Protecting The Homeland 2006 2007

Immediately after September 11, the Brookings Institution began a comprehensive, multidisciplinary project focused on the key policy challenge of these dangerous times—assessing and improving homeland defense. That intense effort produced Protecting the American Homeland, and it continues in this important new book. In Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007, Brookings foreign policy experts analyze current homeland security concerns and the adequacy (or inadequacy) of current policies designed to address them. The authors present both the big picture and the smaller components of homeland security policy that make up the whole. They make specific recommendations on intelligence reform, science and technology policy and the protection of critical infrastructure within the United States. They also look ahead to consider what dangers we should anticipate and plan for, recommending policies that will work to that end. One of the strands running through Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 is the need to "stitch the seams" in our homeland security blanket through greater integration and coordination. The authors emphasize that the U.S. federal government must work together with key partners who have been insufficiently integrated into American homeland security activities to date. These actors include foreign governments, state and local government, and the private sector, and the coordination must occur in several different areas (e.g. border protection, finance, technology, intelligence). The U.S. government should not—indeed, it cannot—do it alone. By its very nature, homeland security is a problem that defies the usual bureaucratic boundaries. Effective homeland security policy demands intense collaboration on new issues and between organizations that have not traditionally needed each other. This book is of interest and importance to journalists, analysts, policymakers, scholars, and citizens concerned with protecting their homeland against terrorism and r

Immediately after September 11, the Brookings Institution began a comprehensive, multidisciplinary project focused on the key policy challenge of these dangerous times—assessing and improving homeland defense. That intense effort produced Protecting the American Homeland, and it continues in this important new book. In Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007, Brookings foreign policy experts analyze current homeland security concerns and the adequacy (or inadequacy) of current policies designed to address them. The authors present both the big picture and the smaller components of homeland security policy that make up the whole. They make specific recommendations on intelligence reform, science and technology policy and the protection of critical infrastructure within the United States. They also look ahead to consider what dangers we should anticipate and plan for, recommending policies that will work to that end. One of the strands running through Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 is the need to "stitch the seams" in our homeland security blanket through greater integration and coordination. The authors emphasize that the U.S. federal government must work together with key partners who have been insufficiently integrated into American homeland security activities to date. These actors include foreign governments, state and local government, and the private sector, and the coordination must occur in several different areas (e.g. border protection, finance, technology, intelligence). The U.S. government should not—indeed, it cannot—do it alone. By its very nature, homeland security is a problem that defies the usual bureaucratic boundaries. Effective homeland security policy demands intense collaboration on new issues and between organizations that have not traditionally needed each other. This book is of interest and importance to journalists, analysts, policymakers, scholars, and citizens concerned with protecting their homeland against terrorism and r

Annotation This report (from the political think tank the Brookings Institution) critically examines President Bush's "homeland security" plan, arguing that it is not sufficient for protection against further attacks. They suggest expanding police powers and centralizing information sharing among intelligence outfits, as well as numerous other more specific recommendations. The entire report is also available online at the Brooking Institution's web site. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

This book explores the paradox of the ‘security dilemma’ in International Relations, as applied to the post-9/11 context of homeland security. The book's central argument can be summed up by the following counterintuitive thesis: the more security you have, the more security you will need. It argues that enhancing security does not make terrorism more likely, but rather it raises public expectations and amplifies public outrage after subsequent failures. The book contests that this dilemma will continue to shape American, Canadian and British domestic and international security priorities for decades. In exploring the key policy implications resulting from this, the book highlights the difficulty in finding a solution to this paradox, as the most rational and logical policy options are part of the problem. This book will be of interest to students of Homeland Security, Security Studies, US politics, and IR in general.

Did 9/11 revive a North American guns-butter trade-off? Established in the largest administrative overhaul since World War II, the Department of Homeland Security was charged with keeping the United States safe within a wider security community, but confronted the Washington Consensus-based Western Hemisphere free trade movement, beginning with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and extending to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2003, to materialize a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) compact. Whether 9/11 restrictions impeded these trade-related thrusts or not, embracing neoliberalism permitted Canada and Mexico to pursue their own initiatives, such as proposing free-trade to the US—Canada in 1985, Mexico in 1990, but, as during the Cold War, security imperatives ultimately prevailed. This work investigates Canada's and Mexico's Department of Homeland Security responses through three bilateral studies of policy responses along comparative lines, case studies of security and intelligence apparatuses in each of the three countries, and a post-9/11 trilateral assessment. Ultimately, they raise a broader and more critical North American question: Will regional economic integration continue to be trumped by security considerations, as during the Cold War era, and thereby elevate second-best outcomes, or rise above the constraints to reassert the unquenchable post-Cold War thirst for unfettered markets replete with private enterprises, liberal policies, and full-fledged competitiveness?