President Trump’s Executive Order 14167, Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States, directed an immediate change to the Unified Command Plan assigning U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) broad new missions to maintain American sovereignty and territorial integrity. This swift, early action points to the administration’s clear understanding of the UCP’s central role in shaping DoW organization and operations.
The change tasked the Department of War (DoW) with actions traditionally in the homeland security domain. While not without risk to primary DoW missions and readiness, it highlights that the homeland faces a growing range of threats requiring whole-of-nation preparedness and response. A future scenario where DoW is simultaneously in combat operations and supporting, or even leading homeland emergency management operations, demands enhanced integration of the homeland security and homeland defense enterprises. Because the UCP begins the Pentagon’s process of operationalizing DoW policy and strategy, additional UCP changes could further enhance integration of the two pillars of national security.
The foremost change in the strategic environment is the emergence of the growing partnership, formal and informal, among the four threat countries of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The 2024 Report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, clearly describes the security implications of what it labels an Axis of Growing Malign Partnerships that “creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multitheater or global war.”
The second major change, highlighted in both the NDS Commission report and the Heritage Foundation’s The Prioritization Imperative – A Strategy to Defend America’s Interests in a More Dangerous World, is the increasing physical threat to the homeland, including nuclear weapons and cyberattacks. Underscoring both reports is the homeland’s current peacetime orientation and the potential need to quickly transition to a wartime-centered government at the national level.
Assessing the impact of these two changes on DoW plans and operations would benefit from an operational design based on current doctrine. The core concept of military homeland defense doctrine is a defense posture integrated across three geographic layers: forward regions, approaches, and the homeland. Specifically, DoW conducts operations in the forward regions and approaches to defeat threats before they can attack the homeland layer.
The new defining element of the homeland defense forward regions layer is the cross-continent area dominated by China and Russia, drawing comparisons to earlier Cold War threats and the grand strategy of containment. UCP analysis of combatant command alignment with Department of State regional bureaus is essential to advance new concepts of containment. For example, U.S. Central Command-assigned countries adjacent to China and Russia should be assessed for potential UCP reassignment to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command or U.S. European Command. This reduces the number of commands bordering the primary axis partners, and improves alignment with the regional bureaus.
The homeland defense approaches layer extends from the homeland layer outward to the forward regions, in which USNORTHCOM has the preponderance of homeland defense responsibilities. The recent UCP realignment of Greenland from U.S. European Command to USNORTHCOM oversight is consistent with the geographic definition of North America, and fits the administration’s expansionist view of regional security interests. However, Greenland is politically aligned with Europe, and resides in State’s European regional bureau, creating unnecessary seams in managing a key part of the Arctic region.
Similarly, Central America, which is in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility, is the focus of homeland security migration and drug trafficking issues. Expanding the USNORTHCOM area of responsibility beyond Mexico to include Central America, or consolidating both commands into a single command, provides a near-perfect alignment of countries with the Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. This action also allocates all land avenues to the U.S. to a single command, significantly enhancing synchronization of interagency operations across the approach and homeland layers.
The final homeland layer, comprising all U.S. territory, includes the joint force combined with all U.S. Government agencies, integrating homeland security and homeland defense plans, operations, exercises, and capabilities. Per joint doctrine, this requires an interdisciplinary approach at the strategic level, primarily “associated with continuity of operations, continuity of government, and national preparedness.”
Central to defining whole-of-government homeland requirements are the Heritage Foundation and NDS Commission insights on the risk of a direct attack on the homeland. The NDS Commission explicitly calls on DoW and USNORTHCOM “to prepare for a worst-case scenario in which nuclear and other strikes are launched against the United States.”
These worst-case scenarios are within the scope of a national security emergency, as defined in the 1988 Executive Order 12656, Assignment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities:
“A national security emergency is any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.”
The Department of Homeland Security is the interagency lead for EO 12656, and advises the National Security Council on emergency preparedness policy and issues. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, in direct coordination with USNORTHCOM planners, leads the deliberate planning effort for national security emergency response.
The order tasks DoW to develop national security emergency plans and programs “to ensure effective mutual support between and among the military, civil government, and the private sector.” U.S. Northern Command civil support plans, fully integrated with federal, state and local planning, fulfill much of this requirement.
The DoW is also required to establish interagency agreements regarding the transfer of federal resources to the operational control of DoW in a national security emergency. The growing probability of a scenario where USNORTHCOM is simultaneously executing its entire family of homeland defense and civil support plans requires further refinement of its homeland defense plans, and validation through National Level Exercises.
The likelihood of concurrent supporting/supported multiagency operations in a future national security emergency presents the most complex response scenario across the homeland layer. Given USNORTHCOM’s central role in whole-of-government national preparedness planning and response, the UCP should formally assign it the responsibility to serve as the DoW lead for national security emergency planning and coordination with the DHS, FEMA, and other interagency partners. This also supports the requirements established in EO 14167.
The next Unified Command Plan will ideally support a new National Security Strategy that codifies the threats posed by the new axis of partners, and articulates a renewed policy of containment. In turn, a National Defense Strategy focused on military denial of axis objectives will provide the DoW policy linkage to a new Unified Command Plan consciously designed to align DoW with other agencies in the forward regions, increase interagency integration in the approach and homeland layers, and most critically, improve unity of effort across the homeland security and homeland defense enterprises.