Social and Political Sciences
Topic:
A threat to USA in regards to homeland security – another 9/11 type attack or WMD attack
Terrorism Threat to Homeland Security in the United States
Course is Homeland Security
Final Paper: The Final Examination for this course is 10-page paper. Conduct research and evaluate in depth one threat to our homeland security (USA) examples including natural and technological disasters, as well as intentional threats of domestic and international terrorism, including weapons of mass destruction. Describe this threat and evaluate the danger. Also discuss if the current government programs effectively address the danger. Finally, address ways in which the government could improve in addressing the threat. You should draw from your text and other sources. You should use and cite at least four sources in your papers.
All papers should follow APA 6th edition. This includes citations, reference page and title page.
For over twenty years since the happenings of the 9/11 attacks, terrorism and targetted violence have continued to be a severe threat to Homeland security in mannerisms that have conspicuously evolved. Terrorism is mainly the unlawful use of force and violence against individuals or property for intimidation purposes or coercing the government or its people to advance particular political or social objectives. Targeted violence refers to violent incidents that implicate homeland security and the activities of theUnited states Department of Homeland security. In targeted violence, the known or knowable attacker chooses a specific target before the violent attack happens. Targeted violence will also include the attacks that lack a precisely discernible objective whether political, ideological or religious (Homeland Security, 2020). Nonetheless, this objective or motivation is generally of extensive severity and magnitude to suggest the intention to cause a degree of mass injury, destruction or death following the known terrorist attacks.
Terrorism and targetted attacks have significant impacts in the homeland concerning the safety and security of the communities, schools, worship places and other public meetings. These two threats increasingly intersect with each other and hence having an alignment to the implemented countermeasures. Therefore, instead of dealing with terrorism and targeted violence as different phenomena, Homeland security has developed strategies to address the challenges and then the tools that could be used to manage the challenges together,
This research paper seeks to fully delve into the threats of terrorism and targetted violence, specifically concerning Homeland Security. The research will evaluate their dangers and the effectiveness of respective government programs in addressing these dangers. Finally, extensive research will give its recommendations that the government could implement to improve handling the threats.
The Evolving Nature of the Threat of Terrorism and Targeted Violence.
Terrorism would receive extensive focus after the September 2011 attacks. However, terrorist threats have been in existence in the United States for a long time. International terrorism was known to threaten Americans that were outside the country’s boundaries. Currently, foreign terrorist attacks attack Americans on their country’s soil. Before the present millennium, an alert Customs Service Official stopped Ahmas Ressam, who tried to enter the country through Canada to carry out a terrorist attack (Wohlstetter, 2019). On an average day, the United States has over one million persons entering legally, while thousands more enter illegally. The bombing at the World Trade Center demonstrated that the country could not depend entirely on the present border controls and procedures in keeping foreign terrorists out of the country.
Over time the terrorist attacks have also become increasingly lethal. The terrorist organizations in the 70s and 80s had specific political objectives (Wohlstetter, 2019). They attempted calibrating attacks to produce enough bloodshed to attract the right attention for their cause but not too much to turn away public support. Notably, the increasing rate of terrorist attacks has demonstrated that they are focussed on killing as many persons as possible. The bombing at the World Trade Center in New York led to six people’s death, and almost 1000 persons were injured. However, the objective was toppling the twin towers to kill tens of thousands of people. The contravention attacks against New York’s infrastructure in 1993 that encompassed plans to bomb the Lincoln and Holland tunnels were also planning to achieve mass casualties (Wohlstetter, 2019). .The terrorist attacks that happen overseas against the United States would also follow a similar trend. In Saudi Arabia’s military barracks and two embassies in Africa, over 6059 casualties were inflicted by terrorist attacks. From the plans, the executions, and statements from those arrested, the terrorist attacks are designed to kill large numbers.
The high risk that accompanied international tourism led to the country putting a heavy focus on countering them, groups such as Al Qaeda and the ISIS after the 9/11 attacks and the military engagements with the Middle East would pose more significant threats if terrorism to the United States and motivated violence to arise from several sources. Notably, the current threat environment has become more diffuse (Jenkins et al., 2014). The terrorist groups are now more decentralized, depend significantly on their affiliates and allies, and rely on their ability to influence the American native recruits to undertake the terrorist attacks. Undoubtedly, Al Qaeda groups are still dangerous organizations, but their ability to carry out another 9/11 attack expeditiously has considerably reduced. The affiliates and homegrown terrorist plots are currently the larger sections of the terrorism threat (Jenkins et al., 2014). The groups remain focussed on their ambitious strategic attacks and have incorporated the “do-it-yourself” terrorist attacks, urging followers to do anything possible regardless of the place. However, the groups’ efforts to mobilize the citizens in America to become terrorists have achieved limited success.
Nonetheless, one cannot underestimate the terrorism threat posed by domestic actors inspired by violent extremist ideologies and the attacks that are not ideologically driven. Domestic threat actors will plan and undertake their violent activities solely and with no apparent warning in a mannerism that limits conventional law enforcement officers’ effectiveness and the disruption strategies. The FBI pointed out that 2019 was the deadliest year for domestic extremist violence since the Oklahoma City Bombing that happened in 1995. More individuals died in mass school shootings in the country in the past two decades compared to the whole 20th century (Muffler, 2020). It became necessary that the country’s homeland security confronted the evolving nature of the terrorism threat through a holistic strategy to prevent terrorism and targetted violence originating internationally or from home., in an era where online radicalization to violent extremism and disparate threats (Muffler, 2020). The country will need to handle the foreign enemies and the domestic enemies trying to spur violence in the nation’s youth.
Over time, the incidents of targeted violence have resulted from numerous motives such as political gain, personal fame, grievances, real or perceived faults or jealousy, among others. Generally, the acts of targeted violence are intentional, pre-planned and predatory similar to terrorism actions. They do not happen by chance but rather affective or impulsive violence. Assassinations such as Julius Caesar and John F Kennedy are some of the famous incidents of targeted violence that changed things’ trajectory (Muffler, 2020). The victims of school killings due to school attacks may not be known, but their deaths altered their families and the American community. The incidents garnered the attention that even some laws were implemented to improve safety.
Notably, targeted violence and terrorism posed a persistent threat to the United States. Apart from the growing set of actors and motivations, leading to terrorism, the advent of technology would also allow the terrorist extremists to disseminate their messages internationally and develop online community influencing vulnerable persons. These online extremist communities are grown between radicalization and violent extremism and mobilization to violence through communication developments. The communities will have the attackers lionized hence encouraging others to follow similar steps. Therefore, the online space has improved the operational competence of attackers as they use the internet to glean technical data for their violent activities.
Present Strategies for dealing with Terrorism and Targeted Violence in Homeland America
The United States would develop a coherent and effective strategy to prevent terrorism, especially domestic tourism and violent extremism from the time counterterrorism emerged. In 2010, the government brought in the policy initiative known as the “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” which would later be dubbed “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) in 2014. This policy outlined the preventive aspects related to counterterrorism and the interventions that will undermine any luring of extremist movements and the ideologies propagating violence. The efforts are mainly handling the root causes of extremism via community engagement. While this policy would not be perfect, it brought in revolutionary initiatives that would recast terrorism as a violent crime that can be prevented instead of being an existential and sole foreign national security threat.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security implemented the Department of Homeland Security Strategy for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence which describes the Department’s vision to deal with terrorism and targetted violence threatening the Homeland (McAleen, 2019). The framework has been designed to ensure the privacy, civil rights and the civil liberties of citizens are upheld. It hence consists of goals, respective objectives and priority actions that enhance their ability to counter the transnational criminal organizations, human traffickers together with other criminal threats. The Department understood that a whole society approach that will empower the people, the territorial authorities, and the private sector among other essential institutions to adapt to the threats’ evolving nature (McAleenan, 2019).
The goals guiding the Department’s strategic framework include understanding the evolving threat environment and supporting partners to homeland security enterprise via specialized knowledge, preventing terrorists and other hostile parties from entering the country and denying them the chance to exploit the country’s trade, immigration, domestic and international travel systems, preventing terrorism and targeted violence and enhancing the country’s infrastructure protections and community preparedness. There are specific objectives and priority actions implemented (McAleenan, 2019). For instance, concerning the third goal of preventing terrorism and target violence, its objectives include increasing societal awareness levels on violent extremism drivers to increase their resistance levels to the threats. Considering that the youth are the most vulnerable to radicalization and violent extremism, the implementation of focussed resilience programs for the group ensures that many do not engage in the crime (McAleenan, 2019). This has required the development of open channels of trusted communication between the authorities and public members in any locality. The Department has had several briefings, engagement strategies and outreach efforts have been focusing on achieving the third goal of the strategy.
With the Department’s evolution, its identifiable capabilities that focus on boosting the country’s defence would also develop. Therefore, the Department’s staff have been deployed across the universe to enhance the country’s defence-in-depth. Their efforts have ensured that several terrorist threats are simultaneously handled, those from foreign origin and those emanating locally. Notably, the Department has also indicated that there is still a gap within the counterterrorism approach to achieve a flexible toolkit that will handle all forms of the threats as they emerge. When the Department can understand the evolving landscape of terrorism and targeted violence, then offer support to their partners in the homeland security enterprise vis specialized knowledge then can be ina position to prioritize there and have proper resources allocated across the Department. Subsequently, the terrorists and hostile parties are prevented from entering the country or exploiting any country’s immigration systems.
In line with their strategy, the Department of Homeland Security has granted %10 million to projects focussed in supporting the development of Terrorism and Targeted Violence Prevention (TVTP) Framework (Kovaleski, 2020). These financial awards were made via the TVTP Grant program, and it reached 29 separate projects. The TVTP program is the only federal grant program focussed on the prevention capabilities within local communities. The main objective is preventing persons from being mobilized or radicalized into violence as they are tailored to fit the community itself (Kovaleski, 2020)
. The various subjects handled through the selected projects include resilience, intervention, preventing recidivism, and reintegration programs at local levels.
Challenges Within Present Counter Measures to Terrorism and Targeted Violence
While the laws and programs focussed on handling the threats have been developed accordingly, there is still an over-emphasis on foreign terrorism which hinders all efforts. Over time, the measures implemented by responsible authorities have displayed several widespread biases that are expressed around terrorism. For instance, the belief that international terrorism poses a significant threat than domestic terrorism is misplaced. From January to September 2018, the FBI stated that they arrested an almost equal number of right-wing and foreign terrorism suspects (Guittard, 2019). Right-wing violence led to more Americans’ death in one year from the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. The discrepancies between the real and the deduced terrorism threat have informed political priorities and allocation of funds. Dealing with the revived threat will need a broader reorientation of the country’s counterterrorism. The political class will need to clarify that the prevention efforts want to protect all communities in both rhetoric and policy (Guittard, 2019).
The second challenge from these initiatives is that the CVE scope will need to be narrowed down to preventing crime if terrorism and targeted violence is to be mitigated completely. The initiatives adopted by the CVE demonstrate an underlying theory of having inclusive, democratic and safe communities that can deal with extremism and violence. While this is the federal government’s function, these extensive broad strategies mislead the primary function of the CVE, which is to prevent vulnerable persons from engaging in terrorism acts (Guittard, 2019). Terrorism offenders within the country are relatively small and manageable in comparison to other countries. The FBI indicated that in 2019, they were looking to investigate 850 domestic terrorism cases. Conversely, the U.K. with about 20% of the United States population suggested having 1314 persons into the counterterrorism diversion program on Channel. It is impossible for the U.S. government despite its complex and challenging task of having the CVE focussing on its core roles.
Other commentators propose distinct solutions to improve CVE’s effectiveness, including increased funding, better leadership and stronger national-local countdown. While the proposals are worthwhile, there is still a need for the broader framing of the CVE’s mandate and handling the core challenges. The CVE came from an ambitious goal of eliminating terrorism and targeted violence through collaboration with communities. All critical stakeholders should create a bipartisan consensus for a strategy that will prevent the crime as they respect civil liberties and awards both the communities and law enforcement officers with workable strategies other than bullets and handcuffs to fight terrorism.
Another challenge is in the navigation of tension between the need for efficiency that has caused an emphasis on particular ethnic groups and the risk of the latter being stigmatized and alienating vital allies. Despite the CVE initiatives being designed to deal with all extremism forms, a prominent theme is that many are perceived to focus on the Muslim community and neglect other possible sources if domestic ideological violence. Public debates over their initiatives have had communities indicate that the latter is stigmatizing, alienate some groups from participation and hurt the communities’ relationships with the government and law enforcement. Concurrently, there are apparent good reasons to be particular instead of general regarding approaches within specific communities. One of the elements in building effective partnerships between organizations and the government is the two collaborating and taking prompt actions to respond to their priority actions without government needs. The two matters are causing tension between having some communities being targeted and collaborating and serving particular communities effectively. Therefore, if communities see terrorism prevention efforts as a form of targeting victimization, it becomes challenging for authorities to achieve their desired objectives of preventing terrorism and targeted violence.
Recommendations of Government’ Strategies to Prevent Terrorism and Targeted Violence.
The United States government will need to expand and update their foreign counterterrorism authorities such that it also includes the prevention and investigation of domestic tourism (Guittard, 2019). Apart from increasing them, they need to be strengthened to address domestic terrorism. They should also engage in public education and understand the threats and how they could respond to its evolving nature. One important step that Congress should take is requiring the President to develop a national strategy for domestic tourism that precisely articulates the threat and its capabilities in handling them. While some commentators could critique the blending of domestic and international threats while expanding the intelligence communities’ domestic function, it is prudent to note that other democracies have successfully done it (Guittard, 2019). The underlying objective is increased transparency and accountability levels with counterterrorism and the CVE.
The United States government also needs to have their approaches to terrorism and targeted violence restructured for better delineation between law enforcement and intelligence-led investigations into known and suspected terrorists and the community-led prevention efforts (Guittard, 2019). Community efforts should not be led by law enforcement. The broad approach taken by the CVE makes the latter look as if they are seeking to provide social services instead of surveillance. The CVE will work best when there are clear boundaries between criminal investigation efforts and community services allowing the agency’s practitioners to develop the unwavering trust required to engage the vulnerable persons on potential targeting and their recruitment into violent groups.
The terrorism prevention efforts need to have top-level access and support from the leaders in participating agencies. While discussing how a task Force could be sufficient over time, many had indicated that effective functioning happened when the leaders from all central departments and agencies such as the DHS and the FBI were engaged (Jackson et al., 2019). While the D.H.s has been seen to prevent terrorism and targeted violence, other agencies have not proven their focus on prevention strategies and activities. Agency leadership will need to be part of the efforts since the top commitments provide credibility, which cannot be availed by the agencies’ lower levels.
After selecting and implementing the coordination structure, the agencies will need to prioritize experimentation and innovation. While the Taskforce could bring in most of its security players from the CVE, its functioning in the ground has increased barriers to risk-taking and being innovative (Jackson et al., 2019). The interagency coordination with the required leadership involved needs to be coupled with accountability for all actions or inactions. Practically. [proper collaboration will have the parties engage in extensive research on improving terrorism and targeted violence strategies. This will allow them to take risks and be innovative in every move they make. Furthermore, there will also be the need to bolus a structure where accountability and responsibility where vested within the interagency entity while the two also remain within individual agencies (Jackson et al., 2019).
Conclusion
Terrorism and targeted violence have increasingly become intertwined in the United States to become some of the top threats to the homeland. Over time, these threats have caused the loss of life and destruction of p[roperty that the respective government requires proper measures to prevent their occurrence. To this case, this research does discuss the strategies the present prevention efforts together with their challenges. The challenges have provided guidelines that the U.S. government could take to improve its prevention efforts’ effectiveness.
References
Homeland Security. (2020, October 22). Targeted violence and terrorism prevention. Department of Homeland Security. https://www.dhs.gov/tvtp
Jackson, B.A., Rhoades, A.L., Reimer, J.R., Lander, N., Costello, K., & Beaghley, S. (2019). Practical Terrorism Prevention. Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2600/RR2647/RAND_RR2647.pdf
Jenkins, B. M., Liepman, A., & Willis, H. H. (2014). Identifying enemies among us: Evolving terrorist threats and the continuing challenges of domestic intelligence collection and information sharing. RAND NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH INST SANTA MONICA CA.
Kovaleski, D. (2020, September 18). DHS awards $10M for terrorism, targeted violence prevention. Homeland Preparedness News. https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/55890-dhs-awards-10m-for-terrorism-targeted-violence-prevention/
McAleenan, K. (2019). STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM AND TARGETED VIOLENCE. Department of Homeland Security.
Muffler, J. F. (2020, June 3). Mitigating targeted violence in our communities. Police Chief Magazine. https://www.policechiefmagazine.org/mitigating-targeted-violence-in-our-communities/
Wohlstetter, R. (n.d.). Countering the changing threat of international terrorism. https://fas.org/irp/threat/commission.html
