Fallows questions DHS raison d'être

Published 17 June 2009

Atlantic’s James Fallows says DHS has not lived up to the expectations that accompanied its creation; abolishing it now would create more problems than it would solve; instead, he suggests changing the department’s name to Department of Civil Security, and broaden the definition of civil security

The current issue of the Atlantic Monthly offers fifteen ideas on how to quick-fix some of the major the United States is facing. James Fallows questions the idea behind creating DHS — but says that abolishing it now may cause more problems than it solves.

He writes that DHS was a rushed bipartisan creation in 2002 reflecting the post-9/11 political imperative to do something in response to disaster, whether or not that something made sense. “Since then, it has failed basic tests of bureaucratic effectiveness,” Fallows opines. One of the supposed benefits of amalgamation was to remove wasteful overlap so the United States could spend more money where it mattered and cut back everywhere else.

This, says Fallow, did not happen. He points to a study by MIT’s Cindy Williams which demonstrates that the shares of the DHS budget now devoted to the department’s individual parts — the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, etc. — are the same as they were when they were first lumped together. DHS, says Fallows, has also failed to develop a sustainable long-term antiterrorism strategy. Such a strategy would involve: focusing on the truly catastrophic threats (above all, loose nukes); building the best recovery and emergency systems, for resilience in case Plan A fails; and otherwise encouraging free people to live brave lives.

“Instead, the open-ended ‘Threat Level Orange’ approach promotes vague background anxiety, making the public too complacent and too fearful.” As for resilience: the DHS component known as FEMA showed its stuff during Katrina.

Yet sometimes undoing a mistake is more disruptive than helpful.

Should DHS be abolished, then? Fallows says that such a move would create more problems than it would solve. he has two other ideas instead:

  • Change the offensive, antirepublican, Teutono-Soviet name Homeland to Civil, as in Department of Civil Security.
  • Make civil-security spending what national-security spending was in the Eisenhower era, when interstate-highway-building and language-teaching were all part of “national defense”: an umbrella for investments in new energy and water supplies, public health, basic research, and other efforts that will actually make us more secure.