essay topics about national security

National Security - Free Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

National security encompasses the measures taken by a state to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens. Essays on this topic could explore the balance between individual freedoms and national security, the evolving nature of national security threats, and the various strategies employed by different countries to bolster their security. The discussion might also cover the role of international cooperation and the impact of technological advancements on national security measures. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to National Security you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Gender-Differentiated Leadership and National Security

Abstract There is much debate on the means of gender equality in practice and how to achieve it in international relations, especially in regards to national security. Feminist scholars are the greatest advocates on this issue and strive for its global recognition. Feminist scholars propose that national security needs to be redefined on various levels of international security affairs. While other IR scholars, usually realist and their variants, contend that feminist scholars are unclear on their desired ends; because there […]

Effects of Social Media on National Security of Liberia

Information dissemination is believed to be the lifeline of any organization. It is a method for eliminating doubts about an organization's activities and achieving good governance. However, unscrupulous individuals can misuse information dissemination as a conduit to undermine a nation’s national security by spreading falsehoods, primarily through the media. Thus, the media can be used to achieve either positive or negative intentions regarding national security. Representing public opinion, the media is crucial to societal functioning. Through newspapers, radio, and television, […]

Police Brutality and Racism

The Declaration of Independence was created to protect the inalienable rights that all Americans receive at birth, yet police brutality continues to threaten the rights of African Americans everywhere. Police everywhere need to be given mandatory psychological tests in order to gain awareness of racial bias in law enforcement and allow citizens to slowly gain trust for the officers in law enforcement. No one wants a child to grow up in a world filled with hate. As Martin Luther King […]

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Miranda V. Arizona (1966)

In Miranda v. Arizona (1966) The Court reasoned that custodial interrogations are coercive in nature due to the adversarial nature of the criminal justice system and thus certain protections must be put in place in order to ensure that a suspect is not forced to incriminate himself unwillingly. In Escobedo v Illinois (1960) the court noted that there was a clear imbalance of power shifted towards police in custodial interrogations. Furthermore, the Court states, “the interrogators sometimes are instructed to […]

Police Body Cameras Friend or Foe

This link is available on all electronic devices, including landlines and mobile phones, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, enabling residents to communicate at all times. The growing use of technology, such as mobile phones, has affected many elements of American society, including the police force. Modern technological breakthroughs have made tools available to aid law enforcement agencies in dealing with urgent circumstances. This technology might have proved helpful in the Darren Wilson and Michael Brown case. Michael […]

A Problem of Cyber Terrorism

Since the inception of the internet, our world has become more and more connected than ever before. Many companies have moved from a paper focused system to a virtual world of computers that allows their reach to international customers. The internet has opened the doors by given us the ability to freely share information among millions of people. As good as the internet has been for mankind there is also groups who have used it to spread terrorism across the […]

Defining Cybersecurity Law

INTRODUCTION In "Defining Cybersecurity Law," Jeff Kosseff, the author, appears to be more concerned with improving cybersecurity law than defining it. In this paper, I will provide a brief summary and critique of the four substantive sections of this article. I will conclude with a mention of the aspects of cybersecurity law the author missed. My main issues with this article are the author's (1) preoccupation with the prevention of cybersecurity breaches instead of balancing security against values, (2) definition […]

The Change in Relationship between Law Enforcement and the Black Community

The relationship between law enforcement and African Americans has always been tricky, but what complicates this relationship even more is police brutality. Over the course of many years, police have become more harsh and violent, even to the point where some might describe them as militarized. This police brutality has also mainly been targeted towards minorities, especially African Americans. These acts of police brutality that still happen today show the amount of racism and discrimination and racism that exists towards […]

Cyber Security Threats on the State Level

This paper examines two notable events of cyber warfare and security in our current age (the Stuxnet attack on centrifuges, and the Petya ransomware affecting citizens and governmental agencies), as well as examines how these attacks shape foreign and domestic policies and procedures. By examining the extent of the damage of these two attacks, I will argue that cyber warfare events will not just affect governmental systems, but would ultimately cause destruction to the layman's infrastructure, further crippling any state […]

Profiling in Law Enforcement: is it Effective Policing?

Profiling in law enforcement is a form of racism in America. This practice is used by police officers on the basis of race or ethnic status of individuals. This form of profiling is also known as criminal profiling or offender profiling and is used to identify likely suspects. Profiling is also used to link cases that have been committed by the same individual. This paper will present several arguments against police profiling. First, the negative impact profiling has in policing […]

The History of the United States

In the early stages of United States history following the events of WW2, the use of stop and search procedures where officers would flood the streets after a reported crime to question individuals in urban, low income, and predominantly black neighborhoods became a staple method for crime fighting. These tactics originated by the LAPD became embraced by other city police chiefs and began to prioritize street stops as a way to conduct surveillance on suspicious individuals. Throughout history patrol officers […]

The United States of America Experienced a Drastic Change

After September 11th of 2001, The United States of America experienced a drastic change in history. On that day, 4 planes got hijacked and were on route to a destination of destruction. Each of the planes got hijacked over by 19 foreign terrorists who were part of a group called Al-Qaeda. The attackers planned this out for a while and was finally carried out. “The attack had been planned for 5 years between Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed”(Heimer). […]

Usage of Drones in US

Can the U.S. utilize drones in targeted killing and still remain in compliance with International humanitarian law? A study by the US university Stanford, New York titled "Living under Drones" concludes that between 2004 and 2012 alone in Pakistan, between 2500 and 3000 people were killed by drone strikes, including around 470 to 880 civilians, almost 200 children. The researchers also note in their findings that a maximum of two percent of those killed could be described as "high-level targets". […]

How Terrorism Effects Non-Muslim

What is terrorism The word terrorism derived from the word terror which meaning is 'affright'. In simple words terrorism is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Common definitions of terrorism refer to violent acts which are intended to create fear. They may be done for a religious, political, or ideological goal, and often target civilians. Explain Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a […]

Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements

Abstract This executive briefing is to discuss President Trump’s recent issued Executive Order (EO) 13767 Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements. The briefing will contain analysis that is focused on the EO’s main purpose of the policy, its benefits and consequences, and the effects on national budget. Introduction On January 25, 2017, President Trump signed EO 13767 to install all mean necessary to secure the southern border, and to prevent illegal immigration and to deport illegal immigrants (Executive Order No. […]

Political Terrorism in Europe

There is no universal agreement on the definition of terrorism. Various legal systems and government agencies use different definitions. Governments have been reluctant to formulate an agreed upon and legally binding definition. These difficulties arise from the fact that the term is politically and emotionally charged. There are many reasons as to why there is no universal consensus regarding the definition of terrorism. The United Nations attempts to define the term foundered mainly due to differences of opinion between various […]

Police Brutality – Misconduct and Shootings

Abstract In the United States, Police brutality has been a source of concern for many years. Police officers have been known to use excessive and unnecessary force on innocent and unarmed civilians. There have been numerous instances of police officers killing civilians when such force was unwarranted. It is important to look at how police brutality affects the community as well as fellow police officers. There are a number of measures that should be taken to stop this menace. The […]

The Issue of Gender in Terrorism

According to Bloom (2011), terrorism is widely used by the weak in the struggle against the strong. Terrorism is non-conventional battle to resist strong and conventional armies' of the countries. Modern armies are well armed in terms of equipment and labor; however, most of the terrorist groups lack the resources or labor to fight such a war. Instead, terrorism is an attractive option because it focuses on soft targets, specifically the civilians that are hard to protect but they cause […]

Can Terrorism Ever be Justified?

Terrorism-noun, the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. Terrorism is not acceptable, no matter what you are trying to prove, politically or religiously. Terrorism usually is used by extremists of a religion and those who wants to spread hate. Terrorism philosophy goes, "One's terrorist is another's freedom fighter But why should innocent citizens put their lives in peril for others beliefs? Terrorism shouldn't be judged by just their effects or aftermath […]

Drones in U.S. Warfare

Thesis: The U.S. should continue drone strikes abroad Drones have plenty of benefits. Drones more accuracy, keep U.S. personnel safer, are cheaper, and are a great advancement in warfare technology. The U.S. began drone strikes after the 9/11 attacks. These drone strikes have helped kill terrorists and militants plotting against the U.S.A. Arguments: Drones have more accuracy. U.S. military personnel are safer. Drones are much cheaper than other aerial combat. The U.S. is not the only country using drones as […]

Essay about Juvenile Justice

By far the most common form of direct racial bias that Tim will come into contact with, is racial profiling, whereby authorities use stereotypes about a person’s race to single them out for greater scrutiny. Given that Tim’s neighborhood shows clear signs of social disorganization, it can be inferred that there are likely more police patrols in his city, due to the high crime rate. Jones-Brown, Stoudt, Johnston, & Moran (2013) identify “stop, question, and frisk” encounters that Tim is […]

Connection between Terrorism and the Media

The Boston Marathon bombing attack took place on April 15th, 2013 after two bombs went off close to the finish line of the Boston Marathon carried out on a yearly basis. The two homemade bombs caused the deaths of three people and caused injuries to over 260 people. At around 2:49 p.m while there were about 5,600 people still running in the competition, the two pressure-cooker bombs packed inside the backpacks with nails and bearings detonated within 12 seconds apart. […]

How Drones Improves Law Enforcement Performance

The implementation of new drone technology are being used to assess the crime situations in several ways. Not only it helps the law enforcement solve the cases faster, it collects all the data from aerial that is useful for preventing the crimes and assisting with the public service. As I mentioned previously that the drones are incredible at getting all the data that the law enforcement needs to assess and solve the cases.  According to Center for the Study of […]

Transparency Paper

Governor Jerry Brown signed bill SB1421, which allows the public to view investigations of officer shootings, serious uses of force, sexual misconducts, and lying. California's confidentiality laws had previously protected police officer privacy, prohibiting the public from knowing what typically occurs during the investigations of these misconducts and their respective outcomes. This bill emphasizes the struggle that has existed for years between the public's right to know and officers’ individual privacy rights. The bill will benefit the public interest by […]

War on Terrorism Yvonne Morales Saint Leo University Abstract

The war on terror illustrates the many ethical hurdles the criminal justice system encounters in relation to terrorism and counterterrorism. Professionals in this field often face decisions that test their moral values, including questions around citizen security, freedom, privacy, and human rights. Ethical decision-making plays a crucial role in counter-terrorism efforts. Although there have been many changes in the intelligence agency since 1947, the most significant ones occurred after the harrowing attacks on September 11, 2001. This day, forever etched […]

How America Prevents Terrorism

A CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) operative that was just recently rescued  by members of Seal Team Six from being held captive by a radical organization overseas, comes home and see the black site that worked at, Abu Ghraib, plastered all over the news. The news is saying American operatives have been torturing their prisoners, and that there is a fine line between interrogation and torture. However, they do not realize how the United States uses espionage, the CIA black sites, […]

The Unreasonable Practice: Stop and Frisk

Stop and frisk is the act of police stopping an individual to briefly search for any illegal substances or concealed weapons. It is said that a stop and frisk needs to be processed when law enforcement is suspicious of an individual. By evaluating the themes of racial profiling and the rights of man, proof will be given on why stop and frisk should not become a nationwide policy. This is significant because not only is it an act of discrimination, […]

Al-Qaeda Terrorism in US

Al-Qaeda or "The Base developed from the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. As the Soviets were getting ready to withdraw their forces and end the problematic conflict, Osama Bind Laden "decided to capitalize on the network he had built to take jihad global (Byman 2015). Bin Laden's goal was clear. He wanted to create an army of trained jihadist that for the purpose of overthrowing corrupt Muslim regimes in the Middle East and replace them with true Islamic […]

Questioning Civil Liberties

Ciuk (2015) noted in his research that before the attacks of 9/11, the most important value to Americans was liberty. Private security companies handled the movement of citizens around the world before 9/11 and policies varied by these companies. People were rarely detained or questioned at airports. (Finkelstein et al., 2017; Kleiner, 2010). Domestic flight security did not routinely involve law enforcement officers traveling on board (Kleiner, 2010). The actions of September 11th, 2001 caused a cascade of actions from […]

What is Counter Terrorism?

Unfortunately, the provisions of the new act, the U.S.A. FREEDOM Act fail to address a lot of the remaining and pressing problems of the privacy rights fight nowadays. It did replace the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act; however, it certainly does not solve the problems present in it. This is clearly being represent in the EU reaction and the legal safeguards the EU proceeded to undertake. While the EU is not a perfect political organism, having itself some problematic background regarding data […]

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Heritage.org

Oct 7, 2014 25 min read

Kim R. Holmes, PhD

The challenge in devising a reliable measure of U.S. military power is that the effort must be rooted in a concrete understanding of what national security is and what it is not. This essay examines the elements of national security, providing both definitions of terms and a clarification of related concepts. It concludes with a number of takeaways from this analysis to help guide the making of a National Security Strategy.

A Short History of National Security

Modern concepts of national security arose in the 17th century during the Thirty Years War in Europe and the Civil War in England. In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia established the idea that the nation-state had sovereign control not only of domestic affairs such as religion, but also of external security.

The idea of the nation-state is commonplace today, yet it would be wrong to assume that it is the only way to look at international security. The pre-Westphalia international system was based on the assumption that there existed a universal principle governing the affairs of states led by emperors, popes, kings, and princes. That was indeed the principle of the Holy Roman Empire. The new idea of the nation-state took a different approach. Peace and stability could be better served if people were not slaughtering each other over some universal principle—in that case, religion. It would be far better to have an international system based on the equilibrium of nation-states dedicated to the limited purposes of national sovereignty and self-defense.

This idea was challenged by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who resurrected the universal principle idea not in the old religious context, but in a secular one inspired by the Enlightenment. In his 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” he outlined his idea that the system of nation-states should be replaced by a new enlightened world order. Nation-states should subordinate their national interests to the common good and be ruled by international law.

Thus was born the secular view of supranational institutions governing international affairs, which today is reflected in the global worldview of liberal internationalism and most clearly manifested in the United Nations.

It is important to keep these two schools of thought in mind when considering the various definitions of national security. They are present in current debates over national sovereignty, international law, and the role of international institutions in world affairs. American liberal internationalists for example, with their dedication to the United Nations and international governance, are neo-Kantians, whereas realists tend more to the views of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), and other philosophers who espoused the supremacy of the nation-state.

Some Basic Definitions

Before analyzing different definitions of national security, it is important to understand some of the concepts the term incorporates.

The first is the concept of power. It can best be defined as a nation’s possession of control of its sovereignty and destiny. It implies some degree of control of the extent to which outside forces can harm the country. Hard , or largely military, power is about control, while soft power is mainly about influence—trying to persuade others, using methods short of war, to do something.

Instruments of power exist along a spectrum, from using force on one end to diplomatic means of persuasion on the other. Such instruments include the armed forces; law enforcement and intelligence agencies; and various governmental agencies dedicated to bilateral and public diplomacy, foreign aid, and international financial controls. Variables of power include military strength, economic capacity, the will of the government and people to use power, and the degree to which legitimacy—either in the eyes of the people or in the eyes of other nations or international organizations—affects how power is wielded. The measure of power depends not only on hard facts, but also on perceptions of will and reputation.

Another term to understand properly is military strength . This term refers to military capacity and the capabilities of the armed forces, and it is a capacity that may not actually be used. It often is understood as a static measure of the power of a country, but in reality, military strength is a variable that is subject to all sorts of factors, including the relative strength of opponents, the degree to which it is used effectively, or whether it is even used at all.

Force is the use of a military or law enforcement capacity to achieve some objective. It is the actual use of strength and should not be equated with either strength or power per se . Using force unwisely or unsuccessfully can diminish one’s power and strength. By the same token, using it effectively can enhance power. Force is an instrument of power just as a tool or some other device would be, but unlike institutional instruments like the armed forces, its use in action is what distinguishes it from static instruments of strength like military capacity. Thus, force should be understood narrowly as an applied instrument of coercion.

Finally, there is national defense . Strictly speaking, this refers to the ability of the armed forces to defend the sovereignty of the nation and the lives of its people; however, since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the mission of homeland security —using domestic as well as military instrumentsto defend the nation from terrorist and other attacks either inside or outside the country—has come to be understood as an element of national defense.

International Systems of Security

Understanding the major schools of thought on international security that have arisen since the end of World War II will also help to explain the international context in which American national security is expected to operate. These schools of thought include:

• Collective Defense. Collective defense is an official arrangement among nation-states to offer some defense support to other member states if they are attacked. It is the basis of the classic defense alliances like the Triple Entente among the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Russian Empire before World War I and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization today. It is distinguished not only by geographical limitation, but also by its focus on military commitments.
• Collective Security. Collective security refers to various types of arrangements. Strictly speaking, collective defense involving mutual commitments of member states could be considered a form of collective security, albeit one limited geographically to military defense. More often, however, collective security is thought of as a regional and global concept represented by such international institutions as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Often, such arrangements are buttressed by concepts of international law and international aid and governance. Their distinguishing characteristic is their hybrid character between collective action at the international level and the acceptance of nation-states being ultimately responsible for their own security.
• Global Security. Global security is a set of ideas, developed largely by the United Nations since the end of the Cold War, that the world’s security is everybody’s business. It rests on the premise that no single nation is secure unless all are secure. While lip service is given to the idea of national defense, the far greater focus is on attempting to eliminate conflict through international law, aid, confidence-building measures, and global governance. The use of force should thus be reserved largely for international peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and the protection of innocent citizens from violence and should be decided upon and organized by the U.N.
• International Law. To the American ear, the use of the term “law” in the phrase “international law” conjures up the idea of binding rules enforced by judicial authorities and law enforcement officials. However, what Americans understand as “law” in a domestic context is often out of place in considering U.S. compliance with “international law.” The U.S. government must comply with the supreme law of the land, which the U.S. Constitution makes clear consists of the Constitution itself, laws made in pursuance thereof, and “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States” (quoting Article VI of the Constitution). The United States also makes a practice of following what is known as “customary international law,” which “is comprised of those practices and customs that States view as obligatory and that are engaged in or otherwise acceded to by a preponderance of States in a uniform and consistent fashion” (quoting United States v. Yousef , 327 F.3d 56, 91 n. 24 (2d Cir. 2003), cert. denied , 540 U.S. 993 (2003)).

Non-Military Ideas of National Security

For most of the 20th century, national security was focused on military security, but as a concept, it expanded over time beyond what armed forces could do (or not do as the case may be). In 1947, the United States created the National Security Council to “advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security....” 1 In the wake of total war, and at the dawn of the nuclear age, it was well understood that the days of defining national security solely in terms of armies fighting it out in set-piece battles were things of the past.

Since then, national security has come to mean different things to different people. Today, there are all kinds of “national securities.” They include economic security; energy security; environmental security; and even health, women’s, and food security. This proliferation of definitions has not always been for the good. In some instances, for example, it is merely a rebranding of domestic agendas to shift resources away from the Pentagon. In other cases, it is adjusting to the complexities of a changing international environment.

The following list provides definitions of the major contending views of non-military definitions of national security, with no analysis of their merits or deficiencies.

• Political security refers to protecting the sovereignty of the government and political system and the safety of society from unlawful internal threats and external threats or pressures. It involves both national and homeland security and law enforcement.
• Economic security involves not only protecting the capacity of the economy to provide for the people, but also the degree to which the government and the people are free to control their economic and financial decisions. It also entails the ability to protect a nation’s wealth and economic freedom from outside threats and coercion. Thus, it comprises economic policy and some law enforcement agencies but also international agreements on commerce, finance, and trade. Recently, it has been defined by some in a human security context to mean eradicating poverty and eliminating income inequality.
• Energy and natural resources security is most often defined as the degree to which a nation or people have access to such energy resources as oil, gas, water, and minerals. It would be more accurate to describe it as access freely determined by the market without interference from other nations or political or military entities for non-market, political purposes.
• Homeland security is a set of domestic security functions that since 9/11 have been organized in a single agency, the Department of Homeland Security. It includes airport and port security, border security, transportation security, immigration enforcement, and other related matters.
• Cybersecurity refers to protection of the government’s and the peoples’ computer and data processing infrastructure and operating systems from harmful interference, whether from outside or inside the country. It thus involves not only national defense and homeland security, but also law enforcement.
• Human security refers to a concept largely developed at the United Nations after the end of the Cold War. It defines security broadly as encompassing peoples’ safety from hunger, disease, and repression, including harmful disruptions of daily life. Over time, the concept has expanded to include economic security, environmental security, food security, health security, personal security, community security, political security, and the protection of women and minorities. Its distinguishing characteristic is to avoid or downplay national security as a military problem between nation-states, focusing instead on social and economic causes and an assumed international “responsibility to protect” peoples from violence. It is to be determined and administered by the United Nations.
• Environmental security is an idea with multiple meanings. One is the more traditional concept of responding to conflicts caused by environmental problems such as water shortages, energy disruptions, or severe climate changes; it is assumed that these problems are “transnational” and thus can cause conflict between nations. The other, more recent concept is that the environment and the “climate” should be protected as ends in and of themselves; the assumption is that the environmental degradation caused by man is a threat that must be addressed by treaties and international governance as if it were the moral equivalent of a national security threat. In the past, natural disasters were not considered threats to national security, but that presumption is changing as the ideology of “climate change” and global warming takes hold in the national security community.

What National Security Is Not

It is true in life, as in strategic planning, that if you try to do everything, you will likely end up doing few things right. America’s definitions of national security should be guided not only by a sensible understanding of what is truly vital to the nation’s security, but also by what the nation can practically expect the government to do and not to do.

It is particularly important that the Department of Defense and armed forces understand this point. An “all of the above” definition of national security, which primarily suits political constituencies, will only lead to confusion, waste, distractions, and possibly even military failures as the U.S. government is asked to do things that are either beyond its capacity or, worse, tangential to the real mission of protecting the country from harm.

It is thus critical to identify what national security is not. The best way to do this is to establish clear criteria for what exactly constitutes a threat to national security.

Is it, for example, truly a threat to the American people and the American nation as a whole? Can it be tolerated, or must it be eliminated? If the latter, does the nation have the proper means to defeat, contain, or influence the threat? If not, can it obtain those means within a reasonable time frame to make a difference and at an affordable cost?

Is the threat external or internal? If internal, is it from foreign, unlawful, and unconstitutional sources and thus reasonably understood as hostile and a risk to peoples’ freedoms, or is it merely an act of lawful dissent or protest by Americans? The last thing the nation’s leaders should do is to mistake political dissent as a threat to homeland security; although surveillance and intelligence-gathering capabilities are necessary to combat terrorism, it is imperative that America’s leaders keep a bright line between watching terrorists and monitoring the political views of Americans.

Are the threats man-made or natural in origin? Natural disasters like hurricanes can be very dangerous, but even if one assumes they are caused by climate change (which is disputable), are they threats to the nation? Are “threats” from the weather, disease, or lack of food due to manipulations by states or terrorist groups or natural in origin, to be dealt with accordingly?

Finally, a crucial question: To what extent is the insecurity of other peoples related to our own? Does U.S. national security come into play only when the safety and security of allies who share America’s values and interests are endangered? Or is America committed generally not only to the safety and security of all peoples around the globe, but also to their health, human rights, and general well-being?

The answers to these questions are not difficult.

First, national security is not something that merely affects the well-being of Americans. Rather, it involves their safety, their security, and their freedoms. It is becoming more commonplace to view perceived social “injustices” as national security problems, but this distorts the very concept. Perceptions of social injustice or inequality are domestic concerns, not national security matters. Making less money than a neighbor is hardly as important to one’s life as being safe from incineration in a skyscraper in a terrorist attack.

A similar distinction holds true for so-called health security. While a pandemic disease could endanger the safety and security of thousands of Americans, unless it is committed as an act of biological terrorism, it should be considered a matter of health and domestic safety, not national security. As for the social implications, whether individuals have health insurance is vital to their lives, but that is a matter for them and their insurance agents or program administrators at the Department of Health and Human Services. It is a matter of “social” security, not national security.

Admittedly, global security concepts like health and human security come into play mainly overseas—in definitions of international security—and not in defining American security. But even there, some distinctions need to be made. “Food security” often means little more than preventing malnutrition or responding to famine caused either by natural causes or by political instability or war. The causes of these problems can be addressed through humanitarian aid, mediation, or (in extreme cases) peacekeeping or even military intervention, but little is gained by creating neologisms that may intend to heighten political concern but do little to help shape an adequate response for solving them.

A similar problem exists with the concept of environmental security. Clearly, wars can cause environmental damage and disruptions. Water shortages can create transnational and social tensions that may lead to conflict, and melting polar caps could open up waterways that exacerbate international tensions. As far as national and international security is concerned, however, the root causes of those conflicts are not environmental; they are political and military. Environmental issues are tangential and, at best, merely contributing factors. For example, Saddam Hussein did not burn the oilfields to damage the environment; he burned them to disrupt America’s military advance. Water shortages exist, but the problem begins when rival nations or groups start manipulating that scarcity for political purposes. Tensions with Russia over Arctic routes are rooted in Russia’s geopolitical ambitions, not in purported concerns about the ozone layer.

A current example of problematic thinking about national security can be found in ideas about environmental security and its link to climate change. Some purport that climate change is a “threat multiplier” insofar as it supposedly could create natural disasters, exacerbate conflicts, and make the operating environment for U.S. armed forces more difficult. Some also see it as a problem for “safeguarding the global commons,” which is a foreign policy problem. From this perspective, government policies focus on using international “engagement to transition to a low-carbon growth trajectory” for the entire planet. 2 As for the Pentagon’s new role, it is about studying global warming’s supposed impact on military installations, the operating environment, and the Arctic and the assumed increased role in humanitarian assistance and relief that it expects to be caused by “climate change–induced” disasters.

As noted earlier regarding the confused thinking that results when policymakers conflate social conditions or public health matters with “national security,” there are a number of questionable assumptions behind current environmental security policy. There may be a scientific consensus on the fact that the climate warmed for a period, but there is no consensus on how much it is still warming or exactly how factors like vapor and the sun contribute to it. Thus, the more alarmist predictions are unreliable.

This sort of uncertainty means not only that there may not be a grave threat, but also that, at the very least, we have little idea how bad it could be or when it could occur. One sympathetic study of the risks of climate change concluded confidently that there is a one-in-20 chance that catastrophic outcomes could cost $701 billion worth of coastal damage by the “end of the century.” 3 But that is 85 years away. In the computer modeling world it is fairly common to come up with such precise figures (why not $700 billion or $702 billion instead of $701 billion?), but in the real world—especially one that is almost nine decades away—many unpredictable things can and will happen.

Such unpredictability and such poorly disciplined thinking about national security are problematic for Pentagon planning. How do military planners make reliable plans for predictions that span almost a century and for which short-term predictions are highly unreliable? It may be appropriate for military planners to study possible long-range implications, especially for the Arctic if one assumes the global warming forecasts to be accurate, but it would be imprudent to assume that any specific adjustments to installations or operational planning can be made reliably for periods of time further out than 10 or 20 years. 4

Further, if things like climate change, global public health, or volcanic eruptions in some distant corner of the world are accepted as threats to national security, they are threats over which the United States does not exercise sovereignty. Yes, the U.S. could choose to do things to help improve the health of its citizens or mitigate the impact on its cities of changing weather patterns, but it stretches reason to assert that the U.S. military should be shaped to account for the policies and conditions of other countries and peoples relative to their own efforts in such cases.

Finally, there is the issue of energy security. All nations need energy to survive, but the market can supply most of their energy needs. Nations like Russia use energy as a geopolitical tool of coercion. Indeed, the Ukrainians can attest to how serious this coercion can be. Other nations like China make satisfying their energy-hungry economies a central part of their foreign policy. By and large, however, whatever attempts these and other countries make to use energy as a geopolitical tool run up against the demands of the international market. Oil and gas markets are highly influenced by nations and cartels, but they are also global in nature. This means that global economic demand also affects the price of energy and typically exerts greater leverage than do the actions of any one country.

Energy security thus becomes more a policy task of keeping the global energy market as free and open as possible than a programmatic objective of national security or even foreign policy. America’s main energy problem has been an intentional limit on domestic production and infrastructure like pipelines and liquid gas facilities. Although energy insecurity is a real problem for some nations, the solutions for the United States are largely economic and infrastructural in nature. Energy “security” is mainly about taking advantage of new techniques such as fracking, more drilling for oil, and building more refineries, pipelines, nuclear reactors, and liquid gas facilities at ports for export purposes.

Focusing the Idea of National Security

It is clear that policymakers need a sharper focus as to what is and is not national security. It cannot be all things to all people; if it were, it would be meaningless. The definition of national security must be limited not only to decide what the government should be expected to do, but also, just as important, to decide what it should not do. This is especially true because of budget restraints. While it is proper to task the U.S. government with protecting a spectrum of national security interests—from the financial and economic system to access to natural resources—the lion’s share of the government’s interest and thus budgetary resources should be dedicated to safeguarding the country and its interests from foreign aggression.

Focusing national security policy on what matters most requires a more accurate understanding of power. As mentioned earlier, power is the degree to which a state can influence and control its destiny. All too often in the debate over “trade-offs” between soft and hard power, people assume that the former is interchangeable with the latter. In its crudest interpretation, it is the misguided belief that U.S. diplomats and troops are somehow interchangeable. Diplomats, particularly skilled ones, are no doubt important to American security, but it is inaccurate to suggest that they and U.S. troops play the same or even similar roles.

It is not uncommon for elected and appointed officials to note that the foundation of all American power is hard or military power. Unfortunately, many seem to do this as a mere rhetorical flourish, but in reality, it is a hard fact of international relations. Without military power, soft power is largely symbolic and ineffective. America draws its reputation as a world leader from three sources, and none of them derives from the unique skills of U.S. diplomats. Those sources are America’s military power, its economic capacity, and its dedication to the values of freedom and democracy.

Much of the emphasis placed on soft power comes from a political desire to spend less on defense so as to have more to spend on diplomacy and foreign aid. It may very well be that more can be done in some of these areas, but that still begs the question of whether hard power and soft power are interchangeable.

Those who think that they are interchangeable, or that soft power is actually superior to hard power, point to the supposed success of the European Union, but this reveals a misunderstanding. The EU’s soft power diplomacy is influential only because Europe’s basic security needs, provided largely by America’s armed forces, are already being met. Not having to spend money on defense enables Europe to spend disproportionately on foreign aid and social development programs. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the confidence the world has in European stability is based in part on the security guarantee provided by the United States.

This is not a model that the United States has the luxury of following. Unlike Europe, the U.S. has no one to whom it can turn for its security. It is a net security provider, not a security taker as the Europeans are; for this reason alone, America’s hard military power responsibilities are unique and should be a top priority. This does not mean that the U.S. should not do a better job in diplomacy, foreign aid, and other means of soft power influence. It means only that any assumptions of zero-sum trade-offs between hard and soft power are fatuous.

Another false assumption is that the U.S. needs only to “rebalance” or “streamline” its way out of a need for military capacity. This presumes that shifting the military’s focus from one region to another or being more efficient with fewer resources committed to defense will somehow lessen the requirement for hard power. In fact, the opposite occurs. Less hard power capacity undermines the effectiveness and impact of soft power, encourages opportunism by competitors, and eventually leads to even greater demand for more hard power. For example, the rebalancing strategy in Asia has been largely rhetorical and diplomatic, covering up the fact that U.S. military capacity in East Asia is dwindling.

Moreover, the notion of a “whole of government” approach, which was prominent in the 2010 National Security Strategy, appears to assume that strenuous coordination in training across departments can replace the loss of hard power capacity. “Rebalancing” and “whole of government” sound sophisticated and almost prosaic; in reality, they are covers for America’s diminishing capacity to maintain its influential role in the world.

What National Security Is

Now that it is fairly clear what national security is not, the task of crafting a definition of what it is should be easier.

National security is the safekeeping of the nation as a whole. Its highest order of business is the protection of the nation and its people from attack and other external dangers by maintaining armed forces and guarding state secrets. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the defense of the homeland from terrorist and other attacks, broadly understood as homeland security, has risen as a major national security concern.

Because national security entails both national defense and the protection of a series of geopolitical, economic, and other interests, it affects not only defense policy, but foreign and other policies as well. Foreign and defense policies should be seen as mutually reinforcing, not as zero-sum trade-offs in budgetary fights. While hard choices will indeed have to be made in national security spending, they should be decided by realities, not by fatuous comparisons or incoherent and tendentious concepts.

The next question to address is how to attain national security. For decades, the United States has tried to answer this question with the official National Security Strategy (NSS). Unfortunately, these official documents have a bad reputation. They are often seen more as public relations exercises than as reliable guides for strategic planning.

Crafting a full NSS is beyond the scope of this essay, but as a bare outline, the U.S. should have goals that are clear, achievable, and mutually reinforcing. The following suggestions for National Security Strategy goals are listed in descending order of importance:

• Preserve the safety of the American homeland and protect the integrity of the nation’s domestic institutions and systems vital to that purpose. This goal requires strong Active, Guard, and Reserve forces as well as effective intelligence, law enforcement, counter-terrorism, cybersecurity, and immigration policies to protect the homeland and secure America’s borders.
• Maintain a global balance of power in favor of America’s security and interests and those of its friends and allies. This requires an armed force capable of successfully completing all of the military missions assigned to it and fulfilling U.S. commitments to defend the security of America’s allies and friends.
• Guarantee the freedom of the seas, upon which both the U.S. and world commerce and economic viability depend. This in particular requires a strong U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and overseas bases capable of supporting the projection of American power around the world.
• Exert U.S. influence as much as possible overseas through the entire spectrum of instruments of power, including diplomacy, foreign aid, selective intelligence sharing, public diplomacy, and human rights and humanitarian programs. This requires integrating U.S. diplomacy and foreign aid and humanitarian programs more closely to achieve the purposes of the national strategy.
• Dedicate America to maintaining as much as possible a global economy based on economic freedom (sometimes called democratic capitalism), including free trade and the openness of energy markets and international financial systems based on the rule of law.
• Focus U.S. energy security policy on developing domestic resources and keeping the international energy market as free as possible from harmful political manipulation.
• Ensure that America’s dedication to values and their promotion overseas reflects not only its own history of liberty, but also the universal principles of freedom—thus defining human rights as freedom of expression, the right of democratic self-government, economic freedom, equality before the law, and freedom from persecution and oppression. Values should guide and inform the nation’s strategy, not direct or control it. Geopolitical compromises will have to be made from time to time, and America should not see itself as the world’s policeman enforcing certain values. However, it is important to recognize that this nation’s commitments to universal values like freedom and democracy are reasons why foreign nations and peoples support America.

The Way Forward

Any discussion of national security must be rooted in a clear understanding of the concepts it involves. The following are the four most important takeaways from this analysis of national security.

Takeaway #1: Make capacity and flexibility the watchwords of strategic and military planning so as to give the President as Commander in Chief and his military leaders as many options as possible to deal with any contingency that may arise to threaten the nation. Understand that the more capacity and credibility U.S. forces have, the less likely it is that they will be challenged and the more able they will be to respond effectively to surprises when they occur, as they inevitably will. This “peace through strength” strategy is not just a slogan; it is a tried-and-true strategy pursued largely successfully during the Cold War to avoid actual war.

Takeaway #2: Avoid the trap of artificial “trade-offs” between non-military and military programs dedicated to national security. In the real world of budgets, there will always be hard choices, but political leaders and policymakers should avoid pretending that funding for a climate change program is anywhere nearly as important as funding for a new-generation fighter aircraft or for maintaining America’s fleet of aircraft carriers.

Takeaway #3: Focus non-military instruments of power and policies on supporting the discrete goals of national strategy listed above. This means consciously aligning U.S. diplomacy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, international trade and financial policies, and human rights policies to advancing discrete national interests. While this involves a global perspective as defined by the national strategy, it does not envision the use of these instruments of soft power either to create a global order of international governance run by international organizations or to bolster the existing international “system” in which the sovereignty of tyrants and human rights abusers is assumed to equal America’s own.

Takeaway #4: Be as clear as possible about what can and cannot be achieved by military intervention. Much of the controversy surrounding the issue of military intervention stems from confusion over what can and cannot be achieved by force and, just as important, over what Americans expect their armed forces to do. Are these troops nation builders and humanitarian police forces? Or are they military defenders of narrower security interests? In truth, they have been employed for all of these purposes with varying degrees of success, but the true trade-offs of doing so are scarcely ever understood and articulated by this nation’s leaders.

The United States cannot eliminate every bad actor, right every wrong, or correct every perceived injustice in the world. That is impossible. But the United States can contribute to building a world order in which the rule of law, the integrity of national borders, democratic capitalism, freedom of the seas, democratic self-government, human rights, and international trade prevail, not as guaranteed outcomes but as opportunities. It is an exhausting and costly enterprise, but no one else can do it. Not only that: It is for America’s own good.

• National Security Act of 1947 (Public Law 80-253), Section 101(a), now codified at (50 U.S.C. 3021).
• The White House, National Security Strategy , May 2010, p. 34, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf a (accessed September 15, 2014).
• Risky Business Project, Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States , June 2014, p. 4, http://riskybusiness.org/pdf (accessed September 15, 2014).
• Climate change policy supporters have been stymied by the now over 15-year temperature hiatus in the rise of the global temperatures. It is not something their computer models had predicted. Scientists are not sure why this is occurring, but at the very least, it shows the difficulty (if not futility) of using computer models to predict specific outcomes over 10- or 20-year time spans. See “Technical Summary” in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis: Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 61, http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_ALL_FINAL.pdf (accessed October 25, 2014). See also Judith Curry, “The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown,” The Wall Street Journal , October 9, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/articles/judith-curry-the-global-warming-statistical-meltdown-1412901060 (accessed October 28, 2014).

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• United Nations Report on Military Expenditures Searchable database of military expenditures by country.
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• Correlates of War Project Includes datasets on international relations topics, including international conflict, militarized international disputes, bilateral trade, and diplomatic exchanges.
• CPOST Suicide Attack Database Comprises the most complete and comprehensive list of suicide attacks since 1980. Hosted by University of Chicago's Project on Security & Terrorism.
• Global Terrorism Database Hosted by University of Maryland, an open-source database that includes information on terrorist events around the world. Includes data on domestic, transnational and international terrorist incidents.
• Terrorism & Preparedness Data Resource Center ICPSR-hosted archive containing data about terrorism, homeland security and government preparedness issues. Includes Terrorism and Preparedness Survey Archive with data from relevant surveys conducted around the world.
• World Handbook of Political Indicators A set of country-level measures of contentious political events. Covers 231 countries and territories using 40 event forms to identify 263,912 events. Political events are identified by searching Reuters news wire stories.

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• Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich An online library that specifically focuses on international relations and security studies. The library now includes approximately 75,000 open source books, chapters, articles, reports, transcripts, etc. Hosted by Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich
• Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Think tank with detailed reports on national security strategy, defense planning and military investment options for the 21st century.
• Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) One of top US think tanks on national security and international relations.
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• International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) British research institute with a focus on international security and international relations.
• James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) Largest non-governmental organization in the United States devoted exclusively to research and training on nonproliferation issues.
• National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism A university-based research center committed to the scientific study of the causes and human consequences of terrorism in the United States and across the globe.
• Rand Corporation A non-profit research think tank that publishes over 17,000 reports dating from 1948. Topics include criminal justice, national security, terrorism and international affairs.

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• Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute The website of HURI features extensive information on Ukraine, both historical and contemporary, including MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine and a dedicated page with background and updates on Russia's War on Ukraine .
• Congressional Research Service: Reports on Ukraine This links to a search for constantly updated research and analysis on Ukraine by CRS researchers.
• EastView Universal Databases (Harvard Login) This collection of databases covers news, scholarly periodicals, and a wealth of primary sources on Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian National Bibliography .
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National security is the ability of a country’s government to protect its citizens, economy, and other institutions. Beyond the obvious protection against military attacks, national security in the 21st century includes several non-military missions.

Key Takeaways: National Security

• National security is the ability of a country’s government to protect its citizens, economy, and other institutions.
• Today, some non-military levels of national security include economic security, political security, energy security, homeland security, cybersecurity, human security, and environmental security.
• To ensure national security, governments rely on tactics, including political, economic, and military power, along with diplomacy.

Concepts of Security 

For most of the 20th century, national security was strictly a matter of military power and readiness, but with the dawn of the nuclear age and the threats of the Cold War , it became clear that defining national security in a context of conventional military warfare had become a thing of the past. Today, U.S. government policymakers struggle to balance the demands of several “national securities.” Among these are economic security, political security, energy security, homeland security, cybersecurity, human security, and environmental security.

In a political context, this proliferation of “national security” definitions poses difficult challenges. In some cases, for example, they are simply a repurposing of domestic policy programs, such as infrastructure improvement, intended to shift funds and resources away from the military. In other cases, they are needed to respond to the complexities of a rapidly changing international environment. 

The modern world is characterized by perilous state-to-state relationships as well as conflicts within states caused by ethnic, religious, and nationalistic differences. International and domestic terrorism, political extremism , drug cartels , and threats created by information-age technology add to the turmoil. The sense of optimism for lasting peace after the end of the Vietnam War was shattered on September 11, 2001, by the terrorist attacks on the United States, the “ Bush Doctrine ,” and the seemingly perpetual war against international terrorism . The United States’ war against terrorism and constantly evolving concepts of warfare are politically intermixed with globalization , economic expansion, homeland security , and demands to extend American values through diplomacy .

During the response to the September 11 attacks, disputes within the national security establishment, Congress, and the public were temporarily muted. More recently, however, the U.S. involvement in Iraq and the continuing concerns about Iran and North Korea have magnified the challenges to U.S. national security policy and have caused a great degree of turmoil in the U.S. political system and foreign policy . In this environment, U.S. national security policy and priorities have become complicated—not due to the threat of major conventional war but because of the unpredictable characteristics of the international arena.

Today’s national security environment is complicated by a proliferation of a diverse range of violent non-state actors. Often by committing heinous acts of violence against innocent civilians, these groups utilize subversive means to exploit and disrupt the international system. 

Suicide bombers are inspired and trained by al Qaeda and its offshoots in Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, and Yemen. Somali pirates disrupt shipping, kidnapping civilians, and extorting governments. As part of a “blood oil” trade, warlords terrorize the Niger Delta. La Familia, a quasi-religious drug cartel, murders its way to control of Mexico’s drug trafficking routes. Such groups are also condemned for relying heavily on children under the age of 18 as combatants and in other supportive roles.

Conventional national security strategy is ill-equipped to deal with violent non-state actors. According to global security analysts, flexible arrangements in dealing with non-state armed actors will always be necessary. In general, three so-called “spoiler management” strategies have been suggested: positive propositions or inducements to counter demands made by non-state armed actors; socialization in order to change their behavior; and arbitrary measures to weaken armed actors or force them to accept certain terms.

Beyond spoiler management strategies, international peace-building and state-building efforts challenge the position of most of these non-state armed actors by attempting to strengthen or rebuild state structures and institutions. While peacebuilding works towards the establishment of sustainable peace in general, state-building focuses specifically on the construction of a functional state capable of maintaining that peace. Accordingly, peace-building is often followed by state-building efforts in a process of intervention by external actors.

In consideration of the new problems of defining national security, noted scholar of civil-military relations, the late Sam C. Sarkesian, prominent scholar of civil-military relations and national security, proposed a definition that includes both objective capability and perception: 

“U.S. national security is the ability of national institutions to prevent adversaries from using force to harm Americans.”

Goals and Priorities 

As first stated in “A National Security Strategy for a New Century,” released by the Bill Clinton administration in 1998, the primary goals of the U.S. national security strategy remain to protect the lives and safety of Americans; maintain the sovereignty of the United States, with its values, institutions, and territory intact; and provide for the prosperity of the nation and its people.

Similar to those of previous U.S. presidential administrations since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance , issued by President Joe Biden in March 2021, established the following fundamental national security goals and priorities:

• Defend and nurture the underlying sources of America’s strength, including its people, economy, national defense, and democracy;
• Promote a favorable distribution of power to deter and prevent adversaries from directly threatening the United States and its allies, inhibiting access to global natural resources, or dominating key regions; and
• Lead and sustain a stable and open international system, underwritten by strong democratic alliances, partnerships, multilateral institutions, and rules.

Increasingly, the U.S. national security strategy is required to confront an international environment characterized by intense geopolitical challenges to the United States—predominately from China and Russia, but also from Iran, North Korea , and other regional powers and factions.

Even two decades after the event, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the resulting War on Terror continue to have a significant influence on U.S. security policy. Aside from the devastating human losses, the 9/11 attacks brought a better understanding of the scale and importance of the global nature of the terrorism threat. America’s defense and political leaders gained greater will and ability to commit the resources necessary to fight terrorism most effectively. The War on Terror also ushered in a new generation of policies like the USA Patriot Act, prioritizing national security and defense, even at the expense of some civil liberties .

Lasting Effects of the War on Terror

Twenty years after the 9/11 terror attacks, the World Trade Center has been rebuilt , Osama bin Laden is dead at the hands of a U.S. Navy Seal team, and on September 1, 2021, the last U.S. soldiers left Afghanistan , ending America's longest war while leaving the country in the control of the Taliban. Today, Americans continue to grapple with the ripple effects of the government’s response to the most impactful national security crisis since Pearl Harbor . 

The new powers granted to law enforcement agencies by the USA Patriot Act expanded beyond the original mission of counterterrorism. In dealing with criminal suspects who had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, police departments adopted body armor, military vehicles, and other surplus equipment from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, blurring the line between warfare abroad and law enforcement at home.

As the U.S. Congress voted to pour trillions of dollars into nation-building projects, particularly the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the unprecedented level of support for bolstering military power crossed into the realm of domestic policy as politicians attached what might be unpopular policy goals to the military and its role in national security. This often dumbed down debate on the issues, with the public—and politicians—blindly supporting what was presented as being “good for the military,” even when it often was not.  

While almost 3,000 people died on 9/11, those deaths were only the beginning of the human costs of the attacks. The attacks led the United States to invade Afghanistan and Iraq while sending troops to dozens of other countries as part of the “Global War on Terror.” Nearly 7,000 U.S. military personnel died in those conflicts, along with about 7,500 U.S. contractors, with many thousands more wounded from the all-volunteer military. Unlike previous wars like WWI , WWII , and Vietnam , the “War on Terror” never involved the use of the military draft .

Even greater has been the toll on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 170,000 people, including over 47,000 civilians, have been killed in Afghanistan as a direct result of the military conflicts; when indirect causes, such as destroyed infrastructure, are taken into account, that number reaches well over 350,000. In Iraq, estimates are between 185,000 and 209,000 civilian deaths; this number may be much lower than the actual death toll, given the difficulty of reporting and confirming deaths. On top of these casualties, hundreds of thousands of people have become refugees due to the violence and upheaval in their homelands.

National and Global Security

Since the War on Terror became a multinational effort there has been an attempt to establish a dividing line between national security and global security. Professor of Security Studies Samuel Makinda has defined security as “the preservation of the norms, rules, institutions, and values of society.” National security has been described as the ability of a country to provide for the protection and defense of its citizenry. Thus, Makinda’s definition of security would seem to fit within the confines of national security. Global security, on the other hand, involves security demands such as nature—in the form of climate change, for example—and globalization, which have been placed on countries and entire regions. These are demands for which no single country’s national security apparatus can handle on its own and, as such, require multinational cooperation. The global interconnection and interdependence among countries experience since the end of the Cold War makes it necessary for countries to cooperate more closely. 

The strategies of global security include military and diplomatic measures taken by nations individually and cooperatively through international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO to ensure mutual safety and security.

In safeguarding national security, governments rely on a range of tactics, including political, economic, and military power, along with diplomatic efforts. In addition, governments attempt to build regional and international security by reducing transnational causes of insecurity, such as climate change , terrorism, organized crime, economic inequality , political instability, and nuclear weapons proliferation. 

In the United States, national security strategies pertain to the U.S. government as a whole and are issued by the president with the consultation of the Department of Defense (DOD). Current federal law requires the president to periodically deliver to Congress a comprehensive National Defense Strategy.  

Along with stating the DODs approach to contending with current and emerging national security challenges, the National Defense Strategy is intended to explain the strategic rationale for programs and priorities to be funded in the DOD’s annual budget requests. 

Issued in 2018, the most recent U.S. National Defense Strategy the DOD recommends that due to an unprecedented erosion of international political order, the U.S. should increase its military advantage relative to the threats posed by China and Russia. The Defense Strategy further maintains that “inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” 

Successful implementation of any national security strategy must be conducted on two levels: physical and psychological. The physical level is an objective, quantifiable measure based on the capacity of the country’s military to challenge its adversaries, including going to war if necessary. It further anticipates a more prominent security role for nonmilitary factors, such as intelligence, economics, and diplomacy, and the ability to use them as political-military levers in dealings with other countries. For example, to help bolster its energy security, U.S. foreign policy employs economic and diplomatic tactics to reduce its dependence on oil imported from politically unstable regions such as the Middle East. The psychological level, by contrast, is a far more subjective measurement of the people’s willingness to support the government’s efforts to achieve national security goals. It requires that a majority of people have both the knowledge and political will to support clear strategies intended to achieve clear national security goals.   

• Romm, Joseph J. “Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects.” Council on Foreign Relations, April 1, 1993, ISBN-10: ‎0876091354.
• Sarkesian, Sam C. (2008) “US National Security: Policymakers, Processes & Politics.” Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., October 19, 2012, ISBN-10: 158826856X.
• McSweeney, Bill. “Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations.” Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN: 9780511491559.
• Osisanya, Segun. “National Security versus Global Security.” United Nations , https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/national-security-versus-global-security.
• Mattis, James. “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.” U.S. Department of Defense , 2018, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.
• Biden, Joseph R. “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.” The White House, March 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf.
• Makinda, Samuel M. “Sovereignty and Global Security, Security Dialogue.” Sage Publications, 1998, ISSN: 0967-0106.
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Matters of national security have concerned the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) ever since its founding in 1955. They are especially concerning during times of war—as the United States has been every day since September 11, 2001. But today’s national security threats are not solely related to matters of terrorism. The contemporary geopolitical environment contains myriad threats and challengers to the United States and its interests.

National security is a complex and multifaceted topic. This book demonstrates this reality by presenting both breadth and depth across topics ranging from grand strategy to military culture, from nuclear deterrence to irregular warfare. While the articles offer snapshots of individual events over the past ten years, the overall coverage should, like Janus, allow the reader both to look back in time and also to contemplate the future.

Such looking forward and backward will be essential for coping with the challenges the United States confronts against threats and challengers such as, to name just a few, the Islamic State, a revanchist Russia, or a rising China. Legitimate questions will also arise over what the nation’s priorities should be and what areas of the budget should be well funded and which areas should be less well funded. Those are points of genuine debate. This work will have succeeded if it spurs such debate and promotes civic literacy on the broad topic of national security.

This volume honors the 60 th anniversary of the Institute by presenting a collection of writings published by FPRI and produced by both FPRI and non-FPRI scholars over the past decade. It is a large collection of writing. It has to be because much has happened. The layout of the sections here should allow those readers not interested in reading the entire volume to jump around to particular authors or subjects of interest. If you enjoy what you find here, visit us on the web to read, see, and hear more—or even better, become a member, a member at a higher level, or a partner, and support the sustained production of quality scholarship and analysis on national security.

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Introduction Seventy-five years ago, the US Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947 to address the shortcomings in national security that had been identified in the run up to and during WWII. At the beginning of the nuclear age, and with the Soviet Union looming as the primary challenger to the US and democratic countries, the Congress established institutions including the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency to meet the national security needs of the 20th century. Given that much has changed in the world since 1947, the Intelligence Project decided to put the question of our national security posture for the 21st century out to the public in the form of an essay contest. The Intelligence Project in conjunction with the Applied History Project then held a one day symposium on the topic, featuring the winning papers.

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Adopting a Whole-of-Society Approach to Terrorism and Counterterrorism

by Nicholas Rasmussen

September 10, 2021

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9/11 Twentieth Anniversary , Counterterrorism , Domestic Terrorism

(Editor’s note: This essay is part of a  Symposium  published for the twentieth anniversary of September 11th; co-organized by Just Security and the Reiss Center on Law and Security.)

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, there is a genuine responsibility to assess anew the terrorism and extremism environment within which we in the United States currently find ourselves. Beyond that, we need also to consider with an open mind whether the strategy and policy approaches we have been relying on in the past two decades are well-suited to the evolving challenges we face.

As we approach that 20-year anniversary, my answer to the latter question is a clear “no.” Particularly with the growing threat to public safety and security posed by domestic violent extremism, it is essential that we move beyond the post-9/11 counterterrorism strategy paradigm that placed government at the center of most counterterrorism work. Viewed from the perspective of a private citizen and former senior government official responsible for counterterrorism matters, there is a clear imperative to mature and evolve our counterterrorism strategies from a focus on integrating a “whole-of-government” effort to a much wider, more expansive and inclusive “whole-of-society” approach to addressing our terrorism and violent extremism challenges.

That wider circle must not only include state and local governments, but also the private sector (to include technology companies), civil society in the form of both individual voices and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and academia. A whole-of-society approach promises to be in many ways more messy, more complicated, and more frustrating in terms of delivering outcomes. All that said, adopting this broader perspective offers the best chance of managing or mitigating the diverse, constantly changing threat we face from terrorism, particularly inside the United States.

Evolution of the Threat

In recent years, the most efficient way to track the federal government’s evolving view of the terrorist threat to Americans has been to review the Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community . Publication of that document, and the ensuing public testimony before U.S. congressional committees by senior intelligence officials, represents the best chance for our Intelligence Community (IC) to speak publicly about its assessment of the full range of threats to U.S. national security. As in prior years, this year’s assessment catalogues and updates the threat picture tied to Sunni terrorist groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their various affiliates and networks around the world. Two decades after 9/11, that is largely familiar stuff, and that aspect of the threat promises to be persistent over time given security challenges in key conflict zones around the world.

Where this year’s assessment breaks new ground for the IC is with its focused treatment of what the Community calls Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs). The IC this year assesses that DVEs “motivated by a range of ideologies not connected to or inspired by jihadi terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS pose an elevated threat to the United States.” The assessment further notes that this “diverse set of extremists reflects an increasingly complex threat landscape, including racially or ethnically motivated threats and antigovernment or antiauthority threats.”

Beyond the abbreviated treatment of the domestic extremism threat in its annual comprehensive assessment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) went on to publish a more focused threat assessment of the DVE problem in March of this year. The IC’s effort to elevate analysis and discussion of the threat posed by DVEs is important because it puts the federal government on record and helps signal heightened priority focus across the CT and homeland security enterprise, which ultimately will help drive resource allocation.

But this year’s assessment hardly comes as any surprise given the increased prevalence of domestic terrorist attacks or events we’ve seen in recent years. Indeed, if most Americans were asked if they felt more at risk from a homeland terrorist attack linked to a domestic group/actor or to an overseas group/actor, I suspect the large majority would cite the DVE threat as feeling more imminent and more acutely dangerous to the average person living in the United States. And statistically, it is, indeed, the greater threat . As the Washington Post has noted, nearly every state has catalogued at least one domestic extremist incident or plot in recent years, suggesting that there the reach and potential impact of the DVE problem has eclipsed other forms of terrorism here inside the United States.

The net result of this evolving threat landscape is that domestic terror concerns now sit alongside homeland threats linked to overseas terrorist groups or ideologies, on roughly equal footing in terms of the level of urgency, political salience, and policy prioritization. Perhaps the best evidence that this transformation of the threat picture had taken place was the early effort by the incoming Biden administration to prioritize the development of fresh approaches to address domestic extremism and terrorism. This was almost certainly intended to be an early priority for President Biden’s team even before the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, but the attack on the Capitol certainly added impetus to the effort.

The announcement on Jan. 22, 2021 of a domestic terrorism policy review led by the National Security Council (NSC) staff and the fast-track development of a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism signaled early urgency and immediate focus at the highest levels of the Biden team. These moves also suggested that the new administration did not feel adequately postured to address this particular threat landscape in terms of the strategy, programs, and resource framework that it inherited from the Trump administration.

What Does the Changing Threat Landscape Mean for CT Strategy?  

This evolution in the threat landscape should cause us to reexamine with a critical eye the set of tools, strategies, and structures that we are using to respond. For the entire post-9/11 period, senior officials under the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations have touted their development of “whole-of-government” approaches to addressing the CT challenges we faced, mostly from abroad. In so doing, we aimed to reassure the American people that the federal government was taking an expansive, creative approach to keeping them safe. We were not simply relying on one set of tools tied to our law enforcement community or another set of tools operated by either our military or our intelligence community. That whole-of-government mindset was also driven by the painful self-examination and lessons learned exercise that followed the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission recommendations certainly pointed to a need for a more coherent and coordinated federal response to terrorism, but even without that roadmap, counterterrorism professionals knew instinctively that new ways of doing business across government were required to respond to the al-Qaeda threat.

A whole-of-government approach meant that whenever we confronted a particular terrorism problem, the White House and NSC staff would organize an effort to bring all tools and instruments of national power into an integrated effort to address that problem. These diverse tools, to be orchestrated and sequenced, included the use of military power when absolutely necessary, but also diplomatic influence, intelligence operations and collection and analysis, law enforcement operations, capacity building, financial tools, international development and foreign assistance programs, and our strategic communications capacity.

Embedded within the whole-of-government approach to terrorism was a presumption that the federal government was not only the primary actor when it comes to terrorism and counterterrorism work but in most cases the only actor of consequence in terms of being able to deliver positive outcomes and mitigate threats to Americans. We of course were also heavily reliant on the capacity of state and local governments and partners responsible for their share of the homeland security enterprise. But for the most part, development and execution of counterterrorism strategy was a Washington-centric project for both Republican and Democratic administrations since 9/11. Today’s evolving threat landscape, and in particular the emergence of a dramatically heightened threat from domestic violent extremists, renders that whole-of-government approach to counterterrorism wholly insufficient.

Toward a Whole-of-Society Approach to Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism

While we should not absolve government of its obligation to lead and organize societal response to the problem of terrorism and violent extremism, the set of actors and sectors with at least some degree of responsibility for contributing to solutions extends well beyond government. We stand a much better chance of achieving results with our CT strategies if those strategies reflect input and active participation from that diverse set of stakeholders beyond government and seek to harness the knowledge, expertise, and comparative advantage that exist outside the classified circle of CT experts centered in Washington. This wider set of contributors, or stakeholders, includes:

The private sector, including technology companies.  In the past, content associated with known Salafi-Jihadi terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS was widely available on larger, more mainstream social media platforms. It is also true that many of those platforms have invested significant effort and resources in building content moderation capabilities to remove that content when it violates their terms of service frameworks. Today, terrorists and violent extremists continue to take advantage of the online environment to further their agenda, but the problem has expanded to include exploitation of many different online service providers and different components of the technology stack by a broader range of actors and organizations across the ideological spectrum. That evolving reality imposes on the private sector special responsibility to be more creative and agile in the effort to develop effective tools, policies, and approaches to addressing terrorist or violent extremist content or activity on their platforms and services. Clearly, more needs to be done by industry to limit the ability of terrorists to exploit the online environment.

At the same time, the many questions private companies face in this context are not easy and many potential solutions come with unintended consequences. Countering terrorism and violent extremism are important societal objectives, but those objectives cannot be pursued at the expense of other equally important principles and priorities, to include respect for fundamental human rights such as freedom of expression. When companies look to governments for guidance in the form of law or policy with respect to many of these complicated questions, what they often see is an incomplete and sometimes conflicting patchwork of measures and legal frameworks.

When we take stock of the last several years of back-and-forth between the U.S. government and the technology sector on this set of problems, it’s possible for two things to be simultaneously true. Several of the largest and most prominent tech companies have shown a willingness to tackle these problems more aggressively, to devote significant resources to that work, and to deepen their conversation with government about those efforts. At the same time, clearly, much more work needs to be done by those leading companies and by governments to eliminate terrorist activity on the internet as the problem of online terrorism and extremism continues to evolve.

Put simply, government and the private sector, certainly for the foreseeable future, will each have a critical role to play in addressing the societal challenge of terrorism and violent extremism. Governments look to companies to be more effective and forward leaning in promptly enforcing their terms of service. Companies increasingly look to governments for greater clarity on the policy and legal landscape, reducing the need for companies to go it alone in making decisions about designation frameworks or banned content. Creating open channels for that dialogue is essential. The organization of which I am the Executive Director, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, or GIFCT, serves as one of those vehicles for collaboration and dialogue between and among the various actors.

Civil society, to include the full array of relevant NGOs and independent voices.  The ways in which civil society voices and organizations can contribute to CT strategies, particularly in the context of DVEs, is worthy of a much longer discussion than this essay allows. Suffice to say that much of the most important and effective work being done to prevent the spread of hatred, violent extremism, and targeted violence takes place at the local or community level. It is encouraging that the Biden administration has moved quickly to capitalize on that source of strength by both emphasizing this work as part of its new national strategy, while also planning to expand the pool of federal funds available to support it.

Civil society voices also play a critical role in engaging with government and the technology sector on terrorism questions, particularly with respect to content moderation, to ensure that the work undertaken in pursuit of CT objectives has the impact of advancing fundamental human rights, especially freedom of expression. Inclusion of civil society voices in the effort to develop effective CT strategies increases significantly the chances that those strategies will be reflective of society as a whole and broadly consistent with our set of collective values.

Academics and other subject matter experts.  One of my most embarrassing personal blind spots during my period of government service working on terrorism issues centered on my failure to appreciate just how much knowledge and expertise existed outside of government on the problem that I was focused on inside government. Those of us “inside” tended to believe, or at least to act like, we had access to the best information and that our strategic insights were therefore informed by that knowledge advantage. Sitting outside government as I now do, that mindset seems myopic at best and absurdly self-defeating at worst. The deep reservoir of expertise and information on all forms of terrorism and violent extremism that exists outside of government remains untapped in my view. That is partly a result of the focus and investment of resources in the academic world that has taken place over the last twenty years. It is also a reflection of the fact that so much terrorism information and activity resides or is accessible in the open source environment, where a government analyst is no more privileged with access than any other smart terrorism expert.

The glimmer of good news is that the Biden administration’s new Domestic Terrorism strategy plainly acknowledges that government does not have a monopoly on wisdom or information with respect to this problem. The strategy calls upon DHS to “create a structured mechanism for receiving and sharing within government credible non-governmental analysis.”  That’s an important admission that successful government strategies will hinge on input, analysis, and information from outside government, where relevant expertise is available.

Other governments. Collaboration between the federal government with both state and local governments here in the United States and with partner governments abroad has long been a feature of U.S. CT strategies. That collaboration needs to deepen even further as CT resources are redirected to address other high priority national security challenges. Terrorists, even domestic terrorists, will continue to show a complete disregard for international borders. Terrorist and extremist narratives circulate freely across the world, as does relevant expertise, advice, and encouragement. That content is also translated and localized for particular audiences all over the world. Any successful approach to our CT problems will contain an important degree of both burden sharing and tangible cooperation with governments at every level.

Having argued that successful CT strategies must be more inclusive and reflective of the genuinely multi-stakeholder nature of the problem, I would not make the case that involving the full array of stakeholders is easy or always comfortable. More voices representing more constituencies can often bring more discord, disparate and competing priorities, and multiple paths to solutions that are often at odds with each other. A whole-of-society approach to our CT problems is certain to be messy, complicated, and at times very unrewarding. It may not be possible to devise policies or strategies that are acceptable to all of the various participants. The effort to arrive at a common set of solutions to a complex problem like terrorism, especially given the diverse nature of the stakeholder community, may seem literally impossible. And yet, working outside that multi-stakeholder framework ultimately limits the efficacy and impact of CT strategies before they are even conceived or developed.

Innovation of Institutions

If it is true that whole-of-society, multi-stakeholder engagement is essential to the effort to develop and implement sound CT strategy and policy, then where and how should that engagement take place? What institutions and fora can we potentially look to for inspiration and example as we try to create and mature this sort of innovative framework for policy development? Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of history on which to draw in this space and I would argue that this work is still very much in an early proof-of-concept phase. That said, there are in fact nascent efforts to create just these sorts of engagement frameworks.

One of those, the Christchurch Call , emerged out of the horrific attack on members of the New Zealand Muslim community in March 2019. Organized and driven by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, the Christchurch Call has brought together in common cause more than 50 countries and governments with almost a dozen of the major online service providers. That assembly of Call supporters is bolstered further by an Advisory Network that includes dozens of civil society organizations from around the world. In only its second year of existence, the Christchurch Call forum has quickly become an essential convening ground for government, technology companies, academics, and civil society as they work together to eliminate terrorist activity and content online.

The organization of which I am the Executive Director, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, or GIFCT , is similarly postured to carry forward this multi-stakeholder work to counter terrorism, and specifically its online dimensions. GIFCT was initially formed in 2017 by YouTube/Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter for the purpose of bringing together key technology companies to collaborate across traditionally competitive company lines to pursue the shared objective of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting the internet. GIFCT also maintains a robust connection to civil society and government through its own International Advisory Committee (IAC), its multi-sector thematic Working Groups that convene to address hard problems at the nexus of technology and terrorism, and to the academic world through its research and scholarship arm, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology .

Both of these organizations are still early in their development and are testing the limits of what is ultimately possible. Over the last year, I have experienced firsthand how worthwhile this trial effort to utilize multi-stakeholder approaches to public policy challenges can be. What these fora have already proven is that they can be essential convening bodies for discussions about the nature of the evolving terrorist threat, the set of common objectives that should be pursued to mitigate that threat environment, and about measures of success in the overall effort to counter terrorism online.

Reaching consensus around big questions such as these is no small feat and represents an important step forward in efforts to craft whole-of-society approaches to one of our most pressing national security challenges. Participation in these multi-sector processes and fora also helps create accountability as each participant is expected to speak clearly to the work they are doing and the results that their work is producing. Driving real progress and delivering concrete CT results that mitigate and reduce the threat from terrorism, while striving to be inclusive of critical diverse voices and committing to be more transparent in our processes, is the next challenge on the horizon.

About the Author(s)

Nicholas rasmussen.

Executive Director of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. Served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) from December 2014 until December 2017. He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. Follow him on Twitter ( @NicholasRasmu15 ).

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Cybersecurity has been an evergreen subject recently. According to Daniele Irandoost, cyberspace has had many benefits in almost every important country’s sector (Irandoost, 2018). The initial intention for developing cyberspace was to open avenues for people to communicate unlimitedly and promote efficiency in operations. Equally, cyberspace has been a safe harbor for criminals to plan and execute operations that can be catastrophic to humanity. A report by the US intelligence indicates technology as the immediate threat to national security. Such a report raises the question of whether the threat of cyberspace outweighs its benefits (Irandoost, 2018). However, if the security of cyberspace is critically evaluated and all the risks eliminated, cyberspace can be an asset that will continue to transform the world (Irandoost, 2018). Consequently, cybersecurity is vital for national security and could cause a disaster unprecedented in the world if it is at risk.

One of the controversial points concerning ethics in this article is a breach of personal data. It is unethical to use someone else’s information without their consent. Most of the crimes committed on the internet involve gaining access to someone’s information and using it for manipulation, intimidation, and blackmailing for financial or political gain. This unethical behavior amounts to fraud and has often been employed on innocent people. Cyberspace has also been the center of spreading false information, causing it to influence public opinion towards an individual or a particular policy, causing great suffering to the victims.

I side with the idea that cyberspace poses a significant threat to national security. My stance is based on the various instances where the internet has been used to cause significant damage to a particular sector. There have been increased hacking cases and bypassing security measures where criminals have gained access to sensitive information. This instance indicates how cyberspace has brought our enemies close than we never imagined. Consequently, a major disaster will strike that will affect the entire nation if cybersecurity is not treated with the sensitivity it deserves.

Irandoost, D. (2018). Cybersecurity: A National Security Issue? . E-International Relations. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, February 24). Cybersecurity: The Matter of National Security. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cybersecurity-the-matter-of-national-security/

"Cybersecurity: The Matter of National Security." IvyPanda , 24 Feb. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/cybersecurity-the-matter-of-national-security/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Cybersecurity: The Matter of National Security'. 24 February.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Cybersecurity: The Matter of National Security." February 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cybersecurity-the-matter-of-national-security/.

1. IvyPanda . "Cybersecurity: The Matter of National Security." February 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cybersecurity-the-matter-of-national-security/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Cybersecurity: The Matter of National Security." February 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cybersecurity-the-matter-of-national-security/.

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National Security Strategy Aims to Address New Challenges

The world is at an inflection point, and the new National Security Strategy unveiled yesterday is designed to address this new world, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security advisor, said.

Sullivan, who spoke today at Georgetown University, compared the situation to the immediate post-World War II era when then-President Harry S. Truman promulgated the strategy that ultimately toppled the Soviet Union. 

As Truman did before him, this new strategy is Biden's moment to define the challenges facing the United States and detail the steps needed to steer the U. S., its allies and partners through such perilous times. 

"Today, our world is once again at an inflection point," he said. "We are in the early years [of] a decisive decade. The terms of our competition with the People's Republic of China will be set. The window of opportunity to deal with shared challenges like climate change will narrow drastically, even as the intensity of those challenges grows. So, we need to grasp our moment, just as Truman did his."

Spotlight: Tackling the Climate Crisis The strategy is used to set budgets, encourage cooperation, advance diplomacy, steer investment, and much more. DOD's National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy take their cues from the National Security Strategy. 

The strategy "touches on our plans and partners in every region of the world," Sullivan said. "It details the president's vision of a free, open, prosperous and secure international order. And it offers a road map for seizing this decisive decade to advance America's vital interests, position America and our allies to outpace our competitors, and build broad coalitions to tackle shared challenges." 

The strategy focuses on two main strategic challenges. The first is the geopolitical competition the United States faces with China and Russia.  

Sullivan said the United States "is better positioned than any other nation in the world to seize this moment — to help set the rules, shore up the norms, and advance the values that will define the world we want to live in."

Russia is another challenge — one that comes with its own set of risks. "Russia's war against Ukraine builds on years of growing, regional aggression," the national security advisor said. "Russian President Vladimir Putin is making reckless nuclear threats, willfully violating the U.N. charter, relentlessly targeting civilians, [and] acting with a brutality that threatens to drag us all back into the dark days of Soviet expansionism." 

The second strategic challenge deals with the sheer scale and speed of transnational challenges that do not respect borders or adhere to ideologies, Sullivan said.

This challenge is exacerbated by climate change, which is already destroying lives and livelihoods in every part of the world, he said. Climate change is causing increased food and energy insecurity. Other challenges —  including COVID-19 — further roil the waters. "Our strategy proceeds from the premise that the two strategic challenges — geopolitical competition and shared transnational threats — are intertwined," Sullivan said. "We cannot build the broad coalitions we need to out-compete our rivals, if we sideline the issues that most directly impact the lives of billions of people."

Problems must be addressed, and — contrary to what some Americans may believe — they must be addressed globally, Sullivan said. "We are building a strategy fit for purpose for both competition we cannot ignore and global cooperation without which we cannot succeed." 

Sullivan said the timelines align. "This is a decisive decade for shaping the terms of competition, especially with the PRC [China]," he said. "This is a decisive decade for getting ahead of the great global challenges — from climate to disease to emerging technology."

Spotlight: Science & Tech The key to U.S. success in the coming years is investing ambitiously and rapidly in the sources of our national strength, Sullivan said. 

The second step is to mobilize the broadest coalition of nations to enhance U.S. influence. 

A third step is to work with other nations to shape the rules of the road for the 21st century economy.  

"Our approach encompasses all elements of our national power — diplomacy, development cooperation, industrial strategy, economic statecraft, intelligence and defense," Sullivan said. 

On the defense element, the strategy stresses that the United States must equip the military and intelligence enterprises for strategic competition, while maintaining the capability to disrupt the terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland, he said. Spotlight: Support for Ukraine

"The war in Ukraine … also highlights the need for a vibrant Defense Industrial Base — one that is capable of rapid mobilization and tooled for innovation and creative adaptation," he said. "All of these steps we take at home are force-multiplied by another core source of our American strength — our alliances."

Sullivan said the United States has re-engaged with allies and partners around the world. The Defeat ISIS coalition and the Ukraine Defense Assistance Group are examples of this portion of the strategy. "If there's anything that's a true hallmark of Joe Biden's approach to the world, it is an investment in America's allies," he said. "A few years ago, NATO was working overtime to justify its value proposition. Today, it is at its apex of its purpose and power." Spotlight: NATO In the Indo-Pacific, the United States reaffirmed iron-clad commitments to our treaty allies. "We've elevated a new partnership of democracies — the Quad — to help drive our vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific," he said. "One of the things that we are doing as we strengthen our alliances, is to drive more strategic alliance between the Atlantic and the Pacific."

Within DOD, the National Defense Strategy draws from the White House document and at its heart is integrated deterrence. Secretary Austin has discussed this idea of the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits. 

Integrated deterrence calls for unprecedented cooperation across all domains of warfare — land, air, maritime, cyber and space. It also calls for cooperation with non-military domains — including economic, technological and information, according to the National Security Strategy.  

 "... Understanding that our competitors combine expansive ambitions with growing capabilities to threaten U.S. interests in key regions and in the homeland," the strategy states.

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Home » Security Issues » National Security

National Security

• National security has been described as the ability of a state to cater for the protection and defence of its citizenry. India’s national security is determined by its internal stability and geopolitical interests .
• Originally conceived as protection against military attack, national security is now widely understood to include also non-military dimensions , including the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, cyber-security etc.
• National security risks include, in addition to the actions of other nation states, action by violent non-state actors.
• The  National Security Council (NSC) of India is an executive government agency tasked with advising the Prime Minister’s Office on matters of national security and strategic interest.
• The  National Security Advisor (NSA) is the senior official on the National Security Council of India, and the chief adviser to the Prime Minister of India on national security policy and international affairs.
• It allows  preventive detention for months, if authorities are satisfied that a person is a threat to national security or law and order.
• The person  does not need to be charged during this period of detention.
• The goal is  to prevent the individual from committing a crime.
• It was promulgated on September 23, 1980

As per the National Security Act, the grounds for preventive detention of a person include:

• acting in any manner prejudicial to the defence of India, the relations of India with foreign powers, or the security of India.
• regulating the continued presence of any foreigner in India or with a view to making arrangements for his expulsion from India.
• preventing them from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the State or from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order or from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community it is necessary so to do.
• Under the National Security Act , an individual can be detained without a charge for up to 12 months; the state government needs to be intimated that a person has been detained under the NSA.
• A person detained under the National Security Act can be held for 10 days without being told the charges against them.
• The detained person can appeal before a high court advisory board but they are not allowed a lawyer during the trial.

Criticisms :

• The NSA has repeatedly come under criticism for the way it is used by the police. As per a Law Commission report from 2001, more than 14 lakh people (14,57,779) were held under preventive laws in India.

How Is It Draconian ?

Typically, if a person is arrested, then he/she enjoy certain rights bestowed by the Indian Constitution. The person has to be informed of the reason for the arrest. Under Section 50 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), the person arrested has to be informed.

• However, in the case of the NSA, the person can be held up to ten days without being informed of the reason.
• Sections 56 and 76 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) guarantee the detained person to be produced before a court within 24 hours. Apart from this, Article 22(1) of the Constitution allows the detainee to seek legal advice from a legal practitioner. However, under the NSA, none of these above-mentioned basic rights is permitted to the suspect.

Powerless National Security Council (NSC) :

• First, The National Security Council (NSC) set up in 1998 almost never meets, primarily because it is an advisory body, with the Cabinet Committee on Security being the executive body.
• If the NSC is to be made more useful, the government’s allocation of business rules should be amended to give more powers to the NSC and its subordinate organizations, such as the Strategic Policy Group.

Second, the job of the National Security Adviser needs to be reimagined:

• Even though the NSA plays a vital role in national security, he has no legal powers as per the government’s allocation of business rules.
• The C. Pant Task Force in the late 1990s had recommended the creation of an NSA with the rank of a Cabinet Minister.
• Over the years, the NSA’s powers have increased, even though he is not accountable to Parliament. The institution of the NSA today requires more accountability and legal formality.
• A  National Security Strategy   or Policy (NSS or NSP) is a  key framework for a country to meet the basic needs and security concerns of citizens, and address external and internal threats to the country.
• The Indian state does not possess an overarching national security strategy (NSS) that comprehensively assesses the challenges to the country’s security and spells out policies to deal effectively with them.
• A well-defined national strategy is a clear vision of the path that India must take in pursuit of its national vision. It also provides a guide for all organs of the state on the policy directions that they must follow.
• Such a strategy must be executed within the parameters laid down by the Constitution of India and the country’s democratic political dispensation. 

Need for National Security Strategy:

• A modern state confronts multiple and simultaneous challenges across several domains .
• National security cannot be confined to the use of the state’s coercive power to overcome domestic and external threats . For example, threats to domestic peace and stability may arise from economic and social grievances.
• A knee-jerk reaction may leave these grievances unaddressed while the use of coercive power exacerbates rather than ameliorates the situation . For instance, left-wing extremism in India is rooted in the persistent exploitation of tribal populations.
• Similarly, the vulnerability of our borders is linked to a large-scale smuggling and contraband trade . Such threats cannot be dealt with solely through enhanced military capabilities without addressing the drivers of illegal trade.
• For a modern state operating in an increasingly globalized world, the line between what is domestic and what is external is becoming increasingly blurred. For example, terrorism is a threat to domestic security but may have external links. Thus, a combination of domestic and external interventions may be necessary. 
• It is only within a comprehensive NSS that such complex inter-relationships between domestic and external dimensions can be analysed and coordinated policy responses formulated. 

What NSS must do?

• The NSS would enable the identification of critical infrastructure that may be vulnerable to cyber-attacks , and the development of human resources capable of identifying attacks and protecting and restoring critical systems.
• There is a trade-off between enhanced security and the citizens’ rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and this must be clearly spelt out for the people of the country and well-considered solutions put forward. National security must not become a justification for a surveillance state.
• Ecological degradation and climate change have significant impacts on national security . There may be direct consequences of the melting of glaciers on the deployment of troops at high-altitude locations on India’s mountainous borders. Sea-level rise as a result of global warming may inundate naval bases along the coasts. Therefore, the NSS must anticipate the consequences of ecological degradation and climate change, and formulate coping measures. 
• Another oft-neglected dimension of India’s national security that must be integrated within the NSS is strategic communications . It relates to the indispensable need, particularly in a democracy, to shape public perceptions through constant and consistent public outreach and to provide a channel for public opinion or feedback.
• National security may be adversely impacted by the spread of false news by hostile elements within and outside the country using social media . This will require strong and advanced cyber capabilities, which may have to be constantly upgraded to keep pace with rapid technological advance.
• NSS for India needs to take a comprehensive approach, encompassing domestic and external and economic and ecological challenges , highlighting the inter-linkages and feedback loops among them and on that basis formulate a coherent template for multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral interventions.
• Drawing up an NSS for India must be a key agenda for the government . This may be tasked to a group of eminent persons from different disciplines who could consider India’s national security in its multiple dimensions.
• In a democracy, an NSS should be citizen-centric and must reflect the values and beliefs of the people ; at the same time, it must seek to raise public awareness of and shape public perceptions about national security issues.
• The NSS must take the Constitution of India as its guide and its objective should be the safeguarding and consolidation of India’s democracy.
• Previous exercises undertaken to promote national security could serve as useful reference material for the NSS . These include the Kargil Review Committee report (2000), the Report of the Naresh Chandra Task Force on Security (2012) , and the document entitled ‘Building Comprehensive National Power: Towards an Integrated National Security Strategy’ prepared by the National Security Advisory Board (2015).
• A well-informed, vigilant and educated public opinion is the best assurance of national security. 

National security is a concept that a government, along with its parliaments, should protect the state and its citizens against all kind of “national” crises.

• A national security doctrine helps the statesmen identify and prioritize the country’s geopolitical interests . It encompasses the totality of the country’s military, diplomatic, economic and social policies that will protect and promote the country’s national security interests .
• India does not have any such doctrine.

Need for India to have a National Security Doctrine:

• Porous international boundaries, growing terror threats, increasing insurgency within country demand government to envisage and formulate a National Security Doctrine for India.
• The existence of such a document will dissuade adventurism and will reassure our citizens that appropriate measures are in place to protect us.
• Many of India’s national security inadequacies stem from the absence of a national security/defence vision.
• It will not only become the basis for strategy-formulation, contingency-planning and evolution of SOP s, but also send a reassuring message to our public.
• It is necessary in the face of having nuclear-armed neighbours, Pakistan and China.
• To define India’s role in the world and its commitment to protecting the life, liberty and interests of its people .
• The country should have an overall national security document from which the various agencies and the arms of the armed forces draw their mandate and create their own respective and joint doctrines which would then translate into operational doctrines for tactical engagement.
• In the absence of this, as is the case in India today, national strategy is broadly a function of ad-hocism and personal preferences.

Challenges in implementing a National Security Doctrine:

• There is a skewed national security decision-making structure that is driven more by idealism and altruism, rather than by realpolitik imperatives.
• National security has suffered neglect for decades due to pre-occupation of our politicians with electoral politics.
• Defining national interests in a multi-party democracy like India that has representation across the ideological spectrum has been hard to achieve.
• Decisions of national security are taken in individual silos rather than cross-domain exchange as subjects are inter-related.
• There is opacity in the functioning of Intelligence agencies for instance there is no credible external audit that happens.
• The agencies that are to provide security cover and neutralise terrorist threats do not have a cohesive command and control structure.
• There has been a gap in political pronouncements in our military capabilities — material as well as organisational.

Way forward:

• 5 key areas in draft National Security Policy that Shyam Saran, former chairman of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), has prepared and handed over to the government in January 2015: Domestic security, External security, Military preparedness, Economic security and Ecological security .
• “ Strategic communication ” is of overarching importance in National Security which must be improved. A command control and communication centre must be built.
• The NSD should guide various doctrines related to external and internal security to fill a huge void in the higher defence management of the country.
• The policy must go much beyond issues of national security and encapsulate the domain of constitutional rights as well.
• It must take an all-inclusive approach to national security integrating diplomatic engagement, domestic economic discipline and amity among communities at home with military power.
• We need to tailor our strategic defence doctrine to create long-term measures towards a deterrent based on severe retribution.
• Emerging strategic technologies like Artificial Intelligence, robotics and miniaturised wars are likely to play an increasingly important role in future warfare, this must be taken care of.

Conclusion:

• Developing a National Security Doctrine is as much about the future vision of a country as it is about its past . The need of the hour is to put together a National Security Doctrine that should have political consensus, publicly transparent and should reflect the complex challenges facing the country. The doctrine must be accompanied by a national security strategy .

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Our daily life, economic vitality and national security depend on a stable, safe and resilient cyberspace.

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DHS works with international partners and the private sector to secure global systems of travel and trade.

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A secure and resilient electoral process is a vital national interest and one of our highest priorities at DHS.

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DHS’s goal is simple: one DHS, with integrated, results-based operations.

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Protecting the American people from terrorist threats is the reason DHS was created, and remains our highest priority.

DHS works with all levels of the government to fight against and recover from attacks, accidents, natural disasters and threats.

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TSA employs a risk-based strategy to secure U.S. transportation systems, working closely with stakeholders, as well as law enforcement and intelligence partners.

Japan's New 'Aircraft Carrier' Is Coming to America for F-35 Training

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Japan is sending its modified Izumo-class helicopter carrier, JS Kaga, to the U.S. West Coast for flight operations with the F-35B Lightning II between October and November 2024. Some experts consider the vessel a quasi-aircraft carrier. 

Summary and Key Points: Japan is sending its modified Izumo-class helicopter carrier, JS Kaga, to the U.S. West Coast for flight operations with the F-35B Lightning II between October and November 2024. Some experts consider the vessel a quasi-aircraft carrier. 

-This follows Japan's strategic move to upgrade its Izumo-class vessels to operate fixed-wing aircraft. Though officially termed "multi-purpose operation destroyers" to align with Japan's pacifist constitution, the modifications bring them closer to aircraft carriers.

-JS Kaga will undergo tests off San Diego, marking a significant step in Japan's defense strategy under its reinterpreted constitution, allowing for "collective self-defense."

-China's concerns about Japan's military resurgence have heightened with these developments.

Japanese Aircraft Carriers Are Heading to the West Coast

One of the two Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) modified Izumo-class helicopter carriers will be heading to the United States, where it will engage in flight operations with the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II .

JS Kaga (DDH-184) will assess its "ability to operate" the short take-offs and vertical landings (STOVL) fifth-generation fighter in "developmental tests… scheduled to take place between October 5 and November 18, 2024, off the coast of San Diego," Army Recognition reported on Tuesday. The U.S. military will be supporting the tests.

The United States Marine Corps had previously conducted STOLV exercises on JS Izumo (DDH-183) in October 2021. "U.S. Marines embarked aboard the JS Izumo and worked directly with JMSDF personnel as part of a bilateral effort to ensure the capability test was both effective and safe," the service previously announced .

JS Kaga is about to begin its Indo-Pacific Deployment 2024, the first since it underwent the modifications that enabled it to operate the fifth-generation multirole stealth fighter.

Carrier Transmission Explained

The post-World War II Japanese constitution renounced war as the sovereign right of the nation, and armed forces with war potential would not be maintained. That constitution is also notable in that it hasn't been amended since its implementation in 1947.

However, it has been a matter of semantics when it comes to aircraft carriers.

The JMSDF has operated the JS Izumo and JS Kaga multi-role flattops since 2013 and 2015 respectively. Throughout their service to date, the two warships may resemble modern aircraft carriers but were officially described by Tokyo as a "multi-purpose operation destroyer" due to their main purpose being to seek out and destroy enemy submarines in the self-defense of Japan. 

However, the vessels have each begun a two-stage transformation that will allow them to operate fixed-wing aircraft – notably the F-35B Lightning II. JS Izumo has undergone its initial modification stage. That has included the application of heat-resistant paint to its flight deck – suggesting it is far easier to change the capabilities of a warship than it is to modify the Japanese constitution.

JS Kaga has seen the modification of its bow section that has earned comparisons to the U.S. Navy's Wasp-class and America-class amphibious assault ships, which also operate with the F-35B.

According to Naval News , "The first-stage modifications also include reinforcing the flight deck to support additional weight, placing additional guidance lights, drawing the yellow lines on the flight deck necessary for launching and landing F-35Bs, and fitting the ship with heat-resistant deck spots for vertical landings."

Yet, despite these modifications of the vessels, Tokyo remains cautious in its exact terminology, refraining from explicitly labeling the modified Izumo-class vessels as aircraft carriers. That decision aligns with the nation's long-standing defensive security policies under the pacifist constitution.

Instead, in 2014, then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved a reinterpretation of Article 9, which allowed Japan to exercise the right of "collective self-defense," in some instances, and even to engage in military action if one of its allies were to be attacked.

Beijing has expressed concerns over Japanese remilitarization efforts, including its decision to operate what are essentially " mini-aircraft carriers " in everything but name.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs . You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu . You can email the author: [email protected] .

Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock.

Light Fighter: The Air Force Might Have a Replacement For NGAD

'We're Alone,' but together, in Edwidge Danticat's remarkable essays

Reading Edwidge Danticat's We're Alone is like sitting down to listen to an old friend. Personal, touching, rich in observations, smart, resonant, vibrant and complex, the eight essays that make up this collection open a door into Danticat’s past and present, her history and the history of Haiti, her relationship to worldly things and to the work of timeless writers. With clear, concise prose that delves into harsh topics without losing its sense of humor, Danticat once again proves that she is one of contemporary literature's strongest, most graceful voices.

We're Alone opens with a preface in which Danticat explains that, for her, writing essays is a quest for a very specific "kind of aloneness/togetherness, as well as something akin to what the Haitian American anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse has labeled rasanblaj , which she defines as “assembly, compilation, enlisting, regrouping (of people, spirits, things, ideas)." That aloneness/togetherness is present in every essay. We all experience things differently, but the way Danticat talks about love, loss, migration, grief and injustice, to name a few, makes them feel patently universal.

This short collection has no throwaways, but some standouts merit individual attention.

"They Are Waiting in the Hills: Traveling with Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison" is, despite its long title, a wonderfully paced essay in which Danticat shares some of her own travels and experiences throughout her career while simultaneously entering into a conversation, full of admiration, with the authors named in the title. Danticat is an accomplished writer, but this essay is all about her love of literature and the way the work of others have impacted her and sometimes worked as a lens through which she could start processing various experiences.

In "This Is My Body," we're right there with the author two days before Christmas of 2017 as she ditches her car, runs away from a shooter at a mall and hides behind a bush. The shooting turned out to be one of many hoaxes perpetrated that year so people could steal from stores during the ensuing chaos, but for Danticat, recounting the experience is an excuse to get the conversation started. From there, the piece morphs into an essay about parenting, her own mother's death from cancer, and how she tried to parent even from beyond the grave by leaving Danticat and her brothers a tape with instructions for life, including what she wanted the author to wear at her funeral. From there, the essay moves — smoothly, always — into a discussion of hunger and, among other things, the ethics of force-feeding at Guantanamo and a recognition of how the "grace of the young Parkland survivors, their eloquence, their efforts to include less privileged youth — among them young people of color whose communities are chronically and disproportionately affected by gun violence — has been especially eye opening."

"By the Time You Read This" is another marvel that seamlessly weaves together past and present while exploring the death of George Floyd, recounting the racism Danticat observed while riding New York City Transit buses, and then touches on the massive migration of African Americans from rural areas in the South to cities in the North of the United States.

The rest of the essays share the same shapeshifting nature. However, they do so while also containing at least one of the cohesive elements that make the book feel like a whole; history, family, racism, Haiti, migration, literature, etc. Danticat masterfully moves from one topic or idea to the next with the powerful fluidity of a raging river. From every Haitian being suspected of having AIDS to memories of the "ruthless Duvalier dictatorship," every essay here contains at least a slice of history. From a discussion of temporary protected status for Haitians that turns into a conversation about rainbows to the many excerpts of poems and names that celebrate Black excellence throughout the collection — Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou — this collection shows exactly where Danticat fits, and just how much her work is in conversation with that of other giants.

We're Alone accomplishes a lot, but perhaps the most important thing it does is that it manages to feel like an invitation from the opening pages. Yes, this is Danticat talking about racism and injustice while digging deep and showing us just how ugly humanity can be, but it's also a collection full of hope and a celebration of writing. Ultimately, this is more than a collection of essays; this is an invitation. "You're alone and I'm alone," says Danticat in one way or another in every essay, "but if you join me, we can be alone together." This beautiful invitation is one I encourage you to accept.

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