This article appeared in Homeland Security Affairs (September 2007), v.3 no.3Today, the homeland security official is focused squarely on the near-term external threats facing America -- the natural and terrorism-induced hazards that define our discipline's present-day rule-set. This essay argues that we need to create a new, broader homeland security rule-set; one that includes at its core both external hazards as well as the internal, long-term 'generational hazards' of our society's own creation. America's fiscal profligacy, global warming, an inferior mathematics and science educational system, and other 'generational hazards' pose a mortal threat to the stability and security of our nation every bit as lethal as religiously-inspired terrorism or the next big earthquake. To aid in the solution to these generational hazards, homeland security officials at every level of government should use their soft-power to help position these threats on a par equivalent to the global war on terrorism; that is, a multi-decade struggle for the very future of our civilization.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited
