@aja2015,
Quote:This may sound baseless,
Get rid of that phrase, it's padding. Plus it makes it look as if you don't believe your own argument, that you're being apologetic about it. Don't be. Whoever is reading this essay isn't going to take it personally.
Most of your usage of quotation marks is incorrect; quotation marks are
not used for emphasis.
Bolding and
italicizing are, instead. They also aren't used for subtitles. Instead, use bolding.
Without the rest of the essay (and I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to read it anyway, and I doubt that most others do, here, either), it's hard to tell whether what you're writing is in context. Your question about style can't, truly, be answered, because the transitions are missing. I don't even know where these paragraphs belong (beginning? End? Somewhere in the vast middle?) or if they come one right after the other, etc.
I also can't figure out why you capitalized
defense and
security in the last line. They aren't titles or names and they aren't coming at the start of the sentence, so don't capitalize those words in this instance.
No time to go into things point by point but that's what leaps out at me immediately.