Welcome to the web site for the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security. The Consortium comprises public and private academic institutions engaged in scientific research, technology development and transition, education and training, and service programs concerned with current and future U.S. national security challenges, issues, problems and solutions, at home and around the world.

The goal of the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security is to help improve the security of the U.S. and its worldwide interests, while protecting and preserving its values, freedoms and civil liberties, and economic interests and competitiveness. The specific objectives of the Consortium are to help:

(1) Improve understanding of national security issues, especially terrorism and strategies for counter-terrorism;
(2) Promote development of better-informed public policy, strategy, plans and programs regarding national security issues;
(3) Develop new technologies and transition those technologies into effective, practical and affordable solutions to (current and future) international and homeland security problems; and
(4) Educate and train the people required by governmental and non-governmental organizations, to effectively accomplish international and homeland security roles and responsibilities.

The primary role of the Consortium is to promote, support and enhance academic research, technology development, education and training, and service programs dealing with all aspects of international and homeland security, through collaboration and information- sharing among academic institutions, researchers and scholars. Our vision is that the Consortium also becomes an effective sounding board and consultative body to assist federal-government decision makers in developing more effective national policies and programs concerning academic research and technology development, education and training, and related service programs pertaining to national security.

This web site offers registered academic institutions the opportunity to share information describing its organizations, research projects, technology development and deployment activities, education and training programs or courses, and service activities pertaining to international and homeland security. It also offers you the capability to identify institutions, research projects and capabilities, education and training programs, and other activities concerned with various aspects of U.S. national security, at home and abroad.

All information on this web site pertaining to a specific college or university has been provided by that institution. Questions or comments should be referred directly to the listed point of contact. Questions or comments pertaining to the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security and this web site should be referred to:    

National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security

National Security Research & Education Programs

The Ohio State University

Page Hall, Room 310W

1810 College Road

Telephone: (614) 688-3420

FAX: (614) 292-4868

e-mail: NACHS@osu.edu

In the Spotlight   

The American Interest Online

Vo. III, No. 5, May/June 2008

Terrorphobia

Our false sense of insecurity

John Mueller

A few days after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there might never be an “end date” in the “struggle” against terrorism, a point when it would be possible to say, “There, it’s all over with.” More than six and a half years later, his wisdom seems to have been vindicated, though perhaps not quite in the way he intended. At least in its domestic homeland security aspects, the so-called War on Terror shows clear signs of having developed into a popularly supported governmental perpetual-motion machine that could very well spin “till who laid the rails”, as Mayor Shinn so eloquently, if opaquely, puts it in The Music Man. Since none of the leading Democrats or Republicans running for president this year has managed to express any misgivings about this development, it is fair to assume that the “war” will amble on during whatever administration happens to follow the present one.

In some respects, ironically enough, the closest semblance to a notable opponent the enterprise has so far generated has been George W. Bush himself. The President has, of course, garnered great political benefit from the terrorism scare. He has consistently achieved his best ratings for handling the issue, and Karl Rove has been known to boast publicly about the political utility of fanning terrorist fears for the good of the Republican Party.11. Note Senator Chuck Hagel’s remark on this point in The American Interest (March/April 2008). It is no accident that the President managed to use the t-word at least twenty and as many as 36 times in each of his post-9/11 State of the Union addresses (as opposed to only once in January 2001). However, for a while there he opposed slapping together all sorts of disparate government agencies into the hopelessly unwieldy Department of Homeland Security. He even allowed that letting a responsible Dubai company manage the occasional American port was not necessarily the end of the world. Eventually, he buckled on both issues, and he will probably buckle again when determined, outraged and likely bipartisan opposition rises up against his tentative proposal to halve the amount of Federal money ladled out each year to localities to fight terrorism.

But at least there were some transitory glimmers. We may not even get that much from his successor in the White House. The reason is that terrorism and the attendant “war” thereon have become fully embedded in the public consciousness, with the effect that politicians and bureaucrats have become as wary of appearing soft on terrorism as they are about appearing soft on drugs, or as they once were about appearing soft on Communism.

Key to this dynamic is that the public apparently continues to remain unimpressed by several inconvenient facts. One such fact is that there have been no al-Qaeda attacks whatsoever in the United States since 2001. A second is that no true al-Qaeda cell (or scarcely anybody who might even be deemed to have a “connection” to the diabolical group) has been unearthed in this country. A third is that the homegrown “plotters” who have been apprehended, while perhaps potentially somewhat dangerous at least in a few cases, have mostly been either flaky or almost absurdly incompetent.

Beyond these facts are a few comparisons that ought to arrest attention. One is that the total number of people killed worldwide by genuine al-Qaeda types and assorted wannabes outside of war zones since 9/11 averages about 300 per year. That is certainly 300 a year too many, but that number is smaller than the yearly number of bathtub drownings in the United States. Moreover, unless the terrorists are able somehow massively to increase their capacities, the likelihood that a person living outside a war zone will perish at the hands of an international terrorist over an eighty-year period is about one in 80,000. By comparison, an American’s chance of dying in an auto accident over the same time interval is one in eighty.

Despite these facts, polls since 2001 do not demonstrate all that much of a decline in the percentage of the American public anticipating another terrorist attack, or expressing fear that they themselves might become a victim of it. The public has chosen to wallow in a false sense of insecurity, and it apparently plans to keep on doing so. Accordingly, it will presumably continue to demand that its leaders defer to its insecurities, and will uncritically approve as huge amounts of money are shelled out in a quixotic and mostly symbolic effort to assuage those insecurities.

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