[Mb-civic] A Dubai Finesse - Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

A Dubai Finesse

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 24, 2006; A15

If only Churchill were alive today, none of this would be happening. The 
proud imperialist would have taken care that the Peninsular and Oriental 
Steam Navigation Co., chartered in 1840 by Victoria ("by the grace of 
God . . . Queen defender of the faith" on "this thirty first day of 
December in the fourth year of our reign"), would still be serving 
afternoon tea and crumpets on some immaculate Jewel-in-the-Crown cricket 
pitch in Ceylon.

The United Arab Emirates would still be a disunited bunch of subsistence 
Arab tribes grateful for the protection of the British navy in the 
Persian Gulf.

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.

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.)

On this, the Democrats are rank hypocrites. But even hypocrites can be 
right. There is a problem. And the problem is not just the obvious one 
that an Arab-run company, heavily staffed with Arab employees, is more 
likely to be infiltrated by terrorists who might want to smuggle an 
awful weapon into our ports. But that would probably require some 
cooperation from the operating company. And neither the company nor the 
government of the UAE, which has been pro-American and a reasonably good 
ally in the war on terrorism, has any such record.

The greater and more immediate danger is that as soon as the Dubai 
company takes over operations, it will necessarily become privy to 
information about security provisions at crucial U.S. ports. That would 
mean a transfer of information about our security operations -- and 
perhaps even worse, about the holes in our security operations -- to a 
company in an Arab state in which there might be employees who, for 
reasons of corruption or ideology, would pass this invaluable knowledge 
on to al-Qaeda types.

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.

Not nearly as clean as the Harriet Miers exit. But as I said, there are 
no very good options. There have not been very many since Britannia 
stopped ruling the waves and it all fell to us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/23/AR2006022301393.html?nav=hcmodule
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