February 22, 2006

Why Port Security Matters, and Why Allies are not Friends

Many are now calling our objections to the UAE port deal "knee jerk", "Islamaphobic", a "red herring" or even "racist". I have friends making the argument, so I won't point them out specifically.

Since the last time I checked "Islam" was still not a "race", I will give no space to that silly argument other than to mention that there are millions of Christian Arabs scattered throughout the Middle East.

As for being "Islamaphobic", I'm not exactly sure how one decides which fears are objectively irrational and which fears are not. For my part, given a fairly large body of evidence, I do not believe it is irrational to scrutinize Muslims more closely than Mennonites and Buddhists. And while I'm sure any religion has its share of its fanatics, to claim that Islam has a disproportionate share of them isn't exactly a problematic in my view.

So, to the last objection: that fears over the announcement that a Dubai (UAE) based company would acquire certain ports in the U.S. were "knee jerk" reactions. This objection is related to the two mentioned above. I can draw no other conclusion than to think that such a statement is predicated on the assumption that the "knee jerk" reaction is based on Islamaphobia or hatred of Arabs. I believe I've addressed those two above, and if the reaction is not based on irrational Islamaphobia or racism against Arabs, then why is it "knee jerk"?

The fundamental problem with the White House arguments that the port sale should go through rest on a misperception of the nature of an ally.

Alliances are relationsips based on mutual interests.

To think of an ally as a friend is to misunderstand the basis of a relationship. Indeed, much political theory has been devoted to arguing that nations cannot have friends, only allies. This is the core of most modern international relations theory, as I understand it, which is rooted in one branch or another of realism.

Neocons, in my view, are just another branch of realism which see the long term interests of the United States being tied to the state of freedom in other countries. So the term "ally" should be a term familiar to them.

When the President and Secretary of Defense argue that the UAE has been one of our strongest supporters in the Global War on Terror, they are telling us a fact. I have no doubt that the UAE is even more that that, they are our greatest Arab ally against al Qaeda.

But the fact that the UAE shares common enemies with the U.S. against Iran, against Salafist insurgents in Iraq, and against the al Qaeda terror network is simply to state a truism: the UAE is our ally because they have mutual interests with us.

Where those interests end, so does the alliance.

It also begs the question as to exactly how many wars we are fighting? According to the Bush White House, we are no longer fighting a "war on terror", but are now fighting a "war on radical Islam".

Since all seven of the UAE emirites--even the most tolerant, Dubai--forbid Muslims converting to any other religion, that strikes me as fairly "radical". In fact, there are large Wahhabi populations in the UAE and an even much larger Salafist following. And since all seven UAE emirites base their law on sharia, they are all Islamist in orientation.

If it is Islamists that we are fighting in the "war on radical Islam", then how can the UAE be said to be a true "ally". Where there are mutual interests, they support us; where those interests diverge, they do not.

France is the poster child of an ally. The French do not generally hold America in high regards, and I believe it is safe to say the feeling is mutual. Yet, despite our mutual disrespect for one another, France remains one of our staunchest allies in the global war on terror. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

The reason France did not join us in Iraq has nothing to do with like or dislike of George Bush, has nothing to do with WMD (if you'll remember the French believed Saddam was developing WMD), and has everything to do with French perceptions of their own national interests. In Iraq the national interests of the U.S. and France diverged, hence France is not our ally there.

Perhaps a better example of the difference between an ally and a friend is that of the Soviet Union during WWII. Yes, the Soviets were our allies, but it would be foolish to think of them as friends. When the war ended our mutual interests diverged. We became enemies.

Is the UAE our ally? Yes. Definitely. But solidarity with the U.S. in the past in no evidence of continued solidarity in the future.

When we really begin to fight the war against "radical Islam", as the President already seems to believe we are doing, then that relationship will need to be re-examined.

As the American public is introduced to Islam as it is actually practiced, will we begin to demand that our Muslim allies live up to a universal code of human rights? Rights such as the freedom to enter and leave a religious faith at one's own choosing? Rights such as treating all citizens equally, regardless of religious persuassion? Rights such as freedom of speech? Rights such as the freedom to organize opposition to rulers?

Alliances change.

Last, let me address the notion that the whole port security thing is a "red herring"

Since 9/11, the danger to us being attacked has been severely minimized at airports. Sreeners are, in my estimation, mostly wasted money. Unless the target is blowing up an airplane--unlike 9/11--then terrorists probably won't use planes again.

Why? Because they're not stupid. They know that people on board the plane will not let them use it as a bomb. Thus, the probability that they will hijack planes for the purpose of turning it into a missile, are much lower today than prior to 9/11.

The "status quo effect" is when people use past phenomenon to judge the risk of future events. It is a risk aversion fallacy becaue we tend to overestimate the risk of events that have already occured (another 9/11 plane scenario) and underestimate scenarios that have never happned (nuclear bomb in NY Harbor).

The example of 9/11 clearly illustrates the "status quo effect". Prior to 9/11, airport security focused on screening for a) hijackers who had no intention of dying b) bombs set to blow up the plane. Because those two types of events had happened in the past, we misallocated resources to screen for them in the future.

However, because learning occurs, risks change over time. Risk estimation tends to be "sticky" because it is difficult to estimate the probability of an event occuring in the future which has never happened in the past.

It seems to me that we should be using our scarce resources to protect against terror events that have not yet occured, and therefore seem exploitable weaknesses to intelligent terrorists.

Further, risk is a notion based not only on probability of occurence, but also on the potential damage that can be done. Ports are much more risky now than airplanes because the damage that could be done by a nuclear bomb entering through our ports are much greater than even the awful damage of 9/11. The risk is high, even if the probability of occurence is low.

In sum, it seems highly rational that we would like to keep U.S. ports in the hands of not only our allies, but our friends.