**"Rebuilding a Resilient Nation"**

A Presentation Summary prepared for the

FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Conference

by

Stephen E. Flynn, Ph.D.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies

Council on Foreign Relations

and author of

*The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient* *Nation* (Random House,
2007)

National Emergency Training Center

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

June 6, 2007

The United States has become a brittle nation. Despite the fact that
America is facing an array of threats---from national disasters,
pandemics, and terrorism---our aging infrastructure, under-funded public
health and emergency preparedness sectors, and ill-equipped emergency
systems are not up to coping with the certain catastrophes that the
future will bring. The central lesson of 9/11 is that America's borders
will not keep prevent terrorism from reaching our homefront. The central
lesson of Hurricane Katrina is that major natural disasters can quickly
overwhelm the ability of state and local governments to rescue their own
citizens.

The United States can ill afford to leave its fate to chance by
sidestepping investments in prudent safeguards. Disaster preparedness is
not free, but every \$1 spent in prevention generally saves \$7 when a
calamity does strike. Failing to prepare ahead of time insures that the
post-disaster price-tag will be a painful one. Further, disaster
preparedness has another virtue: it reduces vulnerabilities that make
terrorist strikes more likely. That is, terrorists are less apt to
strike a target that they know is well protected and where preparedness
measures are likely to keep the casualties and collateral damage low.

National resiliency is an objective that American citizens and elected
leaders need to embrace. Unfortunately, over the last several years, the
United States has been moving in the opposite direction. For instance,
many Americans now lead a "just-in-time" lifestyle---we have just enough
cash and resources to get us through the day---eschewing the
self-sufficiency that was once America's trademark. As a result, after
disasters hit, thousands of citizens end up standing in line just to get
the basic necessities.

Compounding our situation is that Americans have not invested adequately
in public safety, our public health and emergency treatment care system,
or our basic infrastructure. For instance, graded surveys of our roads,
waterways, power girds, canals, and waste management systems paint a
bleak picture. To put it bluntly, our infrastructure bears comparison to
the predicament the Roman Empire found itself in shortly before it
collapsed.

Making maters worse are demographic trends where Americans have moved
and built homes in vulnerable areas. For example, about half the U.S.
population now lives in close proximity to coastal regions that
scientists believe are facing a cycle of severe weather patterns that
promise more floods, tropical storms, and hurricanes. And the West Coast
is overdue for a major earthquake.

Most Americans recognize their predicament; polls indicate nearly 6 out
of 10 Americans believe that the country is ill prepared for disaster.

Unfortunately, America's leaders have failed to adequately address these
issues. Since 9/11, passenger airline security has improved, but
otherwise little progress has been made to improve public safety in the
event of disaster. Instead, the overwhelming emphasis has been placed on
investing in our national security and intelligence establishments to
wage a war on terrorism beyond our shores. The economic investment in
this effort has been enormous particularly when compared with the money
commitment to critical infrastructure protection and preparedness. The
U.S. has been spending an average of \$250 million every single day for
more than 4 years in Iraq. By contrast, in FY08, the Office of
Management and Budget has asked for \$200 million for Emergency
Management Performance Grants or roughly what we spend every 20 hours in
Iraq.

Americans have not lost their capacity or willingness to sacrifice for
the greater good. That reality was poignantly demonstrated on September
11, 2001 by the actions of ordinary citizens aboard United Airlines
Flight 93. United 93, of course, was the last of the four planes
hijacked on that fateful day. Airphone calls with anxious friends and
family alerted passengers that the terrorists' intention was to use the
airliner as a missile. As a result, many of the passengers fought back
and prevented al Qaeda from their intended targets: the Capitol or the
White House.

Although all aboard United 93 perished, their story reveals how ordinary
citizens, if armed with information, can make decisions that safeguard
our country. The lessons of United 93, however, stand in stark contrast
to a pervasive culture of secrecy that makes senior officials reluctant
to share information on potential terror threats with the public.

We have a national security and federal law enforcement culture that
thrives on secrecy. As a result, ordinary citizens are not seen as
allies in enhancing security, but rather as virtual children to be
looked after paternalistically. Since 9/11, the Washington trend towards
greater secrecy has exacerbated this counterproductive trend. We would
do well to follow Thomas Jefferson's advice, namely that "A nation's
best defense is an educated citizenry."

It is no small irony that the homes of the two centers of government
whose solemn constitutional obligation is "to provide for our common
defense" (the White House and Capitol Hill) ended up being protected by
an active and informed citizenry. We can never prevent terrorism
completely and we can never be sure when and where terrorists will
strike. But, we can take prudent steps to minimize the amount of damage
terrorists can inflict, while simultaneously enhancing our ability to
recover quickly in the event of disaster. This requires, in short, far
greater civic participation than our elected leaders currently allow
for.

Criminals know our soft spots and we have to assume that the terrorists
who pose the most serious threat know them as well. Thus, Washington
should be erring on the side of sharing information with the public.
Only be openly acknowledging our vulnerability will we be able to tap a
latent civic mindedness and ingenuity of the broader civil society.
Candor is also the only way for a democracy to generate the requisite
political will for addressing our myriad weaknesses.

**Inviting Disaster**

The United States has suffered many catastrophic disasters in the past.
The fire that destroyed Chicago in 1871 and the San Francisco Earthquake
of 1906, for instance, rank as two of America's worst disasters.
Nevertheless, the federal government's response to these earlier
catastrophes was arguably more nimble and efficient than it was in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The speed as which relief efforts and disaster assistance can be
mobilized has more to do with political and bureaucratic will than
logistics. America seems to have forgotten many of the lessons learned
from past disasters. For instance, after firestorms destroyed much of
Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco roughly a century ago, practical
measures such as stricter fire and building codes were established.
These measures have saved countless lives. Today, however, a rash of
development and home construction is taking place in highly vulnerable
regions such as the Gulf Coast and the Sacramento River Delta. This
practice has been aided and abetted by federally subsidized flood
insurance, which effectively encourages residents to move into high-risk
areas.

Well before Katrina, many experts recognized the sheer madness
associated with the wave of development taking place in hurricane zones.
Tragically, even after Katrina, the reconstruction of New Orleans is
proceeding without comprehensive guidelines to mitigate the effects of a
future disaster. This is a sharp departure from the past when there were
intense efforts to learn what went wrong so as to determine what prudent
changes should be made to reduce the risk and consequences of similar
levels of destruction happening the next time disaster struck.

The wake of Katrina revealed six trends that virtually insure future
American disasters will end up being more costly and deadly than they
should be:

-   The ecosystem is undergoing changes that will elevate risk over
    time.

-   Protective measures undertaken by previous generations are being
    neglected.

-   Rapid growth in coastal, urban, and suburban development in exposed
    and lowlying areas are exacerbating risk.

-   We are failing to invest in appropriate measures to prevent and
    mitigate the effects of disasters.

-   We have not allocated enough resources to respond effectively when
    disasters do strike.

-   After a disaster strikes, we fail to learn the lessons from the
    experience.

In sum, the greatest danger we face lies not in acts of terror or
natural disasters per se, but in our own negligence, which all too
frequently places us on the edge of disaster.

**Ailing Foundations**

Much of America is often one step away from a serious power outage. In
the fall of 2003, for instance, the entire northeastern United States
went dark in what was the largest power failure in American history. The
cause was not al Qaeda, but rather a few untrimmed trees that became
entangled in several high-voltage power lines in Ohio. A little routine
maintenance might have saved upwards of \$6 billion, the estimated cost
for the outage.

America's increasingly antiquated power grid is being taxed to its
limit, and then some. As one utility spokesman observed in the summer of
2006, "we've got to keep our fingers crossed that everything stays
working." It seems to be the approach we are taking for most of our most
critical infrastructure.

America has also failed to adequately fund our public health system, our
system of public transportation, our nation's highways, our rail system,
and, of course, our flood control system. As a result, disasters are far
more likely to produce catastrophic consequences.

Our public health and emergency care system, for instance, would be
completely overwhelmed in the event of an avian flu outbreak where
human-to-human transmission leads to mortality rates similar to the
outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918. Similarly, a major terrorist
attack, natural disaster, or other public health emergency is likely to
overwhelm local emergency rooms and our first responders. Unless we make
drastic improvements in our emergency care system, we will see
Katrina-like failures to meet the challenges the next disaster will
impose.

**The Best Defense**

"These terrorists cannot destroy us." That's the verdict of the former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe. Terrorist,
of course, pose a real threat, but they are not the epochal threat of
our age. Our overreaction to terrorism poses greater dangers than the
terrorists themselves do.

Terrorism, like the flu, will never be eliminated entirely. There will
inevitably be a new strain with the arrival of each season. Therefore,
the most prudent course entails building resilience to terrorism,
natural disasters, and public health threat. A defensive approach does
not concede ground to the terrorists. By improving our defense, we raise
the probability of failure and lower the payoff of success for
terrorists. In other words, a strong defense makes us less inviting
targets for terrorists.

However, the strategy that has been adopted since 9/11 has been to treat
the offense as the only way to confront terrorism. But "taking the fight
to the enemy" in Iraq has become a rallying point for jihadists. For
instance, Iraq has become a training ground for a new generation of
future terrorists. And the war is proving immensely costly in both blood
and treasure.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that terrorists cannot be
deterred. But this assumption is wrong. Terrorists face many limitations
that can be exploited. First, for reasons of cost and recruitment,
terrorists only want to carry out missions with near certain odds of
generating maximum consequences. Making high value targets harder to hit
raises the odds terrorists will be detected. Concomitantly, investing in
redundancy (back-up systems) and harm reduction measures (using less
hazardous substances at critical facilities) will further dissuade
terrorists from striking in the first place.

There are four key steps we need to take to protect critical
infrastructure:

-   Hardening potential targets by improving security and erecting
    multiple barriers.

-   Investing in redundancy---e.g., back-up generators to make sure
    power outages are extremely limited in duration.

-   Being prepared ahead of time to fix something immediately if it is
    targeted.

-   Reengineering critical infrastructure to make them less hazardous if
    they are hit. This can involve relocating refineries and the like
    away from densely populated areas. Or, if this is not feasible,
    alleviating risk by using less hazardous substances whenever
    possible (i.e., water filtration plants could switch from using
    potentially harmful chemicals like chlorine to the relatively inert
    sodium hypochlorite).

We need to recalibrate the war on terrorism. There is no magic bullet to
defeat terrorism, but we can manage the risk. Just as we could never
hope to eradicate an elusive virus, which will tend to mutate quickly,
we'll never eliminate terrorism once and for all. Nevertheless, we can
boost our "national immune system"---our civil society and our economic
and political institutions---so that we are well equipped to handle
adversity.

**Tapping the Private Sector**

Safeguarding our infrastructure requires a pragmatic appreciation of the
strengths and inherent limits of a free-market. Put simply, the private
sector cannot secure our nation's most critical infrastructure by
itself. The reasons for this are simple: a private company that invested
heavily in security would be at a competitive disadvantage with
competitors that did not. Further, security investments made prior to an
attack might be rendered obsolete by government regulations following an
attack.

Absent federal leadership, most CEOs will adopt a wait and see attitude
when it comes to major security enhancements. This state of affairs,
however, hampers the possibility of tapping the private sector to create
a more resilient society. What is needed is federal leadership to
provide meaningful incentives to better line the capabilities of the
private sector with those of the public one. In short, upgrading
security and preparedness can be a matter of enlightened self-interest.
Most business leaders want to be good corporate citizens, but they need
government to be a competent and enthusiastic partner.

**Preparing for the Worst**

Post-9/11 America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and cope
with a catastrophic attack or major natural disaster on the homeland.
One serious obstacle to improving resiliency is that our leaders prefer
to handle all security issues behind closed doors. This tendency is
imprudent for four reasons:

1.  Our enemies already know our vulnerabilities.

2.  Problems out of the public eye tend to get low priority.

3.  It fails to tap into the ingenuity and civic-mindedness of the
    public.

4.  Effective incident management systems must be open and inclusive.

Focusing on disaster preparedness is an act of both prudence and good
citizenship. It requires an open and inclusive engagement of American
people and the private sector. America used to be a society based on
self-reliance, but we have become a "just-in-time" society---we have
just enough resources (food, money, energy, etc.) to get us through the
short term. Preparedness, however, pays off. And every family and
business should have an all-hazards emergency plan.

It is up to Americans to demand that their government at all levels make
resiliency an imperative. Terrorism is only one of the threats that we
face: pandemics, global climate change, and natural disasters loom on
the horizon. Living with an ailing infrastructure is tempting fate. A
healthy society depends on a reliable, efficient, up-to-date
infrastructure.

The failures highlighted by hurricane Katrina must be a wake-up call.
Historically, the American people have responded to natural disasters
with ingenuity and resourcefulness, but their capacities remained
largely untapped after Katrina. The climate of secrecy and suspicion
associated with the war on terrorism needs to be replaced with greater
openness and inclusiveness. Further, Washington needs to do more to
create meaningful public-private partnerships when it comes to disaster
preparedness.

We cannot pretend that catastrophes are rare and unpreventable. A flu
pandemic is almost certain and we need to take steps now to mitigate its
impact in the future. Similarly, encouraging development in vulnerable
coastlines and flood-prone areas is simply asking for trouble. We should
not be subsidizing such high-risk behavior with low-cost insurance and
lax building codes.

Finally, we must adequately fund our emergency responders; the local
police departments, fire departments, and emergency medical technicians.
These are the people we depend on when disaster strikes and providing
them with the resources they need to do their jobs also helps lower
crime and improves quality of life in normal times. Building a more
resilient society will imbue us with a sense of national purpose while
helping us protect what is truly important.

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***Stephen Flynn** is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for
National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the
author of the critically acclaimed* **The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a
Resilient Nation** *(Random House, 2007) and national bestseller,*
**America the Vulnerable** *(HarperCollins, 2004). Dr. Flynn is a
Consulting Professor at the Center of International Security and
Cooperation at Stanford University; a Senior Fellow at the Wharton
School's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University
of Pennsylvania; and a member of the Marine Board of the National
Research Council. He ranks among the world's most widely cited experts
on homeland security issues, including providing congressional testimony
on nineteen occasions since 9/11. He spent twenty years as a
commissioned officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, retiring at the rank of
Commander. During his time on active duty he had two commands at sea,
served in the White House Military Office during the George H.W. Bush
administration, and was director for Global Issues on the National
Security Council staff during the Clinton administration. He holds a
Ph.D. and M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a
B.S. from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He can be reached at*
<sflynn@cfr.org>