At the federal level, homeland security is inherently and fundamentally an interagency undertaking. The quality of interagency relationships and processes is central to the success or failure of federal - and national - homeland security activities. Short of giving a single Cabinet secretary directive authority over other Cabinet secretaries during major domestic incidents (which is unlikely given traditional forms of American government) the only way to ensure effective unity of effort at the federal level is to exercise strong leadership from the White House. This kind of leadership is needed not just during an actual catastrophe but also when the government is engaged in the day-to-day activities of working to prevent, protect against, and prepare for such catastrophes. In recent years the White House has not played this role, in large part because of the bifurcation of national security issues into a National Security Council and a Homeland Security Council. One of the most important and most necessary changes the new administration should make is to merge these organizations into a single council with a largely shared professional staff. This newly merged Council should exercise forceful leadership on behalf of the president of the United States in developing homeland security strategy and policy and should closely oversee its implementation.Why a Merger is NeededThere are three main reasons that the existing Homeland Security Council (HSC) and its staff have not been particularly effective. The first, and perhaps most important, is structural: by establishing a separate council and associated staff to address homeland issues, the White House artificially bifurcated its approach to national security issues, although the issues themselves frequently have both domestic and international aspects that are interrelated. For example, effectively combating terrorism involves targeting terrorists and their support networks overseas, but also addressing the potential for radicalization of individuals inside the United States. Effectively addressing 21st century security challenges requires an integrated approach that considers both sides of a given problem - but such an approach is very difficult to achieve when two different organizations inside the White House are involved. Both council staffs work in the Old Executive Office Building, but they share little more than a mailing address. Each council has a different organizational structure, each staff reports to a different adviser to the president, and each has its own executive secretariat, with separate systems for convening meetings and designating lead directorates on specific issues. The two council staffs don't even work on the same e-mail system: while the NSC staff does most of its work on the classified e-mail system, the HSC staff works mostly on the "low side," or the unclassified network. Some coordination between the two staffs does take place, but it occurs largely through the initiat
{"title":"Merging the HSC and NSC: Stronger Together","authors":"C. Wormuth, Jeremy White","doi":"10.21236/ada494429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21236/ada494429","url":null,"abstract":"At the federal level, homeland security is inherently and fundamentally an interagency undertaking. The quality of interagency relationships and processes is central to the success or failure of federal - and national - homeland security activities. Short of giving a single Cabinet secretary directive authority over other Cabinet secretaries during major domestic incidents (which is unlikely given traditional forms of American government) the only way to ensure effective unity of effort at the federal level is to exercise strong leadership from the White House. This kind of leadership is needed not just during an actual catastrophe but also when the government is engaged in the day-to-day activities of working to prevent, protect against, and prepare for such catastrophes. In recent years the White House has not played this role, in large part because of the bifurcation of national security issues into a National Security Council and a Homeland Security Council. One of the most important and most necessary changes the new administration should make is to merge these organizations into a single council with a largely shared professional staff. This newly merged Council should exercise forceful leadership on behalf of the president of the United States in developing homeland security strategy and policy and should closely oversee its implementation.Why a Merger is NeededThere are three main reasons that the existing Homeland Security Council (HSC) and its staff have not been particularly effective. The first, and perhaps most important, is structural: by establishing a separate council and associated staff to address homeland issues, the White House artificially bifurcated its approach to national security issues, although the issues themselves frequently have both domestic and international aspects that are interrelated. For example, effectively combating terrorism involves targeting terrorists and their support networks overseas, but also addressing the potential for radicalization of individuals inside the United States. Effectively addressing 21st century security challenges requires an integrated approach that considers both sides of a given problem - but such an approach is very difficult to achieve when two different organizations inside the White House are involved. Both council staffs work in the Old Executive Office Building, but they share little more than a mailing address. Each council has a different organizational structure, each staff reports to a different adviser to the president, and each has its own executive secretariat, with separate systems for convening meetings and designating lead directorates on specific issues. The two council staffs don't even work on the same e-mail system: while the NSC staff does most of its work on the classified e-mail system, the HSC staff works mostly on the \"low side,\" or the unclassified network. Some coordination between the two staffs does take place, but it occurs largely through the initiat","PeriodicalId":30057,"journal":{"name":"Homeland Security Affairs","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67988545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At 0830 on an otherwise normal autumn morning, a wave of violence erupts without warning at locations across the American heartland, targeting schools and schoolchildren. Improvised explosives detonate in sidewalk trash bins; school buses are bombed; lone snipers target campuses and first responders in hit and run attacks. As confusion and panic spread from local venues to the national consciousness via the twenty-four-hour news media, a band of armed terrorists take over an elementary school in a small Midwestern city. City and county SWAT officers respond to the scene before the scope of the event is clear; trained to respond to a Columbine-like active-shooter incident, they stage a hasty assault which is bloodily repulsed.Executing a score of adult hostages as evidence of their resolve, the terrorists then herd hundreds of schoolchildren and staff into the school gymnasium, which they prepare with explosives. They upload images of their action onto the Internet. Their postings identify the perpetrators as al Qa'ida-affiliated jihadists. Intelligence from the police perimeter indicates thirty or more fighters, with military small arms, explosives, and heavy weapons, rapidly improving their defenses.The terrorists announce their intention to execute their hostages, and their willingness to accept 'martyrdom,' in the event of another assault or if the U.S. government does not take immediate steps to meet their single, non-negotiable demand: withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the House of Islam.The scenario above is loosely based on the seizure of Beslan School #1 in the Russian republic of North Ossetia in 2004, where over a thousand hostages were taken, and hundreds of schoolchildren and other innocents were ultimately killed by Chechen terrorists. 1 This attack was conducted by terrorists using conventional weapons and tactics, and required technical expertise less challenging and far more common than the piloting skills that guided commercial jets into American buildings on September 11, 2001.The Beslan siege lasted three days before ending in massive bloodshed during an assault by government forces - very unlike the instantaneous effects and protracted aftermath that characterize suicide terrorism. The attackers took physical control of high value assets (for what assets are more valuable, in both real and symbolic terms, than our children?), exploited their act for propaganda value, assaulted and murdered hostages throughout the siege, and threatened yet worse consequences if their impossible demands were not met by the Russian government. Although we can only speculate regarding their ultimate intent, which was pre-empted by the government forces' emergency assault, the final outcome in Beslan was terrible enough.Related scenarios in a U.S. setting are not difficult to construct, applying similar means of attack against a range of soft targets of great iconic, political, or economic value
{"title":"Paramilitary Terrorism: A Neglected Threat","authors":"Bill Tallen","doi":"10.21236/ada476741","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21236/ada476741","url":null,"abstract":"At 0830 on an otherwise normal autumn morning, a wave of violence erupts without warning at locations across the American heartland, targeting schools and schoolchildren. Improvised explosives detonate in sidewalk trash bins; school buses are bombed; lone snipers target campuses and first responders in hit and run attacks. As confusion and panic spread from local venues to the national consciousness via the twenty-four-hour news media, a band of armed terrorists take over an elementary school in a small Midwestern city. City and county SWAT officers respond to the scene before the scope of the event is clear; trained to respond to a Columbine-like active-shooter incident, they stage a hasty assault which is bloodily repulsed.Executing a score of adult hostages as evidence of their resolve, the terrorists then herd hundreds of schoolchildren and staff into the school gymnasium, which they prepare with explosives. They upload images of their action onto the Internet. Their postings identify the perpetrators as al Qa'ida-affiliated jihadists. Intelligence from the police perimeter indicates thirty or more fighters, with military small arms, explosives, and heavy weapons, rapidly improving their defenses.The terrorists announce their intention to execute their hostages, and their willingness to accept 'martyrdom,' in the event of another assault or if the U.S. government does not take immediate steps to meet their single, non-negotiable demand: withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the House of Islam.The scenario above is loosely based on the seizure of Beslan School #1 in the Russian republic of North Ossetia in 2004, where over a thousand hostages were taken, and hundreds of schoolchildren and other innocents were ultimately killed by Chechen terrorists. 1 This attack was conducted by terrorists using conventional weapons and tactics, and required technical expertise less challenging and far more common than the piloting skills that guided commercial jets into American buildings on September 11, 2001.The Beslan siege lasted three days before ending in massive bloodshed during an assault by government forces - very unlike the instantaneous effects and protracted aftermath that characterize suicide terrorism. The attackers took physical control of high value assets (for what assets are more valuable, in both real and symbolic terms, than our children?), exploited their act for propaganda value, assaulted and murdered hostages throughout the siege, and threatened yet worse consequences if their impossible demands were not met by the Russian government. Although we can only speculate regarding their ultimate intent, which was pre-empted by the government forces' emergency assault, the final outcome in Beslan was terrible enough.Related scenarios in a U.S. setting are not difficult to construct, applying similar means of attack against a range of soft targets of great iconic, political, or economic value","PeriodicalId":30057,"journal":{"name":"Homeland Security Affairs","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67988440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism (hereinafter referred to as the NMSP or Plan), released by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) on February 1, 2006, sets out the Pentagon's broad strategy for executing, and presumably winning, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The NMSP can be viewed as an elaboration of part of the larger and more holistic set of policies spelled out by the Department of Defense (DoD) in its June 2005 Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support. The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support envisions a layered approach towards homeland defense and security based on a distinction between: Forward Regions, Approaches to the U.S., the U.S. Homeland and the Global Commons (space and cyberspace). 1 Although the NMSP does not specifically position itself within the rubric of the larger June 2005 strategy paper, its focus on attacking terrorist networks abroad, strengthening international governance and creating a global environment inhospitable to terrorists suggest that it should be viewed as a DoD articulation of the "Forward Regions" component of the overall strategy.This article will focus on the Pentagon's "Forward Regions" strategy through analysis of the NMSP. The Department of Defense, of course, recognizes that combating the terrorist threat to the United States and its allies requires an approach that differs in many critical ways from the approaches needed in order to effectively carry out conventional warfare and even counterinsurgency warfare. An effective homeland security strategy, first and foremost, requires the military to "team-up" with civilian intelligence, law-enforcement, and, for specific missions, with emergency service and public health agencies as well. With the exception of the National Guard, much of the military is largely unaccustomed to this effectively unprecedented role in which the Pentagon must "share power" with civilian entities. The Department of Defense has attempted to cope with this quandary by supporting the distinction between "homeland defense" and "homeland security." A cynic might maintain that this distinction has been created in order to enable the Pentagon to retain "ownership" of a major part of the overall effort at securing the American homeland from terrorist threats and, at the same time, to enable it to play an important role under certain circumstances as the lead agency and under others as a supporting agency in domestic security and response activities. Of course, the DoD must also comply with U.S. law (which limits the military's domestic role) and, equally importantly, avoid irritating public and congressional sensibilities with respect to the power and influence, real or perceived, exercised by the military.Potential motives aside, it is doubtful that many would argue that protecting the United States from terrorism should not require a holistic approach in which the firefighter trained to deal with a possible chemical at
{"title":"National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism: An Assessment","authors":"N. Morag","doi":"10.21236/ada443609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21236/ada443609","url":null,"abstract":"The National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism (hereinafter referred to as the NMSP or Plan), released by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) on February 1, 2006, sets out the Pentagon's broad strategy for executing, and presumably winning, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The NMSP can be viewed as an elaboration of part of the larger and more holistic set of policies spelled out by the Department of Defense (DoD) in its June 2005 Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support. The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support envisions a layered approach towards homeland defense and security based on a distinction between: Forward Regions, Approaches to the U.S., the U.S. Homeland and the Global Commons (space and cyberspace). 1 Although the NMSP does not specifically position itself within the rubric of the larger June 2005 strategy paper, its focus on attacking terrorist networks abroad, strengthening international governance and creating a global environment inhospitable to terrorists suggest that it should be viewed as a DoD articulation of the \"Forward Regions\" component of the overall strategy.This article will focus on the Pentagon's \"Forward Regions\" strategy through analysis of the NMSP. The Department of Defense, of course, recognizes that combating the terrorist threat to the United States and its allies requires an approach that differs in many critical ways from the approaches needed in order to effectively carry out conventional warfare and even counterinsurgency warfare. An effective homeland security strategy, first and foremost, requires the military to \"team-up\" with civilian intelligence, law-enforcement, and, for specific missions, with emergency service and public health agencies as well. With the exception of the National Guard, much of the military is largely unaccustomed to this effectively unprecedented role in which the Pentagon must \"share power\" with civilian entities. The Department of Defense has attempted to cope with this quandary by supporting the distinction between \"homeland defense\" and \"homeland security.\" A cynic might maintain that this distinction has been created in order to enable the Pentagon to retain \"ownership\" of a major part of the overall effort at securing the American homeland from terrorist threats and, at the same time, to enable it to play an important role under certain circumstances as the lead agency and under others as a supporting agency in domestic security and response activities. Of course, the DoD must also comply with U.S. law (which limits the military's domestic role) and, equally importantly, avoid irritating public and congressional sensibilities with respect to the power and influence, real or perceived, exercised by the military.Potential motives aside, it is doubtful that many would argue that protecting the United States from terrorism should not require a holistic approach in which the firefighter trained to deal with a possible chemical at","PeriodicalId":30057,"journal":{"name":"Homeland Security Affairs","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67988255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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