former general of a wealth of knowledge and expertise, and second, because the “civilian cohort…is institutionally critical to maintaining civilian control.” Whether Mattis can win over and effectively utilize the expertise of both the civilian staff and active service employees at the pentagon remains to be seen. However, beyond the DoD itself, the number of former military officers in Trump’s cabinet also raises broader questions about American civil-military relations writ large. The United States has now been at war for over 15 years in multiple theaters, and the military consistently polls as the country’s most respected and trusted institution. Yet only 0.4 percent of the U.S. population currently serves in that military, and the number of total veterans as a percentage of the population has been declining for years. This dynamic is also evident in U.S. political institutions. From a high of 72 percent in the 1971-72 congress, the proportion of veterans serving in congress has now dropped to 18 percent in the House and 20 percent in the Senate, while 2012 marked the first time in 80 years that neither presidential candidate had ever served in the military – an event repeated in 2016. This “veteran’s deficit” has led many, including former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, to worry that “there is developing a wider and deeper gap between civilian society and our military.” One result of this gap is a situation in which, as Snider describes it, you have a “military that is respected but not well understood.” That lack of understanding has the potential to undermine readiness through the insufficient or inefficient allocation of funds by political leaders. At the same time, this understanding gap can also lead to an overreliance on military advice by civilian leaders who do not feel qualified to question it. This can have the effect of crowding out more diverse points of view from civilian defense experts. For the moment, it is this second issue that applies most directly to Trump and his cabinet. Tapping military expertise to inform administration decisions is by no means a bad idea. However, writes Hicks, “the Trump administration’s strong bias away from civilians in these [defense] positions” risks sidelining the critical insights of civilian defense experts, or even deepening the gap of understanding between the military and political leaders. According to Hicks, saving “top defense posts for people drawn from civilian life has helped generate the world’s most vibrant defense community in the United States.” Liberal policies imposed on the military reinforce its perception that Congress is out of touch – damages civil-military relationsCampbell and Auerswald 15 — (Colton Campbell, Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College, David P. Auerswald, Professor of Security Studies at the National War College, “Congress and Civil-Military Relations,” Georgetown UP, 2015, p.202-04, accessed 7-22-2017 through muse, JSO) Civil-Military Beliefs∂ A third and final issue is a possible growing rift between Congress and the∂ military. We have already touched on the decreasing proportion of legislators∂ who have direct military experience. As we noted in chapter 1 (also see figure∂ 1.1), a mere 20 percent of current members of Congress are veterans, the∂ lowest level of congressional military service since the Second World War.19∂ This reflects a wider trend among Americans at large, where the all volunteer∂ military is increasingly disconnected from the average American on∂ a host of levels. Less than 1 percent of the American public currently serves in∂ the military. A 2011 study by Pew Research on the opinions of almost 1,900∂ veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and 2,000 civilians found that there∂ was a significant gap between the two groups in their understanding of the∂ military. For instance, 84 percent of veterans and 71 percent of the public∂ said that the public does not understand the problems faced by the military.20∂ Senior members of the military have voiced their concerns about this gap. In∂ a January 2011 speech at the National Defense University, the then chairman∂ of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, noted that “we are less than one percent∂ [of the population] and we are living in fewer and fewer places and we∂ don’t know the American people and the American people don’t know us.”∂ He went on to say that “to the degree that we are out of touch, I believe it is∂ a very dangerous force.”21∂ Moreover, the active-duty and reserve components of the military have∂ self-selected from a particular slice of the electorate, a slice that remains predominately∂ conservative and believes in its own unique expertise on defense∂ issues. In 2011 and 2012 the Military Times polled hundreds of active-duty, reserve,∂ and retired military officers and enlisted from all four military services.∂ Their surveys found that the military is more conservative than is the public∂ at large. Almost 46 percent of active-duty respondents, more than 50 percent of reserves, and 55 percent of veteran respondents self-identified as conservative∂ or very conservative, compared to 36 percent of the public at large∂ in a Pew opinion poll from the same time period. The differences between∂ military and civilian partisan identification were equally large.22∂ The military’s political ideology makes them natural allies for Republican∂ legislators and puts them at odds with Democratic legislators on issues ∂ associated with the budget and social change. Starting in the 95th Congress∂ (1977–78), House Republicans have grown increasingly and dramatically∂ more conservative. House Democrats have slowly become more liberal between∂ 1947 and today, though the change has been far smaller in magnitude∂ than that experienced by House Republicans. The Senate has also grown∂ more polarized, with both parties’ average ideological position moving away∂ from the middle. Here again the change in Senate Republicans is more pronounced∂ in recent years than is the change for Senate Democrats. House∂ Republicans are still more conservative than are their Senate brethren, while∂ the average ideological position of House and Senate Democrats is roughly∂ the same.23 That puts Democrats further and further away, in an ideological∂ sense, from members of the military. The reverse is true for congressional∂ Republicans.∂ A final trend is worth mentioning, and it is perhaps the most troubling∂ from a civil-military relations perspective. A full 55 percent of those on active∂ duty, 59 percent of reserves, and 65 percent of veterans polled by the Military∂ Times believed that the president and senior civilians should defer to senior∂ military officers on military matters and wartime strategy.24∂ How then should Congress deal with the military when most congresspersons∂ have not served in the military, and military personnel represent only∂ 1 percent of the population, are significantly more conservative than the public∂ at large, have an ideological affinity with one political party, and believe∂ that civilians should defer to military officers on defense policy? These trends∂ raise difficult questions as to how Congress can and should use civil-military∂ relations tools in the future and the efficacy of that use. At the same time,∂ our understanding of how, when, and why Congress uses these tools takes∂ on great urgency. CMR solves nuclear warFried 12 (Ryan Fried, Dean’s Teaching Fellow-Johns Hopkins, "Rethinking Civilian Control: Nuclear Weapons, American Constitutionalism and War-Making," For Presentation at the 2012 Millennium Conference, London School of Economics and Political Science, 10-21-2012, millenniumjournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/fried-lse-paper.docx, accessed 7/22/2017) This material contextual dynamic is also illustrated by a novel shift in civil military relations in which the professionalism of the military cannot be relied upon, and rather, the executive must be active and assertive in controlling the very weapons the military would traditionally be entrusted to use. This Assertive Civil-Military Control as defined by Feaver, using Huntington as a foil, is a method that does not presuppose that the military will conform to the values and more importantly the orders of civilian society or that the officer corps will understand civilian leadership. Nor does it place its trust in military professionalism to restrain itself. As it relates to control over nuclear weapons, assertive civilian nuclear control is a means by which the military is restrained in its ability to use the nuclear weapons in its possession, by keeping custody of the ability for launch out of their control. It is an emphasis on the ‘never’ end of the always/never problematique, a means by which the weapons will not be fired unless given the order by the civilian command. While in possession of the military, the weapons themselves cannot be armed or used because of the method of positive control. The need for the control of such weapons outside the bounds of what Huntington called military professionalism, is a corollary of the increased costs of war and a heightened fear of military accidents or unauthorized uses. In the aftermath of a major nuclear exchange, in as little as 500 detonations, the planet becomes uninhabitable. As argued by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan, global nuclear war would not only bring about the physical destruction of the countries launching such weapons, but would very likely end life on earth as we know it. As he writes it, “cold, dark, radioactivity, pyrotoxins and ultraviolet light following a nuclear war…would imperil every survivor on the planet.” Sagan raises the specter that even a massive disarming first strike by either superpower at the time might be sufficient to wipe out all life. Therefore, the increasing speed of delivery in conjunction with the rapidly expanding scope of nuclear destruction necessitates further positive control measures to prevent the military from unauthorized use. This in turn reinforces the unchecked power of the president, for it would be only he who can give the order to strike. 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