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Cold War Essay During the cold war, the structure of the American security system did not address so much about the interests and protection of its citizens. At that time, most of the country’s security was provided by the Army. The Army mainly dealt with external threats and attacks thus leaving the citizens and the domestic security prone to attacks. This lead to various complaints since the American people felt insecure. The citizens felt that they were not provided with enough security and incase there would be any war in future, they were at a risk. Therefore in order to fill this gap of domestic exposure, there was need to introduce civil defense which was responsible in providing security to civilians. This thus resulted to the formation of Homeland security. Infact the introduction of the nuclear weapons during the cold war had sparked a wave of tension between America and other developed countries and in order to prepare the civilians for any external attack, formation of the Homeland security was eminent. The major objective for the introduction of the Home land security was therefore to provide security for the local people and also to protect the country from any external attack (Hanson, 1996). They were also to offer any necessary support and assistance to the Armed forces. Before the cold war, the nuclear weapons were basically long ranged. The long range lounging of the weapon allowed enough time for the civilians to be evacuated from the target. But after the cold war, missiles were introduced. The missile could destroy a target within a span of minutes and therefore would not allow for evacuation. This then posed the need for more skillful and experienced Homeland security who would deal with such attacks. Before the cold war in 1960s, people could be protected from any nuclear attack by relocating them to fallout shelters. Inside the shelters, people could survive nuclear attack and they were only to come out when the nuclear reactants have subsided. But during the cold war, there was emergence of more nuclear weapons. These weapons were more destructive than the previous ones. There was need therefore for the government to be more cautious by introducing Homeland security in most parts of the country who knew much about the nuclear reactants (Garthoff, 1994). Homeland security were also to be trained on various ways of dealing with the chemical and biological weapons which were introduced then so as to protect the civilians incase such attack could be launched. Homeland security employees were also trained to handle disasters, analyze and detect threat and also prevent it from occurring. Changes in the U. S. government with respect to intelligence activities during 1970s. In the 1970s, there was introduction of the intelligence agencies on the American civilians. Their major assignment was actually to investigate any suspicious action that might lead to a security threat or even an attack on the American soil. But in early 1970s the intelligence agencies were discovered to be holding so much power. They also misused these powers by harassing the civilians. They were given these powers with no supervision in the interest that they will carry out the investigation mainly on external issues. A committee was therefore formed to investigate these allegations. To much surprise, it was found out that FBI had open 500,000 files for the civilians without any one of the cases being heard on court. Apart from this, they had also harassed all those who had opposed the Vietnam War. The investigation committee saw FBI as handling the law on their own hands rather than investigating the crime. Further investigations suggest that security agencies were acting in the interest of external influence. In reaction to the findings, the president stripped all the powers from the intelligence agencies and introduced well balanced and coordinated agencies who would deal with collecting domestic information. This led to the introduction of order (EO) 11905 in 1976 which was to address all the external intelligence activities (Kurian, 1998). The order was also suppose to elaborate on the responsibilities of the intelligence Agencies in order to ensure that law and order was followed. This order was also to clarify the avenues of handling more serious and less serious matters. Reference: Hanson, J. (1996). The Next Cold War? American Alternatives for the Twenty-First century. Westport, C. T. Praeger publishers. Garthoff, R. (1994). The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the cold War. Washington D. C. Brookings Institution. Kurian, G. (1998). A Historical Guide to the U. S. Government. New York. Oxford University Press.