Emergency response to disasters is an element of government that most countries in the world today have invested in, albeit at different levels depending on the types of disasters the country is prone too. In the US, security-related incidents are treated differently with a fully-fledged national agency, Homeland Security, formed to deal with threats to the nation's security. This is apart from the country having various police units, the military, and other security agencies. Coordination when it comes to dealing with issues such as terror attacks is therefore multipronged with Homeland Security spearheading investigations but actual teams on the ground comprising local police units, federal police units, and officers from DHS ( Garrett, 2019).
Other countries e.g. the United Kingdom have a different approach to dealing with emergency incidents where there is a centralized approach that is divided into levels depending on severity. All incidents are first addressed at the local level with police allowed to do investigations on terror incidents that are not high-mortality events (Morag, n. d). The central government is only brought in to give direction and help out in severe incidents such as widescale terror attacks. However, unlike the American approach where the incidents will be taken up by Homeland security, in the UK the police will still do the investigations and follow-ups but this time they will be given access to central government resources, both human and capital. The government will maintain a liaison officer to be in charge and will be responsible for implementing government decisions on the matter (Morag, n. d). This difference in approach from the US Homeland Security perspective can be witnessed in many other countries, not just the UK, that are used to different types of disasters and security threats. Countries such as the UK, Israel have dealt with their security threats in a much better way than the US with these countries' average response rate to security incidents being faster, more coordinated, and the costs are significantly less than what the US spends.
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I agree with the author that there are many lessons for the US to learn from other countries regarding their approach to security matters and that emulation of other countries’ approach to the issue should have been done before coming up with the Homeland Security approach. As it stands, the US spends the most on security-related issues among developed countries to achieve nearly similar security threats. The US spent $732 billion in 2019 and that was more than the next ten countries combined at $728 billion (PGPF, 2019). This means that despite the presence of an agency dedicated to reacting to security threats, the US is no safer than other developed countries. It would, therefore, be prudent for the US to look outside to what other countries are doing right and where possible, emulate these approaches until they get a perfect mix of disaster response mechanism.
References
Garrett, A.L. (2019). The Role of the Federal Government in Supporting Domestic Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. Curr Treat Options Peds 5, 255–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40746-019-00162-7
Morag, N (n.d). “Chapter 50: International Homeland Security”. Introduction to Part 11: International Approaches and Challenges.
PGPF (2020). US Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries. Peter G. Peterson Foundation. https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison
