America's military is the greatest in the world.

At times, it can be frustrating dealing with my opponent's apparent ignorance of my argument, logic, and crucial issues pertaining to this debate. A recurring flaw is his attempts to scrutinize on a single unit/equipment/etc. and then make generalizing claims from this - an obvious failure on his part. I've accused him of failing to take a holistic approach, and in response he claims so have I (which I will show to be false in this round). As a side note, I suggest my opponent not extend his round into the comment sections; if I can similarly ignore the character limits I might as well pour paragraphs into the comment sections. "A funny thing to say considering that you're the one who's gauging a county's military might based solely upon the fact that it has some expensive toys." If you read my first round, I remarked that though just discussing the technology and inventory of a nation doesn't encompass it's entire military might (i.e. ingenuity of it's military commanders), it is still a crucial and indeed major reason why a nation could win a war. If you propose some other argument than focusing on this, be my guest. Otherwise, if you have no alternatives to offer you're wasting your breathe while being a hypocrite. "Ad homiem" It's amusing to see you and many others abuse logical fallacies - an ad hominem applies if I attempt to link the truth of a premise to a persons's characteristic; I did no such thing. ==================== Ground Forces ==================== Again, my opponent misunderstands my point and then goes off the other end. Yes, I recognize that we aren't entirely clueless to China's military might - my point is that we aren't privy to all of it either. For example, it's Special Ops program is clouded with issues such as whether it's even operational. Other more pressing issues are whether China is engaging in cyber-warfare. Even so, while we can gauge China's military might and technological progression to some extent, it'd be foolish to ignore that AMERICA IS DOING THE SAME. For you to claim that because I believe we can't know all of China's military might I'm rationally prevented from speculating the progress of America is ridiculous. "Precisely how and how much such things improve combat potential is arguable and perhaps even nonexistent, it is therefore entirely irrelevant." So while you can off-handedly remark that China is improving their equipment, and thus they are somehow on par or greater than America, I can't reference a SPECIFIC US military program with outlined objectives, methods, changes, etc. and thus propose to show how it will improve combat potential? That is a double standard in it's finest. "I did say they were updating their equipment." And so is America. You ignore my fact about conscription. ==================== Ground Forces - Assault Rifle, Abrams, Special Forces, etc. ==================== The M4 rifle isn't the most overall effective weapon in the world - I agree. But my argument is that even now, it's capable enough to be operationally significant. Let's look at the test you reference, and laugh as it backfires on you[1]: First, it is from this survey I get my number of around 90% (it can be 80-90, still high) of soldier confidence. Secondly, it should be noted that "extreme dust test does not replicate any typical Soldier use or operational condition." It all concludes with the assessment that "while the M4 finished fourth out of four, 98 percent of all the rounds fired from it went off down range as they were supposed to do," BG Brown said. "However, the three other candidates did perform better at about a 99 percent rate or better, which is a mathematically statistically significant difference, but not an operationally statistical difference." The M4 is a word-class weapon; a 98% percent reliability is good enough to be an effective weapon. Your link on operational tactics is from the US Marine Crops, NOT SPECIAL FORCES. *facepalm* Obviously I know the US military is much more open about the Marines or the Army, but if it were to do the same on it's Special Ops then this would jeopardize a lot of future missions (which is why they are not relaxed about former Spec Ops publishing revealing bibliographies). "What's this? Using someone else's arguments are we?" No, I'm showing that even if you want to bolster the point about Spec. Ops the US military can easily compete for number 1 or 2. Lastly, I want to apologize for my slight typo on the Abrams - I meant to say that "I never claimed it was invulnerable". I do claim that it's highly effective, enough for it's strengths to surpass it's weaknesses. This is the same for the artillery system - it has some problems (like all) but it's strengths greatly outweigh them, which is obviously why they are considered to being deployed. My point in why you would reference them is because at best, they simply show America has better guns to bring. ==================== Air and Sea Forces ==================== My response to Vietnam and the Iraq War will follow in the next section, but if this is your only point of rebuttal against air superiority and naval capability, then your argument has a gaping flaw. ==================== Other things to consider + History ==================== The Thomas Barnett video is simply discussing America's military in terms of foreign policy objectives, notably peace. If we want to uphold the value that peace is desired and that we don't want to simply kill everyone with nondiscriminatory fashion (a word both you and he uses), then yes America is lacking in some areas. Barnett's goal is PEACE, whereas this debate is about one nation annihilating the other (or at the very least, strangling the other's military capability). His proposal of a leviathan force is for the purpose of usurping inappropriate rulers (Saddam being the case example). Nowhere in my argument do I ever claim that a soldier's equipment is unimportant. If he carried a stick to war then of course whatever nation he represents will probably lose, badly. But my point is (and this my blur into talks of the assault rifle) the USA's M4 isn't so ineffective and bad as to cause a significant damper in their military effectiveness. Further, in response to your abuse of military history, the German's defeat in their attempts to conquer Russia and England is for similar reasons: they stretched out their supply lines and couldn't successfully incorporate their blitzkrieg tactic[2]. Such a tactic has flaws, notably one of them being it's dependence on the environment. This is why Russia won and England survived - the former fought so gruelingly that the German front wasn't prepared, thus resulting in stringent supply lines and an overall drainage of their troops effectiveness. England was able to survive because of their channels, allowing them to stall and put a stake into the German's capability of sending in troops. The loss in Vietnam and the failure in Iraq now is because of political reasons; Nixon was too intent on implementing the containment policy in Vietnam, as is the same with Iraq in the similar vein of trying to install a new political regime. In the context of this debate, foreign policy issues such as this don't matter. Finally, my point about holism. While I agree I didn't do much to demonstrate a holistic representation of the US military, my approach was so by stressing that though some unit may have weaknesses, it can be compensated by other units. You commonly claim things such as the over-reliance on air power, or how a soldier is fitted to prepare for every situation. I AGREE, but I respond that no military could possibly be non-holistic and be effective; they would devote all or most of the branches of the military if a total war culminated. ---References--- 1. http://findarticles.com... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org...#