State borders perform several crucial functions, including those maintaining citizens’ safety, establishing the state’s geographic location, and controlling core political issues. However, within specific parts of the global community, borders may differ in their functions. For instance, while the borders within the EU might seem quite similar to those between the U.S. and Mexico and the U.S. and Canada, there are significant differences in how the purpose of these borders is perceived and interpreted by politicians and citizens.
Specifically, within the EU, borders serve primarily to mark the extent of the state’s political influence. Indeed, since the political agreement and economic collaboration are nearly homogenous across all EU countries, the borders between them exist primarily as a means of marking each country’s geographical location. In turn, the U.S.-Mexican border is primarily seen as the means of containing immigration rates from Mexico to the U.S. (Carty, 2020). The described perspective incorporates a significant amount of hostility toward immigrants, which has been exacerbated recently due to an increase in the polarization levels within American society (Carty, 2020). Remarkably, the observed trend is absent from how EU borders are perceived.
The described characteristics of the specified borders can also be opposed to the U.S.-Canadian border, which serves mostly as the means of regulating travel and trade between the two countries (Carty, 2020). Though the concept of collaboration and trade encompassed in the specified interpretation of the border’s purpose is also encoded into the EU borders, the U.S.-Canadian one appears to establish the sense of cultural differences more clearly.
Therefore, even though physically, all three of the borders are mostly identical, the exceptions of their functions are strikingly different from one another. Each of the borders in question incorporates a significant range of sociocultural ideas and notions associated with the relationships between cultures and nations that are separated by them. Thus, the borders can be seen as a symbolic representation of the relationships between the states that they separate.
The infrastructure chosen for the specified part of the task is the Commercial Facilities Sector (CFS). The CFS incorporates a vast variety of services from a broad range of industries. Specifically, the CFS is represented by eight specific subsectors, namely, real estate, lodging, gaming, entertainment and media, outdoor events, retail, public assembly, and sports leagues (Newbill, 2019). Primarily, the services that the CFS provides can be characterized as open public access ones, meaning that they are available to any customer (Newbill, 2019). Tin the U.S. context, the CFS has been thriving, with minor fluctuations in the realm of real estate and related opportunities due to the recent restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (Newbill, 2019). Currently, the sector is quite robust and has significant potential.
Relating the CFS to the context of national security will lead to discovering that the specified domain is managed by several agencies, each governing the respective sector (Newbill, 2019). Therefore, the process of maintaining security is shaped accordingly to meet the specified requirements of each environment, which increases the extent of safety rates (Newbill, 2019). At the same time, the necessity to coordinate multiple international transactions suggests the probability of a failure to coordinate the actions of the participants involved, particularly, regarding decision-making and its implications across the sectors (Newbill, 2019). Consequently, the threat of low coordination and poor information management between the sectors in question creates a major vulnerability linked to national security.
Namely, the extent of preparedness for threats to national security, including prevention of disasters and terrorist attacks drops due to the possible misalignment of decisions made in the contexts of the eight sectors in question (Newbill, 2019). Therefore, a cohesive framework for decision-making and exerting control thereover across the specified sectors within the CFS realm is required. In turn, an event such as a natural disaster may affect the critical infrastructure by disrupting communication between the participants and, therefore, complicating the implementation of core goals (Newbill, 2019). Specifically, a natural disaster, such as a flood or a tornado, is likely to affect the set infrastructure by creating power outages and disrupting the data transfer process, as well as possibly damaging the equipment (Newbill, 2019). As a result, the core processes are associated with monitoring the target environment and reporting emergent threats.
To reinforce the extent of national security and prevent instances of terrorist attacks and related threats, a range of legal standards have been designed. The PATRIOT Act is one of them, its key premise being the enhancement of measures against instances of terrorism such as the infamous September, 11th tragedy (Peters, 2018). The core components of the PATRIOT Act, which strengthens national security, include eight essential principles. The first four are the reinforcement of domestic security measures, the enhancement of intelligence efforts, legal standards against money laundering, and border security.
In addition, the regulation contains strategies for overcoming core obstacles to a terrorism investigation, supporting terrorism victims and their families, information sharing, and criminal law (Peters, 2018). The specified standards allow for addressing the nature of terrorism and preventing instances thereof (Peters, 2018). Additionally, the Act addresses impediments such as poor information management by outlining core strategies for obtaining verified data with the help of intelligence, as well as keeping citizens’ information safe. To maintain a balance between citizens’ security and their data privacy, the government and the related agencies should comply with regulations concerning information management and basic human rights.
References
Carty, V. (2020). The immigration crisis in Europe and the US-Mexico Border in the new era of heightened nativism. Lexington Books.
Newbill, C. M. (2019). Defining critical infrastructure for a global application. Indian Journal of Global Legal Studies, 26, 761.
Peters II, M. T. (2018). Threats to homeland security: Reassessing the All-Hazards Perspective.