The U.S. Counterproductive Diplomacy. Tightened Flight Checks Do Nothing to Lessen Terror Threat

Scrambling to respond to new security threats following the attempt terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, the American government responded with an overnight measure aimed at calming fear but does little in ways of strengthening security. Furthermore, this populist measure is extremely counterproductive form a diplomatic standpoint, further alienating the people targeted by the new rules, and therefore potentially leading to further resentment in parts of the world where the new US administration has been seeking to reconnect.

After the failed attack on the Delta Airline at the end December of 2009, the American government's knee-jerk reaction was to single out a dozen countries whose citizens will receive greater scrutiny if they wish to come to the United States. By doing so, the White House and the State Department pointed the finger to specific countries that ironically have been staunched allies of the United States. And that includes Algeria and Libya in the North Africa zone.

Obviously in addition to Cuba, which makes no sense given its lack of terror activity targeted to the US, all the other targeted countries are Arab and/or Muslim nations and that in itself feels very discriminatory. While this may be a necessary deployment of security measures, as no one should blame the U.S. for protecting its citizens, it is a terrible execution of diplomacy in that the US did not really have to single out specific nations and peoples in such a manner. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have known that such pronouncement would clearly nullify the efforts made by President Obama in reaching out to the Arabo-Muslim world after he took office. She should have insisted that no country should be singled out in such a manner. While the American people should be made aware of heightened security measures, there was no need to corner specific countries.

As for the measure itself, any security analyst will likely confirm that it does nothing to improve security at all. Firstly, if you are Algerian or Libyan, the chances to obtain a visa for the United States are virtually zero. Let alone if you are from Cuba or Iran, among the other countries that are targeted by the US. So heightened security or not, the impact is non existent.

Secondly, a quickly check of some of the terrorists that have targeted the US and one will find out that the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid was British, Zacarias Moussaoui was French, and the US has its own homegrown contributors to terror as well. Should the US single out Britain and France, despite citizens from these countries having virtually open access to the U.S. territory through the visa waiver program? This will never happen.

If the US made this decision, it is likely that key diplomatic officials thought of the consequences of naming names but had to go along given the political environment the story was evolving in. I would find it very bizarre if President Obama and Hillary Clinton were not aware of the fuss that this would create. So the question is why did they really name names? Beside the populist call to calm public fear, there is certainly a political component to the decision and that is to attempt to eliminate the growing voices of the Republican party that would see a lack of forceful decisions as a weakness of the Democratic President. Something that would weaken the young president as he moves to implement broad controversial broad in various sectors, reforms that are necessary for the American economy to recover, but used by the Republican opposition party to undermine Obama. For Barack Obama, this is not necessarily a decision he would have liked to make. He has to deal with various issues and perhaps in the State Department's calculations, it will all soon be water under the bridge.

While a country like Saudi Arabia is now used to being named as a source of troubles, given its citizens involvement in 9/11, other countries did not like the new measures at all. Algeria for instance summoned the U.S. ambassador on Monday for an official protest. But the American administration is betting things will soon go back to normal.