Hi everybody! This is my first post in the forum and here is my essay. I would appreciate your assessments.
Your government has announced that it wishes to build a military base near your community. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this new influence on your community. Do you support or oppose the military base?
Today government officials of many nations increase their military presense. Real wars are seldom. But military power is commonly used to prevent someone from assault or to attain some political advantages during international negotiations. Military bases in my country are usually established near small cities. This may cause both advantages and disadvantages for the civilians living nearby.
Obviously the main goal set by the government is improving national security by raising military presence. In case of enemy assault the troops could defeat attackers. This would likely be the opinion proclaimed by the officials. Certainly military base is to improve security of the nation.
But whether the military base can really help to protect a specific community? I think not. Just imagine you are the attacker. What would be your first target? I think it would be the military base. This could be even more dangerous for the civilians leaving n the community in case of modern nuclear war. Nuclear assault will certainly destroy both military base and the community with civilians. The military base is good for the national security but not good for the people living nearby.
In some cases military base establishment can boost the local economy. This is because soldiers should maintain their subsistence mostly by the powers of the local economy. For example soldiers may want to buy food, alcohol or gazoline for vehicles. They could even want to hire personnel from the local community. Government would probably increase funding for the community.
But the military presence near the community can be very unpleasant, annoying and harmful. There will be noising helicopters, jets, trial alarms, gun shots. Vehicles and aircrafts would harm the ecological situation in the region. People living in the community would hardly like this.
I agree that in some cases military bases are needed to be established. This would increase the national security and could protect the country from the enemy assault. However I oppose creating base near my community because I don’t want my home to be the target of the enemy assault and to have ecological troubles. National security must not be improved by the cost of civilians interests.
TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture by a professor of Anthropology