Erik J Dahl

Should Homeland Security Studies Survive?

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management

A few years after the end of the Cold War, Richard Betts argued that a specter was haunting the f... more A few years after the end of the Cold War, Richard Betts argued that a specter was haunting the field of strategic studies, “the specter of peace,” and asked whether that field should survive the new era. Today, more than two decades after the 9/11 attacks that stimulated the field of homeland security (HS) studies, we could ask a similar question about that field. Should it survive as an academic field of study, and if so, how should it adapt and change in an era in which concerns about terrorism have in large part been overtaken by great power competition, climate change, AI, pandemics and a host of other asymmetric threats? Is it/can it be an academic discipline? A profession? What questions does it ask and what contributions does it make to practitioners, policy makers, or society? This article reviews the state of HS studies today and what sub-fields and disciplines it touches. It examines HS publication and education in the United States and evaluates the contributions that HS...

How to Cite Research : Dr. Eric Dahl [video]

David Brannan, Kristin Darken, and Anders Strindberg, "A practitioner's way forward: terrorism analysis

Download

Digital war: a view from the front lines

Digital war, a view from the frontlines BATEMAN Robert L.

Download

Preventing a Day of Terror: Lessons Learned from an Unsuccessful Terrorist Attack (DRAFT)

DRAFTPrepared for presentation at the International Studies Association annual conference Montrea... more DRAFTPrepared for presentation at the International Studies Association annual conference Montreal, March 2011One of the first and most successful cases of terrorism prevention in American history is also one of the least known. In June 1993, only four months after the first World Trade Center bombing, a group of men was arrested while plotting to bomb a number of targets in the New York City area, including the UN Headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge. It was one of the first radical Islamist terrorist plots thwarted within the U.S., and it led to what remains today America’s longest and most complex international terrorism trial. This paper argues that the “day of terror” plot remains important today because it provides an early model for how a group of loosely affiliated extremists can come together, train, plan, and very nearly succeed in carrying out an attack inflicting wide scale death and destruction

Download

Book Review of Spying: Assessing US Domestic Intelligence Since 9/11 by Darren E. Tromblay

The article of record as published may be found at https://www.hsaj.org/articles/15391Sponsored t... more

Download

Assessing the Effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security, 20 Years After 9/11

The article of record as published may be found at https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/202... more

Download

H-Diplo Roundtable Reviews / Vol. XIII, No. 16 (2012) / Review by Erik J. Dahl

Jordan Tama’s new book is an outstanding addition to the literature on national security reform a... more Jordan Tama’s new book is an outstanding addition to the literature on national security reform and the role of national commissions in effecting policy change. He takes a fresh look at a topic that hasn’t gotten enough attention, and makes the very intriguing argument that blue-ribbon commissions accomplish much more than they usually are given credit for. Although I generally subscribe to the conventional wisdom Tama challenges, which sees national commissions as unlikely to spur policy change, I came away from the book at least partly convinced by his argument

Download

Why Won’t They Listen? Understanding Policy Maker Receptivity toward Intelligence (DRAFT)

DRAFTPrepared for presentation at the International Studies Association annual conference Montrea... more DRAFTPrepared for presentation at the International Studies Association annual conference Montreal, March 2011After surprise attacks and other intelligence failures, the complaint is often heard that if only decision makers had listened more closely to the warnings they had received -- if only they had treated intelligence more objectively, rather than letting their own beliefs and wishes interfereâ€”disaster might have been avoided. But even though it is generally agreed that intelligence is of little use unless it is received and understood by policy makers, we actually know little about why some leaders are receptive toward intelligence, while others are not. This paper argues that the willingness of decision makers to listen to intelligence depends primarily on two factors: their belief in the seriousness of the issue or threat involved, and their trust in the utility of intelligence. It examines contrasting cases of policy maker receptivity toward intelligence in the cases of P...

Download

The Role of Focusing Events in Determining Intelligence Success and Failure (DRAFT)

DRAFTPrepared for presentation at the International Studies Association annual conference New Orl... more DRAFTPrepared for presentation at the International Studies Association annual conference New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2010The concept of "focusing event" has been used in the literature on government policy making to explain how disasters and crises can stimulate policy change and help organizations and decision-makers learn. Since the 9/11 attacks a number of scholars have noted that such attacks may, but do not always, serve as focusing events to help prevent future attacks. But little work has been done to examine the role that focusing events may have in determining intelligence performance. This paper examines the influence of focusing events in several cases of success and failure in preventing surprise attacks, and argues that in many cases prior intelligence failure is critical in determining whether intelligence agencies and officials are able to prevent future disaster

Download

Integrity in Academic Writing, Presentation

Download

Warnings Unheeded, Again: What the Intelligence Lessons of 9/11 Tell Us About the Coronavirus Today

Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security, Dec 1, 2020

This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic represents a global intelligence failure on the... more This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic represents a global intelligence failure on the part of the traditional intelligence community as well as the national and international medical intelligence and surveillance systems designed to detect and prevent outbreaks just such as this one. Comparing these failures with intelligence failures of the past such as the 9/11 attacks can help us understand how we got to where we are today-and even more important, how we might prevent future disasters by avoiding these failures next time. Today's crisis is very different from previous intelligence failures, but in both the 9/11 attacks and the coronavirus pandemic, the United States was threatened by an enemy that was present in our country well before it was recognized. This article outlines steps that must be taken to ensure that when the next crisis arises, warnings can be sounded, and they will be heeded.

Download

The NSA Revelations and the State of American Intelligence

The end result of the NSA debate is likely to be an even more capable intelligence community that... more

Download

Book Review of A Practitioner's Way Forward: Terrorism Analysis by David Brannan, Kristin Darken, and Anders Strindberg (Salinas, CA: Agile Press, 2014)

This short (141 pages) and very readable book is a good introduction to some of the most useful c... more This short (141 pages) and very readable book is a good introduction to some of the most useful concepts and best practices for terrorism analysis. As the title suggests, it is written primarily for practitioners, such as working professionals from law enforcement, fire services, or emergency management who find themselves serving as intelligence and homeland security analysts. The focus is on terrorism analysis, but many of the principles discussed in the book would be useful for anyone—whether practitioner or student—who is working to understand and analyze homeland and national security threats.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Download

Intelligence and Terrorism (DRAFT)

Prepared for the ISA Compendium Project and for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Interna... more Prepared for the ISA Compendium Project and for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, New York, NY, February 2009, Preliminary DraftIntroduction: Beginning well before the attacks of 9/11, scholars and policy experts have studied the challenges that terrorism presents for intelligence agencies and officials. This essay reviews the literature on intelligence and terrorism, discusses the primary arguments and issues covered in that literature, and develops a typology of three schools of thought into which much of this work can be organized. It argues that even though the scholarly and policy literature on intelligence and terrorism has grown significantly since the attacks of September 11, 2001, there are still a number of areas that are understudied and deserve further research

Download

Book Review: A Practitioner's Way Forward: Terrorism Analysis by David Brannan, Kristin Darken, and Anders Strindberg (Salinas, CA: Agile Press, 2014)

Homeland Security Affairs, 2015

This short (141 pages) and very readable book is a good introduction to some of the most useful c... more This short (141 pages) and very readable book is a good introduction to some of the most useful concepts and best practices for terrorism analysis. As the title suggests, it is written primarily for practitioners, such as working professionals from law enforcement, fire services, or emergency management who find themselves serving as intelligence and homeland security analysts. The focus is on terrorism analysis, but many of the principles discussed in the book would be useful for anyone--whether practitioner or student--who is working to understand and analyze homeland and national security threats.The authors attempt to provide a structure to the terrorism analytical process, which is a very useful effort because much of the focus of reform efforts within the American intelligence community since the 9/11 attacks has been aimed at improving the work of analysis. The book is partly a work about terrorism, and partly about the business of intelligence analysis, and thus it fits some...

9/11 Attacks

Too Good to Be Legal? Network Centric Warfare and International Law

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL …, 2004

America's military today faces new challenges that appear resistant to conventional solutions. Th... more America's military today faces new challenges that appear resistant to conventional solutions. The concept known as Network Centric Warfare (NCW) promises to use speed, precision, and information technology to win conflicts more quickly with minimal force. But many of the advantages that look beguiling to a commander can create problems for a military that focuses too much on speed and effects, at the expense of deliberation and law. This article argues that both the U.S. military and the American public will lose if new tools and technologies make war seem too easy. It calls for a reassessment of NCW in light of international law and offers recommendations to help guide that effort.

Download

The Plots that Failed: Intelligence Lessons Learned from Unsuccessful Terrorist Attacks Against the United States

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2011

... 10. Brian M. Jenkins, “Intelligence and Homeland Security,” in Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen and Dani... more

Intelligence and the theory of preventive action

Theoretical Foundations of Homeland Security

Uploads

Papers by Erik J Dahl

Log In