Continued from previous page cringe when I see what we’re doing.” But Thomas McCarthy — a principal at PageSoutherlandPage, an architectural firm that has designed more than 20 U.S. embassies and consulates over the last decade, including recent projects in Islamabad, Monrovia, Dakar, Rabat, Addis Ababa, Ouagadougou, Brazzaville and Khartoum — doesn’t put much stock in the criticism. “A lot of the criticism comes from people looking at a project in a place like Ouagadougou and saying, ‘That looks like a fortress,’ but oftentimes these buildings are the nicest ones in the country,” he said. “It’s a safe, modern and highly efficient work environment. I don’t place a lot of credence in the criticism; these critiques are coming from people who are very far from the realities of the situation.” McCarthy said that in designing U.S. embassies, architects’ hands are often tied by the U.S. government procurement process, which requires them to use the same windows and other construction materials around the world. The components are usually functional but look cheap. Christine Foushee, OBO’s director of external relations, said that the State Department is responding to the fortress flak. “Our intent is to address the criticism while still embracing security,” she said. “We’re mindful that lives are at stake, so the security requirements are part of Design Excellence. It’s a matter of applying creativity to the standards.” Foushee and McCarthy said that State has used perimeter greenery, water features and other measures to soften the appearance of U.S. missions. “It’s really about presenting less of a perimeterwall front door and more of a landscape with a fence or some other feature as the first thing you see when you come to an embassy,” McCarthy explained. “In the case of London, it’s a water feature. It’s something else that provides the same protection but with a less severe front door than we’ve seen in the past.”
Building U.S. embassies abroad can cost hundreds of millions of dollars in part because of difficult logistics in places like Khartoum, Sudan, right.
Foushee noted that most of the recent embassies that have opened were designed prior to the DE initiative, but still have some green technology features that weren’t in place even a few years ago. She says that within two to three years, people will begin to notice a new breed of embassies and consulates that are secure but also more centrally located with a more welcoming aesthetic appeal. Five years ago, Loeffler wrote a critical piece on the security-first U.S. construction approach in Foreign Policy, but she said that OBO has improved its approach markedly since that time. “They’re trying to bring buildings back closer to the center, closer to public transport, and making them more functional and also greener,” she told The Diplomat. “There’s been a great change. I would never say that security shouldn’t be the first priority, but design and security don’t have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, good design can enhance security and our image.” But even if State has gotten the message that embassies need to be more than just secure, how should taxpayers feel about the flurry of costly construction activity overseas? The average cost of a medium-size embassy can run over $100 million, and some, like the new embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, which totaled $247 million, can cost much more. McCarthy said that difficult logistics in places like Sudan and the Republic of Congo can drive up prices. He also noted that U.S. law requires that at least some of the construction workers at each site be cleared U.S. citizens, rather than locals, who would be paid much less in most countries. The
Photo: U.S. Department of State
number of U.S. workers required varies depending on the threat level of each country. The legislation originated after the United States found listening devices embedded all over the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1985, an incident that required us to completely rebuild the embassy.The law helps to create jobs for Americans but also pushes up the cost of construction, especially in countries deemed “critical threats” where a large portion of the embassy has to be completed by U.S. workers. Foushee said that OBO’s funding over the last decade has been steady, but indicated that their budget has also been cut and they’ll likely have to scrap at least one new proposed embassy over the next few years. Projects will move forward or be put on a backburner depending on priorities and what’s feasible. “A lot of it is doability,” she said. “There are
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the Ron-Paulists comprised only about a tenth of the party. Dueck also explained that he sees in the tea party movement a return to the era of President Andrew Jackson. “The Jacksonian element has been very strong in the Republican Party for many years,” he said,“but what happens is that different figures come in and direct it in different channels in different periods.” “The mentality is not looking at interventions overseas — certainly not humanitarian and nation-building projects — but at the same time there’s an unapologetic American patriotism and a determination to strike back if attacked,” Dueck said. “It’s neither isolationist strictly speaking nor is it about what George W. Bush was advocating for during the invasion of Iraq.” Dueck said that George W. Bush’s pursuits, especially as framed in his second inaugural address, represent a very idealistic side of the party, which isn’t as strong today. In fact, this year’s unpredictable nominating contest has in many ways put into full view the variant phenotypes of the Republican Party that have been overshadowed by the neoconservative policies that dominated the Bush years and, to a lesser extent, McCain’s 2008 candidacy. In that contest, primary voters selected McCain — someone of almost incomparable foreign policy and national security gravitas who said he had what it takes to navigate the “dangerous world we live in.” A retired Navy captain and prisoner of war in Vietnam, McCain was the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee who had
places on the list where we can’t find a site or aren’t able to purchase a site, so it makes it impossible to move forward. We build where we can with the money we’re given.” The 2012 fiscal year budget for new construction is about $1 billion. So why should taxpayers support the construction of secure new embassies in low-threat countries like Latvia or Malta? “People shouldn’t have to work in high-risk situations doing such important work for our country,” Loeffler said. “Diplomacy is our most important initiative and it’s so much less expensive than war. We need to make the buildings attractive and functional, but they’re also targets so they need to be secure.”
Dave Seminara is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat and a former diplomat based in Northern Virginia.
led the charge in Congress to mount a troop “surge” in Iraq in 2007. He’d made frequent visits to the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other geopolitical hotspots and could rightfully claim that he had developed personal relationships with world leaders over the years. One of McCain’s main selling points was that he was a “statesman in waiting” as NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell noted in 2008. But the entire dynamics of the race changed as economic conditions at home deteriorated that summer. And then, in what can either be considered an earnest attempt to aid his country or a tactical election blunder, on Sept. 24, 2008 — less than 10 days after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and less than two months before voters cast their ballots — McCain suspended his campaign and returned to Washington to focus on fixing the economy. It pretty much doomed him. Earlier in the year, McCain had declared that economics wasn’t something he understood as well as he should. Now it had become the top priority in the election while McCain’s main strength, foreign affairs, receded to the background — much as it has again four years later. And four years later, the man McCain beat to grab the 2008 nomination, Mitt Romney, now sees a new opening for himself precisely because of his business background, much in the way that McCain relied on his impeccable foreign policy and national security credentials — and much in the way Obama will be using his own international credentials to convince a domestic audience that he’s worthy of another term.
Luke Jerod Kummer is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. Anna Gawel is managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.
The Washington Diplomat
April 2012