Thinking about the Dubai Ports Deal

O.k., we don't understand the ports deal very well yet. It sends up red flags, but almost none of us know a damn thing about how these deals work. There's new reason to be concerned, though, since the Coast Guard has indicated that there are "intelligence gaps" in the relevant reports on the deal.

O.k., so how should we think about this stuff? Well, so far those who support the deal have, in effect, argued both that:

(1) There is no appreciable risk that Dubai will cooperate with terrorists

and

(2) Since the organization that runs a port does not run its security, even if (1) were false the deal would still not appreciably increase the risk of terrorist attack.

I don't know anything about (1), but I'm doubful about (2). For one thing, the premiss of (2) is not clearly true. For another thing, (2) asks us to believe that it does not matter--from a security perspective--who owns the ports. But in order for that to be true, it would have to be true that it would not matter even if Osama bin Laden bought them. So, here's the question: is it really true that the ports could be sold to Osama bin Laden without any appreciable effect on American security? If the answer is 'yes', then we don't even need to know whether (1) is true. If the answer is, as I suspect, 'no,' then the administration's whole case seems to rest on (1).

(1) and (2) might be true though, again, we don't know enough yet to know whether they really are. If this deal will significantly improve our relations with the Arab world, then it could conceivably be worth the risk, though that seems unlikely.

It is probably worth noting that, even if the administration turns out to be right about (1) and (2), a move like this seems to be inconsistent with their words and deeds since 9/11. Since that time we've in effect been told that any risk is unacceptable--that, e.g., we should invade Iraq even though the risk to us from their alleged WMDs was small, and even though there was only the weakest evidence that they had ties to al Qaeda. We've also been asked to put up with the intrusions of the "Patriot" Act, unwarranted domestic spying, and so forth, all in order to decrease the likelihood of terrorist attacks only marginally. Consistency would seem to require us to cancel the Dubai ports deal even if it would raise the risk of terrist attack only slightly. Now, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, so the other way to go here would be to admit error in those past actions and acknowledge that the ports deal represents a return to a more reasonable standard of what counts as acceptable risk. But there has, as yet, been no hint of such an admission.