A dangerous place

Yesterday’s circus in a House hearing on the killing of U.S. officials last month in Benghazi was barely over when news reached Washington that Al Qaeda had assassinated the Yemeni security chief at the U.S. embassy in Sanaa.  No doubt these incidents will continue to provide grist for the American political mill, where candidate Romney is trying to pin blame on the Administration and portray America as besieged.

We are not besieged on most days, but we are at risk.  The thousands of our fellow civilians who serve abroad cannot do what they are there to do without running risks.  You  can build fortress embassies, as we have in Baghdad, and provide personal security details.  But nothing reduces the risks to zero.

Some of the security measures we take inhibit achievement of the mission.  Andrew Exum tweeted to me this morning:

It’s what the military refers to as the false balance between the men and the mission. In the end, the mission must come 1st.

Diplomats and aid workers need to be out on the street talking with people, monitoring projects, taking the pulse of local communities, giving speeches, engaging with the press and civil society generally.  Law enforcement officials need to be consulting closely with their police and interior ministry counterparts.  There is no use in an embassy or consulate that incarcerates and warehouses our civilian presence abroad, which is what the euphemistically named “diplomatic security” part of the State Department likes to do.

We need to get smarter about how to protect our people, while recognizing that there are no risk-free formulas.  Anonmity and changing daily patterns is a lot better protection for many diplomats than a personal security detail.  Spreading our people out, and moving them around frequently, is a lot safer than concentrating them in one hardened place.  Relying on properly trained and equipped local security forces is often better than using highly visible Americans, who become easy targets.

Our four colleagues in Benghazi were killed in a fortress-like facility guarded principally by Americans.  They–or someone else–might suffer the same fate using the approach I am suggesting.  We need to ensure that we don’t have more people abroad than we really need.  We also need to make sure they are undertaking efforts that are worth the risk to life and limb that they necessarily entail.

Congress is likely to move in quite a different direction.  It will provide more funding for higher and thicker walls, and more American protection, as it does from time to time.  Then it cuts that funding after a few years of quiet, leaving the State Department with an enormous capital infrastructure but without the means to maintain it.

The pointy end of the diplomatic spear is a dangerous place.  Let’s get smarter and more agile about wielding it.

PS:  I stumbled on this after drafting the above.  So I’m not alone in my devotion to the mission.