A provocative, behind-the-scenes investigation into the consequences of America's efforts to secure its borders since 9/11
On September 10, 2001, the United States was the most open country in the world. But in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil, the U.S. government began to close its borders in an effort to fight terrorism. The Bush administration's goal was to build new lines of defense against terrorists without stifling the flow of people and ideas from abroad that has helped build the world's most dynamic economy. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.
The Closing of the American Border is based on extensive interviews with the Bush administration officials charged with securing the border after 9/11, including former secretary of homeland security Tom Ridge and former secretary of state Colin Powell, and with many of the innocent people whose lives have been upended by the new border security and visa rules. A pediatric heart surgeon from Pakistan is stuck in Karachi for nearly a year, awaiting the security review that would allow him to return to the United States to take up a prestigious post at UCLA Medical Center. A brilliant Sudanese scientist, working tirelessly to cure one of the worst diseases of the developing world, loses years of valuable research when he is detained in Brazil after attending an academic conference on behalf of an American university.
Edward Alden goes behind the scenes to show how an administration that appeared united in the aftermath of the attacks was racked by internal disagreements over how to balance security and openness. The result is a striking and compelling assessment of the dangers faced by a nation that cuts itself off from the rest of the world, making it increasingly difficult for others to travel, live, and work here, and depriving itself of its most persuasive argument against its international critics—the example of what it has achieved at home.
Customer Reviews:
required readingDecember 27, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Edward Alden's timely new book, The Closing of the American Border, is a must read for the incoming Obama administration and any American interested in homeland security (as well as foreigners wanting to better understand often contradictory US immigration policies). Exhaustively researched and brilliantly penned, this page-turner provides a thorough account of the country's border policies since 9/11. This important book is the unofficial history of how overnight border security transitioned from an almost afterthought to a bureaucratic tug of war, sometimes carried out in the oval office, between "the cops" and "the technocrats" struggling to balance protecting the country with civil liberties in a new age of counter-terrorism.
Unlike many serious policy books, The Closing of the American Border is actually a terrific read, written with a combination of serious analysis and gut wrenching anecdotes of detained immigrants whose only crime was their place of birth, unlucky timing, and desire to invest their considerable talents in the United States. The book tells harrowing stories of lives destroyed after being snared in blunt security initiatives aimed at foiling the next major attack. Admittedly, while it is impossible to prove a counterfactual why there hasn't been another terrorist incident, the book details how the closing of the American border has come with considerable cost to America's image abroad and economic competitiveness at home. Immigrants, whose sweat literally and figuratively built America, have run up against an administrative buzz saw from a government still reeling from Al Queda's surprise attack. As the book chronicles, Bush administration officials in a politically charged and risk adverse environment have been at almost every corner willing to sacrifice efficiency and open borders for tighter, if imperfect, border security. The personal stories of individual disaster the book relays put human faces on what often just seem like steely, impersonal policy decisions. The book reads like a combination of the Warren Report and a reality TV series turned horror show.
New DHS officials, incoming National Security Council staff, and citizens interested in the perennial tensions between freedom and security should carefully read The Closing of the American Border and keep it close to their desks. This book provides critical strategic lessons gleaned from seven years of hindsight for Americans and their leaders. The policy choices remain difficult ones, and as this book makes clear, there is still much work to be done.
Dr. Scott Borgerson, a former US Coast Guard officer, is the visiting fellow for ocean governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
FT and WSJ were right to give this book great reviewsOctober 7, 2008 5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I decided to pick up this book after reading very positive write-ups in both the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, and while I don't always agree with either paper on the books they recommend, I must say this one was even better than the printed reviews. The newspaper accounts give the impression that this is merely an important book about an important policy issue...which it is. But it's also an incredibly compelling narrative about infighting within the Bush administration over how to respond to 9/11...and make sure it doesn't happen again. Alden interviews almost all the major players -- Colin Powell, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff -- and lots of less-senior officials who give a really insider account of the battles within the government in the months and years following the attack. Sort of like a classic Woodward book, except on homeland security rather than wars overseas. Can't recommend it more!
