Homeland security as an integrative field: Implications for academia

With the emergence of homeland security (HS) as a field of public policy in the immediate post-9/11 period, there arose a commensurate need to educate HS professionals. In trying to design programs that were relevant and appropriate, universities had to try to determine the boundaries of the field and identify the body of scholarship that made up the discipline. The result was a plethora of programs with different emphases and perspectives as to what makes up the discipline.

HS as a practitioner discipline

Much of this confusion in academia was a function of the confusion in the practitioner community over the nature of HS. The response of the U.S. to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the largest reorganization of the federal government since the post-World War II period. American officials felt wholly unprepared to address what they viewed as a new kind of threat and drastic measures -- as well as conceptual changes -- seemed to be in order.

In those first years immediately following the attacks in New York and Washington, HS was focused largely, though not exclusively, on counterterrorism. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) brought together a range of federal HS functions into one department (including agencies that dealt with maritime, border and aviation security, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency) but it also left many key HS functions in other federal departments, including the Departments of Defense, Justice, Energy, Transportation, Treasury, Commerce, Interior and State.

Moreover, given the limited reach of federal agencies due to budgetary and staffing constraints, as well as legal authority, much of the day-to-day business of preventing, coping with and recovering from terrorist attacks was left in the hands of state and local governments. Consequently, police, fire, emergency medical services and other entities began purchasing equipment and training for large-scale terrorism scenarios. 

Al Qaeda’s failure to successfully follow-up the 9/11 attacks with additional attacks coupled with the systemic failures that led to the poor overall response to Hurricane Katrina of late August 2005 brought about a shift in the focus of HS to preparedness for “all hazards.” Counterterrorism was to remain a pillar of HS, but the field was increasingly viewed as one focused on preventing, coping with and recovering from a variety of large-scale challenges.

Moreover, threats such as SARS, avian influenza and other health emergencies, as well as the threat of cyber attack against critical infrastructures increasingly came to be viewed as part of the HS sphere.

What, ultimately, do terrorism, natural disasters, cyber-attacks against critical infrastructures, public health emergencies and, I would add, large-scale organized crime, have in common? They all present challenges in terms of the ability of society, the economy and government to function when such events occur. Moreover, despite the fact that these are very different types of threats, they will require many of the same tools in order to cope with them.

For example, prevention of terrorism and prevention of cyber attacks, requires that law enforcement and intelligence agencies cooperate, share information and design integrated strategies to track down and apprehend such threats domestically or, in concert with the military, when the threat is based overseas (although the military will, naturally, respond very differently to a cyber attack, as opposed to a terrorist cell in the tribal regions of Pakistan.)

Moreover, critical infrastructure targets and industries must harden themselves outwards to ward off physical attacks, while also hardening themselves in the virtual world to ward off cyber attacks.

Another example of this principle can be found in the interplay between law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, hospitals and the public health system. These must share information, train together and integrate their strategies because they will all be brought into play, not only in the event of terrorism -- with the public health system being a key part of the picture in chemical, biological or nuclear terrorism scenarios -- but also in the case of natural disasters, disease outbreak and other crisis scenarios.

Additionally, the integration mentioned in the examples above must not only be horizontal, across practitioner areas, but also vertical, bringing together federal, state, local and international partners as well as the all-important private sector (which plays a key role in everything from critical infrastructure protection to disaster response.)

If I have used the word “integrate” or “integration” frequently, that’s because this is the essence of HS as a practitioner discipline. It is all about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, and aspires to produce a grand strategy that links together the horizontal practitioner areas (law enforcement, fire, etc.) with the vertical layers of government, laws and agencies. The objective of the strategy and the systems that it produces is to prevent when possible, and cope with and recover from, when necessary, large-scale threats, in order to maintain the ability of society, the economy and the functioning of governmental services and authority.

HS as an academic discipline

If the reader accepts the contention that HS is all about integration between what were previously viewed as discrete and disparate disciplines, then an academic program should strive to provide students with an understanding, at the appropriate level, based on the type of degree, of the workings of the overall system and should not be too specialized.