Homeland Security: American and European Responses to September 11

Although America traditionally saw itself as protected by vast oceans and weak or friendly neighbors, the attacks of September 11 2001 catapulted her policy-makers into a new area of security concerns: how best to protect an open, complex, and interdependent society from large-scale terrorism? Internationally, the US went on the offensive. Its declared war on those who wittingly harbor terrorists caused the downfall of the Afghan Taliban regime and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Domestically, the US embarked on a broad effort to enhance the protection of its homeland. This effort included measures within the field of intelligence and justice, border security, infrastructure protection, measures to prevent or protect against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats (CBRN threats), and an improved emergency management system. With the greatest government restructuring in more than fifty years, the domestic efforts were given an institutional anchor in a new Department of Homeland Security.