Missing the Boat on Port Security Posted by Lorelei Kelly

For the first time, it seems, the adroit operatives of the Bush Administration have landed in the middle of the intersection of politics and policy--and now know what it feels like to be T-boned by a truck.  Make that a sea-faring vessel.  The sale of six US ports to an Arab company has both  Republicans and Democrats doing cartwheels while hyperventilating while watching their 06 poll numbers.

This is not a wise nor a measured response.  In contrast, it is lazy and opportunistic and does nothing to address the overriding challenge of achieving port security.  Instead of educating the public about needed policy reforms, such posturing scares Americans and brings out the worse kind of isolationism. There's a pattern here. Remember last year, when Congress blocked the sale of American company  UNOCAL to a Chinese buyer but said nothing about our wacky budget and the fact that China owns billions and billions of US debt?  Well, the ports sale goes into the same easy political in-box: If Congress screams enough about selling American property to Arabs, maybe nobody will notice the fact that five years after 9/11 we still don't have a well-funded and comprehensive port security plan.  At least the President has something in mind, the National Strategy for Maritime Security. Congress, meanwhile, is so stingy with the Coast Guard that the agency can't live up to its own congressional mandated port security duties.

Today's greatest security challenge is to maintain our status as a leading open society.  Free (and fair) markets are a key part of that reputation. The President is correct when he maintains that blocking the deal would be unfair to "a company that has played by the rules, that has been cooperative with the United States, from a country that's an ally in the war on terror, and it would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through"

Moreover, much of the reporting on the ports sales is just flat wrong. For example:

The UAE company P&O will not be "managing" the ports, as many news organizations have reported. Instead, the company is one of many that leases terminals at the port.  They also won't control security--Dubai Ports World would be managing the commercial activities of these U.S. ports, not securing them as that is maintained by the ports themselves along with the federal government  The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent piece laying out these arguments.  Several conservative  bloggers chimed in on both sides.  Even  Jimmy Carter is defending the president on this one.

The short-sightedness of our political leaders is illogical.  Critics note that some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers used the United Arab Emirates as a financial and operational base.  Well, they also used New Jersey and Florida as financial and operational bases before 9/11.  And home-grown terrorists seem to be a much bigger problem in the UK--the owner of P&O-- than any Arab infiltrators.

The Republicans in Congress are finally getting that kicked-in-the-teeth feeling that Democrats have suffered for five years.  (Members of Congress should also regret the loss of  Texas Representative Chris Bell who was co-founder of the Port Security Caucus in Congress until he lost his district to Delay and Co) But the anger is justified by the absence of any process. No consultation, no deliberation, no forewarning.   Legislators who would like to engage in a much-needed education about Port Security should check out work by the Secure Infrastructure Technology Lab SINTEL at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the Markle Foundation or anything written by Steve Flynn at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Achieving port security comes back to the same old hobby horse "hearts and minds". The most important aspects of port security can happen only with solid international partnerships.  For example,  we need a greater ability to track containers in transit.  We need more efforts like the Container Security Initiative, which allows US screeners to inspect high risk containers before they arrive at US ports. We meed to be able to keep better track of the global supply chain,
something that Steve Flynn calls "trade security". 

We need a comprehensive strategy to be implemented. Port Security will not be in effect until we have one.  That's a  far better occasion for bipartisan consensus than this frenzy to rally Americans' greatest fears for political gain.

Comments

[Craig]

This is one time when the symbolism is overriding. Bush has spent the last four years saying, "Trust me, and I will protect you." Bush has done many things that are ill-advised and has ignored a lot of good advice for political reasons and he has acted with a secrecy and arrogance on many occassions that are troubling.

Clearly, America's trust in Bush has been slowly eroding for the last two years. Iraq is not going well. There are questions about the NSA spying. Katrina showed that Homeland Security is not up to the task of dealing with a possible attack. The list goes on.

Now the Bush Administration tells America that control of six of our ports are being turned over to an Arab country with far more ties to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden than Saddam Hussein had; despite questionable details, we are to trust him once more. Keep in mind the context in which most Americans are hearing this news after four years of blunders and falling approval ratings. It is no surprise that the response of an overwhelming majority of increasingly skeptical Americans is simply, "Huh?"

An overwhelming majority of Americans can no longer resolve the many contradictions of the Bush presidency.

[Lorelei Kelly]

you're right. If your mantra is "we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here" you're going to ruin your chances for reasonable policy discussions across the board. Something tells me, however, that this won't be an occasion for introspection. Let's see what further investigations turn up....seems there is more information about the deal being revealed....

[Craig]

Lorelei, you always make good comments and your points about ports are well taken. I've been concerned about our ports long before the Dubai deal came up for the simple reason I know two people who have worked in customs, one in Los Angeles and the other in New York; both were concerned about a lot of issues long before 9/11. But they were also concerned about an insider's game that allow certain things to come in and certain things to go out without much in the way of inspections; given how Bush operates, I'm inclined to believe something isn't on the level and that may be the real issue for the good people who look at policies and real world effects. But I would argue that the security of our ports is not that good and needs to be improved. A good compromise might involve letting the Dubai deal go through with the normal restrictions that everybody else has who are involved in ports in addition to nationwide improvements in port security.

As for "If your mantra is "we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here" you're going to ruin your chances for reasonable policy discussions across the board," I don't think any of my previous comments have been in that category and if you look at my blog (http://donkeypath.blogspot.com), you'll know for certain that isn't along my lines of thinking.

But symbolism is important and in this case there are two areas involved: national security and outsourcing. Both are sore points for the average American. Policy has to know what the symbolic issues are and incorporate them into policy. Even if racism and jingoism can be minimized as parts of that symbolism, and I think it's wrong to assume that only jingoism and racism are involved even if its primary for a certain percentage of Americans, there are still potent issues involved. Number one on the list for a growing number of Americans is the inability to trust Bush. That's the real issue. The inability to trust Bush is an issue that is hampering all foreign policy discussions worldwide; obviously enough trust still exists for real discussions to still take place by the administration and for policy experts to contribute what they can but the degradation of trust and credibility simply can't be ignored. The real potency of the Dubai deal is that it's symbolic of that growing distrust.

Just so we're clear, I mean three things by trust: transparency, integrity and competence.

[Dan Kervick]

I've been dismayed in the debate over the DPW issue by the startling inability to focus, and am increasingly bewildered by the crazy twists and turns of the discussion. People seem driven by the controversy to vent on the broadest and most abstract issues touching macroeconomic philosophy, while leaping carelessly over the specifics and the matter at hand. At bottom, this is a very specific issue about a specific economic transaction, of the sort that would be expected to arise from time to time no matter what one's approach to global trade. Honestly, if the sale is turned down, I don't think the future of globalization hangs in the balance.

Even in a radically globalized world, I assume that there are some transactions that will be blocked from time to time because of legitimate and weighty security concerns. The question I would most like an answer to is this: in the case of this particular company, from this particular country, making this particular kind of purchase, in this particular business, are concerns about security serious enough to merit blocking the transaction?

Yet this simple and focussed question has been obscured by a large assortment of red herrings, some of which are:

1. Blocking the sale is a sign of the dreaded turn toward isolationism. (It's not. Even in a very open and interconnected world, security issues will arise from time to time.)

2. The main issue is the fact that DPW is state-owned company. (Who cares? We do business with all manner of state-owned companies in many different areas. The security concerns about DPW mostly have to do with where the company is located, not what manner of ownership it has.)

3. The main is issue here is outsourcing. (It really isn't. In this case, what most people are interested in is whether allowing DPW to operate a terminal in the Port of Philadelphia is an unacceptable security risk. The outcry has little to do with the usual outsourcing worries.)

4. Blocking the sale will do nothing to address the overriding challenge of achieving port security. (Of course not. Whether approving the sale is a smart move or a dumb move is independent of whether we have have failed to take certain related and more comprehensive security steps in the past. Similarly, washing one's hands on a particular occasion might keep you from getting a cold a cold, even if it doesn't do anything about the global influenza problem.)

[Lorelei Kelly]

Thanks Dan and Craig. I agree with both of you. Craig, I by no means think that your philosophy is "kill them over there" that's the Rove philosophy of winning elections...and that's what I mean is creating this blowback i.e. mistrust. There's no good faith left. That's been gone with the Dems for years, the R's are feeling it now, too.

[opit]

Whar we really should have learned from the Bush track record is to scrutinize the proposed T O S for sweetheart deals by someone who would know something about the players ; without financial ties to the process.