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Problem: Crisis of Leadership. At the strategic level, a severe leadership crisis has emerged with respect to homeland defense and security (HDS). The Departments of Defense (DOD, Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ) struggle to integrate HDS from the ground-up, while leaders in the Cabinet and National Security Council (NSC) remain resistant or aloof to integration initiatives. The NSC and Homeland Security Council (HSC) continue their wary orbits of each other. Strategic and contingency planning for domestic terrorist attacks and natural disasters remains stovepiped among the three departments. Key Cabinet and NSC members do not speak the language of the National Response Plan (NRP) or Interagency Management System (NIMS), though the White House adopted both as the standard for interdepartmental coordination in the homeland. Senior leadership’s myopic focus on cookie cutter contingencies for their own departments has created a lack of vision and imagination regarding crises that would require a unified, interagency response. At the core of this problem, national security and homeland security institutions are perilously distinct. Substantial reform is needed to resolve these deepening institutional divides before senior leaders collide amidst the next disaster.
Solution: An NSC-Centric Framework. Reform the NSC, and frame all national and homeland security institutions around it. The purpose and composition of the NSC must be changed to harmonize Cabinet-level coordination on national and homeland security. In establishing an NSC-centric architecture, the Council must be more directly linked to DOD, DHS, and DOJ to ensure transformation and seamless implementation of Council direction.
A. Mer ...