TOPICALITY LECTURE

Speaker: Antonucci

“Resolved: The USFG should substantially reduce its military and/or police presence in one or more of the following:
South Korea, Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey.”

• Military presence
o Something you do v. inherent quality
 Possibility of defending squo
 Withdrawal may be extra topical b/c it requires ending current mission prior to withdraw and then
return home
 Can’t undermine fx of present mission
o Not definitional but a normative statement
o Normative, adjectival, definitional evidence – look for definitional ev in T
 Diplomacy affs skirt presence, more theoretical
 fx assessment of presence is indeterminate; makes the topic bidirectional
• remove small fraction of troops; keep others
o Squo v. what we wish the state to be
o Presence as more than military being present
o Presence is a mission
 Sends a signal
 Currently inactive but show that we could fight a war
o Presence must be visible
 Ev flows neg - Best links predicated off perception
 Covert operations?
• Japanese nuke water aff – neither confirm nor deny nuke presence
o Can mean non-combat troops
 Difficult to determine combat v. non-combat troops in low-intensity war
o Presence v. deterrence
o Afghanistan affs will have a more difficult T debate
o Boots-on-ground debate
 Actual soldiers on the ground v. weapons, theoretical troops
 Limited literature that explicitly excludes weapons
 Sold arms are not property of USFG anymore
• Some sold arms require personnel training
o PMCs
 Not owned by USFG; different “boots” and uniforms
 Defined as US force support
• Not boot on ground
o BMD
 Presence means forces – moghadam ev
 Covert operations / cancel operations – not an inherent issue
• Substantial
o Quantifies # of troops
• Harkavy card – confine to troops and bases – good limits card***
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