UAE and Port Security

Yeah, I missed the commentary at the start of this mess. But then, It hasn't gotten any better. I find Krauthammer's take on all of this fairly interesting.

And we hapless Americans -- already desperately trying to mediate, pacify and baby-sit the ruins of Churchill's Empire: Iraq, Palestine, India/Pakistan, Yemen, even (Anglo-Egyptian) Sudan -- would not be in the midst of a mini-firestorm over the sale of the venerable P&O, which manages six American ports, to the UAE.

This has raised the obvious question of whether we want our ports, through which a nuclear bomb could come, handled by a country two of whose nationals flew into the South Tower on Sept. 11 and which has a history of laundering money and nuclear secrets from bad guys to worse guys.

There is a point on security and control. It's difficult to determine if the UAE could ensure that none of the management personnel of the company were terrorist operatives. Even minor tampering with the port system could allow for the entry of weapons that could be used against the citizenry. Not to mention the fact that many of these managers would be given access to information directly concerning port security. Both are things that are very worrisome.

Seeing that these ports are vital infrastructure, I don't see how the Bush administration could have approved this. I understand that the UAE has been an ally of good standing for some time, but then, that doesn't justify handing a company controlled by a foreign government the controls of vital infrastructure.

The politics of this whole thing have been pretty disturbing.

Congress is up in arms. The Democrats, in particular, are in full cry, gleeful to at last get to the right of George Bush on an issue of national security.

Gleeful, and shamelessly hypocritical. If a citizen of the UAE walked into an airport in full burnoose and flowing robes, speaking only Arabic, Democrats would be deeply offended, and might even sue, if the security people were to give him any more scrutiny than they would to my sweet 84-year-old mother.

Democrats loudly denounce any thought of racial profiling. But when that same Arab, attired in business suit and MBA, and with a good record of running ports in 15 countries, buys P&O, Democrats howl at the very idea of allowing Arabs to run our ports. (Republicans are howling, too, but they don't grandstand on the issue of racial profiling.)

Can't put it more clearly than that. And Krauthammer does point out that they are also right on this subject.

That is the danger, and it is a risk, probably an unnecessary one. It's not quite the end of the world that Democratic and Republican critics have portrayed it to be. After all, the UAE, which is run by a friendly regime, manages ports in other countries without any such incidents. Employees in other countries could leak or betray us just as easily. The issue, however, is that they are statistically more likely to be found in the UAE than, for example, in Britain.

It's a fairly close call. I can sympathize with the president's stubbornness in sticking to the deal. He is responsible for our foreign relations, and believes, not unreasonably, that it would harm our broader national interest to reject and humiliate a moderate Middle Eastern ally by pulling the contract just because a company is run by Arabs.

This contract should have been stopped at an earlier stage, but at this point doing so would cause too much damage to our relations with moderate Arab states. There are no very good options. The best exit strategy is this: (1) Allow the contract to go through; (2) give it heightened scrutiny by assigning a team of U.S. government agents to work inside the company at least for the first few years to make sure security is tight and information closely held; (3) have the team report every six months to both the executive and a select congressional committee.

The Bush administration has definitely blown this one. The immediate refusal to put a hold on the deal and allow a review was idiotic. I understand that the president is in charge of foreign policy, but this isn't solely a foreign policy issue. The investigations made by the administration could very well have been sufficient, but it still doesn't strike one as they faulted toward security.

Krauthammer's option sounds reasonable, but I would still prefer that vital infrastructure be controlled solely by entities fully accountable to the US.