The tragic – and apparently avoidable – death of an
Ambassador and 3 other officials is another grim reminder of both an endemic
and systemic problem: the United States
is a reactive country. And this is a
significant problem for both national security strategy and business
security. Loss of life is certainly far
more important than the loss of physical or intellectual assets, but the
underlying principle is basically the same:
we fail to provide adequate security.
As a nation and in the business sector, we tend to be more
reactionary than proactive – we have a long history of “not closing the barn
door until after the horse has run off.”
We believe that bad things can happen, but only somewhere else or to
somebody else; and even when we
recognize that something bad may happen, we rarely expect the worst-case
scenario to occur. We tend to look only
at the immediate past for the information with which we make our decisions
regarding the immediate future. So
when there are few actual, everyday problems or incidents, security becomes an
afterthought and again becomes relegated to the status of “necessary evil.”
We fail to recognize that the law of averages and the intent
of our enemies will ultimately affect everybody. We rely on our God or Lady
Luck or whatever to keep us safe from “the big one.” The security assessors and
planners are always viewed as the naysayers,
the ones who bring negativism to the table because, while everybody else
is talking about peace and détente and political correctness, the person
charged with looking for the bad things will raise his hand and ask “...But
what if...?” And all the shaking heads
will turn in that person's direction and his views will be looked on as the
ramblings of someone who isn't really with the team or on the bandwagon because
"...those things just won't happen to us." But they can...and they
will...and they usually do happen.
The major cause for having inadequate security is readily
apparent: the people who do the
security assessments and create the security plans (in other words, the people
who are the most likely to know what to expect) are never the ones in complete
control of security. Responsible and accountable and scapegoat-able, yes. In control,
no. Why? Because someone else always controls the decision to implement the
plans and policies, the money and the resources. Some bureaucrat or executive
always has to look at what the security readiness plan will entail and cost and
determine – usually in a completely uninformed way – if the imposition of
inconvenience and expenditure is really worthwhile, and if the funds and other
resources are really most wisely spent on something that may never happen. So with this fiscal attitude, bolstered by
our naïve and erroneous belief that it can't happen to us, the will and the
money and the resources we need for truly adequate security are never in place
when we need them most – preferably before, but at least at the beginning of
some disaster. And we suffer
again. Needlessly.
Both our nation and the business world need to recognize the
importance and value of security. Our
post-9/11 world, coupled with the
realities of today’s economy, makes the practice and implementation of adequate
security a virtual necessity. No longer
can the protection of our people and our assets be relegated to good fortune
and happenchance. Rather, a systematic
approach to assure that everything reasonable is being done to guarantee our
nation’s and our business organizations’ safety and financial well-being is of
vital and strategic importance. And the
marketing and selling of the concept of adequate protective efforts is a job
that must be continually and relentlessly pursued by security professionals,
since bureaucrats and executives are most often concerned only with the things
that undermine the ability to provide good security.
Posts
