Double Important Port Security News + Armchair Generalising
From The Daily Breeze: Legislation to tighten container security nationwide is moving forward. On one hand this and other port security legislation seems important, because it further secures our nations major ports, which is, in theory and practice, a good thing. On the other hand, it addresses a largely imaginary or theoretical problem.
Let's do a little thinking about international terrorism and how it relates to our port. Now there is a theory (or fantasy, depending on your vantage point) that our port, the nation's largest presents an irresistably underdefended target to our "enemies" abroad. Therefore, this target must be hardened so that the attacks imagined by our planners (not theirs, necessarily) are more difficult for them to carry out.
Let's look at the praticality of the issue. First, the big elephant is the fantasitc nuke/bio/chem bomb in a container in the harbor theory. Now first of all, presuming that "our enemies/evil-doers" themselves actually would like to do this (there are a number of reasons why they might not, the two biggest being the technical hurdles, and two the inevitable scope of the United States/international response), we have to then imagine that they have a nuclear or chemical/biological dispersion device ready at hand. Then on our side we have to imagine that we have an almost foolproof (love that term) defense on hand.
International terrorism functions a lot like and insurgency, trancending borders and traditional lines and points of defense. The problem with defending against that type of opponent, is that the defender must defend everywhere, leaving no possible avenue of attack for their opponent. Obviously that is impossible, and that is why non-state forces have been able to hand the heads to seemingly more powerful state forces all over the globe, in numerous ongoing conflicts.
By posturing and moving to defend our ports, we actually do more to defend them than the actual defense. In other words, like a car with an obvious anti-theft system, we only shift the target onto a weaker, less defended target. In other words, since defending everywhere is impossible, and since a state can only burn through limited defensive resources and dollars for so long (before collapsing or reducing it's power as a state to irrelevance), eventually all you have done is forced your attacker (whom you most likely may only be able respond to, and not actively defend against) to choose another avenue of attack. You still get bombed/nuked/diseased, just in a different place. The Clausewitzian notion that you attack your enemy at their strongest point to break them is an activity that only states are arrogant and/or stupid enough to engage in.
The other issue, more specific to port security, is that there's no real way to stop someone from nuking your port. 99% of all the security dollars are being spent to detect threats once the've been unloaded from ships. There is nothing in any legislation or proposal that I know of that would actually prevent a device from being used while aboard ship. You don't need to blow up the port, that's what states do in conflicts, using overwhelming and unnecessary conventional force. Terrorists use conventional force in unconventional ways, and in our worst fears, they use unconventional force. You just need to screw the Port up radiologically, and it will never move cargo again. Chernobyl's still chock full of infrastructure in perfectly usable condition, but nobody's gonna touch it for a long time.
So basically, we are preparing to deal with imaginary attacks, dreamed up by the same jackasses that are running the current war (FYI: we are losing), that we can't actually defend against, and if we could defend against them, our theoretical attackers would simply shift to a softer targets. Why are we increasing funding for port security at this time? Will it actually defend us? Defend us from what? At what cost? How many social programs have been cut during the Bush presidency, and how many more will be cut before we start making rational decisions about national security?
NOTE: I'm not necessarily in favour of not having any port security. Obviously, it's an important piece of infrasturcture that is undersecured. I'm much more concerned about the trucks that go in and out all day, many of which are of dubious origin and the intentions of those already working in and around the port than I am about an imaginary container with an imaginary bomb inside, and I think we could do with a lot of improvement on that end, without having to resort to the scenarios that are being used to justify the current round of security measures.
Let's do a little thinking about international terrorism and how it relates to our port. Now there is a theory (or fantasy, depending on your vantage point) that our port, the nation's largest presents an irresistably underdefended target to our "enemies" abroad. Therefore, this target must be hardened so that the attacks imagined by our planners (not theirs, necessarily) are more difficult for them to carry out.
Let's look at the praticality of the issue. First, the big elephant is the fantasitc nuke/bio/chem bomb in a container in the harbor theory. Now first of all, presuming that "our enemies/evil-doers" themselves actually would like to do this (there are a number of reasons why they might not, the two biggest being the technical hurdles, and two the inevitable scope of the United States/international response), we have to then imagine that they have a nuclear or chemical/biological dispersion device ready at hand. Then on our side we have to imagine that we have an almost foolproof (love that term) defense on hand.
International terrorism functions a lot like and insurgency, trancending borders and traditional lines and points of defense. The problem with defending against that type of opponent, is that the defender must defend everywhere, leaving no possible avenue of attack for their opponent. Obviously that is impossible, and that is why non-state forces have been able to hand the heads to seemingly more powerful state forces all over the globe, in numerous ongoing conflicts.
By posturing and moving to defend our ports, we actually do more to defend them than the actual defense. In other words, like a car with an obvious anti-theft system, we only shift the target onto a weaker, less defended target. In other words, since defending everywhere is impossible, and since a state can only burn through limited defensive resources and dollars for so long (before collapsing or reducing it's power as a state to irrelevance), eventually all you have done is forced your attacker (whom you most likely may only be able respond to, and not actively defend against) to choose another avenue of attack. You still get bombed/nuked/diseased, just in a different place. The Clausewitzian notion that you attack your enemy at their strongest point to break them is an activity that only states are arrogant and/or stupid enough to engage in.
The other issue, more specific to port security, is that there's no real way to stop someone from nuking your port. 99% of all the security dollars are being spent to detect threats once the've been unloaded from ships. There is nothing in any legislation or proposal that I know of that would actually prevent a device from being used while aboard ship. You don't need to blow up the port, that's what states do in conflicts, using overwhelming and unnecessary conventional force. Terrorists use conventional force in unconventional ways, and in our worst fears, they use unconventional force. You just need to screw the Port up radiologically, and it will never move cargo again. Chernobyl's still chock full of infrastructure in perfectly usable condition, but nobody's gonna touch it for a long time.
So basically, we are preparing to deal with imaginary attacks, dreamed up by the same jackasses that are running the current war (FYI: we are losing), that we can't actually defend against, and if we could defend against them, our theoretical attackers would simply shift to a softer targets. Why are we increasing funding for port security at this time? Will it actually defend us? Defend us from what? At what cost? How many social programs have been cut during the Bush presidency, and how many more will be cut before we start making rational decisions about national security?
NOTE: I'm not necessarily in favour of not having any port security. Obviously, it's an important piece of infrasturcture that is undersecured. I'm much more concerned about the trucks that go in and out all day, many of which are of dubious origin and the intentions of those already working in and around the port than I am about an imaginary container with an imaginary bomb inside, and I think we could do with a lot of improvement on that end, without having to resort to the scenarios that are being used to justify the current round of security measures.
5 Comments:
Did you ever see the HBO series "The Wire"? The whole second season was framed around "port security" in the container terminal(s) of Baltimore. I don't know if it is available as a DVD, but, for anyone interested in this issue, it is highly topical.
Never saw it. I'm not to into law enforcement shows.
Most of the fallacies in our current approaches to security are due to the aging infrastructure in the grey matter of the people who make both legislation and policy on security issues. In the past 25 years a tremendous amount of theory and practice regarding terrorism, insurgency non-state warfare and warriors and post-conventional warfare has developed. Most of which goes so counter to everything that everyone from your beat cop to the Pentagon was trained to do and is doing on a day to day basis. The people charged with our security are trying very carefully to ignore the reality of the situation, given that it might make them have to work harder to do their job, or might make them unqualfied to continue drawing a salary.
Ahem...speaking as one of those people "already working in and around the port," let me assure you that even if our intentions were thoroughly evil (and stupid, since destroying the port would mean destroying our bread and butter), there isn't an awful lot we could do to act on those intentions. What the fuck are we going to do, suddenly snap one day and run over all of the superintendents with our UTRs and tophandlers? That would be a bummer for the supes, but it wouldn't do much to smash the economy of the wicked American infidels, now, would it? We don't have access to the cargo, we don't know what's in the boxes, we don't know which container we'll be hauling at any given time or where in the yard we'll be putting it, we don't take anything off of the terminal, and we're not capable of doing anything to any potential WMD inside a container that couldn't be more easily done by remote control (oops, there's that elephant again!).
Of course, none of those facts will stop the shippers, with the connivance of the Bush administration, from trying to use "port security" as an excuse to make an end run around the dispatch procedures in the Pacific Coast Longshore Contract Document and wrest control of the hiring hall away from the ILWU. Or to use the same excuse to screen political undesirables (read: left-wing activists) off the waterfront as potential "terrorists."
Incidentally, if you're not concerned about a bomb or other such unconventional device inside a container, then why be concerned about the trucks or the truckers? The only realistic harm they could do is by bringing such a device onto a terminal inside a container. Other than that, there's really nothing else they could do that would be any threat to "homeland" security. It's kind of the same situation as with the longshoremen--what the hell are they going to do, all gun their engines at once and kill us with a big dose of diesel exhaust?
You're sort of on the right track here, but you've got it backwards. There are two main realistic threats to port security: an attack on the entire infrastructure using a device hidden in an inbound container; or attacks on the ships themselves, either from devices hidden in outbound containers or from the water side, U.S.S. Cole-style. Additionally, there's the threat to national (but not necessarily port) security posed by smuggling of weapons, devices, or operatives (i.e., human beings) inside containers. Are you seeing a pattern here? Except for the Cole-type attacks, it's all about those darned containers (that the shipping industry was so gung-ho about implementing back in the 1960s because they made it possible to move more cargo faster while employing fewer workers...).
Now, then...for anybody who skipped to this paragraph to see if I was going to get to the point, here's the point: if Mr. Calamari is right and there is little or nothing to fear from those zillions of containers that pass through the port every year, then in fact there's nothing to fear at all, and we can all quit making such a fuss about port security. The end.
When I'm referring to my concerns about Port security being focused on those already working at the Port, I'm talking about general security (i.e. theft, human trafficking, smuggling, etc...). As my post above pretty clearly lays out, securing the port as part of Fortress America doesn't actually protect America, and the threat against our nations ports may be largely imaginary (I'll admit, there is the possiblity that Al Queda is obsessed with attacking our ports, and our intelligence services have already stopped dozens of industry destroying attacks, brave soldiers holding the line against chaos and death. Yes that scenario could be happening, but outside of my imagination, I have reason to believe that it is.).
There are aspects of existing legislation that affect Port workers that are of some serious concern, and definitely could function as assists in the union busting fantasies of various business and ideological interests. I'm not really adressing those in this article. Other than the Union line on the issue, I don't many of the details on that, and I'm witholding developing a serious opinion until I get more objective information.
Being concerned about attacks at the Port not involving WMDs (which I remind you are not in play in this conflict, at least not by our enemies) is pretty pointless. I'm not really concerned (on a national security level, not a personal one) if someone blows up a speedboat/container with conventional explosives and kills a few people. Although that would be an unpleasant incident, it would be a terribly minor one, from a "War on Terrorism" perspective, and do little to affect the Port's operation or the local community, which of course means that it's not a really useful attack to engage in if you happen to be an "Evil Doer". Of course given that America, like a drunk red neck, reacts to even the most insignificant percieved slight with a "You want to go outside?" attitude, maybe blowing up a container and scratching some asphalt would be more effective than blowing up a nuke, if only because you can predict and control America's response. If your goal was to draw America into a long term, bloody conflict in the Middle East, creating chaos which you can profit from and after America's conventional forces lose a war of attrition with local insurgents, you can then re-enter the stage as a hero and Defender of the Faith, maybe a speedboat full of C4 is all you need... Why sucker punch the 300 pound redneck, when merely brushing against him will do the job of drawing him out to the sandy parking lot, where your buddy is waiting with a crowbar.
As to smuggling of equipment, that's a more serious issues, since I think we can presume that there is a certain amount of inbound and outbound smuggling going on at every port in the world. But that's a problem that could be adressed with more general purpose security measures. More aggressive inspection, better screening of employees and contract employees (especially the truckers. ILWU workers have little incentive to engage in illegal activity, they are well paid workers with benefits, who exist in a society of trust and pride in their work. The truckers, on the other hand are often barely scraping by, it's not difficult to imagine one of them trying to make an extra buck...), could cut down on illegal traffic. Of course, if you make it difficult to smuggle at the Port of Los Angeles, you will just drive a determined smuggler to a weaker point in your border, and they will make their efforts there.
Good points all, except that again, screening of the truckers wouldn't accomplish much if anything. Smuggling of people or equipment through the ports can easily be (and easily is) accomplished without the knowing or willful involvement of truckers. Inbound containers are sealed, and the truckers aren't allowed to open them. Once the container is off the terminal, it doesn't matter who opens it--trucker, warehouseman, coyote accomplice at the corner of Shady Boulevard and Ill-Lit Avenue...
That's the beauty of intermodal shipping containers and the infrastructure that supports their movement, you see. They can be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes without the slightest need to get the knowing cooperation of anybody between the two ends of the supply chain (truckers, longshoremen, ship's crew, truck stop employees, etc.). Since the evil terrorists needn't let any of those people in on the operation, chances are that they won't. Thus, "screening" those people for...um, whatever it is they're supposed to be screened for may make everybody feel vaguely safer, but it won't accomplish much of anything.
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