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A broad, academically useful summary of the issues, March 21, 2008
This review is from: Homeland Security and Terrorism: Readings and Interpretations (The Mcgraw-Hill Homeland Security Series) (Paperback)
Academic homeland security programs are proliferating more rapidly than quality writing to support them. Among other challenges for faculty preparing homeland security courses, the difficulty of finding a comprehensive survey text that fairly and faithfully opens the core issues to students is particularly acute. Works that explicitly link threat and vulnerability to government policy and programs are also hard to come by. The publication of Homeland Security and Terrorism: Readings and Interpretations helps to resolve these shortcomings.
Third in a series that began with Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment and Defeating Terrorism: Shaping the New Security Environment, this new text was compiled by editors affiliated with the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point. U.S. Army Brigadier General (Ret.) Russell Howard, a career Special Forces officer, headed the Department of Social Sciences at West Point and is completing and Ph.D. in international security studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Dr. James Forest, an assistant professor at West Point, is the director of terrorism studies there. Major Joanne Moore, a career U.S. Army officer, recently served as an assistant professor of political science at West Point.
As with its predecessors, Homeland Security and Terrorism is intended for the classroom, and this survey approach works well for that purpose. To their credit, the editors have assembled diverse expertise on the issues. Contributors range from military officers, to social scientists, policy analysts, scientists, politicians, attorneys, and senior civil servants. This diversity in perspective shows in the work and itself advances an important pedagogical point: homeland security challenges are diverse, complex, and interdisciplinary. Some papers were prepared for this volume; others are culled from previously published works. Most are of high quality in both analysis and writing.
Because of the diversity of issues to be reviewed, the editors faced no small task in assembling a representative sampling of quality contributions in a single volume. They mostly succeed. Their text surveys a broad range of issues, trading depth of analysis for breadth of coverage. Using a common-sense approach to organizing the issues, the editors present thirty chapters in five sections. The editors provide a brief but useful introduction to each of these sections, establishing the context for the chapters and tying them in to the larger theme of the text.
Logically, the first of these sections introduces the nature of the threat, covered in six detailed chapters. In the first, Russ Howard, an editor, usefully distinguishes the characteristics that make contemporary terrorists more dangerous than their predecessors, establishing the right context for chapters that follow. In Chapter 3, Rand analyst John Parachini provides an iconoclastic analysis of terrorist access to and use of weapons of mass destruction, arguing on page 39 that "inordinate attention on the comparatively unique challenges of coping with unconventional weapons draws scarce resources away from the more basic but essential activities of law enforcement, intelligence, border and customs control, diplomacy, and military action."
In Chapter 5 Bruce Hoffman, also of Rand, describes the chilling logic of suicide terrorism. Hoffman recounts the increasing use of suicide terror attacks, which began in Lebanon in 1983 and came into widespread practice in Israel during the second intifada in September 2000, emphasizing his firsthand discussions with Israeli authorities wrestling with suicide bombers. Hoffman argues the logic of suicide terrorism is found in its unique power to trigger horror and revulsion among societies who regard such wanton disregard for human life as supremely illogical.
Drawing on a comprehensive data suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2001 (which he includes in his text), Robert Pape of the University of Chicago uses Chapter 6 to present a typology and analysis of suicide attacks. He concludes on page 72 that suicide terrorism is strategic in the sense that such attacks "occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign by an organized group to achieve a specific political goal," and that suicide attacks are specifically designed to coerce modern democracies. Pape argues that because suicide terrorism relies on the threat to inflict low to medium levels of punishment on civilians, highly ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns are not likely to achieve great gains and are more likely to fail completely.
The second section focuses on specific areas of vulnerability in homeland security. The eight chapters in this section consider selected vulnerabilities to transportation, borders, and critical infrastructure. Professor Joseph Szyliowicz of the University of Denver recounts the complexities of improving aviation security in Chapter 7. Brian Jenkins of Rand describes in Chapter 8 public surface transportation as a uniquely attractive target for terrorism, given the psychological and economic implications of a successful attack. Bombings against buses, subways, and trains represent the most prevalent mode and target of such attacks from 1920 through 2000, Jenkins shows. Jenkins' analysis of the policy implications is unique and persuasive. He argues that, because of differences in threats, consequences of attack, security possibilities, and economies of the two modes, the commercial aviation model of security cannot be applied to surface transportation. Deterrence and prevention are less effective for surface transportation, Jenkins argues on page 136, meaning that the security emphasis must be shifted to "mitigation through station and vehicle design, quick diagnosis of threats, prompt intervention, and rapid response."
In Chapter 11 Larry Wortzel of the Heritage Foundation provides a comprehensive description of the practical challenges facing the Department of Homeland Security in protecting the nation's critical infrastructure with recommendations on how best to clarify public- and private-sector roles. Claudia Copeland and Betsy Cody, both of the Congressional Research Service, discuss in Chapter 13 the terrorism and security issues associated with water infrastructure. This chapter is an excellent source of authoritative data on the issue and presents a fine assessment of the current security situation and its historical antecedents. Because this chapter was originally published as a CRS report for Congress, the presentation of policy issues is crisp and broadly accessible. Section Two ends with a short but informative chapter from Barbara Bruemmer, a lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Bruemmer provides background and insight on the issue of bioterrorism and the nation's food supply, an important issue on which academic writing is in short supply.
The contributors to the third section of Homeland Security and Terrorism relate how government at the federal, state, and local levels are attempting to organize and manage programs to address the threats and vulnerabilities to the homeland described in the first two sections. Louise Comfort, a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh begins in Chapter 15 with an exploration of individual, organizational, and collective learning in environments of risk. She proposes a model, auto-adaptation, for explaining and predicting the behavior individuals and organizations during crises. John Sullivan, a sergeant with the Los Angeles Sherriff's Department describes the success of Terrorism Early Warning Groups in providing public safety agencies with a cooperative means for obtaining and assessing the information needed to manage terrorist attacks.
In Chapter 17 Reid Sawyer an U.S. Army Military Intelligence officer and Joseph Pfeifer, the chief of planning and strategy at the New York City Fire Department recount key lessons learned from the 9/11 fire response. Originally published in this volume, their chapter is a particularly useful contribution to the crisis management literature, providing a novel framework for organizational adaptation before crises that enables rapid adaptation to and innovation in crises with unanticipated dimensions. Though their analysis emphasizes New York firefighter experiences on 9/11, Sawyer and Pfeifer's recommendations are widely applicable.
In Chapter 19 Seth Jones of Rand argues that key shortcomings have severely undercut the ability of the Secretary of Homeland Security's ability to perform his most important function, synthesizing homeland security intelligence and coordinating communications with state and local governments, the private sector, and the American people about threats and preparedness. These shortcomings are primarily associated with failing to provide the necessary authorities to the Department of Homeland Security for information analysis, and the ongoing reluctance of FBI and CIA to hand over counterterrorism and intelligence responsibilities to the new department.
Another fine addition in this section - and perhaps the best chapter in the book - is Chapter 20, contributed by Chris Hornbarger, an U.S. Army officer and instructor at West Point with experience working on the White House Homeland Security Council staff. In assessing the current state of U.S. homeland security strategy through a thorough analysis of key policy documents, Hornbarger draws several conclusions. He argues that homeland security institutions remain immature and that homeland and national security strategy must be fused. He argues that current U.S. National Strategy for...
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