The United States is obsessed with terrorism, but we shouldn’t be. Countries like North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China are greater threats.
As Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen correctly pointed out on Wednesday, the threats facing the U.S. today increasingly come from other nations. Our overemphasis on terrorism by non-state actors leaves us ill-prepared to address modern threats.
Nielsen, in a speech at George Washington University, explained that the U.S. is “witnessing the re-rise of the hostile nation-state” adding, “our nation-state rivals are increasingly asserting themselves in ways that endanger our homeland. In fact, threats to the U.S. from foreign adversaries are at the highest levels since the Cold War.”
This is a brand new focus for the Department of Homeland Security, which was created just after Sept. 11.
Regular Americans — who, unlike Nielsen, depend on cable news for their understanding of geopolitics — will have a much harder time shifting their focus. Younger Americans, particularly, grew up in a world largely defined by Sept. 11. Seeing nation-states as the biggest threat is a big shift. Specifically, the threats to the U.S. aren’t so much bombs, hijackings, and mass murder as they are subtler and more insidious actions.
The nature of the threats from nation-states, as well as their goals, are different from the terrorist’s desire to provoke fear. A nation-state doesn’t need to kill or even hurt any Americans in order to cause tremendous damage.
Pernicious influence campaigns, such as those connected to Russia and Iran, meant to sow discord, are on the rise, and the U.S. isn’t quite sure what to do about them. As senators grill Twitter and Facebook executives on their response to Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, the same lawmakers (not to mention President Trump) have hardly done enough themselves to protect the integrity of voting ahead of the midterm elections.
But it’s not just elections that aren’t ready for new threats. Critical infrastructure such as hospitals, like those brought to their knees by North Korea’s WannaCry ransomware attack, are also vulnerable with life-threatening consequences. Likewise, well-documented attacks on local and state governments by hackers linked to foreign powers can cripple day-to-day functionality with little warning.
More broadly, the rise of adversarial state actors threatens key U.S. interests abroad and the world order led by Washington. By exerting increased influence over independent states and imposing political orthodoxy by using money and bullying to generate allies, both China and Russia have already worked to advance regional territorial claims.
For international organizations like the World Trade Organization or even the United Nations — created to ensure a stable, rules-based world order — the growing power of China and Russia, combined with the abdication of U.S. leadership, paves the way for a world overtly governed by strongmen and money, where rising powers are emboldened to pursue armed interference in sovereign countries and genocide goes unaddressed in Myanmar out of fears of pushing the country towards a rising China.
These are slow-burning threats. There will be few, if any, flashes, booms, and newly minted heroes fueling feverish commentary of a terrorist attack. Instead, lacking the right optics for prime-time coverage, the rise of these nations vis-a-vis the U.S. will be a slow process. If we cannot refocus attention from the short term to the long term, Nielsen’s words will still be correct, but we will be ill-prepared for the future that is creeping up on us.
