More or Less Afraid of Nearly Everything: Homeland Security, Borders, and Disasters in the Twenty-First Century

Description

Migration, borders, cybersecurity, natural disasters, and terrorism: Homeland security is constantly in the news. Despite ongoing attention, these problems seem to be getting bigger even as the political discussion grows more overheated and misleading. Ben Rohrbaugh, a former border security director at the White House’s National Security Council, cuts through the noise to provide an accessible and novel framework to understand both homeland security and the thinking around how to keep civilians safe. Throughout the twentieth century, the United States did not experience national security domestically; it defended its borders by conducting military, foreign policy, and intelligence operations internationally, and then separated these activities from domestic law enforcement with bright legal lines. In the twenty-first century, U.S. national security no longer occurs exclusively outside of the nation. The U.S. government is beginning to respond to this change, and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security is merely the first step in an organizational and strategic realignment that will be a long, difficult, and mistake-filled process. More or Less Afraid of Nearly Everything is an accessible and engaging guide to homeland security, particularly migration and border security, that makes innovative arguments about the American government and keeping citizens safe, and provides practical solutions to real-world problems.   Contents Author’s Note List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. National Security Comes Home 2. The Implications of New Vulnerabilities 3. The Unpleasant Process of Reorganizing a Government 4. The Department of Homeland Security We Have 5. Sovereignty and Twentieth-Century Border Management 6. Risk Management and Twenty-First-Century Borders 7. Migration and Border Security 8. Putting Off the Evil Day Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index