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Be Ready
Dept of
Homeland Security
Homeland Defense History in America
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
Homeland defense has been America's first priority
since the founding of the Republic. Many Americans may not
see things that way, but it's because the nature of that
defense and the agencies involved have changed over the
years.
Providing for the common defense was so crucial and basic a
government obligation that the framers explicitly said so
in the Preamble of the Constitution. When George Washington
became president in 1789, "common defense" primarily meant
two things: defeating a foreign invasion and defending
against Indians.
Military forces -- and this included the various state
militias -- were raised to defend the country against
England, France and Spain. With the Revolution fresh in
their minds, American leaders considered Britain the main
enemy and a second war and possible invasion their greatest
threats.
France, though a Revolution ally, claimed ownership of a
huge tract to the west that posed a potential threat to
American interests. Spain held Florida and virtually all
the lands to the west not claimed by the French.
French and British naval ships both preyed on American
merchantmen. In the interior of the United States, settlers
confronted American Indians as the boundaries of the country
pushed west.
The Army and the Navy were the homeland defense. Congress
authorized the Army to build or strengthen fixed harbor
defenses and the Navy to build blue-water ships to defend
America's right to the sea lanes.
The USS Constitution, berthed in Boston, is a material
example today of this building program. Fort Monroe, Va.,
Fort Washington, Md., and Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.,
are also remnants of these homeland defense efforts.
This does not mean the defenses were successful. During the
War of 1812, neither Fort Washington nor the one that is
now McNair stopped the British from capturing Washington
and burning it. Seems the forts were in place, but not the
manpower to adequately garrison them.
A bit later in the war, the British wanted to burn
Baltimore as they had Washington. Fort McHenry in Baltimore
Harbor withstood a British naval onslaught that inspired
eyewitness Francis Scott Key to pen "The Star-Spangled
Banner."
After the war, Congress appropriated more money to harbor
defense. The best and brightest graduates of the U.S.
Military Academy became engineers, and many were assigned
to work on these fortifications. Robert E. Lee worked all
along the East Coast building brick forts to defend the
United States from foreign enemies. Fort Pulaski on the
Savannah River in Georgia, Fort Totten in New York and Fort
Jackson on the Mississippi were just some of the forts
strengthened or built during this time.
In 1861, the Civil War broke out at Fort Sumter in the
harbor of Charleston, S.C. The masonry fort withstood
Confederate pounding, but the Union garrison surrendered
because food was running out.
But technology was already passing these forts by.
Conventional wisdom was that forts could withstand anything
a ship could shoot. That wasn't true with the Union Navy's
new rifled cannons. The weapons fired projectiles at higher
speeds and with greater penetrating power than smooth-bore
guns. Union ships pulverized Fort Pulaski in 1862 and ran
past the forts on the Mississippi to take New Orleans.
The forts built at such expense and with such effort were
obsolete.
On the frontier, the U.S. Army patrolled. Soldiers
protected settlers and trade routes. In many cases, the
Army acted as "frontier cops." This mission would continue
through the 1890s.
After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era saw changes in
homeland defense. The Army occupied and policed the South.
It propped up courts and protected former slaves, and
soldiers had arrest powers. Reconstruction ended in 1876.
The passage of the Posse Comitatus law in 1878 ended the
military's having civilian law enforcement powers.
In the latter part of the 19th century came another era of
ship building. While Americans still considered the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans enough of a defense against
foreign enemies, a strong Navy upon those waters was
important. The U.S. Navy built larger all-metal steam ships
that sported larger and larger guns.
The theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan became current.
Americans viewed the Navy as America's first line of
defense. Mahan, who wrote "The Influence of Sea Power upon
History" and retired as a rear admiral, was instrumental in
persuading Americans that the United States needed a large
"battleship Navy."
By the time the Wild West was tamed, the Army was reduced
to maintaining small garrisons in the West and now-obsolete
forts in the East.
In 1898, the Spanish-American War broke out. During the
six-month war, the Navy handily defeated Spanish fleets off
Cuba and in Manila Bay, the Philippines. But Americans were
shocked at what they perceived as thousands of miles of
undefended coasts. In the years following the war, money
poured into building new defenses around U.S. ports.
Retractable guns and electric mines were the primary
defenses. The coastal artillery branch of the Army manned
these posts. They were never tested.
Another result of the Spanish-American War was the United
States obtained the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. A
Navy able to keep the sea lanes open became a necessity.
In World War I (1917-18), the British bottled up the German
fleet. America girded for war untouched by a threat to U.S.
soil.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was the first
foreign strike against U.S. territory since the war of
1812. While coast artillery units continued manning their
forts early in the war, none ever fired a shot in anger.
When it soon became apparent that aircraft and ships would
be the main line of homeland defense, the Army transferred
coast artillery officers and NCOs into field artillery.
During the war, the Army Air Forces and the Navy defended
the homeland. Aircraft patrolled the approaches to ports
looking for German and Japanese submarines. Navy destroyers
and corvettes patrolled the sea lanes and pursued enemy
craft that aircraft could not engage. The Navy even
launched anti-submarine blimps to patrol the East Coast. At
least one blimp attacked a German U-boat and was shot down
for its effort.
Air power entered the homeland defense equation during
World War II. The Nazi bombing campaign against Britain and
the U.S.-British campaign against Germany made real the
threat from the air. The safety America felt by being
separated from the rest of the world by the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans evaporated.
The United States was first in developing intercontinental
bombing platforms with the B-29 Stratofortress. If the
United States could develop long-range bombers, so could
other countries. Nazi war plans in fact called for an
"Amerika Bomber."
Conventional bombs were scary enough for defense planners,
but the atomic bomb totally changed homeland defense.
The United States developed the atomic bomb and used two
against Japan. The devastation and radiation dangers posed
by the bomb caused the military to think of new means of
defense. After the Soviet Union developed the bomb, the
threat to America came from the skies.
The United States responded with the North American Air
Defense Command. NORAD was a U.S.-Canadian organization
charged with the missions of air warning and air control
for North America. The command searched the skies for
Soviet planes and would direct interceptors to shoot them
down.
Later, with the development of intercontinental nuclear
ballistic missiles, NORAD became the early warning system.
To this day, there is no defense against these missiles.
The NORAD warning would give people a chance to take cover
in the event of a nuclear strike.
In the minds of the average American, "homeland defense"
became "civil defense." And civil defense programs
consisted of urging families to take cover and build
fallout shelters and directing the development of community
air raid shelters. Air raid drills became as common at
schools as fire drills -- children practiced hiding under
their desks or sitting together in the hallways.
In the traditional military sense, "homeland defense" meant
forward deployment. U.S. forces stationed everywhere from
Europe to Korea were America's line in the sand against the
Soviet Union. Engaging the Soviets and their allies
overseas precluded having to fight them in the United
States.
With the exception of NORAD, a direct military connection
to homeland defense eroded. Many Americans came to perceive
the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps as assets to
defend U.S. interests in distant lands, but not actively
defending U.S. shores. Wars in Korea and Vietnam reinforced
this attitude, as did operations in the Dominican Republic
in 1965, Lebanon in 1958 and the Berlin Wall crisis in
1961.
Historians view the 1970s as the age of détente. President
Nixon recognized the People's Republic of China. He and
President Gerald Ford met with Soviet leader Leonid
Brezhnev. The Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972
resulted, and the two superpowers moved to relax tensions.
Through this period, homeland defense was seen mainly as a
function of civil defense.
In the late 1960s, terrorism in the form of plane
hijackings and assaults on innocent civilians grabbed
public attention. U.S. aircraft were hijacked and diverted
to Cuba or Mexico City or Rome. The U.S. response was not
military, but centered on law enforcement. Sky marshals
appeared. FBI agents investigated hijacking crimes and
threats. Justice Department counterterrorism programs
appeared.
So, the U.S. version of homeland defense meant the FBI was
the lead federal agency for investigating or preventing
terrorist incidents and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency was the lead for remediation. The military stood by
to help if called.
The events of Sept. 11 seem to be bringing homeland defense
full circle. From the halls of Congress to New York street
corners, Americans are calling for more military
involvement in homeland defense. Sept. 11 changed the world
just surely as the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki did. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said
that the people of the United States need to debate this
issue long and hard.
President Bush appointed former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge
as his director of homeland security. Ridge must see how
the Defense Department fits in with all the other federal
agencies and coordinate responses to threats to homeland
security.
While the threats to America have evolved and changed, one
aspect is clear: Whatever happens, the Defense Department
will play a major role in defending America.
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