Abstract
What the Rough Rider can teach us about how to stop illicit trafficking.
All across the globe, smugglers are at work, trafficking in drugs and other illicit wares–including, potentially, the building blocks for nuclear weapons. States have enacted comprehensive export control, police, and customs laws to bolster border security, but even the best-written law is no better than the people who put it into practice. Viewed in this harsh light, border security is sorely lacking.
I got a close-up look at some of the conditions that allow for smuggling when I traveled to Albania in October 2005 to investigate how well the government enforces its regimen of export and border controls. In Albania, a gateway via Turkey from central Asia to the European Union, customs and border police officers are paid next to nothing. Judging from the country's well-documented battle against narcotics and human trafficking, even a modest payoff from purveyors of hazardous goods or technology could induce impoverished agents to wink at suspect cargoes. Compounding the problem, Albanian policy makes the Border Police Directorate a dumping ground for discipline problems from elsewhere in the National Police.
Such problems are not unique to Albania. The borders separating the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union are more fictional than real. Terrorist groups, organized crime rings, and drug traffickers flit back and forth across these frontiers almost at will, alighting in the country with the weakest law enforcement. In particular, these problems are legion in countries crisscrossed by the high-traffic routes of the Silk Road of antiquity and of the “maritime Silk Road,” the sea-lanes that link east Asia to the Indian Ocean littoral, and ultimately Europe, by way of the piracy- and terrorism-wracked Strait of Malacca. (It's no accident that much of A. Q. Khan's proliferation ring was based in Malaysia, which adjoins the strait.)
Establishing effective local public administrations to tighten up these borders and transit areas might seem like a monumental and costly task, but lessons on getting such projects under way can be gleaned from the efforts of U.S. reformers to root out corruption and cronyism during the Progressive Era. Among the Progressives' most innovative practitioners was Theodore Roosevelt, who knew a thing or two about reforming public administration in general and police forces in particular. In his pre-presidential days, Roosevelt crusaded tirelessly on behalf of the “good government” movement, serving for six years as U.S. Civil Service commissioner under presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland before taking up the post of president of the New York City Police Department's Board of Commissioners.
Two themes relevant to border security emerged from Roosevelt's career in public administration. First, he championed the merit principle. He railed against the patronage or “spoils” system, under which elected officials rewarded their political supporters, qualified or not, with government jobs. Politics “political pull,” he called it had no place in the hiring, promotion, and firing of civil servants and police officers. Second, Roosevelt strove to cleanse the police department's organizational culture of its ethos of apathy and outright crookedness. His efforts depended in part on policy changes, in part on hands-on leadership.
He extended the classified service at the Civil Service Commission, using written examinations and other objective assessments to pick the most qualified job applicants and to evaluate their professional performance once hired. He instituted a similar system at the police department, vowing to make merit the lone standard for personnel decisions. In a similar vein, Roosevelt espoused concentrating oversight powers in the hands of disinterested public servants–such as himself, naturally–whom the voters could hold accountable.
Duly Noted
Deal Breaker
“… Ten years from now, 20 years from now, as some new country announces that they have a nuclear bomb, they will point back to today and they will say it was the day that President Bush cut his deal with India…. This agreement allows India to be an oxymoron-half weapon state, half civilian nuclear weapon state-without ever having signed a nuclear nonproliferation agreement…. It's a contradiction in terms. It's carnivorous vegetarian or jumbo shrimp.” -Democratic Cong. Edward Markey of Massachusetts at a March 2, 2006 press conference.
Aiding and Abetting
“The most troubling aspect of the prosecution of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for mishandling classified information is that prosecutors have adopted an expansive new interpretation of the Espionage Act that could make criminals of many reporters, lobbyists, and advocates who traffic in government information that may be classified.
“But another worrisome feature of the case is that one of the AIPAC defendants is charged under a separate statute with ‘aiding and abetting’ an unauthorized disclosure of information.
“The use of this ‘aiding and abetting’ statute multiplies the impact of the government's new theory of the Espionage Act, since it means that anyone who facilitates or encourages the disclosure of proscribed information-as reporters and many others do in the course of their daily activities-is as culpable as the one who discloses classified information without authorization.” -Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (March 6, 2006).
Identity Matters
“As the anti-terror campaign holds larger meaning for Pakistan's domestic politics-it's equally about the fundamental, if ignored, role of citizens in making policy-so Baluchistan continues to remind Pakistan's government, and should remind the United States, that tribal and ethnic identities provide a political vocabulary when national identity and enfranchisement are absent.” -Paula R. Newberg, an international consultant specializing in the management of international public policy, in YaleGlobal, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (yaleglobal.yale.edu, February 28, 2006).
Regulations for Dummies
“Congress knows that American citizens and businesses still struggle to understand the many rules that they need to follow, which are confusing and unreadable. The need for readable regulations continues. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that [Democratic Cong. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts] and I have introduced legislation-the ‘Regulation in Plain Language Act of 2006’-that will require agencies to incorporate the concepts of plain language into their rule-making process. By requiring agencies to use plain language, the public will be able to participate in the regulatory process in a more meaningful and substantive manner.” -Michigan Republican Cong. Candice S. Miller, chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs (March 1,2006).
Roosevelt's police board also began awarding commendations and promotions for “personal prowess as shown in any special feat of daring.” During his campaign to enforce New York City's liquor laws, for example, he went out of his way to promote an officer who was too junior to otherwise merit the honor but had dared to shut down a saloon frequented by the rich and well connected. He soon made himself the terror of lazy, corrupt, or abusive police officers, ferreting out official vice on regular “midnight rambles” through the streets of the city with fellow Progressives such as newspaperman Lincoln Steffens.
Roosevelt's example deserves emulation today. Governments should entrust border security not to the cronies of elected officials but to the most capable applicants, as measured against objective standards. Personnel policies should be revised to improve the culture within border security services and to motivate these officials to prize the national interest over personal gain. Incentives and disincentives that reward good and punish bad performance should be put in place to build esprit de corps. And senior officials should impose stringent oversight, probing for and filling gaps in the system's real-world effectiveness.
How can outsiders coax states into undertaking concrete reform measures? Again, Western officials should look to Roosevelt, the consummate Realpolitiker, who called on states to pursue their enlightened self-interest. For example, Albania's overriding foreign policy goal is to gain membership in the European Union and NATO, garnering a host of security and economic benefits. Both bodies should refuse Albania entry unless it stringently controls its borders. Savvy U.S. and European leaders should sound a Rooseveltian note, showing Tirana that it has a pressing interest in reforming its customs and border police apparatus.
Similar arguments hold for any country that craves the bounty accompanying globalized trade and commerce. The price for greater access to Western markets should be the deployment of skilled, motivated customs and police officers at national border checkpoints along smuggling routes. This would give the international community, in particular the United States and its European partners, what amounts to a layered defense against weapons proliferation. And participating nations would advance their hopes for a secure, prosperous future in the bargain.