Risk Management

An element of every strategy is the degree to which the decision makers assume some degree of risk on behalf of those for whom they are making the decision. As already pointed out in the first National Strategy for Homeland Security of 2002, when focusing on risk (albeit terrorism), "we have to accept some level of terrorist risk as a permanent condition..." Zero tolerance, or the avoidance of all risk, may be the goal, but other variables often make that end state unrealistic, and some risk may be preferable to the price of getting to a state of no risk.  Discussions in this area often resort to the decision to live with low probability, high consequence threats versus high probability, low consequence results.  The acceptance of risk and the planning for it have manifested themselves in recent strategies as the ‘new norm’ of awareness of the consequences, and of resiliency in the event there is an incident, and attention must of necessity be directed to the recovery phase.

Risk management requires a delicate balance between what makes sense, seems proven and is reliably understood and engaging instead in new and untried behaviors and strategies in pursuit of shaping different outcomes and results.  The tradeoffs between what is familiar and comfortable with what is unproven and risky cannot be calibrated solely by experts and political leaders without input from ordinary citizens.  There must be a shared commitment towards investing in a risk management strategy that sustains our society well past 2020 and reflects new imperatives about how best to ensure our collective homeland security.