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The Hart-Rudman Commission and the Homeland Defense

Authored by Dr. Ian Roxborough.

September 2001

41 Pages

Brief Synopsis

With the exception of attacks by ballistic missiles, the continental United States was long held to be virtually immune from attack. For Americans, wars were something that took place in other countries. In the future, that may not hold.

But while strategic thinkers agree that homeland defense needs greater attention, there is less consensus on the precise nature of the threat. The author disagrees with the commonly-held assumption that the main threat to the American homeland will come from terrorism inspired by U.S. leadership of globalization. He contends that the architects of the American strategy for homeland defense need a broader perspective that includes a wide range of existing or potential threats.

SUMMARY

The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, popularly known as the Hart-Rudman Commission after its chairs, has recently produced a series of reports. The commission believes that recent changes in the security environment mean the rise of new threats, in particular the likelihood of an attack on American soil resulting in thousands of casualties. As a consequence, the commission calls for major changes in the organization of national security institutions in order to respond adequately to these new challenges.

This monograph discusses the assumptions underlying the diagnosis and threat assessment made by the commission. It argues that several assumptions made by the commission are of debatable merit and rest on a very selective reading of social science. The commission relies heavily on the notion that globalization has both integrative and disintegrative tendencies. While for much of the world globalization increases integration, there will be an intense rejection of western culture and a backlash to globalization in parts of the Third World. The key assumptions underlying this picture are that people in traditional societies are disoriented by rapid social change and seek to turn the clock back.

In fact, this notion that globalization is likely to produce a backlash from Third World, and particularly Islamic societies, has very little to support it. The monograph argues that the work of the commission is based on poor social science and that there is the risk that this has produced an inaccurate diagnosis of the causes of conflict in the 21st century. The commission believes that fundamentally we are moving into an era of global cultural conflict. This is speculative, and there is little in the way of hard evidence to support such an assertion. We might equally be moving into a historical period in which global resource conflicts and changing regional power balances will lead aspiring regional hegemons to embark on policies that lead to war.

The monograph discusses four assumptions underlying the work of the commission. They are: (1) globalization will be a mixed blessing, producing both more integration and also strident rejection; (2) social change is disruptive and produces conflict because people lose their moral bearings (what some authors call “anomie”); (3) what underlies conflict is ultimately a clash of fundamental values; and (4) the world is entering a radically new age. Each of these assumptions is, in the view of the author of this monograph, wrong.

The commission’s focus on a threat of mass casualty attack on the American homeland perpetrated by Third World states runs the risk of an unbalanced threat assessment. The threat of mass casualty by foreign states cannot be discounted, but it is not clear how the commission arrives at the conclusion that this is likely to be America’s biggest security challenge in the coming decades. This monograph argues, first, that there is also a substantial risk of mass casualty attack perpetrated by U.S. citizens. Focusing on primarily on a threat from foreign states may lead to defensive measures which may do little to reduce the domestic threat. Second, the focus on dealing with the threat of mass casualty attack on the United States needs to be balanced with a range of other security concerns, including the possible rise of would-be regional hegemons.

The monograph also discusses the analysis made by the Hart-Rudman Commission concerning likely future trends in American society and the implications these will have for American military power. The commission argues that globalization and declining social cohesion in American society will together lead to an erosion of the ties between citizens and the state. The commission believes that this will result in a rather brittle public support for American military operations. The monograph argues that this many of these recommendations, such as the call for a National Homeland Security Agency, should be adopted, the commission is prone to rely heavily on moral exhortation rather than, for example, economic incentives, as a way of changing what it sees as inefficiencies and defects in American government. This monograph argues that moral exhortation is unlikely to be effective except as part of a large package of policies.

The Hart-Rudman Commission calls for the United States to develop a “culture of coordinated strategic planning.” This is an important recommendation which plays to one of the Army’s strengths. It is in the Army’s interest to do what it can to encourage the development of strategic culture, and in particular of a balanced set of capabilities to deal with a wide range of diverse threats.

Access Full Report [PDF]: The Hart-Rudman Commission and the Homeland Defense