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Pre-Publication CopyAutumn 2005 (Vol. 1, No. 1)

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2 The American Interest

CONTENTSTHEAMERICAN INTEREST VOLUME 1, NUMBER1 (AUTUMN 2005)

5 Defining The American Interest

7 Symposium: The Sources of American Conduct

A panoramic analysis of Bush Administration policies. Short articles

by Francis Fukuyama, Josef Joffe, Anne Applebaum, Eliot Cohen,

Glenn Loury, James Q. Wilson, Peter Berger, Ruth Wedgwood

and Walter Russell Mead are anchored by a spirited critique of the

Administrations perception of the historical moment:

37 The Dilemma of the Last Sovereignby Zbigniew Brzezinski

47 A Conversation with Condoleezza Rice

The Secretary of State gets beneath the headlines to address the theory

and practice of American statecraft.

Essays

58 Asias Destiny, Americas Choiceby Kishore Mahbubani

Despite an enormous reservoir of goodwill for the United States in

Asia, the Pacific Ocean seems to grow wider every day. Heres a diag-

nosis of the problem, and a plea for urgent care.

68 Warrior Honor

by Robert D. Kaplan

The American soldier fights for freedom, and for God. An embed-

ded view of the code of personal conduct that motivates Americas

warriors.

74 I Will Be Your Poet: Walt Whitmans America

by David Kirby

Leaves of Grassis 150 years old, but vibrant as ever. A fellow poet cele-

brates Walt Whitman as Americas muse to the Kosmos, and the

craftsman of Americas own spirit.

80 Suffer the Intellectuals

by Owen Harries

Western intellectuals are endlessly engaging and edifying. But when it

comes to capturing the trends that define present reality and gauging

the shape of the future, they are uncannily wrong.

47

58

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Autumn 2005 3

85 Global Warming Goes to Market

by Senator Joseph Lieberman

Global warming is real, and the dangers it raises are serious. Luckily,

an affordable, market-based solution is at hand.

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92 U.S. Port Security and the Global War on Terror

by Stephen Flynn

Seven specific suggestions for immediate Executive action.

Reviews

97 The Gloryland Chorus

by Clifford Orwin

Robert Wuthnow worries that Americas traditional live and let live

approach to religious diversity isnt good enough. He seeks a more

engaged pluralism, but his own analysis suggests hes not likely to get it.

101 Reading 9/11by Mary Habeck

A guide to the hundreds of books that have been written in the past

four years about Islamist terrorism and the 9/11 attacks.

109 Tinseltowns Tin Ear

by Michael Medved

Hollywood is having box office troubles; a review of some recent and

prospective films shows why.

113 Retroview: Family Guys

by David Landes

Max Webers The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has

turned one hundred years old. An eminent economic historian pro-vides a slice-of-life illustration of Webers wisdom.

Notes & Letters

117 Letters from James Hoge, Jr., Moiss Nam, Richard John Neuhaus,

James Kurth, Tod Lindberg, David Goodhart, Steven Lagerfeld and

Colin Powell

119 An Autumn Note: The Wrong Stuffby Adam Garfinkle

The major intelligence error that presaged the Iraq war and the many

errors that followed raise questions about the capacity of the United

States to manage complex interventions. They cast a shadow forward

on U.S. Middle East policy, as well.

74

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THE AMERICAN INTEREST 5

DEFINING

THE AMERICAN INTEREST

The American Interest(AI) is a new and independent voice devoted to the broad theme of America in the world.

Our agenda is threefold. The first is to analyze Americas conduct on the global stage and the forces that shape

itnot just its strategic aspects, but also its economic, cultural and historical dimensions. American statecraft is

not simply about power but also purpose. What is important to the world about America is therefore not just its

politics, but the society from which those politics ariseincluding Americas literature, music and art, as well as

its values, public beliefs and its historical imagination.

The AIs second aim is to examine what American policy should be. It is our view that the challenges and

opportunities of our time transcend the assumptions and vocabulary used by both the Left and Right in recent

years, and that we need to move beyond the defense of obsolete positions. We therefore seek to invite the best

minds from a variety of professions to engage in lively and open-ended debate founded on serious, sustained

arguments and evidence. We wish to provoke and enlighten, not to plead or to please the guardians of any ide-

ology. We take a pragmatic attitude toward policy problems, privileging creativity and effectiveness over con-

tending orthodoxies.

Third, though its name is The American Interest, our pages are open to the world. The simple and inescapable

defining fact of our era is that America is the foremost actor on the world stage. For good or ill, the United States

affects the lives of billions because of its dominance in military, economic and, ever more so, cultural affairs.

Hence, theAIinvites citizens of all nations into the American national dialogue, convinced that Americans have

much to learn from the experience and perspectives of others.

There is of course no single or simple American interest. The United States is what novelist Tom Wolfe once

labeled our wild, bizarre, unpredictable, Hog-stomping Baroque country; it is a complex society that not just

foreigners but Americans themselves often do not well understand.

Therefore, The American Interestwill not represent any single point of view. The names listed on our editorial

board and global advisory council form an eclectic group, though not infinitely so. As the pages below attest, we

share many first principles, but we often disagree energetically on their application. Both through what we share

and what we contest, we mean to enliven and to enlighten the public debate.

We therefore invite adepts of all political schools and persuasions, and those too busy thinking to concern them-

selves with labels, to join the fray. In our five annual issues we want to provide the premier forum for serious and

civil discussion on the full spectrum of issuesdomestic and internationalthat shape Americas role on the

world stage. We seek a discourse characterized by mutual respect, humility and a passion for useful truths. Please

join us.

Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen & Josef Joffe


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United States Department of Debate

Washington, D.C. 20500

September 6, 2005

TO: President George W. Bush

FROM: Stephen Flynn

SUBJECT: U.S. Port Security and the GWOT

We have a serious national security vulnerability within the broad

framework of the Global War on Terror. This memorandum outlines

that vulnerability succinctly, and proposes seven specific steps

you can take immediately to remedy it.

* * *

The harbor shared by Los Angeles and its neighbor Long Beach is

arguably Americas most important seaport. Its marine terminals

handle more than 40 percent of all the ocean-borne containers

shipped to the United States. Its refineries receive daily crude

oil shipments and produce one-quarter of the gasoline, diesel andother petroleum products that are consumed west of the Rocky

Mountains. It is a major port of call for the $25 billion ocean

cruise industry. Just three bridges handle all the truck and train

traffic to and from Terminal Island, where most of the port facil-

ities are concentrated. In short, it is a tempting target for any

adversary intent on bringing its battle to the U.S. homeland.

Yet no one in the Pentagon sees it as his job to protect Los Angeles

and the nations other busiest commercial seaports from terrorist

attacks. Oakland, Seattle, Newark, Charleston, Miami, Houston and New

Orleans are Americas economic lifelines to the world, but the U.S.

ACTION MEMORANDUM

STEPHEN FLYNN is a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer and a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council onForeign Relations.


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Department of Defense does not view them as national security prior-

ities. These ports do not deploy the navy ships, troops, munitions

and supplies needed for overseas combat operations. Lacking such

defense critical infrastructure, DoD has decided that the respon-

sibility for safeguarding them is not its job.

It is the Department of Homeland Security that should be assuring

that there is credible security along Americas long-neglected

waterfront. But the new Department lacks both the resources and the

White House mandate to undertake this critical mission. This is

because the Office of Management and Budget sees port security as

primarily the responsibility of state and local governments and the

private companies that operate marine facilities. The 2002 National

Homeland Security Strategy sets forth principles to guide federal

outlays for homeland security, maintaining that all levels of gov-

ernment must work cooperatively to shoulder the cost of homeland

security. It also hands much of the tab for protecting critical

infrastructure to the private sector. The [federal] government

should only address those activities that the market does not ade-

quately providefor example, national defense or border security.

. . . For other aspects of homeland security, sufficient incentives

exist in the private market to supply protection.

So when it comes to port security, the buck stops somewhere outside

Washington, DC. Since seaports in the United States are locally run

operations where port authorities typically play the role of land-

lord, issuing long-term leases to private companies, it falls large-

ly to those companies to provide for the security of the property

they lease.

In the case of Los Angeles, this translates to the security for

7,500 acres of facilities that run along 49 miles of waterfront

being provided for by minimum-wage private security guards and a

tiny port police force of under 100 officers. The situation in

Long Beach is even worse, with only 12 full-time police officers

assigned to its 3,000 acres of facilities and a small cadre of

private guards provided by the port authority and its tenants. The

command and control equipment to support a new joint operations

center for the few local, state and federal law enforcement

authorities that are assigned to the port will not be in place

until 2008. In the four years since September 11, 2001, the two

cities have received only $40 million in federal grants to improve

the ports physical security measures. That amount is equivalent

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Autumn 2005 93


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to what American taxpayers spend every day on domestic airport

security, or every few hours on military operations and recon-

struction in Iraq.

But the fallout from a terrorist attack on any one of the nations

major commercial seaports would hardly be a local matter. For

instance, should al-Qaeda or one of its imitator organizations

succeed in sinking a large ship in the Long Beach channel, auto-

dependent southern California will literally run out of gas with-

in two weeks. This is because U.S petroleum refineries are oper-

ating at full throttle and their products are consumed almost as

quickly as they are made. If crude oil shipments stop, so do the

refineries.

The nations manufacturing and retailing sectors depend on just-

in-time logistics. Their warehouses are the millions of 40-foot

cargo containers that move around the planet on trucks, trains

and ships. If that circulation is disrupted, assembly plants go

idle and store shelves go bare almost immediately. When a labor-

management dispute led to a 10-day lock out of longshoremen on the

West Coast in October 2002, U.S. businesses quickly racked up bil-

lions of dollars in losses.

In light of these realities, U.S. Navy deployments are not in bal-

ance. While the Navy owns all the federal governments marine sal-

vage capabilities, it has no salvage ship stationed on the West

Coastthe nearest is located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. If the

threat to shipping came from some relatively low-tech underwater

mines, as happened in the Red Sea in 1984 and in the Persian Gulf

in 1990, it would take the Navy up to 30 days to get one of its

few minesweepers to the Pacific Coast. They would have to sail

from their homeport of Corpus Christi and steam through the Panama

Canal to complete the voyage.

The limited exceptions to the general lack of port security rule are

San Diego and Norfolk, which are homeports for much of the Navys

fleet. There the Defense Department has financed substantial secu-

rity upgrades, including underwater detection of swimmers, a state-

of-the-art closed circuit TV system, and a joint operations center.

This is crazy. We should have learned from the 9/11 attacks and the

more recent July 2005 bombings of the London Underground that we

cannot count on forever keeping the threat of catastrophic terror-

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Autumn 2005 95

ism at arms length. There are limits to what our military opera-

tions in Iraq and Afghanistan can achieve, and our current intelli-

gence capabilities are not yet up to snuff when it comes to this

new adversary. It is reckless to rely on a strategy that depends so

much on taking the battle to the enemy.

When it comes to protecting the critical infrastructure concen-

trated in our seaports, the firewall that the national security

establishment has so diligently erected and preserved needs to be

torn down. There are seven things that must be done right away.

First, over the next 18 months, the Department of Defense must

work closely with the U.S. Coast Guard, now part of the Department

of Homeland Security, and with local authorities in organizing and

participating in exercises that involve simulated attacks on the

nations largest commercial seaports. The aim of this training

should not be to prevent every terrorist act; that is unrealistic.

Instead, training should focus on identifying what is required to

quickly restore the operations of the port in the aftermath of a

successful attack. These exercises and planning efforts must be a

joint DoD-DHS effort. The reality is that DHS responsibility is

not yet matched by an adequate resource base, and only DoD has thephysical assets needed to address this vulnerability.

Second, DoD needs to take the lead on funding and setting up

joint operations centers in all of our major ports: to outfit

them with advanced information and communications technology that

supports surveillance and data sharing; and to provide the nec-

essary training to the local, state and federal agency partici-

pants. The resources and skill sets to accomplish this are con-

centrated within the national security community. It would be too

costly and time consuming to try to develop these capabilities

without the support of the military. This should be completed by

2007.

Third, as Commander-in-Chief, you can order the Navy to reposition

one of its two salvage ships in Norfolk to the West Coast and take

the lead in drawing up commercial salvage contracts to support domes-

tic harbor clearance. Over the next five years, the Navy should dou-

ble its salvage fleet from four vessels to eight, and base two of

them on the West Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, and two on the East

Coast. The remaining two can be deployed overseas to support Navy

operations.

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Fourth, the Navy needs to construct and deploy two new minesweep-

ers to the West Coast. In the interim, the existing fleet should be

used to complete bottom surveys of all the major U.S. commercial

seaports. This baseline information is indispensable in quickly

spotting mines should an adversary deploy them. Without it, the cen-

turies of junk at the bottom of most harbors has to be examined by

divers to determine if it poses a risk. This examination could take

many weeks or even months, and that is unacceptable.

Fifth, you must double to $1.5 billion annual funding for the Coast

Guard so that it can replace its ancient fleet of vessels and air-

craft, and bring its command and control capabilities into the 21st

century. Many of its cutters, helicopters and planes are operating

long beyond their anticipated service life and routinely experience

major casualties. Under the current delivery schedule, it will be 25

years before the Coast Guard has the kind of assets it needs today

to perform its mission. This, too, is unacceptable.

Sixth, you must persuade Congress to authorize the realloca-

tion of all the duties and fees that are collected in seaports

to go back into those ports to support security upgrades and

infrastructure improvements. Currently, ports are the onlytransportation sector where the federal government is parasitic.

That is, unlike airports and highways, the federal treasury takes

more money away than it returns. According to the Coast Guard,

seaports need to invest upwards of $5 billion to put in place

minimal access control and physical security measures. Neither

the ports nor the municipalities nor the states in which these

ports are located have those kinds of resources.

Finally, you should order the Executive Branch of the U.S. gov-

ernment to develop a national port plan that takes into account

long-term trade and security trends. Relying on a patchwork quilt

of locally-based decisions for managing this critical infra-

structure is just not acceptable.

As our dependence on global trade grows and the catastrophic ter-

rorist threat persists, we must acknowledge that our commercial

seaports are critical national security assets. As such, we must

work to ensure that they possess adequate capacity, redundancy and

resiliency to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

CC: OVP, NSA, SECDEF, SECSTATE, SECDHS, DCI.

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