Securing the Homeland

Since the attacks of 2001, America continues to wrestle with how best to confront the threat of terrorism within the homeland. New strategies and organizations were developed to enhance this domestic mission of national security -- notably and historically, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Response Plan. Despite these changes, the nation's conceptual and operational approach lacks an embrace of a wartime mission which limits both efficient and effective levels of security. Changing the vector of America's homeland security trajectory is critical to avoid lost opportunity and increased vulnerability to external and internal threats. While the objective of homeland security is clear, the roadmap is not. Fundamentally the problem lies with ambiguous language in strategies and plans, and over-reliance on federal agency coordination as the basis of the approach. Hurricane Katrina exposed national plans as largely ignoring principles that have provided framing issues in the development of strategy for centuries.