Homeland Security Policies Overlook Essential Issues, Says Shipping Executive

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November 2007

By Sandra I. Erwin

Security industry soothsayers for years have been sounding alarms about the prospect of a nuclear or biological weapon reaching U.S. shores in a shipping container.

“A terrorist attack involving shipping could severely disrupt the global supply chain and cripple the economy,” says a report by the Reform Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The admonitions have been heard. Congress recently mandated that, within the next five years, all U.S.-bound maritime cargo loaded at foreign seaports be screened for radiation.

The security measures may be well intentioned, but are unlikely to create a foolproof system, especially in the unwieldy global shipping business, says an industry executive. The legislation does not take into account that container ships are only a small percentage of the many thousands of vessels traveling the world’s oceans, nor does it consider that many of the containers, once they are loaded on ships, are not accessible by radiation detectors, says Stephen M. Carmel, senior vice president of maritime services at Maersk Line Ltd.

Maersk, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, operates in 125 countries and runs the world’s largest container ships, which are bigger than Navy aircraft carriers. It runs a U.S.-flagged shipping line and operates 30 vessels for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command.

The company on any given day has 1,000 ships, 550 of which are cargo ships carrying up to 11,000 containers, Carmel says.

Speaking at a recent maritime strategy conference in Washington, D.C., Carmel says the latest wave of U.S. security measures ignores some fundamental realities of the shipping world. One is that container ships are so big that no detector would be able to scan every box unless the containers were removed from the ship, which may not be feasible in every case.

Another flaw in the new security mandates is that they ignore the existence of other vessels that don’t carry containers. “The world is fixated on container ships, for whatever reason,” Carmel says. “Nobody talks about a weapon of mass destruction coming underneath a couple of thousand tons of oil on a tanker,” he adds. “Container ships are a small percentage of ships. In places like Africa, there are more tankers than container ships.”

Carmel also chastises the Department of Homeland Security for pursuing piecemeal efforts instead of taking a broader view of the threats.

The U.S. government’s so-called “maritime domain awareness” program — intended to gain global access to information about terrorists trying to smuggle a WMD into a U.S. bound ship — is not well coordinated, Carmel says. “It’s a collection of pre-9/11 programs.”

A case in point is the emphasis on automated identification systems to track ships and cargo at sea. That technology has significant limitations and compliance is far from universal, says Carmel. “At least 30 percent of all data is incorrect. The concern about false data is global.”

Both the Navy and the Coast Guard increasingly are shifting more resources to anti-piracy efforts. But in Carmel’s opinion, piracy is a much over-hyped threat. “For international trade, it’s not a big problem,” he says. What usually gets reported in the media as piracy acts are mostly low-end crimes such as theft of food supplies, he says. “People don’t get past the headlines.”

Petty thieves and stowaways are the real nuisance, he adds. “We spend a lot of money on private security to deal with stowaways.”

Carmel’s views are not unlike many other executives in the shipping industry who complain that tighter security will hurt their business.

But he also predicts that security measures — such as the recent law mandating the scanning of all containers — will hurt working-class Americans more than they will perturb wealthy corporations.

When one considers that 30,000 containers come into the United States every day, “if the supply chain is disrupted, it will hit Wal-Mart shoppers harder than it will affect the shoppers at Saks Fifth Avenue,” Carmel says. “The giant sucking sound that Ross Perot warned about will get louder. It’ll be harder to do business in the United States, so jobs will migrate overseas.”

Advocates of stricter security dismiss these claims as corporate whining.

“Maritime trade is a critical part of our economy, but it also represents a serious vulnerability that must be addressed,” says Robert Kelly, a homeland security expert at the Reform Institute. “While there are some legitimate concerns regarding the 100 percent screening requirement, the fact of the matter is that it is now the law. Instead of procrastinating and posturing for extensions, all the players should see this as an opportunity to enhance the resiliency of our supply chain,” says Kelly. “The mandate is workable if innovations such as ‘smart’ containers are utilized, and the public and private sectors collaborate closely.”

Please email your comments to SErwin@ndia.org