Describe the two types of competition the United States must choose between when trying to select weapons contractors. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these processes?
What will be an ideal response?
One option is to have possible competitors develop full-scale operating systems and then to test those prototypes against one another. The other option is to settle on one or a limited number of vendors very early in the development process and then work with them to develop the weapon. Although the former option corresponds to the standard procedures for bidding out contracts, it may ultimately produce more expensive and less effective weapons. If a manufacturer must develop fully operational weapons to compete for a program, it may choose simply not to compete, and many potentially useful ideas might be lost. Second if such full-scale competitions were carried out, any firm competing for government contracts might have to amortize its failures across willing contracts to make a profit, and consequently the costs of weapons systems to other countries, a strategy that came back to haunt several countries, including the United States, during the Gulf War and thus may not be the best strategy for reducing the level of military tension in the world.
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Should the U.S. Constitution include a Bill of Rights? Take a stance for or against a list of rights and liberties, being sure to discuss the consequences of that stance.
What will be an ideal response?
Population groups making up the bulk of the Republican Party voting coalition include all except which of the following?
a. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants b. Upper middle-class suburbanites c. Military, active and retired d. Rural and small town Texans e. Lower income urban dwellers
Mearsheimer argues that great powers have "hegemony as their final goal," but later states that "Survival is the number one goal of great powers[.]" How can it be both?
a. "Hegemony" is just another word for "survival." b. A state will seek hegemony in a bipolar world but survival in a multipolar world. c. Hegemony is the best and only way a state can ensure its survival. d. Survival is only the primary goal of a great power that has already achieved hegemony.
Under which of the following circumstances would a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court have the most trouble being confirmed?
a. when the House is opposed to the nominee's ideological orientation b. when a president nominates a woman or an ethnic or racial minority c. when a president makes a nomination at the beginning of his or her term d. when a president's party affiliation is in the minority in the Senate