James Carafano

Dr. James J. Carafano (born May 8, 1955 in East Meadow, New York) is the leading expert at the Heritage Foundation in defense affairs, military operations and strategy, and homeland security. He has authored and co-authored many books. Carafano is a member of the National Academy’s Board on Army Science and Technology, the Departments of the Army Historical Advisory Committee, and is a Senior Fellow at the George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute.

Carafano’s research focuses on developing the national security that the nation needs to secure that long-term interests of the United States- protecting its citizens, providing for economic growth, and preserving civil liberties.

Education & Early Career

Carafano is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. He has a master’s degree and doctorate degree from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in strategy from the U.S. Army War College. As an accomplished historian and professor, Carafano was an Assistant Professor at West Point and served as director of military studies at the Army’s Center of Military History. In addition, he has taught at Mount Saint Mary College in New York and served as a fleet professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Today, he is a visiting professor at the National Defense University.Carafano served 25 years in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His areas of expertise soon became military strategy, joint operations, future combat systems, post-conflict operations, and nuclear weapons. While serving in the army, Carafano served in Europe, Korea, and the United States and became the head speechwriter for the Army Chief of Staff, the service highest ranking officer. Prior to his retirement, he was Executive Editor of Joint Force Quarterly, the Defense Department’s stellar professional military journal.Carafano married in 1980 and had one son Luciano. His wife, Diane assisted him with his early writing. His son now assists him with research.

The Heritage Foundation

In 2003, Carafano joined the Heritage Foundation as a Senior Research Fellow after serving as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington institute dedicated to defense issues. In 2005, Carafano earned the Heritage Foundation’s prestigious Drs. W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award for his “outstanding contribution to the analysis and promotion of the Free Society." In 2006, Carafano became Assistant Director of Heritage’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.

Winning the Long War

Carafano and Paul Rosenzweig co-authored “Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preventing Freedom in 2005. The book written for today’s policy makers and leaders outlines a strategy that includes 4 winning elements: 1) Security 2) Economic Growth 3) Protecting Civil Liberties of the People 4) Winning the Struggle of Ideas. According to Carafano, good national security policy must meet all four criteria, and must not sacrifice one for another. Carafano writes in “Homeland Security Technology, Global Partnerships, and Winning the Long War (2006)” that winning the long war to disrupt transnational terrorist net¬works will require international collaboration in researching, developing, and sharing homeland secu¬rity technologies. Carafano urges the American people and policy makers to ask the right questions and not loose their grip for what we are fighting for. Read “911: America took the right first steps, but winning the long war requires grit (2006).” He givesreaders a transparent way of thinking and talking about terrorism and the war (Nine Essential Points for Talking About the War on Terrorism, 2007.)

Carafano's Principles on National Security

On issues of national security, Carafano has made his stance clear on immigration, homeland security and defense.

Immigration

Carafano is one of the foremost experts on immigration policy as it relates to national security. He advocates an incremental strategy based on 1) enforcing current laws 2) Recapturing control of the border 3) Restructuring and accentuating the legal immigration process 4) Establishing legal prospects for temporary work in the United States. In short, according to Carafano, “What is needed to complete the task is not another attempt at ‘comprehensive’ reform, but a basic commitment to implement and enforce the law, along with a few modest, common-sense legislative initiatives.” For further reading reference Carafano’s article A New Strategy for Immigration Reform,As part of his proposal towards a secure immigration policy, Carafano advocates the inception of the Real ID program. Recent relevant written works by Carafano include:

* Making REAL ID Real-Finally (2008)

Homeland Security

Since the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Carafano has been carefully following the issue. As the leading expert in homeland security at The Heritage Foundation, Carafano has written extensively on Congress and DHS and how to make American secure without hurting our economy or violating American’s civil liberties. Though not inclusive, issues which he as commented on include:

* FISA
* U.S. Coast Guard
* International Collaboration on Homeland Security
* Port Security
* Emergency Response
* Grants

One of the most influential publications was DHS 2.0, which James Carafano co-authored with David Heyman. The report took a second look at the organization and operations of the new Department of Homeland Security. Many of the recommendations were adopted by Secretary Chertoff.

For 2008, Carafano has identified five homeland security issues that must be addressed.

* Homeland Security: Five New Year's Resolutions for Congress (2007)

Defense

In conjunction with his colleagues at the Heritage Foundation, Carafano has written numerous publications on defense issues that include cyber warfare, stability operations, and missile defense issues. Our nation’s intelligence surveillance is an important tool of for effective national security and foreign policy. Playing politics with security is foolish according to Carafano’s stance on making the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) permanent. Read Congress Must Stop Playing Politics with FISA and National Security (2008) where he advises Congress to stop playing politics with national security and pass sensible legislation that meets the needs of those who protect the country from attack while upholding Americans' civil liberties.

Carafano believes that a large part of establishing a proper defense against foreign attack lies in the establishment of an adequate missile defense shield. According to Carafano, “the nation’s first priority should be to bring this operational capability online as soon as possible. Next, the Administration should move to expand and improve this limited defense, using its spiral development process to achieve a more robust global missile defense capability. The most important steps for building on this initial missile defense capability are: (1) aggressively pursuing options to deploy missile defense sensors and interceptors in space, (2) continuing to build the global command and control structure for managing missile defense assets, and (3) expanding missile defense cooperation with friends and allies around the world. Additional steps should include pursuing sea-based deployments of missile defense interceptors, expanding the number of interceptor and sensor sites, continuing to improve the existing Patriot missile defense system, and proceeding with development of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.” For more information see:
* Defense Priorities for the Next Four Years

Providing for the Common Defense

One of Carafano’s most prominent issues is that of defense spending. In his most recent co-authored publication entitled Providing for the Common Defense: What 10 Years of Progress Would Look Like (2008), he lists criteria for U.S. military intervention and maps out a blueprint for Congress and the next president for the next 10 years. As the defense expert, Carafano and his colleagues have led the effort in promoting a campaign which would set the floor of the defense budget to a sustained 4% of GDP. According to Carafano: “Despite intense military activity since 9/11, defense spending is at a historical low and has been for too long. Current and future Administrations and Congress should commit now to spending 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on national defense even after any drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, both to prevent a recurrence of the ‘hollow force’ and to meet the military's immediate modernization needs. Although defense spending has been relatively restrained, expen¬expenditures on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have been exploding. Meeting the resource needs for winning the war on terrorism includes maintain¬ing overall defense budgets at 4 percent of GDP while simultaneously recognizing that projected growth in entitlement expenditures will jeopardize the nation's ability to wage war over the long term. This harsh fact makes entitlement reform a national security issue.”

Books

As a leading defense expert, Carafano has published more than several military history books and studies. His latest is Mismanaging Mayhem: How Washington Responds to Crisis (2008) from the serious “The Changing Face of War” which examines how emerging political, social, economic, and cultural trends will affect the nature of conflict.

Other published works include:

* "GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War II" (2006) Praeger Security International.
* "Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom" (2005).
* "Homeland Security" (2005) McGraw-Hill.
* "Independent Task Force Report, Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared" (2003) Council on Foreign Relations.
* "Waltzing in to the Cold War" (2002) Texas A&M University.
* "After D-Day", a Military Book Club main selection (2000) Lynne Rienner.

His editorials have appeared in newspapers nationwide including The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, The New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

Media

Carafano has testified before the U.S. Congress as an expert of defense, intelligence, and homeland security issues. He has also provided televised commentary for:ABC, BBC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, SkyNews,PBS, National Public Radio, the History Channel, Voice of America, Al Jazeera,Telemundo, Al Arabiya and Australian, Austrian, Canadian, French, Greek, HongKong, Irish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish television.

External links

* [http://thepolitic.org/content/view/34/38/ Nurturing a Nation of Immigrants] Carafano's Security Strategy