Glenn Greenwald points out that the UAE outsource is complicated, and it’s hard to say, really, why it’s a bad idea. And maybe it’s a good one. He notes that security has been outsourced to Chinese companies as well, and why is this is bad? And is there some kind of racism going on here?
Let’s start with why it’s a bad idea.
It’s a bad idea for a country to outsource security. Let’s consider a polar case. Do you think that Dick Cheney would agree to outsource Secret Service protection to the Pakistani ISI?
He wouldn’t, because the ISI could easily be penetrated, even though they are longstanding (not entirely reliable) allies. Pakistani interests are not US interests.
Ah, but you say, for a private organization, rather than a foreign government, things would be different. But the same issues apply. The incentives of a private organization don’t correspond with the goals of the contracting agency. The incentive is to under-deliver and overbill. In the case of security services, the tendency is to save money by not vetting candidates as carefully as you promised to do, which is a problem in port security.
So, regardless of where the private agency is located, it’s a bad idea to outsource security services. I hate the TSA, but they are, in my experience doing a more thorough and consistent job than the previous rent-a-screeners. Their incentives are more closely aligned with the needs for the job. Even worse, consider the US mercenaries in Iraq. They cost more than soldiers with the same degree of responsibility and don’t have any clear chain of command. Better to increase the army forces.
When we’re talking about port security, this issue is magnified, because, well, there isn’t a whole lot of port security. The system is driven by matching up bills of lading at point of load and point of disgorgement. Stuff can happen in between. There have been proposals to insure that stuff doesn’t happen in between, involving surveillance cameras and before and after shipping electronic content scans. But those proposals have not been adopted. So the system relies on a degree of trust in the shippers and stevedores that is enforced at random and not systematically.
So no. This is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea regardless of the country you’re outsourcing your security to. There is something really profoundly broken in a system that, as a whole, is spending tens of billions of dollars on acquiring flighter planes and bombers that have no current mission and only one foreseeable mission--China, but outsourcing border security to (as Glenn points out) among others-- China.
Is there some kind of racism in the uproar? Sure thing. It’s nasty, as well. But the UAE did recognize the Taliban, and they are not reknowned for their separation of private and public affairs.
But the larger question in this is what were the Bushies thinking? They’ve spent an enormous amount of propaganda feeding the racist meme that all Arabs are dangerous. We just had one of their surrogates, Anne Coulter, talk about just killing the ragheads at the CPAC confernece. They've fed this racism.
Sure it’s racist. Sure people who say, without more information, that we can’t let these people control our security are displaying ignorance. But these are exactly the same people that Rove/Bush have been feeding the Saddam=Osama=9/11 line. They’ve worked very hard to create an environment where people who don’t follow the news closely see Muslims as inherently dangerous. How can they be surprised when there is popular reaction that reflects this propaganda campaign?
So, it’s a bad idea, in general, to outsource your security. It’s probably cheaper not to do so. In this particular case, even if it is more expensive to have the government provide port security, better to pay for it by cancelling a procurement system that enhances security by less than solid port security.
