Public-Private Partnerships Essential for Protection
Duane Highley serves as President and CEO of Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation, a regulated utility, and Arkansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc., a non-regulated services company with subsidiaries ERMCO and Today’s Power, providing electrical equipment and solar solutions for utilities nationwide. He also serves as one of three co-chairs of the Electric Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC).
One hundred years ago, in April 1917, America faced a national security crisis. President Woodrow Wilson asked the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany, and we entered World War I to make the world safe for democracy. But if critical information had been shared months earlier, might the outcome have been different?
Months before our declaration of war, in January 1917, British intelligence forces had intercepted and decoded a secret telegram written by the German foreign minister to the German ambassador to Mexico.
The telegram encouraged Mexico to join Germany in the war against the U.S., and stated Germany’s intention to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against non-military vessels. That would be an action nearly certain to pull the U.S. into war against Germany.
The British did not share their knowledge of the telegram with the Americans for fear of revealing their intelligence sources and decoding capabilities to both the Germans and the Americans. They had wiretapped the U.S.’s undersea cable.
Might the president have used the contents of this message to pursue a diplomatic solution to hostilities, as he had hoped? Historians continue to debate the wisdom of the British decision and whether lives were saved or lost by their inaction.