The aftermath of January's Haitian earthquake dramatized an obvious but largely forgotten feature of the global maritime trade system: the uniqueness and vulnerability of container port facilities.
Naval strategists point out again and again that shipping can and does deliver masses of material far more efficiently than airplanes. Yet accounts of earthquake relief refer mainly to the problem of traffic control at the main Haitian airport. What about sea traffic?
The quake destroyed the container facilities at Port-au-Prince. It did not destroy the port itself, in the sense that the water area remained sheltered, and ships could still enter. It knocked down the gantries used to unload containers and threw the wreckage into the sea. It is not clear how long it will take to construct a new container facility. Without the gantries, container ships cannot unload. The alternatives to containers, roll-on/roll-off vessels (Ro-Ros) and barge carriers, exist in small numbers and presumably are not immediately available. It may also be difficult for a Ro-Ro to get close enough to a pier to put down her ramp.
At one time ships were essentially self-unloading, using their own cranes. In photos of World War II or early postwar freighters, the single most prominent feature is the series of kingposts supporting cranes. Cargo was stowed in relatively small packages, hooked by stevedores to the cranes, and unhooked manually on the pier. It then had to be loaded onto vehicles for onward movement. The entire process was manpower-intensive and relatively slow. Its only great virtue was that it was extremely flexible: any sheltered water area could be a seaport. Even if there was no pier on which to unload, the ship could place her cargo on board lighters offshore.
Containers were the great maritime invention of the 1960s. They could be moved quickly from a ship and placed on a flatbed truck or a railway flatcar. They were called "intermodal" because they moved quickly and seamlessly from one mode of transport to another. Loading and unloading became largely mechanized; the mass of teamsters or stevedores of the past were no longer needed. Cargo losses in loading and unloading essentially disappeared. What was needed in a container port was a great deal of open space: space to move and store containers and space for trucks to park and pick them up. Most of the world's great port cities lost their working harbors as new container ports were created at considerable expense. The efficiency associated with containers was a key factor in the rise of seaborne trade, which in turn has been a major reason for globalization. That is, manufacturing jobs move to wherever they are most efficient only when the cost of moving the manufactured goods plunges.
The Haitian experience is relevant to a military tactician or strategist partly because post-quake Port-au-Prince is exactly the kind of unimproved place we may want to use as an emergency port. During the 1980s the U.S. Navy built up a rapid-reaction force to move masses of material as needed to support troops (as in the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War). By that time it was obvious that any such buildup would have to exploit commercial-type container shipping (the force did include Ro-Ros and barge carriers). The solution was to convert some large container ships into crane ships specifically so they could unload containers without resorting to the sort of gantry structure lost during the earthquake. These ships still exist, but presumably there was no time to mobilize them to support the Haitian relief effort. They could be a key component of any future sea base.
The Port-au-Prince experience also dramatizes the way in which the world's port structure has shrunk since the advent of container shipping. At one time freighters could dock in many places, although few locations were large enough to be efficient ports, had large stevedore forces, or supported enough traffic to make it worthwhile to build container gantries (or, for that matter, to maintain deep enough channels for large container ships). As the number of effective ports shrinks, it becomes more profitable for an enemy to conduct an anti-shipping campaign focused on them.
For example, during the 1991 Gulf War the bulk of materiel supporting the Coalition land campaign flowed through a single container pier at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. At that time advocates of ballistic-missile defense pointed out that a single Scud with a chemical warhead could have knocked out that pier, and with it precluded the Coalition land offensive. It seems arguable that with the advent of widespread GPS receivers, precision attacks on the very few container ports in an operational area become more, not less, practicable.
Threat from al Qaeda?
The Haitian disaster coincided roughly with a public call from al Qaeda for attacks on world shipping. This may be no more than talk; al Qaeda does not have a particularly good record of achieving what it threatens. However, the concentration of world trade in relatively few container ports creates vulnerability. Usually the focus is on the containers themselves. The explosion of container numbers is a reflection of the success of the container revolution; it is easier than ever to move goods by sea.
Containers are useful because they do not have to be broken down by hand every time a ship is loaded or unloaded. That also means their contents are relatively difficult to examine on arrival. Once it passes customs inspection (which generally means a spot check), a container is loaded on a truck and can go anywhere inland. Al Qaeda has, from time to time, fitted out containers to transport its operatives.
That containers can also transport weapons has been obvious for a long time, and there is an ongoing effort to devise means of examining containers without opening them. But any cure that slows the massive flow of containers can ruin world trade and cause an economic disaster far worse than the recent financial meltdown.
Osama bin Laden himself was a businessman before he became a terrorist; he was said to control, for example, a fleet of about 20 cargo ships. It follows that he is well aware of the character of the container trade and also of the possibilities of container ports. Anything that damages this trade is likely to have deep consequences. It is difficult to imagine that the ports are not targets. How well are they protected?
Large gantry structures are hard to destroy, short of the sort of earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince. Even a big explosion would vent through the largely open girders. The container area could be neutralized by chemical attack, but, at least in the United States, enormous efforts have been made to identify potentially threatening ships long before they approach our ports. It therefore seems unlikely that a freighter could move chemicals into place. So what threat (if any) does al Qaeda have in mind?
In places like Afghanistan, the trademark attack technique is the improvised explosive device even more than the suicide bomber. In either case, the question is whether small explosions can in themselves be made to have dramatic effects on world maritime commerce. The only answer that comes to mind is the possibility that a swimmer or boat-borne explosive could sink a large merchant ship alongside a container facility, blocking it until it could be refloated or otherwise removed. That al Qaeda has sometimes (as in the British 7/7 attacks) managed to draw on locals, rather than traceable foreigners, is a worrying factor.
The problem in a Western port is that the waterfront is not completely closed off. There are always places where a swimmer can more or less legitimately jump into the water, although clearly that is discouraged as dangerous. Once in the water, a swimmer is difficult to detect, because he is a very small sonar target and because the area as a whole is so noisy. Since 9/11 enormous effort has gone into harbor-defense sonars, and it is difficult to say how successful this has been.
Another factor might be called rules of engagement or identification. It seems unlikely that any commercial harbor or harbor area can be considered a free-fire zone for swimmers, just as it is impossible to protect against bombers in a place like Baghdad by declaring free-fire forbidden zones. The social cost of killing the wrong swimmer is just too high. To some extent, the swimmer problem is simplified by combining non-lethal weapons such as underwater loud hailers with detection, the idea being that anyone who ignores the loud hailer is fair game (the loud hailer may also disable many swimmers).
This is not an entirely new problem. During World War II, Italian swimmers proved unpleasantly successful operating from a supposedly derelict tanker at Gibraltar, in the face of supposed British control. After the war there was great interest in Italian and German swimmer and midget-submarine operations, on the theory that the Soviets had adopted similar methods. Western interest in defense against such attacks waned in the late 1950s as conventional war seemed less and less likely. We now know that the Soviets retained considerable interest in what they called "diversionary" and "anti-diversionary" weapons and tactics, to the extent that Soviet warships had special dipping anti-swimmer sonars for use in port. Unlike Westerners, the Soviets did not mind killing innocent swimmers, so they concentrated on detection and destruction. Let's hope we are doing better.