Obama offers strategic redefinition, expansion of DHS mission
security as “a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur.” However, the document stated that effective preparation for “catastrophic natural disasters and man-made disasters” was also important to increasing security.
DHS took that shift further in a September 2008 strategic document, setting out a mission statement that acknowledged other “threats and hazards” and the department’s role in securing borders “while welcoming lawful immigrants, visitors, and trade.”
The Obama administration’s review focuses on terrorism as the foremost of many threats, defining homeland security as “a concerted national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards, where American interests, aspirations, and way of life can thrive.”
The QHSR lists five missions, backed by fourteen specific goals: preventing terrorism and enhancing security, particularly against chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological threats; securing U.S. borders; enforcing the U.S. immigration laws; securing cyberspace; and ensuring resilience to disasters.
By comparison, the 2007 national strategy update set four goals: prevention and disruption of terror attacks; protection of the public and critical assets; response to and recovery from incidents; and strengthening the nation’s homeland security foundation.
The review states that preventing terrorism remains the cornerstone of homeland security, while it identifies other hazards, including mass cyberattacks, pandemics, natural disasters, illegal trafficking, and transnational crime. The review notes the danger of complacency and restores the strategic aim of mitigating risks before disasters occur.
In a two-page introductory letter, President Obama’s homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, highlighted what she called a broad national homeland security “enterprise,” of which her department is only “one among many components.”
Key systems, such as computer networks and power plants, are privately controlled; state and local governments lead emergency responses to natural disasters; and other federal agencies investigate terrorism, Napolitano said.
“Homeland security will only be optimized when we fully leverage the distributed and decentralized nature of the entire enterprise in the pursuit of our common goals,” Napolitano said.
Frank J. Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University and a White House homeland security official from 2001 to 2003, said that although the new report raised important questions, “what I don’t think it did is answer those questions in terms of brass-tacks priorities.”
Cilluffo said a forthcoming “bottom-up” review by the department intended to direct its 2012 budget a year from now might move it “closer to the goal line.”
