Summary: When an idea’s time has come, it rises up from many sources. Who can best act as fast responders to local disasters, whether natural or deliberate? Lawrence Korb proposes creatino of a “home guard”, much like what I propose in “Militia – the ultimate defense against 4GW” (originally written in September 2005). Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) and a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information (CDI). He served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan Administration. {Hat tip on this to Adam Elkus, who posts at Rethinking Security}
“Home Guard“, Lawrence Korb, Democracy (Spring 2008) — free registration required. Excerpt:
The National Guard’s primary task is responding to natural or manmade disasters that strike the homeland. Yet, when Hurricane Katrina struck in the summer of 2005, the combat brigades of Louisiana and Mississippi, along with their equipment, were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Countless lives were lost before the Bush Administration could scramble Guard units from other states and active-duty soldiers in the Gulf region. This situation was repeated in 2007 when tornados struck Kansas and fires engulfed Southern California. Put bluntly, the members of the Guard cannot protect us here while fighting over there.
… Even in the event of a withdrawal from Iraq, our ground forces are likely to be called upon to help stabilize other areas of the world; such potential situations might include a collapse of the government in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. And given budget and political realities, the active Army is not likely to be expanded back to anywhere near its Cold War level of 800,000, nor will we reinstitute the draft. Moreover, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, technology is no substitute for boots on the ground.
Because the National Guard will continue to be needed overseas, the next president and the nation’s governors should establish an adequately trained, non-deployable Home Guard in each state. These all-volunteer units would consist of doctors, nurses, construction workers, firefighters, police officers, communications experts, city planners, engineers, and social workers–all skills central to responding to catastrophic terrorist attacks and natural disasters. To enable states to train and equip these units adequately, the new president should ask the Congress to increase the budget of the Department of Homeland Security by at least $10 billion, the cost of one month’s operations in Iraq.
A real-world application of this is Project White Horse, who are working from the grassroots up towards something similar, training and coordinating the efforts of community police and disaster-preparedness organizations.
Please share your comments by posting below (brief and relevant, please), or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).
Fourth Generation Warfare
I have developed a simple typology to show the relationship of the many works on modern warfare, to show the relationships among the various theories about modern warfare. This has evolved into a first cut at a solution to 4GW. These are the first steps in a long series.
- A solution to 4GW — the introduction
- How to get the study of 4GW in gear
- Arrows in the Eagle’s claw — solutions to 4GW
- Arrows in the Eagle’s claw — 4GW analysts
- Visionaries point the way to success in the age of 4GW
- 4GW: A solution of the first kind – Robots!
- 4GW: A solution of the second kind
- 4GW: A solution of the third kind – Don Vandergriff is one of the very few today implementing solutions of the third kind.