NCJ Number
230108
Journal
Journal of Strategic Security Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 7-19
Date Published
November 2008
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article features the rationale and planning for a new academic discipline called "Strategic Security," which encompasses the sub-disciplines of intelligence, counterterrorism, and protection, with attention to concepts for introducing this new discipline in the curriculum of Henley-Putnam University, which was conceived as a college for the training of security specialists in 1993, after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Towers.
Abstract
The development of new technologies and the rise of new types of adversaries have created an environment in which intelligence, supplemented by protection and counterterrorism has become even more vital to the defense of national interests, i.e. "homeland security." The term "strategic security," as used in this article, encompasses not only the current official definition of homeland security, but also its allied fields and the professionals who work in them. Although there is not yet a clear, consensus definition of "strategic security," this article defines "security" as an "activity, as ongoing behaviors designed to forestall reasonable or probable threats." The activity of "strategic security" depends on "accurate, objective knowledge, obtained in a timely fashion and skillfully acted upon." The intellectual tools and tradecraft of intelligence, counterterrorism, and personal projection, when properly applied, can provide the right information to the right policymakers or decisionmakers so they may act in the Nation's collective best interest based upon the facts as they are seen at that moment. This new term informs the creation of a new educational curriculum and educational standard; and it emphasizes tradecraft over more general fields that happen to overlap areas of concern to intelligence, counterterrorism, and protection. This emphasis on tradecraft increases one's ability to respond to a wider variety of circumstances and scenarios, because tradecraft has evolved out of a vast array of situations and applications.