Lack of Leadership in Homeland Security

Is the “System Under Stress”? Book Review of Kettl’s Homeland Security and American Politics

Introduction

This review covers Kettl’s (2007) System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics, published by CQ Press in Washington, D.C. (pp. 151). The book is relevant because it addresses the need to assess the status of the Department of Homeland Security in light of the various stresses it encounters. It frames that discussion within the scope of 9/11 and the disaster of Hurricane Katrina by asking what happened and why it happened that the government apparently failed to protect its citizens. Ultimately it asks what questions have been learned from these disasters and what has not been learned well enough.

The author states in his Preface that from 2002-2003 he worked “with the Century Foundation as executive director of its Project on Federalism and Homeland Security” (p. x). His background on Homeland Security issues is mainly from an academic perspective, but the background to the book is actually situated in cardiology, and the author explains that a stress test in cardiology is used to tell how well the heart works. The purpose of Kettl’s (2007) book is to examine how well the nation’s defenses are working. The 2007 edition is the second edition of the book, which was re-written in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The book is intended for students of American government, public policy and public administration, intergovernmental relations, and homeland security, so as to communicate to them the conundrum of managing a complex system like Homeland Security and responses to disasters. The historical context shaping the work is thus that of disaster—namely, the 9/11 terror attacks and the organizational failure of Homeland Security and FEMA to respond appropriately to Katrina. The “school” represented by the work is that of the Century Foundation, which, according to the author, helped to shape its outcome. The scope of the work includes an assessment of the impact of 9/11 on the nation and the response of the nation’s leaders; the system-wide breakdowns that allowed the attacks and what holes were plugged within the intelligence community to ensure they would not happen again; the problems of federal bureaucracy that made coordination fail at Katrina; the political system’s attempt to prevent disasters that can never be fully eliminated in terms of risk; the tension between security and the sacrificing of civil liberties; and, finally, how the political system can respond to “such crushing strain” (p. ix). This scope is somewhat large for the scant 150 pages the text occupies. Nonetheless, the author’s approach is relatively exploratory, and the aim is to raise questions more than it is to answer them.

Description

Overview

One of the keys to understanding this work is the role that leadership plays in homeland security and in the coordination of the various programs and offices that now must collaborate under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. Kettl (2007) highlights, for instance, the role that US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen played in the disaster response at New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. Allen helped to coordinate personnel at the local, state and federal levels, when other leaders were hopelessly failing to take coordinated action. It is this type of leadership that has to be cultivated in order to establish homeland security. Without such leadership, the bureaucratic nature of federal government threatens to serve as an obstacle to the aim of security. Political leaders should be aware of that need and should facilitate rather than frustrate leadership development and the appropriate placement of command.

Method, Assumptions and Thesis

The author uses popular sources such as CNN and the Boston Globe for data collection purposes as well as White House press releases, scholarly articles, white papers, RAND publications, the US General Accounting Office, the 9/11 Report, Congressional documents, testimonies, transcripts of speeches, and reporters such as Seymour Hersh to explore the world and the problems of Homeland Security. Because the nature of the work is exploratory, there is no substantial thesis stated at the outset; rather, the work drives toward a broader question at its conclusion, based upon the evidence presented. That question is: how does the American political system respond to the stresses facing homeland security?

Structure of the Book

The book is structured around seven chapters. The first chapter sets the stage for the examination of the problems of homeland security by looking specifically at 9/11 and its ramifications. The second chapter looks at failures in the system and what steps have been taken to address them. The third chapter looks at the problem of coordination in a federal bureaucracy. The fourth chapter takes up this same matter but at the levels of state and local government. The fifth chapter explores the problem of trying to maximally protect against threats that can never truly be eliminated. The sixth chapter looks at the policy problem of balancing the need for security with the need to protect civil liberties. The seventh chapter addresses the central question that arises from the evidence collected and addresses the matter of how the political system of the US can face the stress test.

Note-worthy Statements

In chapter 2, Kettl (2007) notes that Arlington County “responded so well” to the disaster of 9/11 “because of the leadership the county’s emergency services officials had shown in the years leading up to the attacks” (p. 34). Later, in the book’s exploration of federal bureaucracy, Kettl (2007) notes that FEMA failed at Katrina but succeeded in earlier years in its disaster response: “it did far better in dealing with a string of disasters in the 1990s, including major hurricanes and a California earthquake, but that was due far more to the agency’s leadership, especially from its director, James Lee Witt” (p. 77). Again, Kettl (2007) observes that the “huge impact of the terrorist attacks created a demand for strong leadership” (p. 127). And, again, in his discussion of Katrina, he notes that “increasingly complex problems and growing organizational complexity require even stronger individual leadership. These leaders can serve as bridge builders, to link organizations who share a piece of important, interconnected missions…Never before has leadership been as important” (p. 143). Each of these statements highlights the all-important issue of leadership in the face of the problem of homeland security.

Evaluation

Method

The author’s method is efficient in that it pulls from a variety of sources to develop a view of what has happened in the realm of homeland security and the American political system since 9/11. It nicely draws from popular as well as scholarly sources to evenly explore a period in American history surrounding the development of an overhaul of its homeland security approach. The method is not explicitly described by the author, but his exploratory intentions are evident from the onset.

Thesis

Because the work is exploratory in nature, it does not present a thesis at the outset but gradually works toward a research question, which is how the American political system can address the stress it faces to its homeland security operations. The work thus explores the factors adding to that stress and also explores some possible ways to address that stress—namely through the efforts of strong individual leaders. This conclusion is developed throughout the work, again and again, as the author continuously points out the role that strong leadership must play in homeland security. Therefore, the work does not so much set out to prove a point but rather to arrive at a point made clear by the summation of evidence, which is analyzed in the final chapter.

Data and Validity

The author selected the data based upon relevance to the central research question regarding the ways in which the US political system faces the stress of providing homeland security. Data that was relevant to this issue was absorbed into the narrative constructed. The judgments provided are valid because they are logically deduced from the many different facts provided. The thematic issue of stress was what guided the selection—the stress of terrorism, the stress of disaster response, the stress of a federal bureaucracy, the stress of a lack of leadership, the stress of politics, and the stress of addressing threats that can never be eliminated.

Conclusions Supported?

The evidence selected supports the conclusions drawn because it becomes apparent early on that at the heart of the crisis is leadership; this is shown again and again, from the confusion of 9/11 to the disastrous response to Katrina, when one of the few leaders to demonstrate true leadership was the US Coast Guard Admiral. The evidence shows that in a bureaucracy, leadership is often lost, and that when politics get in the way of policy, leadership is sacrificed for political point-making. The work contains no over-generalizations because it is focused on the inherent problem within the system; false assumptions are also not a problem, because the author does not begin with assumptions but rather with an articulation of the facts: disasters happen; threats never go away; the only sure-fire way to address them is through leadership that understands how to coordinate and collaborate within a complex system.

Questions That May Have Strengthened the Book

The author does not leave out any aspects of the issue or ignore any factors that are pertinent; he addresses the issue of security vs. civil liberties, and shows why it is not just a matter of mounting more and more regulations on top of regulations in order to make the nation safe. Disasters still will occur, and responders will still need to demonstrate leadership. Bureaucrats and politicians are not necessarily capable of showing such leadership, based upon their track record; thus, one question the author might have asked to strengthen the book is whether centralizing disaster response under the Department of Homeland Security was actually a bad idea to begin with. If the political system itself is prone to shocks and failures, perhaps a clean slate is what is needed.

What Others Have Said

Reviews have been mostly favorable with reviewers commenting that the book raises important questions about the American political system and why that system has failed time and time again. However, some reviews pointed out that if one is familiar with homeland security, the book raises nothing new but simply rehashes what has already been published in journals or given to the public through popular media for their consumption. For the uninitiated it might seem revelatory, but few those with an understanding of the background and the problems it offers little new insight.

Summary

What the Book Does Well

The book sets the stage well for exploration of the main issue—the stresses facing the political system struggling to provide homeland security. It provides a window onto the underlying issues, from failures of coordination in intelligence, to bureaucratic red tape, to politicians trying to make America safe at all costs (impossible), to the lack of leadership in general. It does not go too deeply into any one issue, but presents them all as individual problems that combine to indicate a rather distressed heart within the political system. If that distress is not addressed appropriately, the system is not going to be of any service to anyone, and no one should expect anything of it.