People: the Best Homeland Security

I imagine someone might be reading this on a mobile device as they are in an interminable security line at the airport waiting to go on spring break (they wisely got there early). But know this: the most draconian security measures we are proposing - full-body scans and extensive pat downs/strip searches - still would not have caught the Christmas day "Underpants Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

I was going to write that because he flew from Nigeria Abdulmutallab wouldn't have gone through a full-body scanner, but it turns out that Nigeria's international airport already has scanners. It doesn't seem Abdulmutallab was scanned, since as the Truman Project's Melissa Skorka points out, the workers in many developing countries' airports are often concerned with things other than safety. But the real story, as Marc Sageman discussed at a Middle East Policy Council event today, is that Abdulmutallab carried only about three ounces of explosive, the equivalent of three packets of sugar, and it is extremely unlikely that either a body scan or a pat down would have discovered the packets. As another panelist today mentioned, Yemen now has a very creative bomb maker, and though both the butt bomb and the underpants bomb have failed, he will keep trying. Three sugar packets worth of powder makes me think he could hide it in actual sugar packets, or as tooth powder, or really just about anywhere.

We'll know more about what exactly led to the breakdown of intelligence in the case of the underpants bomber when the unclassified version of the report is released later today, but we do know this: our best defense is alert, smart people talking to each other. We need our intelligence community to do its job. The National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) is designed to bring representatives from the various agencies to share information with each other and put their heads together. One person should poke their head up over the cubicle and say "hey, this guy in Nigeria says his son is becoming radical" and another says "hey, I know of a Nigerian posting some radical thoughts online" and a third could say "hmm, the British just revoked a Nigerian's visa. Maybe we should do the same thing." But it didn't seem to work. No wonder people are clamoring for NCTC director Michael Leiter's head. Of course the NCTC has bigger problems, but Leiter has had plenty of time to work on them.

We also need as much interaction between governments and people in other countries. As much as an Obama Doctrine currently exists, it is based on the idea of smart power, and that means we need to keep our foot on the gas with diplomacy, exchanges, and training. DHS' Office of International Affairs needs to be fully staffed and step up its mission working on training, cooperation, and increasing security practices around the world. And people need to keep traveling the world and showing the good and productive side of Americans.

Finally, homeland security is everyone's responsibility. Who became suspicious and subdued Abdulmutallab? Not an air marshall (there wasn't one): other passengers. Same thing for Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. The DC Metro system constantly has announcements to report suspicious packages and the like. An alert and educated public can be our best weapon, since even DHS can hire only so many people.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said "the system worked" in the aftermath of the attempted bombing, a quote she clearly regrets. Parts of the system didn't work, the parts we pay billions of dollars a year for, and clearly those parts need to work better. But if you include everyone in the system, than the system did work. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks everyone wanted to help, and many did by donating blood or needed materials. President Bush had an opportunity to tell everyone that they were part of the solution, and that their role was to always be vigilant. Instead he told them to go shopping. Luckily for us many got the message anyway. People are the most important defense against terror.

O'Hanlon Calls For an Armed Peace Corps

We've all heard how once a high percentage of Ivy League graduates served in the military, but now few liberal, well-off, and elite-educated (service academies aside) students want to or are willing to serve. Truman Project Fellow and Brooking Institute Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon may have come up with a solution (although he doesn't identify it as such) in a Washington Post op-ed: essentially a militarized Peace Corps.

O'Hanlon describes the current situation in the Congo and compares it to Darfur, where many in the United States wanted to do something and the best humanitarian assistance might have been troops on the ground providing security, but with the military stretched thin as it is by extended deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan even considering it was impossible.

He proposes creating a "peace operations division" of 15,000 soldiers, of which 3-4,000 or so would be deployed at any one time. The troops would be specifically recruited for this humanitarian division, would only serve two years, and would have more experienced officers and NCOs, including those driven away by the stupidity of "don't ask, don't tell." A more lovable, more liberal, military. The Peace Corps with guns.

It's an interesting concept, and I think encouraging a broader spectrum of young people to serve our country would benefit both the individuals and the military, but I also see some major flaws. Having a "special" force liberal interventionist troops with many gay leaders, and you want them to be less well trained and go on softer missions? Wouldn't that just reinforce stereotypes? Instead create specific training for humanitarian/peacekeeping/nation building missions for our current troops. Undertake those types of missions if they make sense to our national interest. Use various methods, including touting those missions, to recruit from a broader spectrum of young Americans. And repeal DADT. But don't create an alternative, wimpier, military for liberals and gays.

Unstable Countries: Will We Ever Get Ahead of the Curve?

Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Jamie Morgan. The views expressed are her own.

There has been much talk on the media waves about whether the Islamist sect Boko Harem is Nigeria’s version of the Taliban. “Will the next attack come from Nigeria??” In my opinion, the answer to that question is a moot point. The real question is, what is the United States doing to ensure that the Nigerian government begins to address the source of these problems – the lack of infrastructure and services for its people? And how long will the Obama administration’s attention span last?

Washington seems to have what I call the Terrorism Test. Violence erupts in a new country. Is the group connected with a known terrorist group? If Yes, we care. If No, we don’t. Secretary Clinton met this morning with the President of Somalia’s floundering Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and pledged additional military support – in the form of 40 tons of weapons – to the government forces. The support to the TFG’s security forces is the right course of action. Thus far the security situation on the ground in the areas held by Al-Shabaab has been so bad that many of the aid workers implementing the touted $150 million in U.S. assistance have been forced to relocate to the north – where the aid is much less needed.

Yet the attention to Somalia comes, again, once the crisis has already erupted. This type of reactionary policy-making will never get us ahead of the curve on the threats to U.S. national security – terrorism or otherwise. One never knows what the next big threat will be, or from where the next terrorist group will emerge. The nuanced factors that turn a population frustrated with its government into one that channels its outrage towards Western world are many, and we have yet to fully understand them. Thus, let’s start giving focused attention and proper resources to unstable regions from the start, not waiting until they turn into full-scale crises.

Guest Post: The Politics Behind the Acoustics

Ed. Note: The following is a guest post by my colleague, Michael Rohrs.

The show was organized and advertised in under two weeks.The tickets were sold out in under twenty minutes.Dispatch, a world famous yet eternally philanthropic college band from Vermont, has been broken up for five years, but was playing a reunion concert in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater. I came into two coveted tickets by a cosmic stroke of luck. The evening performance coincided with Prime Minster Morgan Tsvangirai’s eminently diplomatic visit with President Barack Obama that afternoon. The entire set was played acoustically, the Prime Minister himself spoke eloquently, without notes, and the proceeds went directly to the starving people of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s government exists today, as it has for four months, as a two-headed snake. The unlikely ‘unity’ or ‘power-sharing’ system has precariously empowered two heads of state—the inexorable Robert Mugabe and the ineluctable Morgan Tsvangirai—each the illustrious champion of his party.

For the impoverished people of Zimbabwe, caught between the pestle and the mortar, it’s midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Depending upon the political leadership in the country and which man best leverages the power of the government ministries he controls (in general, Tsvangirai controls the treasury and Mugabe controls the secret police), determines whose political will be done. As the Post’s Michael Gerson wrote today in his op-ed Taking Meetings with a Murderer,

His [Tsvangirai] intention is to fight arbitrary and personal rule with the weapons of process—a Madisonian response to a Neronian dictator…If Tsvangirai fails, he will be just another victim of Mugabe’s charming ruthlessness. But if the prime minister succeeds, he will be an exceptional statesman who set aside his own claims of justice for the peace and progress of his country.

For the citizenry, the cessation of despotism, the economic prosperity of the country, the existence of sustainable democracy, and so many more basic human and civil rights hang in the balance.

Last Friday, the United States tipped the scale towards Tsvangirai. The Obama Administration devoted $73 million in foreign aid to the people of Zimbabwe—a salvational humanitarian effort that will, however, require an international political end-around. The Obama Administration will mete out millions of dollars for medicine bottles, bread loaves, and text books through NGOs and charities—effectively circumnavigating the graft of the Mugabe machine. The Dispatch Foundation, and the proceeds from their small but sold-out acoustic evening in the Kennedy Center, is one such charity. The amount of U.S. aid to ease the suffering and promote the suffrage of Zimbabweans just went up to $73,022,000. Now, we’ll watch and hope—as Obama remarked during his meeting with Tsvangirai—that concrete things solidify and enable the Prime Minister’s commitment to concrete improvement in day-to-day life in Zimbabwe.

I was lucky to get two tickets to see my favorite band reunited. But from what I saw on Friday night, the Zimbabwean people are even luckier to have the immanent resolve of PM Tsvangirai and the attention and aid of the United States.

China's New Special Forces

Of course if the rest of the world was as sophisticated as China we too would have thousands of highly-trained dolphins to repel pirate attacks.

Perhaps we can re-train our mine-hunting dolphins armed with poisonous darts, that is if we've recaptured them after Hurricane Katrina freed them from their enclosure.

Pirate Wars

After yesterday's dramatic rescue of American captive Captain Richard Phillips it seems like every news outlet but ESPN is running a story on pirates (Navy SEALs apparently make good copy), and every blog or commenter is discussing how to stop piracy.

Sure, building more Littoral Combat Ships is a good idea, since our brown-water naval capability is low, but what is needed at this point are the same things needed to combat terrorism or any other asymmetric threat: cooperation and intelligence.

Anywhere valuable ships have to maneuver slowly through restricted waterways has been prime pirate territory for hundreds if not thousands of years, including parts of the Caribbean, the Straits of Malacca, the South China Sea, and, yes, the Gulf of Aden off Somalia. When a good friend of mine took a semester at sea cruise around the world she had to take a turn standing guard at the rail with a fire hose to fend off pirate attacks when they were near the Straits of Malacca. Fire hoses are still the recommended tool, as shooting back at the pirates would almost certainly lead to the crew being killed if captured, and at least heavy damage to the ship (rocket propelled grenades can easily go through the sides of most ships).

Navies in the sixteenth-nineteenth centuries routinely spent significant time escorting convoys of commercial ships through dangerous waters. That remains one option here, but would be fairly ship-intensive given the current makeup of our navy. A far better option is inviting countries whose ships pass through the Gulf of Aden to send one or more naval vessels and coordinate a multilateral patrol of the region. Cooperation will be essential, and the European Union and NATO ships in the region are not doing a good job of playing nicely, but it can be done. Countries seeking to expand their blue water naval capabilities, especially China and India, will jump at the chance to share logistical support and learn from the navies with more experience. Additionally the Chinese, Indian, and other navies have slightly looser rules of engagement and can be slightly more aggressive (you may recall the Indian navy had some success against a pirate mother ship). China would also love to be given permission for a permanent base in Somalia.

Piracy cannot be completely stopped, and pirates in a country as poor as Somalia are unlikely to be deterred from risky operations, but with a low-tech, intensive, coordinated effort sharing the burden we can make it far more manageable than the current situation.