US Internal Security Redux

[Jack_Gander]

I am a bit confused on your initial response. Is it fair to say you believe that while there currently is no organization (formal or informal) attempting to undermine the gov’t, the potential exists for conditions to emerge that would threaten domestic stability and the situation could be exacerbated by some external event/actions? If so I would agree with you except that the “trigger” could be internal – market/currency collapse, prolonged gov’t shutdown etc.

What do you mean by 'resolved'?

Take for example, the issue of immigration. Will the political process resolve this by enacting national laws that will eliminate the problem of illegal immigration? This includes finding an equitable solution for the 10-20M illegal immigrants currently within our borders and preventing future immigrants from entering the country illegally.

America has experienced, and survived, much worst, and in many ways, the democratic system emerged stronger afterwards.

Perhaps you are focused on the civil disturbance issue with this response. Have we ever had problems with increasing civil disturbances and illegal immigration and a broken criminal justice system and transnational threats and radicalization all in the context of failing governance and a sagging economy. Individually, the components to this equation may be insignificant however in aggregate they are of concern.

What role does citizenship (not the legal process of becoming a citizen) play in National Security?

None.

This is a surprising response. I would say citizenship, that is being a good citizen, and honoring the responsibilities(civic duties) that come with that title are very important. Just take a few civic duties – voting, honoring the laws of the land, paying just taxes , and serving in the military when needed, for example. Could we have fought the last decade of war without the use of the citizen-soldier? Isn’t citizenship the foundation of our COIN doctrine? During COIN aren’t we attempting to make the indigenous population better citizens of their nation, loyal to a “legitimate” government?

My point by posing this question is there are many people who inhabit the US but are not good citizens -just look at crime and voting statistics. What percentage of inhabitants within the physical borders of the US actually pay federal taxes? The growing disparity between citizens and inhabitants should be of concern. Although some recent data indicate that community level citizenship is on the rise.

Right now, these issues are solidly political issues since they are minor national security concerns.

But how are these minor national security concerns trending? I would offer that with the exception of immigration (because of economic conditions) they are all trending negatively. The intent of this posting was to use Panarin’s analysis as a starting point for continued analysis on this issue.

I fail to see how these issues can merely be dismissed as politics… we can spend the better part of a day on each item. Take transitional crime – this is a political issue? How many people were killed on the US-Mex border since 2006 with the connection to human or drug trafficking?

If you really would like to open the aperture on transnational crime you must include cyber crime – a crime that recognizes no national border. Chinese espionage, organized criminal activity, etc not to mention direct attacks. How many attacks against US critical infrastructure have been perpetrated by US citizens?

Perhaps blaming politics is just an easy solution to actually addressing the issues.