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- Alt causes to bad civil-military relations – Carter step-down, Syria, and sequestration.
OverpopulationOverpop is inevitableTran 14 [Mark Tran reports on general news. He was previously a reporter on the Guardian's Global development site. “Global overpopulation would ‘withstand war, disasters and disease’”, 10-28-14, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/global-population-science-growth-study-wars-disaster-disease, msm] The pace of population growth is so quick that even draconian restrictions of childbirth, pandemics or a third world war would still leave the world with too many people for the planet to sustain, according to a study.¶ Rather than reducing the number of people, cutting the consumption of natural resources and enhanced recycling would have a better chance of achieving effective sustainability gains in the next 85 years, said the report published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.¶ “We were surprised that a five-year WW3 scenario, mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the first and second world wars combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century,” said Prof Barry Brook, who co-led the study at the University of Adelaide, in Australia.¶ The second world war claimed between 50 million and 85 million military and civilian lives, according to different estimates, making it the most lethal conflict, by absolute numbers, in human history. More than 37 million people are thought to have died in the first world war.¶ Using a computer model based on demographic data from the World Health Organisation and the US Census Bureau, the researchers investigated different population reduction scenarios. They found that under current conditions of fertility, mortality and mother’s average age at first childbirth, global population was likely to grow from 7 billion in 2013 to 10.4 billion by 2100.¶ Climate change, war, reduced mortality and fertility, and increased maternal age altered this prediction only slightly. A devastating global pandemic that killed 2 billion people was only projected to reduce population size to 8.4 billion, while 6 billion deaths brought it down to 5.1 billion.¶ “Global population has risen so fast over the past century that roughly 14% of all the human beings that have ever existed are still alive today. That’s a sobering statistic. This is considered unsustainable for a range of reasons, not least being able to feed everyone as well as the impact on the climate and environment,” said co-author Prof Corey Bradshaw, also from the University of Adelaide.¶ . Presidential PowersHigh NowPresidential powers high now – Obama has been using presidential memorandums often.Korte 14 (Gregory Korte, White House correspondent for USA Today with a B.A. in Political Science from Ohio University, “Obama issues 'executive orders by another name',” USA Today, 17 December 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/16/obama-presidential-memoranda-executive-orders/20191805/, *fc) WASHINGTON — President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders. When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the "Do Nothing Congress" almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has made prolific use of memoranda despite his own claims that he's used his executive power less than other presidents. "The truth is, even with all the actions I've taken this year, I'm issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years," Obama said in a speech in Austin last July. "So it's not clear how it is that Republicans didn't seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did." Obama has issued 195 executive orders as of Tuesday. Published alongside them in the Federal Register are 198 presidential memoranda — all of which carry the same legal force as executive orders. He's already signed 33% more presidential memoranda in less than six years than Bush did in eight. He's also issued 45% more than the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who assertively used memoranda to signal what kinds of regulations he wanted federal agencies to adopt. Obama is not the first president to use memoranda to accomplish policy aims. But at this point in his presidency, he's the first to use them more often than executive orders. "There's been a lot of discussion about executive orders in his presidency, and of course by sheer numbers he's had fewer than other presidents. So the White House and its defenders can say, 'He can't be abusing his executive authority; he's hardly using any orders," said Andrew Rudalevige, a presidency scholar at Bowdoin College. "But if you look at these other vehicles, he has been aggressive in his use of executive power." So even as he's quietly used memoranda to signal policy changes to federal agencies, Obama and his allies have claimed he's been more restrained in his use of that power. In a Senate floor speech in July, Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "While Republicans accuse President Obama of executive overreach, they neglect the fact that he has issued far fewer executive orders than any two-term president in the last 50 years." The White House would not comment on how it uses memoranda and executive orders but has previously said Obama's executive actions "advance an agenda that expands opportunity and rewards hard work and responsibility." "There is no question that this president has been judicious in his use of executive action, executive orders, and I think those numbers thus far have come in below what President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton did," said Jay Carney, then the White House press secretary, in February. Carney, while critical of Bush's executive actions, also said it wasn't the number of executive actions that was important but rather "the quality and the type." "It is funny to hear Republicans get upset about the suggestion that the president might use legally available authorities to advance an agenda that expands opportunity and rewards hard work and responsibility, when obviously they supported a president who used executive authorities quite widely," he said. While executive orders have become a kind of Washington shorthand for unilateral presidential action, presidential memoranda have gone largely unexamined. And yet memoranda are often as significant to everyday Americans than executive orders. For example: • In his State of the Union Address in January, Obama proposed a new retirement savings account for low-income workers called a MyRA. The next week, he issued a presidential memorandum to the Treasury Department instructing it to develop a pilot program. • In April, Obama directed the Department of Labor to collect salary data from federal contractors and subcontractors to monitor whether they're paying women and minorities fairly. • In June, Obama told the Department of Education to allow certain borrowers to cap their student loan payments at 10% of income.
Presidential powers can’t solve – Obama still needs Congressional support to pass remaining major legislation.Nather 1/16 (David Nather, Washington editor at Boston Globe Media with a M.A. in Political Science from the George Washington University, “Barack Obama nears limit of executive powers,” Politico, 16 January 2015, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/barack-obama-executive-powers-114305.html, *fc) President Barack Obama can crank out all the executive actions he wants, but they’re not going to solve the biggest problems on his agenda. That’s the reality the president faces as he prepares for his State of the Union address next week, his first to a Congress with both houses controlled by Republicans. With GOP lawmakers unlikely to help him advance his priorities, he’s been on the hunt for ideas he can announce and enact on his own. He’s been finding a lot — more than many Democratic policy experts had expected — and has been rolling some of them out over the last several weeks. But most have little to do with the biggest problems he wants to solve as he enters the last two, legacy-building years of his presidency. And even though he can shape the public debate with a steady stream of executive orders and regulations, there’s not an endless supply of issues where he can make a big impact without cooperation from Congress. Want to make community college cheaper? Obama just rolled out a plan to make it free for two years, but he needs Congress to sign off on it, and he’s not going to get that. Raise the minimum wage? Obama has already issued an executive order to do that for federal contractors, but a federal minimum wage hike is as dead in the new Congress as it was in the last one. Universal preschool? Rebuild the nation’s crumbling bridges and highways? Fix the Voting Rights Act now that the Supreme Court threw out part of it? Nope — he needs Congress for all of those things, too. Moreover, Obama has already done the “moon shot” of executive actions — shielding nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. The rest of the ideas for comprehensive immigration reform — border security, guest worker programs, maybe even a path to citizenship — need Congress, and that’s less likely than ever now that Republicans are stewing about what he’s done already. White House officials know there are only so many new options left that can still grab the public’s attention. So they’re eyeing softer goals over the next two years: They’re hoping to find creative new executive actions that aren’t on the radar of most policy experts, and they want to squeeze more impact out of the ones Obama has already launched. Obama’s team would love to keep the momentum going from his two boldest post-election moves: immigration and his decision to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Just this week, Obama announced proposals to encourage paid leave for working families, strengthen cybersecurity, expand broadband access in rural areas and cut methane gas emissions. He also has a new housing initiative to cut some mortgage insurance costs. It’s all intended to show that, whether the Republican Congress likes him or not, Obama is still in the game for two more years. “I think there is still real opportunity to be creative and look for additional places where we can act,” said one senior White House official. But even Democratic policy experts aren’t convinced there are a lot of “big bang” ideas left that aren’t already in the pipeline or crossed off the president’s checklist, especially on his top priority for the year: helping middle-class Americans share the gains of the economic recovery. Civil-Military RelationsAlt CausesAlt causes to bad civil-military relations – strong presidential leadership, new political team, and firm foundation are key.Carafano 5/2 (James Carafano, Leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, “How the Next President Can Improve Politician-Military Relations,” The Daily Signal, 02 May 2015, http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/02/how-the-next-president-can-improve-politician-military-relations/, *fc) To make civil-military relations an asset rather than a headache, the next president will have to take steps early to get everyone working from the right playbook. First and foremost, the president must accept that the state of civil-military affairs starts at the president’s desk. Without the right kind of leader, the system just can’t work all that well. Strategic leadership requires not just willingness to do the job, but the ability and the discipline to actually get it done. Character, competence, and critical thinking are the hallmark of strategic leadership. The president must accept that political-military affairs can’t be outsourced to the Pentagon. On the other hand, he or she must understand that the partnership can’t succeed with a chateau commander-in-chief making all the critical military decisions in isolation from the Brass. Second, the president can’t just bring in a new political team and expect the quality of civil-military relations to rebound. Initially, the White House will have to carefully review senior military leadership to make sure they constitute a well-balanced team—one in which leaders’ skill sets and leadership styles complement one another. The second task is bound to be the most stressful and controversial. Some senior leaders already in place may not be the best fit. That says less about the competence and character of any individual military officer than it does about the skills and chemistry the president needs from the defense enterprise. Sometimes sports teams trade away their top all-star, not because the player lacks talent or production, but because he’s just not the best “fit” for the team. So it is with a defense team. Without question, the ability of senior military leaders like George Marshall to pick exactly the right leaders for the task at hand was instrumental to the success of the U.S. military during World War II. The next president will have a long and difficult to-do list. The new president will have to start at the beginning, by assembling a strong, cohesive team.
A professional development program will build stronger leaders, in turn building trust and confidence between leader teams and ultimately leading to organizational and process reforms that deliver better performance. Such a program starts with education: Leaders must learn the skills, knowledge, and attributes that will make them successful in civil-military affairs. Next, the program must offer the next generation of leaders an operational opportunity—some kind of duty or assignment that allows them to put what they have learned into practice and to prove they are good at it. Finally, a development program must have a means to: validate that it has provided participants with the right education, appropriate operational assignments; track where they are developmentally, and deliver them to the right critical job at the time when they are needed. Properly trained and equipped, these leaders can form the nucleus needed to transform civil-military relations for maximum effectiveness. This step will not be easy. The people who are the best candidates for professional development will also be the ones in greatest demand. Creating the space for building their skills will require creative solutions. It is not reasonable, for example, to pull a senior person out of government for a year of formal schooling. There has to be a better way. A 21st century human capital management framework also must provide multiple paths to finding and developing “just-in-time” talent needed to respond to emerging demands. Looking for cyber leaders is one example.
I believe that Carter would have been a good secretary of defense, and I think he has helped Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel do better than was feared, especially after Hagel’s rocky confirmation. I hope that he is replaced by someone who can similarly command respect from Democrats and Republicans, and from civilians and the military, for we appear to be heading into rocky civil-military waters. Some have said we have already entered. A few weeks ago, Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, reviewed the civil-military debate over Syria and concluded: "civil-military relations have not been this tense and precarious since the end of the Cold War." Since that period saw the conflict over "don’t ask, don’t tell" (not to mention the prevalent military contempt for President Bill Clinton early in his tenure) and the Rumsfeld-era civil-military friction, Zenko’s assertion is a dramatic one. The evidence Zenko cited included reports that the military is unhappy with poor White House planning on Syria and was generally reluctant to do the strikes Obama was threatening. Retired Gen. Robert Scales claimed explicitly that he was channeling "the overwhelming opinion of serving [military] professionals" when he said that they were embarrassed by the "amateurism" of the Obama administration in the Syria episode. Zenko also discussed the doubts, primarily from congressional Republicans, about the way the administration handled the Benghazi debacle. Curiously, Zenko left off what is arguably the most important driver of civil-military tensions, now and especially going forward: the persistent fiscal crisis that has resulted in sequestration. Sequestration was designed to be something so horrible that it never would be implemented. Almost everyone in the Defense Department, whether in or out of uniform, still views it that way. But there is a growing sense that the White House, and the commander in chief in particular, has come to view the first round of sequestration as tolerable. Worse, the president’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans has raised fears that perhaps he is willing to prolong sequestration, at least insofar as it applies to the Defense Department. This is a real civil-military problem — much more consequential than the Obama administration’s odd decision to prevent World War II veterans from visiting their open-air monument as a way of ratcheting up pressure on Republicans. Harassing wheelchair vets makes for compelling television, but imposing arbitrary cuts on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars across the FYDP undermines national security. There is no question which hurts civil-military relations more. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 2.62 Mb. Share with your friends:
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