Throughout its history the United States has acted to protect its territories, citizenry, and interests at home and abroad. The terrorist events of September 11, 2001, heightened public interest in national security matters, and the U.S. government has asked all Americans to be watchful, suspicious, and alert to signs of danger or potential security threats. Since September 11, 2001, rarely does a…
Weapons are an integral part of any military. Conventional weapons of the early twenty-first century are accurate and deadly enough to destroy almost all types of military targets, including buried command centers, hardened aircraft shelters, and tanks and other armored vehicles. Challenging and combating the proliferation, or spread, of weapons that can be used against the United States and its a…
One of the first people to contemplate the use of biological weapons in North America was Lord Jeffrey Amherst. Amherst was the commanding general of British forces in North America during the final battles of the French and Indian War (1754–63). Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian (New York: Facts on File, 1985) describes a siege at Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by the forces of Native American leader Chief Pontiac during the summer of 1763. Amherst sent a letter to another…
Since the end of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat no longer focuses solely on two superpowers but includes a host of nations, among them China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and Syria. Figure 3.2 and Figure 3.1 (both in Chapter 3) show the countries actively involved in developing b…
While conventional weapons, such as explosives and firearms, remain the most likely means by which terrorists might attempt to harm U.S. civilians, the possibility of an attack involving biological or chemical weapons has increased. Many nations and terrorist groups have explored the use of such weapons on small and large scales, and many countries, including the United States, have chemical and/o…
On September 11, 2001, nineteen members of the al Qaeda terrorist group hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners and flew two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. More than three thousand people were killed and thousands more injured as a result of these devastating attacks, wh…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) divides terrorism into two distinct types: international terrorism and domestic terrorism. The FBI defines international terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence committed by a group or individual, who has some connection to a foreign power or whose activities transcend national boundaries, against persons or property to intimidate or coe…
At the apex of the U.S. federal government is the Constitution. (See Figure 8.1.) The Constitution gives the job of providing for America's national security to the president and the executive branch of the government, as well as to the legislative branch (the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate). It designates the president the commander in chief of the American armed forces.…
Within the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense (DOD) works directly to deal with national security threats and keep the president's military options open. For fiscal year 2005, the DOD has an estimated budget of nearly $402 billion. Of the total 2005 budget, the army receives $97.2 billion, the navy/Marine Corps gets $119.3 billion, and the air force gets $120…
Interdependence is one of the key words of foreign policy in the post-cold-war era. States are increasingly relying on each other, as well as nongovernmental and multinational entities, to accomplish their stated political and economic goals. Interdependence is complicated because it does not rely on ideological loyalties, as the communist and democratic blocs each did during the cold war. Ideolog…
The concept of U.S. national security is constantly evolving and adapting to the changing global security environment. There are a variety of emerging trends and threats with which America has not had to deal before. At the same time, the domestic national security infrastructure itself is changing. …