Homeland Security Watch

Today’s post was written by Fred Stein.  It is based on his recently completed homeland security master’s degree thesis.

Fred’s central conclusion — a surprising one to me — is the U.S. would basically become energy independent if we stopped using gasoline to power our automobiles.

Information about obtaining the complete thesis (including the evidence supporting his argument) can be found at the end of this post.

Fred’s analysis begins with a look at some common perceptions about this country’s dependence on foreign oil.

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Dependence on foreign oil is the Achilles heal of the United States’ security.

While the direct economic costs are staggering with an oil trade deficit of $1 billion per day, the security threat posed by that dependence is an even greater disaster waiting to happen.

Hugo Chavez has threatened to cut supplies of oil to the United States.  Al Qaeda and other Islamic radicals have identified the world oil supply as a prime target.  As Iran proceeds inexorably towards nuclear weapons, U.S. and European policy makers must temper their responses to counter this threat for fear of driving up oil prices.  Iran has the ability, and espouses rhetoric about its desire, to close the straits of Hormuz to interrupt the supply of oil in certain circumstances.

Every U.S. President since Richard Nixon has denounced America’s dependence on foreign oil.  Discussions abound regarding increasing U.S. oil production or efficiencies, but no real measures have been seriously considered that would truly end America’s dependence on foreign oil by simply eliminating the need for that oil.

Though the consequences of energy dependence are complex, the solution is simple.  The amount of oil used by the U.S. for motor gasoline, about 50% of total oil consumption, is the same as the net amount of oil imported by the U.S., about 50% of total oil consumption.

If the U.S. stopped using gasoline to power its automobiles, it would essentially become energy independent.

Adding nuclear or clean coal facilities, building wind farms, installing solar panel fields, etc., would do little to foster energy independence.  Those technologies increase the generation of electricity, but not in a manner that can currently be utilized by most of the transportation sector that depends almost exclusively on the combustion of oil.

Electric vehicles (EVs) bridge that gap. The price of EVs and the lack of a recharge infrastructure is all that stands in the way of their full integration into the automobile market.

It has been demonstrated before that as the price of gasoline increases, consumers respond in large part by purchasing more fuel-efficient vehicles.  A detailed analysis of historical gasoline prices, car prices, car sales, and other factors, allows for creation of a model that predicts the EV car sales as it relates to the price of gasoline.

A model developed here, predicts the rapid growth of EV sales if an excise tax on gasoline of $2/gallon, incrementally rising to $5/gallon were to be imposed on the retail sale of gasoline, and simultaneously a $15,000 rebate on the sale of new EVs were to be introduced.  The results are illustrated graphically below.

An excise tax of that magnitude would raise sufficient funds to provide for the EV tax rebate, to mitigate the effects from the regressive nature of the tax, and to provide monetary incentive for the development of a nation wide recharge infrastructure.   The funds that would be collected under such a scenario are described in the table below.

There is a cost to achieving energy independence.  That cost is two to five dollars on each gallon of retail gasoline sold, paid by drivers continue using internal combustion vehicles.  With conviction and determination, the United States can achieve energy independence in a few short years.

For a copy of Fred Stein’s thesis providing in-depth analysis of the ideas expressed in this paper, go to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security in February 2012.  You can also contact Fred Stein at chdsstein[at]gmail.com

In his Tuesday post Chris Bellavita introduced us to Jeffrey M. Cottam a twenty-something homeland security professional who is not contributing as much as he perceives he could contribute.  Jeff told Chris that after earning good grades at respected undergraduate and graduate programs, “(I did) expect that after 18 months or so I’d be an agent somewhere.”

Mr. Cottam’s circumstance seems to crystalize many recurring hopes, doubts, and dreams of homeland security.  Here’s my unsolicited advice.

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Dear Jeff:

You have earned helpful educational credentials. (May your student loans be modest.)  You are in your late twenties.  You have a job. You are dissatisfied.

Count yourself lucky.

Bureaucracies are bad places for entry level people; even — perhaps especially — bureaucracies that call their employees “agents.”

Compliance is typically the easy and rewarded path in most bureaucracies.  Compliance is the enemy of creativity.  Creativity is the most valuable long-term skill.

Avoid bureaucracies until you have creative skills sufficiently strong to resist the soul-devouring maw of bureaucracies.  With that strength secured bureaucracies can be conducive to soul-growing, but mostly as a source of resistance training.

Claim and craft opportunities to be creative.  Fail more than a few times and learn from your failures.  Succeed and give particular attention to the most ephemeral elements essential to your success.

Any time before you die is a great time to be dissatisfied.  Be especially suspicious of self-satisfaction.

Responding to your letter sent to Homeland Security Today the editor David Silverberg advised, “Network like crazy.”

Yes.  Absolutely.

Attend the meeting no one else wants to attend. Volunteer.  Take a title and role for a dollar-a-day (in addition to your current employment).  Put yourself in the most difficult circumstances possible.   Contact the Red Cross — or a dozen other agencies — and get yourself the training and launch-pad to be deployed for the next Katrina, Haiti, Tohoku…

Network for others.  It will benefit you too.

Network to recognize and engage reality.  What’s really going on?  Network to recognize needs.  Network to recognize solutions to needs.  Network to apply solutions to needs (that’s the toughest networking).   What kind of networking works?  What kind of networking fails?  When? Where? With who?  Why?

What skills do you have in networking?  What deficiencies do you have in networking?  With whom can you network that will balance your deficiencies?  Who needs you?  Who do you need?

The social network has been the principal human experience for several millenia.  Our networks are increasingly dense, complicated, complex and evolving with increasing speed.  Never before has malevolent networking been more a threat. Never before has gratuitous self-involved networking been such a waste of time.  Never before has wise and effective networking been more valuable.

Especially in homeland security.

In my judgment the traditional public safety professions — firefighting, law enforcement, emergency management, public health, and others — are and will be fundamental to the homeland security mission.   The same is true of related private and civic functions.

If homeland security has any comparative advantage it is networking proactive prevention, mitigation, and preparedness across public, private, civic, jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries.  Homeland security is about the big picture or it is redundant… or even worse.

This is much more than a job.  It is a calling to be creative when most others are satisfied to comply.

May you be in a constant state of creative dissatisfaction.  May you always be weaving webs of relationships.  May you walk, even dance the cusp of chaos.

The news out of Washington, DC this week is likely to focus on the failure of the “Supercommittee” to agree on a plan to cut the federal debt. Finger pointing has already begun and there is talk of undermining the automatic triggers put into law that were designed to cajole both sides into cutting a deal lest significant cuts into treasured programs and departments are made in budgets following 2012.

The focus of concern is the Defense Department and not entitlement programs, which troubles me for two reasons: (1) I’ve yet to read a non-biased argument (to give the most public of examples, it does seem to me that the opinion of the current Secretary of Defense is somewhat biased) explaining how even with the planned deep cuts into the Defense budget as called for in the triggers what near or plausibly near-peer competitor will leap ahead of us across any set of security parameters and seriously threaten our national security.  The cuts may drive a strategic reconsideration of our military footprint and national policies around the globe (for deeper thoughts on that subject, I would recommend Harvard professor Steve Walt’s blog: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/), but I do not see how they lead to North Korea, Iran, or even China coming to represent an existential threat.  That is not to say I favor this outcome–I would much rather see a considered package of defense and entitlement cuts in addition to sensible new revenue–but I am not concerned that it represents the end of U.S. military hegemony.

Oh yeah, (2): while obviously our national security is of utmost importance, the imbalance between publicly displayed concern by politicians about cuts in defense vs. entitlements saddens me at some level.  As a citizen of such a powerful nation I wonder, where is our concern about those among the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens?  How many additional fighter aircraft provide a return on defense investment in comparison to helping to provide for the health of a poor child who can perhaps then realize his or her full potential and contribute to our society? Or the health of those who have spent a lifetime contributing?

While these are general, and somewhat philosophical, observations a more concrete example of shortchanging the future recently occurred in…wait for it…Congress:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wanted to reshuffle its offices to establish a National Climate Service akin to the agency’s National Weather Service. It asked for no new funding to do so.

But in a political climate where talk of the earthly kind of climate can be radioactive, the answer in last week’s budget deal was “no.” Congress barred NOAA from launching what the agency bills as a “one-stop shop” for climate information.

Climate change is a particularly hot topic (pun intended), so this decision is not surprising. That does not make it any less disappointing.

Who would find such an office helpful?  Most likely some latte-drinking hippies:

Farmers are wondering when to plant. Urban planners want to know whether groundwater will stop flowing under subdivisions. Insurance companies need climate data to help them set rates.

The proposal has drawn wide-ranging support. NOAA’s administrator from 2001 to 2008 under Bush, Conrad C. Lautenbacher, urged Congress to approve it this year. So did scientific, weather and industry groups, including the Reinsurance Association of America, which represents huge firms that backstop home, car and life insurance companies.

This matters to homeland security because it impacts a wide range of risk areas:

Franklin W. Nutter, president of the RAA, said insurance companies are increasingly relying on the predictions of a changing future that NOAA provides. “It’s become clear that historic patterns of natural catastrophes — hurricanes, tornadoes, floods — are not good predictors of future risks,” he said. In other words, the future’s looking rougher.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change buttressed that message last week. A report from the world’s top climate science group warned of more extreme weather, more frequent droughts, worse downpours and more dramatic flooding.

Sometimes relatively small investments now can contribute to significant future savings.  Is this an example of preparedness, mitigation, or both?  Whatever box one wishes to throw it in, this decision seems to undercut our resilience.

At the very least, this decision must contribute to cutting government spending, right?

After the deal, which passed Congress last week, a House Appropriations Committee news release implied that Congress had saved $322 million in fiscal year 2012 by nixing the climate service.

The reality: Congress is still giving NOAA those funds for climate research and data delivery. But they’ll be distributed across the agency instead of consolidated under an umbrella climate service. The hundreds of millions in savings trumpeted by the Republican-led Appropriations Committee are an illusion.

Perhaps later this week there will be news that for which one can feel thankful.

I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but things are getting a bit tense out there. If life inside the Beltway was making you anxious, you might not want to avert your gaze. The view farther afield is not such a pretty sight these days.

With the Tea Party on one hand and the Occupy Wall Street and We Are the 99 percent protestors on the other, a growing proportion of our fellow citizens are actively expressing disgust with the status quo. And this doesn’t even include all the others like No Labels, the Coffee Party Movement and more who in their efforts to re-establish a middle-ground have ended up — often from the comfort of their home computer or smartphone — on or near the edge of a growing disquiet.

This morning I listened in a state somewhere between fury and amazement as Bill Frezza, a venture capitalist and fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, complained bitterly on NPR that those making more than $250,000 a year were being unfairly cast as “whipping boys” for failing to pull the economy out of its tailspin by creating jobs. His full-throated defense of free market capitalism worked about as well as sending the fire department to pour gasoline on a blaze.

If Frezza and his ilk are to be believed, the country has it all wrong: executives are just like entrepreneurs; consumption always precedes production, and employment is an input to a healthy economy not a byproduct of it. And, oh yeah, corporations are citizens too. Of course, Frezza and his friends are the same folks who creatively destroyed not only some of the nation’s biggest corporate brands, but also brought us the savings and loan scandal, the dot.com bubble, and collateralized debt obligations.

After 30 years of vilifying civil servants and public policies aimed at protecting much less expanding the middle class, these economic elites want us to believe that consumers have only themselves and the left-leaning political pawns they elected to blame for the lack of jobs, growth and real competitiveness.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and co-author Michael Mandelbaum have another take on this. Their book, That Used to Be Us, contends that four trends underlie our current situation (summary taken from ‘That Used to Be Us’: Tom Friedman’s Rx for America to Get Its Groove Back at Yahoo! Finance):

1. Misreading the end of the Cold War, which was not a military “victory” but the start of a very big challenge to U.S. hegemony.
2. Taking a bad course after 9/11 by focusing on the losers of globalization vs. the winners.
3. Underestimating the impact of technological change which has made the world “hyper-connected.”
4. A generational shift from the “Greatest Generation” who believed in thrift and “sustainable values” to the Baby Boomers who use “situational values” and prefer to ‘borrow and spend’, instead of save.

Friedman and Mandelbaum suggest that the remedy to our current ills lies in what they call the ‘Five Pillars of Success,” outlined as follows:

• Education
• Infrastructure
• Immigration
• Regulation
• Research and development

In all five areas, the government, they argue, plays the key role, not just in jump-starting our economy, but in restoring confidence in our greatness as a nation. They make a compelling case that without competence in these five areas, the nation cannot expect to reclaim much less retain its position as the world’s preeminent power.

About the same time Friedman and Mandelbaum’s book hit the stores last month, James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, was discussing a damning essay by former GOP Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren and conveying some pretty salient observations himself (see here, here, and here) about the degree of unrest emerging around the country as a consequence of the growing distrust of our political elites.

More than a few commentators have begun to suggest in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the Arab Spring could be followed by an American Fall. As homeland security professionals, we might rightly ask ourselves what this means for us. Which side are we on? Do we stand with the state or the citizens?

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not eager to play the part of the Egyptian Army if Zuccotti Park becomes the new Tahrir Square.

Over the years I have wondered what my response would have been if I had been alive when the rumors began of the Nazi regime’s mass murder of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others.

Official camp record photo of Samu Berkovics (inmate no. 59757), who arrived at Buchenwald Concentration Camp on a transport of Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz

I was several years younger than the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.  I have vague memories of incomprehension.  If I had been older, would have I been outraged? If so, would I have done anything with the outrage?

Four killed in the September 15, 1963 bombing in Birmingham

When I was twelve I read Cry, the Beloved Country and wept.  I inserted South Africa into a couple of courses I taught in the late 70s and early 80s. But I made no meaningful contribution to the struggle against apartheid.  Despite my personal disapproval, I was careful to explain South Africa’s internal situation within a broader historical and geopolitical context.

For more than six months hundreds of thousands of Syrians have engaged in largely peaceful protests against the Assad regime.  More than 3500 have been reported killed, including 217 children.

Children in Lebanon carrying pictures of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, whose tortured and mutilated body turned him into a symbol of the Syrian uprising.

Today it is being reported by The Scotsman and others that, “Syrian children chanting for revolution marched in Damascus and in other parts of the country after school yesterday, only for some to be detained or beaten by security forces. Children as young as ten have been taking to the streets since the new term began on Sunday, according to witnesses, in what appears to be the first major involvement of schoolchildren in the six-month-old uprising against president Bashar al-Assad.”

Today it is being reported by Amnesty International that, “The mutilated body of 18-year-old Zainab al-Hosni of Homs, the first woman known to have died in custody during Syria’s recent unrest, was discovered by her family in horrific circumstances on 13 September. The family was visiting a morgue to identify the body of Zainab’s activist brother Mohammad, who was also arrested and apparently tortured and killed in detention. Zainab had been decapitated, her arms cut off, and skin removed.”

What should I do?

I can, of course, question the veracity of the reports and the credibility of sources.  I should certainly be aware that information is usually framed and targeted for a purpose.  This is especially the case  in a complicated context such as contemporary Syria. I can recognize the risk associated with any revolution.  I can be cautious.   I can give attention to serious problems closer to home.

But when a wide range of sources from the New York Times to Facebook all bring similar stories of courageous calls for freedom meeting brutal oppression week after week after week, what should I do?

When children choose — or are being used — to join the protests and are being beaten and killed, what should I do?

At the very least I should not avert my eyes.  At the very least I should acknowledge what I have seen.

This is not enough, but it is the very least I can do.

The north reflecting pool, photograph by Michael Arad.

The tall towers have been replaced by deep voids.

Framed by the rush of falling water, the shallow pools are meant to reflect their surroundings.

At the edge of each void the names of the dead are inscribed in bronze.

In his original proposal the memorial’s architect, Michael Arad, wrote,  ”A cascade of water that describes the perimeter of each square feeds the pools with a continuous stream. They are large voids, open and visible reminders of the absence.”

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. (Heraclitus)

Surrounding the void is a grove of swamp white oaks.  Fast growing yet long lived, the trees could flourish for the next three centuries.  The species is native to New York and well-adapted to extremes of climate and urban life.

More than four hundred American oaks will be joined by an exotic other.  A single Callery Pear tree survived the collapse of the towers. Originally one of several ornamentals lining the plaza it was found, according to New York City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, “soldered, twisted and gnarled and blackened.”

The Callery Pear is native to East Asia and is considered by many an invasive species, tending to crowd out less prolific flora.   They also have “a nasty habit of crashing just as they reach their glory at 15 to 20 years old… Often large limbs are lost in wind and ice storms, but can also fail on a calm day.”

Last December when the Callery Pear was replanted, Mayor Bloomberg commented, “The presence of the Survivor Tree on the Memorial Plaza will symbolize New York City’s and this nation’s resilience after the attacks.”  Perhaps it also symbolizes our openness to diversity even in adversity.

The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony. (Heraclitus)

Tonight at 8:30 a choir with orchestra will perform at Trinity Church, a quick walk from the memorial site. The two hour performance will include elements of the Faure Requiem, Amazing Grace, and three movements of the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem. This is the culmination of a day-long series of concerts alternating between the Trinity sanctuary and St. Paul’s Chapel.

If you have visited Ground Zero you have almost certainly passed St. Paul’s.  This is a colonial-era church just across the street from where the towers once stood.  Amazingly the church survived without even a broken window.  A giant sycamore gave its life shielding the chapel from falling debris.

In the hours, days, weeks and months after the attack St. Paul’s served the needs of those involved in response and recovery.   Lyndon Harris, who was there, wrote, “More than 5,000 people used their special gifts to transform St. Paul’s into a place of rest and refuge. Musicians, clergy, podiatrists, lawyers, soccer moms, and folks of every imaginable type poured coffee, swept floors, took out the trash, and served more than half a million meals. Emerging at St. Paul’s was a dynamic I think of as a reciprocity of gratitude, a circle of thanksgiving—in which volunteers and rescue and recovery workers tried to outdo each other with acts of kindness and love, leaving both giver and receiver changed.”

The final performance tonight is Dona Nobis Pacem (Grant Us Peace) from the Bach B Minor Mass, considered by many the consummation of Western choral music.

Discussing the purpose of the memorial, the architect explained the design’s intention as, “stoic, defiant and compassionate.” These three characteristics do not always travel comfortably together.   But you can hear each in Bach’s closing chorus.

I am told that in the months after the attack the mood at St. Paul’s was persistently stoic, defiant, and compassionate. In that particular place where the very worst was so painfully present, firefighters and cops, physicians and iron-workers, believers and unbelievers, the wide range of humanity responded as one.

Again Lyndon Harris writes, “We just got up, day after day, dressed accordingly, and went about the monumental task of trying to make sense out of absurdity, bring order out of chaos, and reclaim humanity from the violence that sought to make human life less human. This was also a season of remembrance as we mourned the loss of loved ones. It was a season of improvisation as we tried, often at our wit’s end, to respond to the needs emerging from these never before experienced acts of terrorism.”

We can still be at our wit’s end.  Defiance often seems our default when either stoic restraint or unrestrained compassion would do better.   But it is not one or the other. We are to embrace opposites.   Bach was master of counterpoint, the musical expression of eternal paradox: love abides with hate, good abides with evil, life abides with death.  This is our perpetual reality.

All things are in flux; the flux is subject to a unifying measure or rational principle. This principle — logos, the hidden harmony behind all change — binds opposites in a unified tension, which is like that of a lyre, where a stable harmonious sound emerges from the tension of opposing forces that arise from the bow bound together by the string. (Heraclitus)

This is another in a series of posts considering the analysis and recommendations of Linda Kiltz in a recent edition of the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

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Before reading Dr. Kiltz’s article outlining the challenges in developing a homeland security discipline, I was fiercely ambivalent about the wisdom of engaging in such an endeavor. In the interests of full-disclosure, this is a subject she and I discussed while I was on the faculty of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government and she was finishing her doctorate there in 2007. Although I admire her scholarship and passion, which I have considered carefully, I am now convinced not only that we do not need a distinct homeland security discipline, but that its successful emergence could prove harmful to the enterprise itself.

Much of my concern arises not from how we might define what is or is not within the homeland security domain, but rather what we decide is and is not within a legitimate and well-defined curriculum to support the preparation of its practitioners. Dr. Kiltz writes:

The homeland security enterprise consists of public organizations at all levels of government, non-profit organizations and businesses. As such, there are hundreds of thousands of employees and volunteers that are involved in this enterprise with a broad range of job descriptions, duties and skills. In order to prepare professionals to serve within the homeland security enterprise, it will be necessary to provide them with the knowledge and skills to perceive, analyze and respond to disaster and crises from multiple perspectives and paradigms (Drabek, 2007; Waugh, 2006; Bellavita, 2008). While this certainly will be challenging, it will be critical given the on-going threats we will face now and in the future. The scope and magnitude of the disasters in 2010 provide us with a warning signal of increasingly catastrophic disasters to come.

I have significant issues with the two main propositions presented in this paragraph.

First, while accepting the existing diversity within the field as it currently exists, Dr. Kiltz fails to acknowledge what specific contributions each makes to the whole. Is that whole equal to, less than, or greater than the sum of its parts? If the success of the present enterprise is in anyway a product of its diversity, how then will a curriculum that draws only on limited parts of the contributing disciplines foster perspectives that improve the concentration or orientation of expertise rather than promoting its dilution or dissipation?

Second, the future for which Dr. Kiltz argues we must prepare practitioners is not so much a product of the threats we face as the vulnerabilities we have already created by investing too little energy and effort in protecting or leveraging the legacies of previous investments. The byproduct of defining progress in a way that equates it not so much with innovation as with newness and moreness, has been too little attention to or respect for the uncertainties, complexities and interdependencies that arise within and not just across existing disciplines.

This leaves me wondering, “What can a new homeland security discipline do to make other disciplines — those responsible for creating and managing the domains in which catastrophes and crises emerge — more efficient and effective at managing them?” The answer from Dr. Kiltz’s perspective, it seems, relies on the unstated assumption that we cannot rely on those who created our problems to offer us the solutions. When it comes to problems like climate change, as just one example, we have choice but to do just this.

Convincing existing disciplines to invest more energy and effort in mitigating the long-term effects of past decisions and recovering from their inevitable mistakes does not strike me as the province of one discipline. Although we would do well (when it comes to mitigation at least) to develop and encourage the capacity of our existing disciplines to become more constructively self-critical and less patch-protective, when consequences arise we have no choice but to depend upon the deep expertise of several disciplines rather than the broad and superficial expertise of one to resolve the effects and mount a recovery. Creating a new discipline that carves out a niche for homeland security practitioners does little to enhance the application of expertise within disciplines to solving their own problems, and could even undermine the efforts of other disciplines — like law — to secure appropriate remedies when failures in others — like engineering or medicine — produce spillover effects.

The resilience of the homeland security enterprise depends as much on its diversity as any other system. Protecting our communities is not the province of any single group of individuals no matter how well intentioned or trained they may be. Security is a fundamentally collaborative endeavor, the strength and success of which depends less on the concentration found in any one part than the contributions of many.

As deliberations over the debt limit become increasingly mired in the debate over strategies to reduce the federal debt, the previously unthinkable possibility of a U.S. government default looms larger by the day. Up until now, homeland security practitioners seem to have been more concerned with whether or not negotiators would touch their pet programs than whether the damage caused by a prolonged impasse could threaten the safety and security of our communities.

In homeland security and emergency management circles, talk of the unthinkable usually revolves around complex hazards that produce a cascade of failures resulting in ripples of consequences. This time around we are talking about a cascade of failures that will produce a complex hazard the likes of which we have no way of really knowing until they emerge. What is certain is that some effects will be immediate and others will take years to appreciate. Regardless what time scale their emergence or our awareness of them adheres to, one thing is certain: Most of the worst consequences will never go away.

Those who argue that the debt limit does not matter seem to believe in a myth of American exceptionalism that suggests we can do no wrong, that our decisions and actions will not produce the consequences for us that others have suffered, often at our hands. The opposite is more likely true. Our security could be threatened in previously unimagined ways by creditors who force us to swallow the bitter pills we have dispensed so earnestly and eagerly to others.

Nowhere is this more likely than in the developing world. China and India are rapidly approaching the points where their roles will shift from risk takers to risk makers. And those left vulnerable to the risks created by their rising dominance will surely be us.

China’s military and political might worries some. But its economic ambitions, borne as they are of a desire to keep pace with the burgeoning aspirations of the Chinese people, are greater cause for concern if only for the consequences of their pursuit on the climate and therefore our own ecology and environment.

Others who see little urgency in the current situation may fear the economic effects of others’ decisions and actions but gleefully imagine an America whose government can no longer afford to inhibit or interfere with the decisions and actions of her own citizens. These same people apparently see little difference between a natural person and a corporation when it comes to fundamental liberties. Sadly, the same cannot be said of these same individuals’ assessments of the responsibilities of each to the other.

It’s worth reiterating that U.S. government default is unprecedented. This is important for two reasons: First, the effects are not simply unknowable because we haven’t witnessed such an event before, but because we have no clear idea what ripple effects will result. Second, unlike other disasters that involve underlying processes that we do not fully understand and therefore cannot predict, we know with certainty that the effects of this disaster are entirely preventable.

We cannot and should not assume that the sovereign debt crises resulting from other countries’ fiscal and monetary failures presage the effects should Congress and the White House fail in their duties to resolve the current crisis. Our economy is not just the biggest, it is also intimately connected with every other economy on the planet. Several economists have warned that default would not only delay recovery from the recent recession, but could actually trigger a worldwide depression. We cannot assume an economic calamity of this sort would resemble previous economic depressions.

A devaluation of the U.S. dollar and higher interest rates resulting from default would hit pocketbooks and balance sheets immediately. Reluctance of foreign buyers to invest in U.S. treasury bills would require the government to suspend activities almost immediately to meet interest payments rather than risk further defaults. As government dollars began flowing out of the county to repay foreign creditors, job losses would rise almost as fast as the prices of basic goods and services.

Already stressed state and local governments would be hit hardest after a default. The effects of the recent recession emerged there last and have lingered far longer than elsewhere in the economy. The need for structural and systemic reforms rather than simple shifts in emphasis have already become apparent to many public safety executives as evidenced by the recent legislative initiatives to repeal collective bargaining rights and restructure public employee pension obligations.

As Chris Bellavita’s holiday post reminds us, our leaders have to work if they are to preserve our republic. Their deeds must match their words.

Phil Palin for his part reminded us that our forebears equated the ideals of the republic with the pursuit of eudaimonia. How one attains such an ideal was as troublesome to the ancients as it is for us today. Then as now, much of the disagreement centered on the importance of attaining wealth and exchanging external goods.

Agreeing on the virtue of reducing the debt is meaningless if we are not prepared to meet our obligations. Others can only ever truly judge our intentions by our actions. And even the mere suggestion that the unthinkable is now thinkable has had a negative effect on confidence in our government and its leaders.

Emerging from the current crisis, whether it deepens into downright default or not, will depend on how we respond not just to our situation but to one another. When cities and states can no longer afford to provide essential public safety services who will notice? And what will they do about it?

Their sense of humor intact, Cantabrians have learned to make the best of a bad situation. (Photo by Bronwyn Hayward)

This week the New Zealand Government announced that it will buy out more than 5,000 Christchurch homeowners affected by the February 22 earthquake that devastated the Southern Hemisphere city of 400,000 people. Many more are still awaiting assessments of geotechnical conditions that threaten to undermine any investment in rebuilding their shattered lives where the rubble of their homes now rests.

Since the original earthquake last September, Christchurch has experienced more than 7,300 aftershocks. Two of them had moment magnitudes greater than 6.0 and several more exceeded magnitude 5.0.

With their central business district and most iconic landmarks still in ruins people are wondering when they will get the chance to start rebuilding. The logistics alone suggest the task ahead will be Herculean — although for many it seems, at least for now, rather more Sisyphean. Some estimates indicate that it will take about five years to raze all of the damaged buildings and clear the debris left behind.

With each significant aftershock the community has come together to meet immediate needs, but some wonder how long this can continue. No firm estimates seem readily available to indicate how many people have packed up and left for awhile if not for good. But the impact of their departures are beginning to show signs of straining the social fabric even as the physical fabric of the community remains tattered and torn. This begs the question how people will organize themselves to meet the ongoing challenges of living in the devastated city.

From what I can tell from monitoring Facebook posts and talking to friends, the people coping best with the situation are those who have managed to keep a small but strong social circle intact. A sense of humor has helped immensely with this. As has the willingness to share other forms of human capital.

The most valuable commodities being exchanged in Christchurch these days are not dollars or dozers but instead quick smiles, soft shoulders, firm handshakes, hearty laughs and quiet strolls together along the dark and dusty streets. The duties of those undaunted by disaster are few but strict: In Christchurch they are summed up by a song written and recorded by New Zealand arist Dave Dobbyn entitled Loyal. The second verse summarizes much of what drives those still living in Christchurch these days:

Out in the battle, flung far and used.
Where does allegiance lie?
Sometimes when all of your hopes, and all of your dreams,
Are too much to value in one moment.
And all of us anxious, but why hurry love?
History’s here and now.
Oh and why are you waiting – waiting for what?
The history of some love?

Those daring enough to remain in Christchurch these days seem to share something in common much more powerful than their love of the place or the economic interests they have in homes or jobs. It’s the relationships that have nurtured and sustained them through this serial tragedy that now bind them tightly together. They have history together; a history bound up in love and hope.

The dharma of disaster requires little more of us than a willingness to share our vulnerability by being present in the suffering of others. No burden is too terrible or too great when enough people are willing to bear it.

Those awaiting answers, like those who now know the Government will step in to buy up their properties, have important decisions to make. Here’s hoping they find comfort and direction in the help offered by their friends and families.

Stock and commodity markets reacted negatively today to news that sluggish private sector hiring, slipping domestic manufacturing and sliding Greek sovereign debt ratings. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans met with President Obama to discuss legislation to raise the debt ceiling following a show-vote on Tuesday meant to signal their resistance to any measure that fails to herald a new era of fiscal discipline in Washington. (Which, it should be noted, they regard primarily, if not solely, as cuts to domestic discretionary spending and entitlement programs.)

Although the economic situation in Germany and Japan are not much better than here in the United States (and some would argue much worse), the stories grabbing the biggest headlines in these countries are very different from those here at home. Indeed one might wonder whether the tables have now truly turned since the end of the Second World War.

Those Americans who worked to defeat the axis powers in World War II have come to be known as the Greatest Generation for their willingness both to make difficult decisions and to make significant sacrifices at home and on the battlefield for the sake of future generations. Their leadership benefited not only our generation, but those too of the nations they fought.

The turnabout decision this week by Germany to abandon nuclear power by 2022 and invest heavily in renewables with a target of supplying at least 80 percent of their domestic demand by 2050 reflects nothing short of a payback on our nation’s post-war investment in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe. Germany’s decision and the actions that must follow are no less ambitious than the mobilization of labor and capital required in the United States to supply the war effort 60 years ago. The German people will only succeed in reaching their goal through a combination of expanded capacity, technological innovation and significant reductions in demand through energy conservation and increased efficiency.

A segment of the population of that other great power of the war era has shown a different kind of foresight and fortitude that reflects a more personal sort of sacrifice. The lingering crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has fueled the loss of faith in the government and is now mobilizing a segment of Japanese society that one might assume has every right to sit back and wonder what happened to the country they helped build as the successors to the generation defeated by our grandparents. Instead, this generation of retirees and grandparents is volunteering to expose themselves to dangerous levels of radioactivity by helping cleanup the damaged nuclear reactors rather than leaving the job to younger workers who would be more likely to suffer the long-latent effects of such significant radiation exposures.

In both instances, the decisions and actions we see taking center-stage overseas reflect the sorts of values that made our forebears great. At the same time, their presence, even prominence in the news from abroad makes their absence from our own political debate that much more glaring and indeed worrying for our stability, stature, security and future prospects of success.

What sacrifices are we willing to make to maintain our greatness? How hard are we willing to work? How much would we pay to remain an exemplar of the can-do spirit for other nations to follow?

Judging by the crisis of confidence afflicting both the political and economic spheres, it seems the answers to these questions are “not so much.” Our crisis will continue, if not deepen, unless those who can start doing. Americans should not expect leadership of the sort displayed in Germany and Japan this week to come from politicians alone. As the examples of our former rivals aptly illustrate, we need leadership at every level of our society if we are to restore our greatness.

The Political Economy of Homeland Security

The week before U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden, at least one prominent media outlet took note of an academic paper examining the return on America’s homeland security investments. Although politicians have offered varying opinions in the week since bin Laden’s killing about the ongoing need for such investments, the paper itself has received little additional notice. An event like bin Laden’s death should, however, amplify rather than reduce our interest in assessing where we stand and where we are heading.

The study’s authors, John Mueller of The Ohio State University and Mark G. Stewart of the University of Newcastle, argue that the country’s one trillion dollar investment in homeland security since the 9/11 attacks should be assessed on the basis of risk reduction and cost-benefit returns. Using such techniques, they argue, one would be hard-pressed to justify the massive scope and scale of investments given the miniscule returns achieved.

I am not sure this finding surprises many people reading this blog. Moreover, I am reasonably confident that a at least some of you question whether it even matters.

The homeland security enterprise, like national defense, has rarely considered cost-benefit returns significant criteria for making decisions. To the extent that analysts consider risk reduction, they accept the extremely low short-term probabilities of an attack while assuming something catastrophic (by some measure or another) will occur eventually.

This ensures that debates usually focus on whether or not we are thinking about the right rare event, rather than whether or not our efforts will actually make any difference at all. The opportunity costs of the investments rarely receive any significant attention.

Even if we cannot justify making all homeland security and national defense decisions on the basis of risk-cost-benefit analyses, we should be able to agree that securing should short-term yield from our investments makes sense even if  long-term benefits remain our ultimate concern. Too often, though, the short-term benefit is measured solely in terms of the immediate satisfaction of having mollified critics or addressing the exigencies of whatever crises called our past decisions into question.

As a community concerned with how we prepare future practitioners, these tendencies to focus too much on the moment on one hand and too far into the future on the other should concern us. Most of the techniques we teach new practitioners have very limited efficacy in these situations or have very little evidence to recommend them.

Allied disciplines, like political science, public administration, engineering, economics and policy analysis, employ more robust theoretical frameworks in their analyses. Although homeland security practitioners recognize many if not most of these methods, it seems we rarely use them. Why is this?

As we look to the post-bin Laden future, I suspect we would do well to recognize that most of the investments we made had little impact on the ultimate success of the mission to locate and eliminate the world’s most-wanted terrorist. As we look for ways to address the atomized residue of al Qaeda and its affiliates, we would do well to ask ourselves which investments make the most sense.

We can invest in the development of democratic institutions and the popular expression of the principles of democratic self-governance, including respect for human rights and economic and environmental equity. Or we can continue supporting the status quo ante, which equates stability with subsidies to military-industrial oligarchs and their patrons.

Applying cost-benefit analysis does not in or of itself ensure democratic outcomes. But the absence of any consideration of the economic value of investments in homeland security like anything else ensures that those who have the most to gain enjoy more say in the decision than those who have something to lose.

Building a sustainable homeland security future may not mean ensuring stability in the short-term, especially if it comes at the expense of our economic security. Investing our national wealth — especially our human and social capital — in institutions that promote freedom will generate a more stable long-term future only if we are willing to accept that speed and certainty matter a whole lot less than the price we pay in terms of blood and treasure.

Last week I noted the grassroots movement to rebuild Christchurch, New Zealand’s earthquake devastated core, and the interest expressed in applying principles sustainable urban development. Phil Palin’s Monday updates to his post on Japan’s transition from response to recovery suggest Japanese leaders also see an opportunity to apply innovative thinking to manage ecological impacts as they rebuild the areas shattered by the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011.

I think Phil and I both sought to make cases that such adaptations reflect a certain philosophical consistency or congruence with the principles of resilience that have represented a central theme in many of our respective posts. This should not, however, be taken to suggest that either of us see sustainability and resilience as synonymous or for that matter we see one necessarily leading to the other.

Most conventional definitions of sustainability start with an emphasis on making decisions today in ways that avoid identifiable impacts on future generations. Resilience starts with the same locus of control, but assumes a different outcome.

When we think about sustainability and act with a view toward the future needs of others, we are doing so in the hope, if not the expectation, that the decisions and actions we take can either prevent some future harm or yield some future benefit to others. When we look to the future from the perspective of resilience, we may also be concerned with preventing some specific harm or controlling circumstances that make us vulnerable.

What distinguishes sustainability and resilience, in my mind at least, is the object of these actions. Choices influenced by the ethos of sustainability seek to limit our contribution to phenomena that can do others like us similar harms in the future. Resilience, on the other hand, seeks to manage how we react to the occurrence of these phenomena when the inevitably recur or are replaced by something equally disruptive.

In the aftermath of a disaster, making a commitment to rebuilding sustainably suggests resilience. If people can look beyond the exigencies of their own immediate needs and think about the future they will leave for others then I think we can say with some confidence that they possess a certain degree of resilience.

That said, acting sustainability may be much harder for shattered communities to say they seek than it is for them to achieve in the end. Striving for sustainability suggests a resilient spirit. Achieving sustainable outcomes in the recovery process demonstrates resilient character.

When I posted Ruthless Resilience two weeks ago, I had suspected (or maybe hoped) some of you would take issue with my thesis that markets take care of themselves and in doing so exhibit more resilience than almost any other human system. Of course, my thesis relied upon the assumption that the economy, like the planet, will survive the calamities confronting us in some form even if it is not one we find particularly satisfactory.

That this can be said of the macroeconomy also says an awful lot about the sorts of microeconomic choices that confront market participants after disaster strikes. Economies rise and fall on their ability to help us meet our wants and needs. In fact, it is the difficulty the market has with making a distinction between the two (our wants and our needs), or perhaps more accurately the ease with which it utterly ignores the very existence of any meaningful distinction between the two conditions that causes much of the concern about the economic effects of disasters.

As New Zealand and Japan face the daunting tasks of reconstructing their communities, the economic effects of their respective disasters has received considerable attention. But that attention has shed very little light on the values informing market participants’ decisions about their present situations.

Economists like to assume that rational people act in their own self-interest. As such, they would have us believe that people left to their own and confronted with competing choices, will choose the option that yields the most utility. In this sense, utility is best understood as the ability of the chosen option to satisfy one’s notion of his or her interests or expectations. Although these considerations leave plenty of room for people to choose things that make them feel good by appealing to altruism or compassion rather than one’s own temporal concerns with safety and security,  such choices afford them little immediate advantage and almost always leave economists puzzled.

We have many examples of economic transactions in which people behave in ways that leave them less well off and others better off without any tangible evidence that those giving receive anything in return but the warm feeling of having done something nice for someone else. Perhaps the most common and tangible example is the tendency to tip service workers even when we have no reasonable expectation of ever seeing or interacting with them again. We have already benefited from their services and have nothing to more to gain by being generous rather than stingy. But we still choose to follow conventions that reward those who serve us knowing that it is the right or just thing to do.

Maybe this sentiment helps explain why the leading suggestions for how to rebuild Christchurch’s shattered central city precincts emphasize principles of sustainable design. The leading citizen-submitted suggestions for the future of Christchurch rated by visitors to the Re-imagine Christchurch website recommend steps to make the resurrected city the best example of sustainable urban design on the planet.

Such sentiments are not without precedent. After the devastating 1931 Hawke’s Bay Earthquake, the residents of Napier rebuilt that city in a way that has made it one of the best examples of Art Deco design in the world.

Christchurch’s residents seem inclined to leverage the city’s pre-quake identity as the Garden City to green their community even further. Some even seem willing to relegate cars to the dust-bin of history and rebuild in ways that make the relatively flat cityscape even easier to transit by walking, biking or riding buses, trains or other modes of mass transit than it already is.

This would be interesting enough even if it were not accompanied by some suggestions that emphasize efforts to retain some slightly quirky urban design characteristics, like those one contributor refers to as “secret spaces.”

Economists might have us believe that such suggestions reflect the interests of Christchurch’s residents in encouraging tourism, which does constitute a significant portion of the local export economy. But I would like to believe that the aspirations reflected in these suggestions indicate a higher sense of value and a commitment to future generations’ enjoyment of a place that has inspired and sustained many generations already.

In the end, those making the decisions about how to rebuild may neither have much to gain from these choices nor much more to lose than that which has already been sacrificed. If economists’ efforts to work out the puzzling ways in which our values influence our decisions are right in assuming that we value present losses more highly than future gains, then there has never been a better to time act selflessly than right now.

In his State of the Union Address tonight, President Barack Obama acknowledged that the rules governing our society and our place in the world have changed. Many Americans, he said, have experienced the impact of these changes in lost opportunities, diminished outlook and a dashed sense of optimism if not outright despair. Nevertheless, the President challenged us to see the future as ours to shape, and he outlined a four-point plan to renew American confidence in our competence, our creativity and our ability to make the world a better place by collaborating and competing.

The four elements of the President’s plan — innovation, education, building the nation, and managing the debt — seem sound but strike me as not enough to meet the challenges we face. If what we confront, as the President himself proposed, is a “Sputnik moment,” we have less need for new rules than we do for a whole new game.

As the President himself noted in examples sprinkled throughout his speech, the greatest changes have arisen from people seeing in past crises opportunities dressed up as challenges. The nation itself, he noted, was founded on just such a radical idea. The notion that the nation’s existence reflects a quest to promote an idea — securing the common good by protecting individual liberty — was itself a radical innovation in its day, and one we are in danger of taking for granted.

In what struck me as burying the lede, the President made few if any bold policy pronouncements or proposals until he mentioned his administration’s plan to present a proposal to reorganize executive branch departments and agencies to reflect his agenda. He gave few hints at what this might look like beyond offering an amusing anecdote about the conflicted way in which our government regulates and protects salmon, smoked and otherwise.

Incremental changes in government administration, tax policy and fiscal management will not fix the problems facing our country or renew the promise of its founding documents or the potential of its citizens. The President admitted as much himself, but he offered few if any tangible insights into how we might restore the vitality of the institutions touched by the agenda he proposed. I for one hope that the relative position of comments concerning reorganization of executive branch functions in his remarks does not reflect the true priority of this initiative. If it does, the other planks of the platform he outlined may be doomed.

Finally, unless you count his goal of increasing the percentage of energy we produce from renewable sources to 80 percent by 2035, his remarks barely touched on homeland security. When he turned to foreign policy concerns near the end of his address, he relied almost entirely on boilerplate plaudits. While renewing promises that al Qaeda, its affiliates and supporters will have no safe haven while he occupies the Oval Office, he made the point that renewed focus on domestic issues does not mean abandoning our commitments abroad or seeing those beyond our borders solely as consumers or competitors.

With all of this said, I wonder whether you see the President’s remarks as new rules, a new game or neither? Either way, what would you like to see come of each of the four policy planks he proposed? How will actions to implement policies in each of the four areas — innovation, education, infrastructure and debt — help us build a stronger, safer nation?

The end of one year and the beginning of another gives one pause. New beginnings are a chance to start over. If we’re honest with ourselves, a bit of reflection can help us enter the knew year equipped with insights that help us avoid or at least reduce the impact of new calamities like those that confronted us in the year before. As I look back at 2010 for lessons, here are the top five things I saw that make me wonder what the year ahead holds in store:

We still don’t know security when we see it. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped in a landmark First Amendment case that he knew hard-core pornography when he saw it. Unfortunately, the naked truth about homeland security is we still know know what it is when we see it. Full body scanners and aggressive pat downs to search airline passengers have, however, hinted at the limits of public support for security theater. That said, we still have few clear hints how we should balance the competing interests of civil liberties like privacy and security.

We may be smarter, more successful and skillful than our adversaries, but that ain’t saying all that much; or, maybe it’s just hard to find good help these days. Most of the homeland security successes we witnessed this year, seem more like lucky strikes than genuinely skillful performances by our security services. Maybe that’s because our adversaries have had less success recruiting skilled operatives than we might have imagined. This makes me wonder: with unemployment still running nearly 10 percent nationally (and much higher in some minority communities) why is it so hard to find skilled help? What’s more, as local and state governments find themselves in the death grip of fiscal austerity, how will they meet public expectations of them for safety and security? Judging by public criticism of the response to severe weather events as we end the year, not well at all.

It’s the economy, stupid. Before we had even managed to stop writing or typing 2009 when we meant 2010, Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake that some estimates suggest killed more than 250,000 people and left millions more homeless. As the year came to a close, the country languished in the grip of a cholera epidemic and a presidential succession crisis. The flow of aid lagged far behind pledges from international donors, leaving the impoverished country barely clinging to life. If we ever had any reason to doubt the fact, Haiti confirmed that poverty is any adversary or calamity’s best friend. The corollary to that observation is equally clear and simple: Resilience is about resources. The fungibility of capital — that is the ability of any individual or group to apply their stores of human, social or political capital to conduct transactions that transform natural, economic or material resources to their own or others’ benefit — depends on both the sufficiency and diversity of those hard assets as much or more than any degree of cleverness or incentive to apply themselves. Necessity is the mother of chaos, not invention. In the absence of resources, don’t expect that to change unless you are willing to watch things get worse not better.

Victory (sometimes) favors the unprepared. The benefits of diverse stores of all forms of hard and soft capital was aptly illustrated by the New Zealand response to September’s earthquake in Christchurch and the numerous and still ongoing aftershocks. People there weren’t all that well prepared (especially for the specific event that occurred), but they knew how to use what they had to take care of what they needed. As such, they fared much better than the Haitians and required no outside assistance. The Chileans too, although better prepared than either the New Zealanders or Haitians, demonstrated that was all the more true when a society’s resources and mindsets are both well-adapted to the environment they inhabit.

Casting oil on the water sometimes makes waves. Rather than calming turbulent seas, the explosive destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the resulting release of millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea made waves for months. Rather than crystallizing public opinion on energy policy and the need to invest in alternatives to petroleum, the federal response — both on a regulatory level and an operational level — came under intense criticism for ignoring the needs of local citizens who depended upon the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihood. Never mind that some depended upon industries that posed a risk to these ecosystems while others depended on the ecosystem itself, the debate never fully confronted the difficult policy choices facing the country now or in the future. As the federal government continues its work with Gulf Coast states on a recovery plan we should be looking forward not backward for answers about the future.

Clearly, many more things happened in 2010 than I have covered here. What were your top lessons learned from 2010? And what are your hopes for the year ahead?

Today I am starting a new job as a deputy fire chief in a fire district near Seattle. As such, I have been pretty consumed with the details of moving and starting a new job rather than keeping up with my homeland security reading and preparing this week’s post. Nevertheless, it strikes me that the odyssey upon which I am embarking offers a new prism through which to observe what’s happening in our field at the state and local levels.

Over the past several months, I have commented often about the importance of leadership in dealing with the challenges we face. As such, it should come as no surprise that I was attracted to my new position by a charismatic fire chief with a reputation for innovation and integrity. During the interview process, his commitment to these ideals became more than evident.

The commitment of the community and the firefighters to his success was also evident. This is not to say he has enjoyed a smooth tenure since taking up the position a bit less than a year ago. Indeed, the burgeoning fiscal crisis, the annexation of a portion of his district by a neighboring city and a campaign by the union local representing firefighters from his last department to pass a vote of no-confidence in his leadership have presented personal and professional challenges. Fully aware of these issues when I applied, it was was his pleasant (cheerful really) demeanor and ability to see the opportunities in these challenges that convinced me to join his team.

From what I can see so far, the community, the elected fire commission and the firefighters themselves see in their chief the hope of a better future despite the challenges they face as well. His ability to articulate a clear and shared vision, involve others in charting a way forward, give the work back and manage the pace of change so the challenges remain manageable have given people tangible evidence of his commitment to their welfare as well as that of the organization and the community.

One of the things that seems to distinguish the agency I am joining from some of its peers is its commitment to learning. My role comes with an unusual and unexpected title for a fire department: chief learning officer. Besides overseeing training, I am responsible for the fire district’s emergency management, risk management, research and development, and safety and wellness programs. The combination of these portfolios reflects an appreciation of the changing nature of fire and rescue services and a desire to shape the service in ways that reflect the relative shift in emphasis away from fire-related services to other activities that address risks arising from natural and technological hazards.

I have a lot to learn about my new community, the fire district, my new colleagues and my new role. In the process of getting settled, I will undoubtedly learn a great deal about myself and my capacity to endure change. One of the most important things I have learned from past moves is the importance of accepting both my limitations and the assistance of others. In the process I have become much more aware that when I recognize and maximize others’ strengths by asking for their help we both get something valuable in return.

What are the most important lessons you have learned from the experience of taking a new job or assuming a new role in homeland security? How have you shared these lessons with others and how did you benefit from that experience? How can we maximize the strengths of others to benefit the whole of the homeland security enterprise?