Book Reviews/Recensions de livre

Book Reviews

Recensions de livre

America the vulnerable: by what mode our government is failing to screen us from terrorism Stephen Flynn (2004) novel York: Harper Collins Publishers, 256 pages ISBN 0060571284 (hardcover)

The September 11 2001 terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center in novel York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC demonstrated that the United States is not immune to international terrorism. In replication to the September 11 attacks, the U reorganized its national regulation by combining 22 Federal agencies to create the Department of Homeland Security and implemented a broad array of domestic and international policies intended to help obviate or reduce future acts of terrorism. These policies gave the U management powers ranging from the right to review a person's library use to the right to review by what means transportation firms provide supply chain security. Stephen Flynn's goals in America the Vulnerable are to provide an assessment of America's efforts to improve its domestic security and a framework that the U conduct and others can follow to further improve their security efforts. Flynn's target audience is the average U resident.

Dr Stephen Flynn is a senior associate at the Council of Foreign Relations, a retired U Coast Guard officer, and former staff member of the National Security Council. He argues that the U management is failing to protect its citizens from terrorism. This argument is compos of several assertions that pour from a fundamental premise that it is sole a matter of time before terrorists launch another attack upon the U.S. His first assertion is that America is fighting its international war upon terror at the expense of its domestic security. His next to the first is that despite making homeland security a priority the U remains dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attack. His third is that the private sector will not voluntarily take the action exigencyed to improve America's security. His final single is that the U.S. conduct must assume an active leadership character in facilitating the institutional coordination between the management the private sector, and the general public that is required to achieve an acceptable horizontal of homeland security.

The formulation and implementation of U homeland security policy, between 2001 and 2004 watched to be very disjointed, technically nuanced, and virtually impossible for well educated individuals to tread on the heels of Flynn provides a brief summary of the issues that America's homeland security efforts addressed between 2001 and 2004 He states that despite useful intentions the U.S. government still has not adequately screened its citizens from terrorism. He, however, cautions that U regulation must be careful that, in its rush to achieve security, it does not implement policies that do more harm then useful This is a very important point because, as a be derived of the September 11 attacks, the U has intervened in American and international economies in ways that it previously did not. Flynn struggles that, in order for the U to achieve an adequate horizontal of security, it must facilitate institutional cooperation between rules and the private sector. Flynn's work provides a general summary of America's homeland security policies; however, he acknowledges that more in-depth research straits to be brought to bear upon the issue.

A major shortcoming of Flynn's work is that it does not define homeland security. A useful definition would help shift the popular policy debate to issues that may have a significant impact upon improving America's homeland security. Economics provides us with a definition of homeland security. It can be argued that homeland security is a public advantageous that benefits not only the United States, on the other hand also other nations that might go through from a terrorist attack upon the U.S. A public useful is one whose consumption by the agency of one nation does not shut out consumption by other nations that did not pay for it. Public usefuls tend to be a reflection of a nation's social values, which are many times hard to define, let alone measure. Further, policies intended to deliver a public profitable result from collective decision making that takes into account important social trade-offs. Flynn's failure to define homeland security obviates him from discussing how America's political a whole and values help or hinder its security policies. It also interrupts Flynn's arguments from being expanded to a global connection This is a critical oversight as we live in an increasingly globally-integrated world.

Flynn does not explain the fundamental factors that make the formulation of almost any homeland security policy difficult. Security, broadly defined, is a nation's efforts to harbor its interests from attack. There are several critical uncompounded bodys that influence the effectiveness of a security policy. A country's efforts to preserve its interests are based upon its perception of the threats it faces. However, the intentions and behaviours of those who search for to harm that nation do not necessarily conform to that state's perceptions. Further, a nation's perception of its security threats, as well the intentions and behaviours of its enemies, are dynamic in that they are make subordinate to change. Collectively, these different security aspects make the formation of adequate homeland security policies real challenging. Flynn does not address these security aspects in a concise manner. He fails to provide his readers with a certain quantity of important concepts that could help inform the homeland security policy debate.