Public reporting burder for this collection of information is estibated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing this collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burder to Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information The emergence of the narco-terriorist nexus has significant implications for the national security environment of the United States. The present focus on counterterrorism and the current debate on governmental reorganization and Homeland Security offer a unique opportunity to reevaluate and reprioritize our counterdrug national security strategy and policies.This paper traces the history of counterdrug strategy in the United States National SecurityStrategy and the National Military Strategy from 1987 to the present within an analytical framework in terms of classical economics and Jominian spatial organization: Supply side and demand side; source zone, transit zone, arrival zone, domestic zone, and fiscal zone approaches.The current counterdrug National Security Strategy is a demand side domestic zone strategy, a supply side arrival zone strategy weakened by priority to free trade, and a multilateral, multinational source and transit zone supply side strategy focused primarily onColombia. This analysis concludes that the ends, ways and means of the present strategy are not effective for the long term and leave the nation immediately vulnerable in the short term.The simple fact is that the United States does not have secure borders, or even marginal control of its border.This analysis produces five specific recommendations for a change in strategy. The first is to adopt a new rational approach of protracted threat management rather than an ideological war to be won. Secondly it calls for a shift to a supply-side arrival zone priority and for setting a strategic endstate of secure borders as fundamental to national security. Third, the Homeland Defense reorganization centralizes control of multitudinous security agencies toward a common threat strategy, priority of effort, and intelligence picture, but in its current form is flawed because it does not include the 9,000 agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The emerging recognition of a clearly identified narco-terrorist nexus, with perhaps even stronger interrelationships than previously considered, presents an opportunity to reassess our National Security Strategy (NSS) and ask if it makes sense to combat illegal narcotics, terrorists and cross-border crime in a multitude of separate, often competing, federal agencies and spheres of bureaucracy. The counterdrug national strategy should complement, or in effect be a supporting strategy, to the Homeland Security Strategy.Reinforcing this need for reassessment is emerging evidence that...