Whether one attempts to define “homeland security” as a discipline, activity, programmatic approach, or a national security objective, the necessity for learning what it entails is a new endeavor.

By Glen Woodbury

One national priority under the National Preparedness Goal is collaborative geographic regional approaches. This article identifies several basic practices intended to facilitate forming and sustaining a high-performance partnership that should be useful for these collaborative approaches.

By Sharon Caudle

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many, including the president, have called for serious public discussion over whether the U.S. military should take over what has been historically a civilian governmental function of catastrophic incident response.

By Kathleen Gereski

In labeling its post-9/11 efforts the “war” on terror, the United States invoked a war metaphor that ties its success or failure to the doctrinal rules of war.

By Donald Reed

The Strategy for Homeland Security stresses the need for a robust public health component to respond to and recover from a range of emergencies. However, dire problems with the current public health manpower infrastructure have been reported for more than fifteen years and continue to be a problem.

By Anke Richter and Denise Santiago

There is little political will to substantially alter the organizational and programmatic system that characterizes U.S. homeland security. The system we have is the one we have to work with, at least until something significant happens: another attack, a catastrophic natural disaster, a national public health emergency, or a new political administration.

By Christopher Bellavita

Much of the media-pundit and popular analysis that has followed the death of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has focused on how his death will affect the outcome of the war in Iraq. However, the emphasis on outcome is not the right approach.

By Donald Reed