Clash of Civilizations: ‘Required Reading’
“Let me recommend to all of my colleagues the book by Samuel
P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations,’”
said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. In a speech on the Senate floor, he
said Huntington’s book “should be required reading for
all of my colleagues and those within the national media, and all
interested in preserving democracy, freedom and western values.”
In the summer of 1993, the journal Foreign Affairs published Huntington’s
chilling article entitled, “The Clash of Civilizations?”
The article generated so much buzz in the national security community
that Huntington, a professor at Harvard, extended his article into
a book.
In the book, Huntington posed the question of whether cultural
“fault lines” could lead to a world war in the early
21st century. He explained that differences between civilizations
that developed in the period after the Cold War, and presented the
idea that American and European concepts of peace, liberty and freedom
are now under attack. He made explicit references to Muslim nations
and said that the relationship between the Muslim nations and China
could determine the outcome of a world war.
Huntington wrote: “A global war involving the core states
of the world’s major civilizations is highly improbable, but
not impossible. Such a war, we have suggested, could come about
from the escalation of a fault-line war between groups from different
civilizations, most likely involving Muslims on one side and non-Muslims
on the other.
“…If it continues, the rise of China and the increasing
assertiveness of this “biggest player in the history of man”
will place tremendous stress on international stability in the early
21st century. The emergence of China as the dominant power in East
and Southeast Asia would be contrary to American interests as they
have been historically construed.”
— • — • —
Measuring Security in Terms of ‘Perimeters’
“Secret Service agents work under a concept called perimeter
security,” said Dario Marquez, a former Secret Service agent
who served on the security details of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter
and Reagan. He is now chief executive officer of a security-staffing
firm called MVM Inc, located in McLean, Va.
He explained that perimeters of security are used to keep “assets,”
such as buildings or dignitaries, secure from adversaries.
The first perimeter of security is intelligence, said Marquez.
“Knowing the adversary, his strengths, weaknesses and his
methods of operation are important. The best way to gather intelligence
is to have sources inside the adversarial operation, penetrating
the group,” he said.
Intelligence information assists with the second perimeter of security,
which is access control. “Access controls are your countermeasures,”
he said. Marquez explained that security officials must control
access to the nation’s borders and question the types of identification
that Americans use to travel.
The September 11 terrorist action was “a wake-up call to
establish the identities of Americans and those who wish to visit
here. We need to find out what they’re doing here and confirm
that they are who they say that they are. We need to know not just
their identity, but what the person’s all about,” he
said.
The third perimeter of security is contingency planning: “If
something goes wrong, what will I do to protect the asset? We need
to have established evacuation routes, cars stationed in certain
places.
“People now are tightening down on access control. Eventually
those buildings will have to be accessed to those that need them,
so we will eventually have to enhance our intelligence capabilities
and contingency planning, so we can ease up on access control,”
he said.
— • — • —
Ridge: No Stranger to Beltway Politics
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, appointed by President Bush to
head the newly created office of homeland security, is no stranger
to either Washington or national security matters.
Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967, Ridge earned the Bronze Star
for valor, while he was an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam. In
1982, he became the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran elected
to the U.S. House of Representatives, and served seven terms. In
1995, he was elected governor of Pennsylvania, and was re-elected
in 1998.
“Our nation faces an unusual threat, one it has never faced
before,” Ridge said, shortly after his appointment was announced.
— • — • —
Senator Warns of Threat to ‘Critical Infrastructure’
“President Bush has warned us of the new fight ahead,”
said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. “With more than 85 percent
of critical infrastructure entities owned and operated by the private
sector, voluntarily shared information leads to a more focused understanding
of threats and empowers government, industry and private citizens
to mitigate risk.”
According to Bennett, critical infrastructure includes key sectors,
such as financial services, telecommunications, transportation,
energy, emergency services and government essential services, whose
disruption or destruction would greatly impact the economy and national
security.
“If I were a terrorist, I would attack the computers. I would
shut down the federal wire and prevent all financial transactions
from ever clearing,” he said.
“The rapid development of technology and its interconnectivity
have made it easier to attack critical U.S. infrastructures with
physical or computer based attacks than at any other time in history,”
he said.
In light of these threats, Bennett introduced the Critical Infrastructure
Information Security Act (CIISA), along with Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.
The bill is “intended to increase the sharing of information
and improve threat analysis for critical infrastructures. Information
sharing between government and private sector industries will give
critical infrastructures a fuller understanding of potential threats,
greatly increasing their risk management potential,” he said.
— • — • —
New Tasking for Defense Science Board
The undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics,
Edward “Pete” Aldridge, Jr. directed the Defense Science
Board (DSB) to take a new look at the work the panel did on homeland
defense. The DSB released a two-volume study earlier this year on
the subject of homeland defense, specifically addressing the threats
of bioterrorism, chemical attacks and cyber-warfare. An ad-hoc DSB
group is being assembled to look at these studies and make them
more relevant to the realities of U.S. national security since the
terrorist attacks of September 11.
“We got a tasking on September 19 from Aldridge to do a study
on anti-terrorism,” said William Schneider, chairman of the
DSB. “Our first round of efforts is to review the recent work
that has been done on homeland defense and refocus some of the recommendations
in ways that are implementable,” Schneider told reporters
during a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C. No specific due date
was set for this report.
— • — • —
Bureaucratic Turfs Shaping Up
During the past several months, Rep. Mac Thornberry has been working
to implement a recommendation of the Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission
on National Security/21st Century — the creation of a National
Homeland Security Agency.
Thornberry, together with Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., introduced
legislation to include sections of the Coast Guard, Border Patrol,
Customs Service and the National Guard in a new “beefed-up
Federal Emergency Management Agency” to protect the United
States from terrorist attacks.
Thornberry, reached for comment after the September 11 disaster,
said that momentum was building to create a National Homeland Security
Agency, and that the Congress would be “doing something legislatively,”
even though a cabinet-level post to address homeland security had
been created by the president.
The commission report, produced between 1998 and 2001, concluded
that a national security agency focusing on homeland defense was
needed. “There are some things you don’t want to ever
be right about,” he said. “It’s hard, when you’re
in the middle of a war, to think with a cool head about the proper
role of these various entities.”
If Thornberry’s bill were enacted, federal law enforcement
entities would be placed under a non-Defense Department umbrella
of other civilian organizations, which would specifically address
threats to American soil.
— • — • —
Halting Terrorism ‘Quietly and Methodically’
The U.S. war against terrorism may have to be waged in a similar
manner to the way Israel retaliated after the 1972 bombing of the
Olympic Village in Berlin, said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. In that attack,
a Palestinian group known as Black September seized Israeli athletes
inside the Olympic village in Munich, leading to the death of 11
Israelis and some of the terrorists.
“Quietly and methodically, the Israeli Defense Forces went
in and killed every person connected with the attack,” Kirk
said in an interview. “And they didn’t get the last
one until 1981. They were unrelenting, unforgiving and infinitely
patient,” he said.