National security conservatives view the rise of terrorism as the main threat facing the United States. They point out that America’s enemies don’t always use conventional weapons anymore. Instead, our enemies may use electronic hacking, targeting banks and secure information in order to use that information against the United States and its allies. Or they may manipulate the world markets on key commodities like oil.
While Secretary Rumsfeld discussed foreign threats to our national security, Ambassador R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence under President Clinton, focuses on domestic threats to America’s defense, specifically relating to energy. These emerging threats represent something seemingly new in American history: an undefined enemy, working across borders, striking silently in ways both large and small.
Ambassador Woolsey is a Democrat, but his views are shared by most national security conservatives regardless of their party. He explains some of the major threats facing the United States, and the need to balance liberty concerns with preservation of our national security.
Ambassador R. James Woolsey is a former director of Central Intelligence under President Clinton. Ambassador Woolsey has held presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. He served as ambassador to and chief negotiator for the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and undersecretary of the navy. He currently chairs the board of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Advisory Board of the Opportunities Development Group, and the Strategic Advisory Group of Paladin Capital, and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management. He has served as the Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and as a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Ambassador Woolsey was formerly a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton in McLean, and a partner with Shea and Gardner in Washington, D.C.