… have in common?
They both start with “D”.
That’s about it.
There’s been a tremendous hoopla over the Dubai Ports Deal, and with some justification. The idea of an Arab
Government having access to our shipping systems in this nation appears at first blush to be just plain
stupid, no matter how its sliced and diced.
But as usual, all is not quite as it appears.
First, security isn’t being changed – the Coast Guard is responsible for that. Neither is ownership of the ports – these companies do not own, but rather lease, space on which to put their equipment.
Second, the company didn’t “take over” per-se. They bought out an existing British firm which held these contracts.
Nonetheless, the issue is real and so are the concerns. Our seaports are, quite frankly, one of our weak points in the security chain. The sheer number of containers that make their way through these terminals on an average day is staggering, and anyone who thinks that we can simply scan and inspect all of them for “nasty surprises” is on another planet.
How hard would it be to put a nuclear weapon in one? Not difficult at all. Rig it so if the door is opened…..
Inspect all you want – there are only three games where “close” truly counts – Horseshoes, Hand Grenades and Nuclear Weapons.
My first reaction to this deal when I heard about it was “you have to be kidding me!”
But upon further investigation, I’m not quite so sure. Certainly, what is
evoked by this concept is sheer lunacy on the part of the administration. But is it?
First, most shipping is controlled by outside-the-US interests
already. We’ve done this to ourselves, MURSK, for example, is the largest company in the business, and they got there in no small part because of laws passed in this country that have made it prohibitively expensive for firms in the US to compete globally. Whine all you want – organized labor essentially killed our competitiveness in this area of commerce.
My view of this comes down to this:
- We must insist that the records – all of them – be kept on US soil and thus open to US court orders and inspection. It is not acceptable if those records are kept outside of the United States where a middle finger can be raised in response to a subpoena.
- We must insist that all workers who are not US citizens be vetted by our security folks. This goes not just for this deal, but for all workers in our ports. This will anger some people in the business. Too bad. Its long past time that we did this, and it needs to happen now.
- We must insist on the right, as a nation, to void without notice or compensation any contract which is performed inside the boundaries of one of our seaports if the firm or people involved are tied to terrorist activity, without exception.
- We must reserve the right to void any contract for seaport access upon material change in ownership of the underlying firm. This would have prevented this hooplah because then DPW would have had to secure our assurance that this was ok before they put the tender offer on the table. We screwed this up; let’s fix it for the future.
- We must fix as many of the security holes in this part of our infrastructure as we are able. We won’t be able to get them all – but I bet we can get some of them.
Now our friends in Dubai – and I do believe they are, in general, our friends – may balk at these requirements. So may others that run some of the terminal operations. If they do, then fine – let them walk away.
But if not, and if we satisfy ourselves that the deal is, in fact, materially “safe” in terms of our exposure to terrorism, then that’s fine – let the deal go through.
The burden of proof should be on the company requesting the access – not the other way around.
And this sort of transaction should
never be undertaken quietly, with the hope that it slips under the radar.
