[Mb-civic] IMPORTANT: 'Critically' Inadequate - Anne Applebaum - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

'Critically' Inadequate
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By Anne Applebaum
The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; A19

"I'd like to see us move toward really focusing on critical 
infrastructure that is controlled, owned or operated by any foreign 
government."

-- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.)

"It's important that the secretary of defense, in consultation with 
Homeland Security, identifies what is critical infrastructure. . . . And 
having identified that, that that infrastructure be owned, operated and 
managed by Americans."

-- Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.)

At last we have a genuine bipartisan consensus. A Congress whose members 
cannot work together to prevent the coming Social Security crisis, to 
keep the nation out of debt or to fix the health care system has finally 
agreed on something: Foreigners shouldn't be allowed to own or manage 
our critical infrastructure. Amazingly, this consensus has even outlived 
the Dubai ports deal that created it. This week Duncan Hunter, chairman 
of the House Armed Services Committee, said he's still looking to pass a 
bill forbidding foreign-owned companies from possessing or operating any 
"asset that is included on the national defense critical infrastructure 
list." Hillary Clinton says she still wants to pass a narrower bill that 
would prevent state-owned foreign companies from "managing, controlling 
or owning U.S. port operations."

Unfortunately, the consensus on critical infrastructure isn't 
accompanied by a willingness to define what, exactly, "critical 
infrastructure" might be. A spokesman for Hunter told me that "critical 
infrastructure" meant anything whose destruction "would have a 
debilitating effect on national security, economic security or public 
health and safety." A spokesman for Clinton said the senator's 
legislation concerns only ports, but added that she still thinks that 
"in the post-9/11 world, we need fresh thinking on how to protect our 
critical infrastructure."

Since this pretty much leaves the field open for anyone to make up his 
or her own definition, I'm going to avail myself of the opportunity. 
After all, at last count, foreign direct investment in the United States 
amounted to $486 billion. That means there are many thousands of 
foreign-owned properties whose destruction might have a debilitating 
effect on "national security, economic security and public health" and 
whose protection may require "fresh thinking." Here are a few:

· The sanitation system of Laredo, Tex. Along with plants in more than a 
dozen other U.S. cities, the wastewater treatment plant in this critical 
border city is managed by Suez, a French firm. Suez -- which also owns a 
liquefied natural gas "port operation" in Massachusetts and makes 
regular gas deliveries at ports in Maryland and Louisiana -- is 
negotiating a merger with a state-owned company, Gaz de France. Thus 
will the government of France -- one of whose citizens, Zacarias 
Moussaoui, is on trial for terrorism in a U.S. court -- be in a position 
to poison Texans' water, interfere with border control and blow up gas 
terminals, too.

· The highways of Indiana. With great fanfare, the Indiana authorities 
earlier this year announced that a Spanish company and an Australian 
firm would jointly manage the state's main toll road. The two firms will 
also complete the unfinished "Hoosier highway" -- presumably giving them 
access to all kinds of information about bridge and tunnel 
vulnerabilities. Spain, like Dubai, is a country that harbored 
terrorists, in advance of the Madrid bombings.

· The refineries of Toledo, Texas City, Tex., and Carson, Calif., among 
others. All are owned by British Petroleum, a British company based in 
London. But even if all were sold to U.S. companies, BP would still own 
some $41 billion worth of fixed assets in the United States and would 
still be the largest marketer of natural gas liquids in North America 
and one of the largest distributors of gasoline as well. Britain, also 
like Dubai, has harbored terrorists: the London bombers, the shoe 
bomber, the IRA.

· The pilots, tugs and dockworkers of New York, New Jersey and San 
Francisco, along with a dozen other U.S. ports. They all work for a 
company, Inchcape Shipping Services, that has a contract with the U.S. 
Navy. The company used to be British and was sold for $285 million in 
January to -- the royal family of Dubai. Need I say more?

As I say, those are just random examples. Foreign investors also own and 
operate power plants, chemical plants and railroad tracks, and more 
refineries and natural gas facilities than I've got space to mention. 
The process of confiscating, nationalizing or otherwise forcing the sale 
of "critical infrastructure," or even "port operations," broadly 
defined, could go on for years, would cost billions and would certainly 
destroy this country's reputation as a safe place in which to invest.

Instead of doing so, it might make more sense to institute a secure 
system of identity and background checks for all port or refinery 
employees, especially since it's not necessarily more difficult to 
penetrate a U.S. company than a French or Arab one. It might also make 
sense to sit down and define "critical infrastructure" and to set 
priorities and think harder about which objects, American or 
foreign-owned, pose genuine dangers. But that would be complicated, 
expensive and time-consuming. It could only succeed with the support of 
a bipartisan Congress, one willing to devote the time and money to 
genuine security, and one whose leaders were willing to explain to the 
American public that in the globalized economy -- a system whose rules 
we essentially wrote -- it's no longer possible to pick and choose whose 
investments we want. That sort of bipartisanship, alas, is still very 
far away.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401106.html?nav=hcmodule
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