Included in the cargo that now enters U.S. ports are a billion tons of petroleum, and approximately six million containers. That's an average of 16,000 containers per day--and less than 2 percent of them are physically inspected. All of those numbers are projected to increase significantly in the next 20 years as the volume of U.S. international trade doubles, and perhaps triples.

It is impossible to exaggerate the value of that trade to the nation's economic well being--and to U.S. national-defense capabilities. More than 95 percent of America's commerce with other nations--exports and imports combined--goes by ship. Today, U.S. maritime industries account for over one trillion dollars of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP). Tomorrow, the maritime share of GDP will be much higher.

Those are but a few of the statistical, geophysical, and economic facts of life that today's Coast Guard has to take into account as it transforms itself to meet the complex new challenges of the 21st century--challenges made exponentially more difficult by the new, complex, and unprecedentedly dangerous threats to the United States itself, and to U.S. friends and allies around the world, posed by international terrorism.

The Coast Guard played a key role in coping with the first manifestation of those threats--the 11 September terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center complex in New York City. In a speech at the Coast Guard Academy on 28 September, Adm. James M. Loy, the Coast Guard's commandant, recounted in vivid detail what happened next: Not knowing if other attacks were imminent, hundreds of thousands of terrified citizens were seeking desperately to "escape the city by running south to the ferry terminals. Many of them jumped into the water in their panic and desperation." Working with local and federal authorities, Coast Guard Activities New York quickly coordinated the operations of a veritable armada of Coast Guard cutters, tugs, and ferries to rescue those in the water and to carry as many citizens to safety as possible. By 6:00 p.m. that evening, Loy said, "we had successfully evacuated over one million people by water."

For purposes of comparison, the usual daily passenger flow to and from south Manhattan, prior to 11 September, was about 186,000 people.

Meanwhile, not only in New York Harbor but also on the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., along the U.S. East and West Coasts, and in all of America's major ports and harbors, Coast Guard units were working with the Navy and with other agencies, both state and federal, to ensure the safety of the nation's 95,000 miles of coastline and protect against foreign intrusions of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ--all 3.5 million square miles of it.

Like the young men and women serving in the nation's other armed services, every man and woman in today's U.S. Coast Guard knew from Day One of the U.S.-led war against international terrorism that homeland defense had suddenly become the most urgent mission and highest priority of the nation's military--and would remain so for the foreseeable future. There are two important differences, though, between the Coast Guard and the other services. The first is that, ever since its founding (as the Revenue Cutter Service) more than two centuries ago, the Coast Guard has always considered homeland defense to be one of its most important missions. In recent decades the principal focus of that mission has been the interdiction--as far from U.S. littoral waters as possible, preferably--of drugs and illegal migrants, but Coast Guard Marine Inspectors also have boarded an average of 100 large vessels per day for port safety checks, and Coast Guard PSUs (port security units) have been active not only in U.S. waters but overseas as well in protecting U.S. citizens and commercial interests from terrorism and other dangers.

In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September attacks, several PSUs were rapidly deployed to New York, Boston, Los Angeles/Long Beach, and Seattle to improve the security of those harbors.

The second difference is the Coast Guard's unique status as the only one of the nation's armed services that is also a federal law-enforcement agency. Coast Guard Captains of the Port have the legal authority, therefore, to stop and search any vessel in the ports under their jurisdiction--and the service's PSUs provide the means of enforcing that authority if and when more than persuasion is needed. At sea, Coast Guard law-enforcement detachments, or LEDETs--sometimes riding Navy ships--can go alongside, board, and inspect ships suspected of carrying illegal contraband. Today, that contraband is not necessarily limited to narcotics or illegal migrants, it also can include weapons of all types, including weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs.

The threat posed by the proliferation of WMDs throughout the world in recent years was one of the main topics addressed in the report published last year by the Commission on National Security Strategy for the 21st Century--also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission. That report, issued well before the 11 September terrorist attacks, pointed out, with tragic prescience, that the United States "will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on the American homeland, and U.S. military superiority will not entirely protect us."

Senator Gary Hart, the commission's co-chair (with Senator Warren Rudman), developed what he called the "Five New Realities" of what is now, in the wake of 11 September, the "new normalcy" of life in the United States today. Those new realities can be briefly summarized as follows:

First: America's borders--land, sea, and air--are not secure.

Second: The traditional "rules" of warfare, and of national security in general, are no longer valid.

Third: The centuries-old distinctions between war and crime have become increasingly blurred in recent years.

Fourth: Future conflicts--in nations, between nations, and between coalitions of nations--are more likely to be cultural in nature, rather than political, economic, or ideological.

Fifth: U.S. decision-makers, and the American people themselves, will be required to make extremely difficult choices between constitutional liberties and both personal and national security.

Validating the worst fears of the Hart-Rudman Commission, the terrorist attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers killed more than 3,000 people--the total would have been much higher had it not been for the extraordinary heroism of the New York City firefighters, policemen, and others, including local Coast Guard personnel, involved in the rescue effort. The attacks also cost well over $700 billion in the destruction of buildings, businesses, and the municipal infrastructure, lost wages, the decline in tourism, the temporary grounding of virtually the entire U.S. airline industry, and other direct and indirect costs.

Although a human tragedy and a catastrophic shock to the national psyche, the attacks were not a total surprise to the American people--not after the earlier bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, and similar incidents that had taken the lives of hundreds of innocent people, civilians as well as military personnel, over the last three decades. The instruments of death used in the 11 September attacks--passenger aircraft converted into weapons of mass destruction--were a surprise, perhaps, but the reaction of the American people was definitely not a surprise. Not to anyone who knows the history of the United States.

Analysts and commentators, media pundits, and the political leaders of both parties seemed in universal agreement: Not since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor more than 60 years earlier had the American people been so united in their fury, and in their determination not only to see that the perpetrators of these terrible crimes against humanity are "brought to justice," in the words of President Bush, but also to ensure, insofar as possible, that the scourge of international terrorism is erased from the face of the earth.

The leadership provided by President Bush and his senior advisors both on 11 September and in the more than six months that have passed since the terrorist attacks did much to keep the nation united, as did the bipartisan support the president received from both houses of Congress. Just as important, perhaps, was the resolution passed by Congress authorizing the president to use "all necessary force" not only against the terrorists behind the attack but also against foreign governments that support and/or provide safe harbor for terrorists. That resolution--combined with: (a) the appointment of then Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Ridge to serve as director of homeland security; and (b) the massive increase in fiscal year 2003 funding requested by the president for both national defense and homeland security--all were, and are, clear evidence that the American people and their elected leaders are willing to make whatever sacrifices are needed, for as long as they are needed, to win the war against international terrorism.

The homeland-defense strategy recommended by the Hart-Rudman Commission--and in the early planning stages even before 11 September, it should be emphasized--includes a strong maritime dimension. The Coast Guard plays a key role in implementing that aspect of the overall strategy. This is not only because of the Coast Guard's unique capabilities in both law enforcement and naval/military operations but also because of the multimission service's maritime expertise, its experience in the management of disasters of all types--both natural and man-made--and its long history of working in close coordination with other agencies of government, particularly law-enforcement agencies, at the state, local, and national levels.

The task facing the Coast Guard is a daunting one, though. America's continued economic well-being depends on international trade--95 percent of which passes through the U.S. port system. Anything that disrupts that trade could be economically disastrous. It is largely for that reason, Loy said, that the Coast Guard is seeking to strike what he calls "a delicate balance" between policing and protecting the U.S. port system on the one hand and, on the other, facilitating the daily flow of commerce. This makes interdiction, to cite but one of the Coast Guard's numerous missions, not only more important but also immensely more complicated. The possibility that a weapon of mass destruction might be smuggled into the United States is now viewed, appropriately, as a clear and present danger. So shifting any of the Coast Guard's already limited, and considerably overworked, human and physical resources to homeland-defense operations and away from drug and migrant interdiction is counterproductive in certain respects. Some of the illegal migrants might be terrorists, for example. Another problem is that the al Qaeda terrorist organization has for many years been using profits from the sale of illegal drugs to finance its attacks against U.S. (and allied) citizens and property.

Nonetheless, the Coast Guard made the difficult choices required. Immediately after 11 September, Loy told a Heritage Foundation audience on 17 December, the Coast Guard: (1) started to put sea marshals on commercial vessels entering U.S. ports, with special focus on ships carrying hazardous materials, cruise ships, and other "high risk" vessels; (2) increased, to 96 hours, the advance reporting requirements for foreign-flag ships arriving in U.S. ports; and (3) started both to inventory the "critical infrastructure" in all major U.S. ports and to assess the vulnerability of those same ports.

Is that enough? In Loy's well-informed opinion, it is not. Much more is needed, he said, including the development of special forces possessing a broad spectrum of the complex new skills needed to cope with the challenge posed by international terrorism. Also, a broader-based and much deeper intelligence network; the ability, and willingness, to share that intelligence with America's domestic and international partners, in both the public and private sectors; and, of perhaps the greatest importance, creating and maintaining what Loy describes as "Maritime Domain Awareness," or MDA, an umbrella term that more or less encompasses all of the information requirements of any and all individuals and agencies who, or which, have any responsibility for homeland security in the maritime field.

Despite the immense task the Coast Guard faces in serving as the "maritime dimension" of the homeland-security strategy, Loy seems confident that his service will continue to remain Semper Paratus. "Some people see this function as an adjunct mission," he told the Heritage audience, "another new task added to a growing constellation of tasks for the Coast Guard. But I see it as our north star. The mission of maritime security may be more urgent today than it was three months ago, but it is no less important than it was 211 years ago."