Author: Patricia F.S. Cogswell

The Arctic is rapidly changing. While the Arctic region has experienced warming and cooling cycles over millennia, the current warming trend is unlike anything previously recorded. As sea ice diminishes, ocean resources are more readily accessible. This accessibility, along with recent scientific estimates indicating the presence of significant energy and other resources, have inspired strong interest for new commercial initiatives in the region, including energy production, increased shipping, scientific research, tourism, and related infrastructure development. As an Arctic nation, the United States must be proactive and disciplined in addressing changing regional conditions and in developing adaptive strategies to protect its interests. An undisciplined approach to exploring new opportunities in this frontier could result in significant harm to the region, to our national security interests, and to the global good.

Today, we are releasing the National Strategy for the Artic Region. Through this strategy, we are setting the United States Government’s strategic priorities for the Arctic region. These priorities are intended to position the United States to respond effectively to emerging opportunities – while simultaneously pursuing efforts to protect and conserve this unique environment.

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Twenty years ago today, an improvised explosive contained in a truck was detonated in the public parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  Improvised explosive devices (IED) continue to pose an ongoing threat, both here at home and abroad.  Our capability to identify and disrupt them before they occur, as well as to respond after an attack, has improved greatly. We have come a long way in twenty years. 

Today, with the publication of the policy statement on Countering Improvised Explosive Devices, we both recognize the progress we have made, and rededicate ourselves to the next phase in our efforts to implement measures to discover, prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate IED attacks and their consequences.

We will seek to develop even smarter solutions, and make the most efficient use of our resources, by enhancing our capability to share information regarding these threats, synchronizing standards and procedures, prioritizing and aligning activities according to risk management principles, and leveraging the expertise and resources of industry and foreign partners in pursuit of our shared interests.

The threat from IED use is likely to remain high in the near future, and will continue to evolve in response to our abilities to counter them. A whole-of-government approach that integrates Federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and global participation in counter-IED activities will best position the United States to discover plots to use IEDs in the United States, or against U.S. persons abroad, before those threats become imminent.

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