Drawing upon resource material provided and that discovered while conducting your own research, students are to develop a research paper of at least 5 full pages (not including title page and reference list) to provide scholarly responses on the following two topics (both questions must be addressed in your assignment):
1) Fully describe the overall concepts of homeland security and homeland defense. Construct a response that provides the following related to both homeland security and homeland defense:
Primary missions, tasks, responsibilities, operations, etc. for:
Homeland Security and
Homeland Defense.
Highlight those areas that are shared between the two (what overlaps between HLS and HLD?)
Lastly, recommend a definition for homeland security.
2) Using the overarching themes of the National Security Strategy from 2017, provide your own recommendation for new National Strategy for Counterterrorism (it must be nested under the NSS according to the principle of strategic hierarchy). What key elements and focus areas would you suggest for the part of a new CT strategy that is domestic focused (homeland security, not overseas), and make sure to use the Ends, Ways, and Means strategy framework.
Note: You should be aware of the fact that “homeland security” is made up of much more than just DHS. That agency is only one part of a larger Homeland Security Enterprise that includes [DHS] Departmental leaders and components [the 7 field agencies including USCG, CBP, ICE, USSS, etc], state, local, tribal, territorial and private sector partners and others. Also remember there are many other essential federal agencies that play a role in HLS, such as the very important DOJ where the FBI is the lead agency for countering terrorism in the US (not DHS).
Technical Requirements
Make sure you read the instructions carefully and that you focus your paper on answering the assigned questions. This assignment is a research paper, not an opinion paper, so you need to use scholarly sources to support your thesis (see this library article How do I write a good thesis statement). Use formal academic writing and do not use the first person such as ‘I’ or ‘my’; see this site on academic writing style (scholarly voice). Make sure you use APA style 7th edition in-text parenthetical citations at the end of every sentence where you are quoting another’s ideas (or any information) that is not your own thoughts and words, like this (Bergen, 2015, para. 14). Citations are required for paraphrases as well, but not the page or paragraph number in that case. I highly recommend you use the APUS writing guide which can be found in the university library or at this link: APUS Research Writing and Style Guide. You are welcome to use supplementary sources to compliment the assigned readings based upon your research, but make sure you use only scholarly and credible sources (do not use open websites and you never want to use wikipedia for a college level paper). Also, dictionaries and encyclopedias as well as general news sites (like CNN) are NOT appropriate for college level research papers. A good example of what NOT to use is NSA.Gov1.info — not only is it not the NSA webpage, the site loaded with bogus information and if you scroll down to the bottom it says “This is a parody of nsa.gov and has not been approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency or by any other U.S. Government agency.” Also, do not cite the weekly lessons as those are only basic information to start off the topic with. You need to use mainly scholarly and reputable academic books and journal articles. Refer to the guide provided to you at this link titled Dr Gardners Toolbox of Top Research and Writing Tips that includes a section on “How to find scholarly research sources for HLSS Courses.” Also, see the APUS Library Homeland Security Program Guide for good sources, as well as the APUS Research Primer and the APUS Library Research FAQs. For formatting, the best option is to use the attached example paper as a template (for formatting purposes only). I also recommend you use the this Dr Gardner Toolbox with writing tips already mentioned when crafting your paper, especially the section on How to write an effective college level research paper for HLSS Courses.
