So, the hotest news item in the US (at least since Cheney’s hunting accident) is that Dubai Ports World (DPW) is buying P&O (a British company). Consequently, P&O’s port terminal operations will come under the management of PDW.
Congressmen/women of both parties are up in arms. The public is going nuts over this-- something like 75% of Americans want the deal to be killed.
And yet… The Europeans and Australians have issued not a peep, AFAICT. Why? DPW already operates port terminals in Germany* and Australia. Additionally, they will take over P&O’s terminal operations in Britain (two ports), Belgium (2 ports), France (3 ports) and Australia (4 more ports).
Are Europeans being careless? Do the Australians think they are immune to terror attacks? Is security in European and Australian ports so much better than in the US that no one need bother with such issues? I’m geniunely curious as to why there is such a tremendous disparity in how this issue is playing out in the US vs Europe/Australia.
*this current port is an inland port on the Rhine (thanks, kellner), and only receives shipments from neighboring countries, so maybe it’s “different”. But all the P&O ports I cited above are on the coast.
Europe and Australia didn’t spend the last five years with a President trying to whip everyone into a foreigner-fearing frenzy?
As I said before, I’m not convinced one way or the other whether or not the Dubai World port deal is a security risk or not (I suspect it’s more about croneyism than anything else). But it should be obvious that a lot of the anti-deal backlash is coming from folks who have been taught that “9/11 changed everything,” and that anything is justified to prevent another terrorist attack, whether it’s invading Iraq for nonexistent WMDs or giving the President unchecked authority to eavesdrop on Americans.
I don’t know why it’s controversial in the US. Personally I don’t care if it’s Dubai Ports or Mærsk as long as they all have to follow the same security regulations. And, as far as they operate in areas important for national security, are throughly checked and supervised. And given the boot if caught in something shady. This is a multi-billion company, I doubt they’ll risk a profitiable bussiness for, what?, letting terrorists enter the country? Why on Earth should they do that?
Dubai’s just not seen as really a part of the middle east here. It’s sort of percieved as its own little oasis removed from the conflicts. My step brother lives and works there, a friend of mines parents just got back from there and to be honest I plan on trying to get a job there for a while – nurses make money hand over fist compared to here!
Most people, if they think about Dubai at all, see it as a place to go shopping on stopovers on the way to Europe. It’s just doesn’t feel like it’d be dangerous for them to control ports.
**Rune ** should pay attention to this tidbit: Danish products in the UAE were taken off shelves to protest the Prophet cartoons, add to that the fact that the UAE is not a democracy and I do think the best point to make in a deal like this is to allow foreign ownership, but only if they are coming from foreign democracies.
If there is one thing I see as reprehensible is the attitude that globalization is ok even at the increased risk (even though slight) to allow infiltration of terror elements, while I do think the deal will go through, the reality is that some concessions that were not given any thought (and this is what I do see as the folly of all this) will be granted now by the UAE.
Regarding the point on why would they attack or allow terrorists to attack us since they will have billions invested, one unlearned lesson of 911 does appear IMHO:
One big reason why the attackers of 9/11 were virtually unmolested was that they were acting in the most antifundamentalist ways: partying, drinking, etc; but there was another reason why they were unmolested even when James Woods reported them on a dry run: because they were rich. Or at least they appeared as that, First class gives you lots of privileges, as an aside I do feel it was idiotic when recently some changes were enacted to allow first class passengers to get into planes faster, what I am getting into is that it does not matter how rich an investment a dubious entity makes, when martyrdom calls, billions of dollars are not important, neither thousands of people.
Nativism and a sort of crypto-racismm I suppose. But I think what is really driving the train is (I suspect) a desire to chase the illegal wiretapping story off the front page.
Congress insists on investigating one, and refuses to investigate the other. How odd.
Not really. Outside security only checks approximately 5% of the cargo moving through a port. They rely on the port management to follow general security procedures and report any other suspicious activity. The presumption is that the company wants to maintain security and will cooperate. So, while I’m necessarily saying Dubai Ports is such a company, it would be easy for a port management company to evade outside security if they chose to do so.
Part of it is the political scene in the US. This issue is a good one for Repubs who are trying to distance themselves a little bit from Bush for the upcoming election while still looking strong on defense to grab onto, so the issue was able to get traction in the congress. Honestly I think that if the port thing hadn’t happened, another issue would’ve been found to serve the same purpose.
Methinks this might be the other half of it. Have Europe/Australia had the same sort of focus in their press on hypothetical terrorist threats that the US has had over the last few years? Literally every week since 9/11 some news outlet will spin some Tom Clancyish story about how a WMD could be brought through a port in a shipping container, or smuggled through seceret tunnels from Mexico or whatever. So the idea of port security has become a fairly important one in the American mind.
There’s no way for them to know. I saw an interesting interview with a terminal manager and he was clear about the point that he, as the terminal operations guy, was specifically left out of the loop of knowing what is in the containers. The shippers know, the US customs agents know, but the terminal operator is not allowed to have access to the manifest. The operations guy may send up a flag if they see something suspicious, but they are not any part whatsoever in security and insepction procedure that exists.
This is very true. Nobody here has such a blinkered ‘outside threat’ attitude, somehow thinking that if we build a strong enough fortress, then we’ll be safe. And the tube bombings confirmed this.
Please objectively demonstrate that your OP reflects something more than your opinion regarding a lack of concern on the part of citizens of other countries.
I personally agree with the OP’s premise (that the same thing is seen differently when encountered on the two sides of the Atlantic). The only instance when I read about a noticeable fuss being made in Germany (by politicians, not really by the public) was in armaments industries (two cases involving tanks and submarines, respectively, come to mind) where it was feared that the German government’s control on arms exports could be circumvented by the transfer of design data within companies). Otherwise the only concerns are about a suspected short-termism of foreign esp. American investors.
Other that the reasons already named, I can offer the following suggestions:
[ul]
[li]important European companies being foreign-owned is old hat in Europe - we’ve noticed the sky has not fallen. We are aware that the free flow of capital obviously works both ways.[/li][li]as a corollary, we are familiar with the principle that operations are governed by the law of the country that the operations are in.[/li][li]government-owned companies (what we’d call state-owned companies) we are also familiar with, and we don’t consider a state (our own or a foreign one) as a shareholder as fundamentally different from domestic or foreign individuals as a shareholder, or as particularly sinister.[/li][li]security and immigration considerations tend to concentrate less on the border than they seem to in the US (e.g. the U.S. practice where immigration control is strict at the border and almost nonexistent within the country looks a bit strange to me).[/li][li]We tend to see the Islamic part of the world as less monolithic than a lot of Americans seem to. For example, the participants of last year’s French riots usually were described as young Muslims in US media, as young people of Algerian/Moroccan/etc. ethnicity in German media. Where an American might see a Muslim passing on the street where I live, I see a Turk (who most likely isn’t any more in thrall to his imam of state-run Turkish Sunni Islam than I am to my Lutheran pastor). Paradoxically the American perspective seems to be more similar to the islamist radical/jihadist one… [/li][/ul]
I’ve spent a lot of time looking, and I haven’t found anything. My Op is more of a question than a statement. If you have some evidence of concern, I’d love to see it.
Uh uh, pally. The standard you made clear recently is that one advancing an argument must have objective or empirical support. You wouldn’t want to be hypocritical now, would you?