The U.S. Resilience System

The U.S. Resilience System is a society-wide initiative with the goal of improving the health, well-being, and prosperity of American citizens and their communities, within the United States and abroad, during this period of fundamental change. During the 20th Century, American systems, built upon a reductionist science base, economic base dependent upon inexpensive fossil fuels, and industrial age technologies had competitive advantages and made widespread positive impact throughout the world. Unfortunately, today, many of these same systems are now antiquated, not well adapted the 21st Century social ecologies, and are finding it ever more difficult to successfully meet the challenges we now face. A U.S. Resilience System is emerging to step into the breach to address the gaps that are widening in association with 20th Century infrastructures and institutions that are falling behind in meeting the needs of Americans. The U.S. Resilience System is not just another patch on our 20th Century infrastructure. Instead it is being architected from the ground up not only to provide initial benefits on an urgent basis, but to eventually take responsibility for larger and larger portions of our 21st Century National Sustainable Security System, if or when in deep crisis America finds that it would be better to shift to more resilient and sustainable systems forged from the sciences of complexity and a 21st technology base, less dependent of fossil fuels, and other non-renewable resources of foreign origin. Planners are designing the U.S. Resilience System so that as it matures within a National Sustainable Security Infrastructure during the first half of the 21st Century, it can, if required, cover under its umbrella, essentially all aspects of non-coercive, non-violent, sustainable security. Any use of coercive force is out of scope for the U.S. Resilience System. Use of coercion is left to those aspects of the National Sustainable Security System that are traditionally managed by law enforcement, military, clandestine intelligence, and the U.S. Justice Department. The U.S. Resilience System is being designed to hold an inherent potential for significantly reducing and avoiding the need for coercive force (whether related to crime, terrorism, or warfare) through improvements in social justice, public engagement, non-violent discourse, management, governance and conflict prevention and resolution. Today, the nascent U.S. Resilience System (as it is now being architected) applies advances in the sciences of complexity, computing and communications to address health, humanitarian, ecosystem, and disaster management. It is particularly focused during the first decade of the 21st Century on preventing and managing emerging socio-ecological crises associated with economic downturn and global change. Although many institutions are addressing aspects of economic downturn and global change, to date no other institutions in American society are systematically and comprehensively modeling and addressing the social and human impacts of large-scale discontinuities in American society and the related health, humanitarian, and disaster management interests and concerns within our country and aboard. Without a robust U.S. Resilience System, American society, under the new conditions of the 21st Century, is subject to massive and costly systems failures and discontinuities, as we are now witnessing in our housing, health care, defense, financial and economic systems. In the absence of effective and sustainable systems, current U.S. responses tend to be reflexive and reactive through incremental action, reforms and stovepiped solutions. These stovepiped responses may provide short-term cushioning of systems decline, but without massive re-engineering or, alternatively, transformation that includes the creation of new systems architected to optimally and efficiently address the requirements of 21st Century challenges, they may remain non-viable, or only marginally viable even after costly interventions. Unfortunately, the pouring of public resources into public and private institutions designed for the conditions of the 20th Century, are more likely than not to collectively generate significant cost to American society with marginal and diminishing returns when addressing 21st Century challenges, even after reform. If the U.S. government spends trillions of dollars cushioning the decline of U.S. systems (such as the U.S. car industry, banking sector, insurance industry, and U.S. pharmaceutical industry) in a manner that leads to publicly owned assets at book values of less than 50% of our public investment in three to five years, our society will continue its current decline. If on the other hand, it invests in resilient systems and infrastructures providing Americans with sustainable food, water, energy, health, transportation, and other systems responsive to 21st Century socio-ecological conditions, the U.S. will have solidified the foundations of a growing green economy and will capture the current opportunity for stabilizing U.S. society and its leadership in a world facing increasing challenges in the years and decades ahead. The U.S. Resilience System is designed to systematically address the root causes of our most crucial risks, vulnerabilities and impediments to long-term sustainability and to lay the foundations for sound economic recovery. Its measurable objectives focus on maintaining and advancing health, human prosperity. development and security indicators across U.S. society, with a special focus on the most vulnerable at home and abroad. The U.S. Resilience System applies a breakthrough in management and governance systems, called “Agility, Focus and Convergence (FAC).” FAC teams, for example, supplement and then eventually replace many hierarchical, control systems with more efficient complex adaptive systems, which are self-synchronizing to contemporary and emerging conditions. These non-hierarchical, non-controlled systems operate with the qualities of distributed collective decision-making and actions, similar to market economies and the internet, rather than 20th Century Soviet-style centralized economies or traditional American command and control systems. Although our nation has benefited significantly from non-hierarchical, non-controlled systems, (such as free markets and the internet) the advances in systems science have yet to be fully applied to the U.S. health sector, security sector, and disaster management community. Most of the U.S. disaster management systems still operate formally through hierarchical controlled systems. That said, the poor performance of these systems in Iraq and Afghanistan and during our nation's response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster have catalyzed a demand for change, and increased use of complex adaptive systems that enable unity of effort without unity of command. Following are the four core components of the U.S. Resilience System: 1) FAC-enabled Teams Rapid FAC-enabled humanitarian assistance and disaster management teams organized into Hastily Formed Networks 2) Resilience Networks Resilience Networks that enable American citizens and their communities to understand how to live better, more sustainable lives, while actively becoming a part of the solution to emerging mission-critical gaps associated with large-scale socio-ecological crises and global change. 3) STAR-TIDES Logistics and Distribution A new generation of environmentally-friendly logistics and distribution systems (like STAR-TIDES originating out of advancements in DOD) that address non-commercial demand for health- and life-sustaining products and services in distressed populations, while moving them into a position of self-sustainability by enabling them to participate productively in local markets more sensitive to the needs, culture, and aspirations of local communities. 4) Trust Networks Trust Networks are intelligent social networks of individuals and groups with conflict resolution tools and methodologies, and unique cross-cultural knowledge and other characteristics that make them uniquely prepared to identify the underlying precursors and emerging indicators of conflict and violence. The U.S. Resilience System is architected as a multi-organizational enterprise within the National Sustainable Security Infrastructure, which taps the knowledge assets, human resources, and financial assets of government at all levels, as well as the private sector, and the non-profit sector. It may draw resources from government, but it is fundamentally non-bureaucratic. It may engage the private sector. However, it is not dependent upon private capital and traditional rules of return on investment, which might otherwise act in opposition to the creation of social capital and actions required to reach the populations that are most in need. Although it primarily focuses on the creation of social capital, it is not solely dependent upon non-profit organizations, governments or international organizations to meet the needs of populations with significant non-commercial demand.