The Architecture of Government in the Face of Terrorism

Abstract

2001, the post–Cold War security bubble anally burst. In the preceding ten years, the United States and its major allies failed to identify and invest in the prevention of“A-list” security problems that could affect their way oflife, po sition in the world, and very survival. Instead they behaved as ifgulled into a beliefthat the key security problems ofthe post–Cold War era were ethnic and other internal conoicts in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, East Timor, and Kosovo. Peacekeeping and peacemaking in these places, although engaging important humanitarian concerns, never addressed the vital security interests ofthe United States, and none ofthese conoicts could begin to threaten its sur vival. As ifto conarm this point, the of acial military strategy ofthe United States during the last decade centered not on peacekeeping but on the challenge ofaghting two Desert Storm reruns, one in Korea and one in the Persian Gulf, at the same time. The two-major-theater-war doctrine at least had the virtue ofaddressing threats to vital U.S. allies and interests. But as the decade wore on, it was increasingly apparent that although important interests were at stake in both major theaters, in neither was U.S. survival in question. The A-list seemed empty, so policy and strategy focused on B- and C-level problems instead. 1 A-list threats, such as the threat posed by the Soviet Union for the preceding half-century—were indeed absent, but only if threat is understood as the imminent possibility ofattack deaned in traditional military terms. Iftaken in stead to denote looming problems that could develop into Cold War–scale dangers, the A-list contained at least four major underattended items in the