Widening national security concerns
The searing images of the deadly 9/11 attacks make it almost an automatic response to view issues of national security through the lens of terrorism. But during the intervening years, analysts have come to see such threats much more broadly. Professors and politicians agree that issues of public health, poverty, and crime are also dangerous to a country’s safety and security, and are often contributing factors to the unrest and instability that promote anarchy and violence. Together with terrorism, they argue, such topics must be included in an expansive understanding of the national and international security landscape. A new collaboration between the Harvard Law School (HLS) and the Brookings Institution, the Harvard Law School/Brookings Project on Law and Security, aims to help define that widening view. “With this program, we really combine the wealth of legal expertise in various fields that exists at Harvard with the richness of policy expertise and all the...