The actions of governors have been a model of quick thinking—a demonstration of the benefits of federalism when the White House is unprepared and disorganized. But while the administration deserves some criticism, many of the obstacles to faster action are architectural in nature.

The hard part of homeland security often has less to do with the security than with the homeland. The United States is made up of 50 homelands. Even though the Constitution gives federal authorities more power than the Articles of Confederation did, our governance structure was still designed to limit the role of the central government. The Tenth Amendment reserves powers not specifically listed in the Constitution for the states and, through their constitutions, for local governments. Public health and law enforcement are among those powers. Even when the problem is a pathogen that spreads across state and national borders, the principles of federalism still apply.

The standard operating procedure is that the response to a crisis should be locally executed, state-managed, and federally supported. Local communities are supposed to maintain control at the operational level; outside resources and assistance flow in should the need arise. A governor helps a mayor manage a crisis by drawing on the resources of other jurisdictions within the state’s borders. Should that not be enough, a state emergency-management agency will seek other states’ assistance. This is quite a formal process, known as the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, and it essentially sets up a deployment-and-payment structure. It is, for example, how firefighters from Massachusetts assist with fighting wildfires in California. They don’t just show up.

With the coronavirus, state and federal authorities can talk a big game about unity of effort—we are all in this together—but the nation’s governance structure will make this more like musical chairs. No state wants to be the last one to secure necessary equipment. And so the operational difficulty is obvious: Every state’s emergency-management plans foresee an influx of resources and personnel through mutual-aid agreements with other states. But because all other states will be in the same bind, no one will be willing to share. Every governor will have good reason to hold back resources. Even a state that is currently reporting no COVID-19 cases cannot afford to send any capacity outside the state. How could it justify doing so?

The coronavirus pandemic won’t be the first disaster in which states have had to compete for resources. When five states along the Gulf of Mexico were affected by the BP oil spill, the distribution of resources became a flash point. The federal government had only so much containment boom—the floating lines that keep oil from spreading. So the Obama administration gave priority to states with pristine coastal wetlands—much to the chagrin of Alabama’s governor, who wanted to protect his state’s open beachfronts.