Naval Postgraduate School

The purpose of this book is to research and provide a comprehensive overview of contingency contracting practices within the United States as they apply during major disaster response scenarios. To do this, we analyzed three major disasters that occurred within the last twenty years. These are the Northridge, CA earthquake of 1994, Hurricane Katrina in LA in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy, impacting much of the northeast in 2012. We specifically picked these events for several reasons. They are large disasters with a voluminous amount of data available, they are geographically dispersed around the country, and there was sufficient time between each disaster to allow changes to contingency contracting plans and policy to change and be implemented. Our research and analysis focused on the events of the disaster itself, what contingency contracting preparations were in place prior to the disaster occurring, what types of contracts were awarded during the recovery phases, and what types of contingency contracting policy and procedure changes were made in in the aftermath of the disaster to make the system work more effectively and efficiently. Lastly, during each disaster we highlight what worked well and what did not and recommend changes to contingency contracting policy to avoid committing the same mistakes again.

Jobbik, an ultra-nationalist party in Hungary, was founded in 2003. By 2010, this party had secured national parliamentary representation and sent three representatives to the European parliament. In its manifesto and public speeches, Jobbik has called for Hungary to leave the European Union and possibly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and to forge relations with, among other Eastern countries, Russia, China, and Iran. Meanwhile, the group rattles sabers-and nerves-on Hungary's uneasy borders with Slovakia and Romania, states with significant Magyar minorities. This book seeks to answer the following questions: What will a Jobbik-influenced Hungary mean for Europe and the European Union confronted by political, social and economic turmoil that can swiftly has security implications? What, if anything, can the EU or NATO do to influence the path of a once-promising democracy in the heart of Europe and the resurgent nationalist conflict in Eastern Europe? This book concludes that Hungary will maintain its strategic usefulness to NATO regardless of whether it can maintain a Western-styled democracy-NATO's other Allies will be content to defer action to other European institutions. The EU's previous attempts to influence far-right governments have failed and many of the EU's member states have human rights issues of their own-The EU is not likely to take meaningful action against Jobbik. Therefore, it is up to the Hungarians to save their own democracy.

An important part of the homeland security enterprise is the ability of public officials and leaders to communicate effectively with the public. When a crisis strikes, the public's ability to understand and act upon messages provided by officials is often significantly impinged by anxiety, fear, worry and distrust. In these uncertain and traumatic times, the public looks for a trusted voice and steady leadership. The ability to be trusted and lead during a crisis is determined, largely, by how well an official communicates with those affected. This book examines the public information methods used by officials in two high-profile criminal cases that unfolded before live television news cameras over the course of several days in 2013-the Boston Marathon bombings and the nine-day manhunt for former Los Angeles Police Department Officer Christopher Dorner in the greater southern California area. Best practices in risk and crisis communication are identified through a review of the literature and are used as the basis for analyzing each case study. The findings lead to four key crisis communication recommendations for public officials: recognizing the importance of empathy and compassion in trust building, focusing specifically on crisis communication best practices for leadership, emphasizing the importance of building pre-event partnerships, and differentiating the tactics from the strategic.

This book is an auto ethnographic book exploring ineffective practices of American information sharing and intelligence in a post-9/11 world. It answers the questions: 1) What is there to learn about the relationship between homeland security information sharing, leadership doctrine, and personal experience?, and 2) How does complexity science influence this relationship? The book combined personal experience with a methodological framework that leverages complexity science, social planning (wicked problems), and leadership doctrine to discover improved coordination between the federal intelligence community (IC) and state, local, tribal, territorial, and private (SLTTP) first responder levels. The analysis reveals virtually no interaction or understanding of the available resources occurred on either level before the 9/11 attacks. Pre-9/11, both entities were focused on their respective missions, the IC on post "Cold War Soviet issues, and state and local first responders on local criminal issues. After 9/11, both were forced to somehow coalesce, to mitigate gaps identified by the 9/11 Commission, which created a paradox of conflict and resistance within reform systems that would not have existed but for the efforts to coalesce them, within which this nation continues to flounder. The conclusion provides recommendations and potential solutions to remaining information gaps, as well as leadership doctrine that can provide a foundation for operating within the complex domain.

Since 2010, the United States and Brazil have made efforts to expand security cooperation between the two countries with the signing of a defense cooperation agreement, a general security of military information agreement, and the establishment of a defense cooperation dialogue. Despite these positive steps, the issue of technology transfer threatens to impede greater U. S.-Brazil security cooperation. Brazilian defense policy identifies technology transfer as a key component of its national defense, and there is a perception among many Brazilian officials that the United States is reticent to transfer defense technology to Brazil. This book includes an in-depth review of each country's policies and strategies related to arms and defense technology transfers, as well as case studies on cooperation (or lack thereof) between the U. S. and Brazil in two areas-nuclear and aviation-to understand what drives this belief among Brazilian policymakers. The book concludes that historical events in its relations with Washington make it difficult for Bras lia to accept more recent U. S. efforts to enhance security cooperation and facilitate technology transfer on their face, while these same efforts cause U. S. policymakers to discount the importance of past indifference towards or overt efforts to block Brazil in obtaining certain technologies.

The increase in violence involving transnational organized crime syndicates in various parts of M xico in the twenty-first century is widely viewed as a challenge to security and stability. Some observers have drawn comparisons with the well documented conflict in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s between the Colombian government and the Medell n and Cali cartels. Various factors, including the professionalization of the Colombian National Police, are viewed as a model for improving the effectiveness of law enforcement elsewhere. This thesis asks whether a Colombian law enforcement model can be codified, in terms of key attributes, to improve security and stability in M xico. To this end, I explore Colombia's law enforcement strategy in the 1980s and 1990s and identify shifts in strategy that might also apply to the current struggle in M xico. At the same time, I identify aspects of the Colombian model that have little or no relevance to contemporary M xico. I argue that the Colombian model can do little to reduce or eliminate the production and transportation of illegal narcotics by M xico-based organized crime syndicates; however, a hybrid version of the Colombian model could help reduce the overall power of the cartels and enhance security and stability throughout M xico.