Back in the fall of 2003, I was in London for an conference
and I took a stroll around the neighborhood near my hotel. At one point I turned a corner and saw
a massive, looming building, surrounded with various barriers and fences and
looking for all the world like an updated version of a medieval castle. "What's that?" I wondered, and
wandered over to investigate. It
was the U.S. Embassy, of course, and I was struck by how forbidding and
unwelcoming it was. It seemed to
me to be a vivid physical symbol of a powerful Empire striving to keep the
outside world at bay.
I thought of that moment today when I read the Times story on the winning design for a
new U.S. embassy in London. Lord
knows I'm no architecture critic, and I think my wife was too harsh when she
said the winning design looked "like a big ice-cube," but the sketches in the Times don't show a building that invites
the world in, or that conveys a sense of openness and confidence. Despite
elaborate efforts to conceal security measures with adroit landscaping, the
overall image is one where security concerns predominate: a fancy building
isolated from its surroundings and keeping the world at arm's length.
What troubles me is what this tells us about America's place
in the contemporary world, and the tensions between its global ambitions and
its willingness to accept the consequences of them. On the one hand, the United States defines its own interests
in global terms: there are no regions and few policy issues where we don't
want to have a significant voice, and there are many places and issues where we
insist on having the loudest one.
But on the other hand, we don't think we should get our hair mussed
while we tell the world what to do. It's tolerable for the United States to fire drones virtually
anywhere (provided the states in question can't retaliate, of course), and Americans don't
seem to have much of a problem with our running covert programs to
destabilize other regimes that we've decided to dislike. We also aid, comfort and diplomatic
support to assorted other states whose governments often act in deeply objectionable ways. But then we face the obvious problem
that some people are going to object to these policies, hold us responsible,
and try to do what they can to hit back.
So we have to build embassies that resemble fortresses, and
that convey an image of America that is at odds with our interests and our own self-image, and
especially with the image that we would like to convey to foreign peoples. We like to think of our country as friendly
and welcoming, as open to new ideas, and as a strong, diverse and confident
society built on a heritage of pluck and grit. You know, we're supposed to be a society built by generations of immigrants, pioneers, and other determined folk who faced
adversity and risk with a smile and a bit of a swagger. Yet the "Fortress America" approach to embassy design
presents a public face that is an odd combination of power and paranoia.
Don't get me wrong: states in the modern world do have to worry about security
for their representatives, and we ought to take all reasonable measures to
ensure that our diplomats are adequately protected. But as with dangers (such as extremists with
explosives in their underwear), it's possible to go too far in the quest for
perfect security. Trying to blast-proof everything may even be counterproductive,
if the damage done to our global image is greater than the damage that violent
radicals would do to a slightly less-fortified global presence
cannot agree with this post (although as I type this, I'm actually coming around to it).
"Don't get me wrong: states in the modern world do have to worry about security for their representatives, and we ought to take all reasonable measures to ensure that our diplomats are adequately protected."
Doesn't this imply embassies such as the one in London? What does "adequately protected" mean?
Perhaps - probably - you're right that such embassies are counterproductive. But how counterproductive are they? How many people go into US embassies (I have, in a country with probably a medium-level risk profile, and I do have to admit, I was wowed by the security measures in place)? How many people really go into US embassies, or see them, and say, "The US is bad? The US doesn't like us?" In others words, what is the magnitude of whatever ill-effects high-security (Inman-standard?) embassies cause? And would Professor Walt eat his words were, say, a Nairobi or Dar es Salaam occur to a less protected embassy?
This also gets to the level of risk we should ask Foreign Service Officers - presumably some of Professor Walt's students, both past and present - to assume. Recall the potential drafting of FSOs to serve in Iraq. FSOs do take the same oath of office as commissioned officers in the military, is my understanding from Pat Lang's blog. And in our new COIN doctrine, we reject the idea of hunkering down on FOBs. Still, I'm not sure FSOs are soldiers, and once more, I question how large an impact having an ugly and secure embassy has on the population of a host nation.
Come see the embassy in Amman, Jordan. An expansive structure with lots of elegant green buffer zones, some entry 'checkpoints' ... dotted with the occasional military jeep atop which sits a soldier and a HUGE machine gun.
Indeed the US Embassy in Amman, does project the image of "fortress America", however, whether this is the image the US wants to project contiously or not, the structure is actually that of fortress. In any case, if the US public are unhappy about the diplomatic image which exists in various parts of the world, or if they are aware of it, then by all means they have a say to change it "probably". certainly, if one has understood the words of Prof. Walt correctly, than the US Embassy in Amman stands as the perfect paradigm.
khairi janbek.paris/france
I was studying in Washington DC when the Marines were killed in Beirut by a truck bomb. The US government started barracading all the Federal building and now you can no longer drive on the street in front of the White House.
When I moved to Singapore in '93, the US Embassy was a regular office building on Hill St. It later relocated to a new fortress very much like the one you describe in London. I bet it's policy for some time now to roll these blast proof structure out across all the embassy sites.
The siege mentality has now extended to US airport security. It's sad, but the even a pacifist like Ghandi was assassinated. So yes, the symbol is the reality for a couple of decades now...
While I can't discount the importance of appearances and perceptions, isn't an embassy much more than its outward appearance?
It's not hard to think of places in the world where you would feel comfortable walking past someone in a bullet-proof vest carrying an automatic weapon (think Heathrow Airport) and other places where the sight of someone in a uniform would make you cross the street to get out of his way.
Unfriendly US embassy staff, unresponsive customer service, lack of interaction with the host community and convoluted visa processes probably do more to destroy America's image abroad than does a few checkpoints and fences. I suspect most people care more about what the embassy does than how it looks (with the possible exception of Mayfair residents).
It is pretty much generally accepted by people who study such things that the UK is the heart of the European jihad; therefore, a fortress-type of embassy may be as reasonably in London as in downtown Baghdad.
I have to express my total agreement with the writer here. I lived in England for several years, and had occasion to go to the American embassy numerous times. Surrounded by beautiful, ornate-but-tasteful embassy buildings, the American embassy stood like a black, hulking monolith in the heart of the square, looking quite literally like some outpost of the evil Galactic Empire out of Star Wars.
As an American looking at the structure, it was depressing. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free?" Not from the looks of *THAT* building.
I understand the need for security, but security does not have to be... well, ugly.
I have to express my total disagreement with the writer. On one hand he is upset about Fortress embassies and the message they convey. Therefore, he is especially upset about the design for the new Embassy building in London. OK - how does a mostly glass design surrounded by landscaping and with one section of a reflecting pool to the side nearest the Thames strike him as a Fortress? It looks State was trying to strike a balance between security and an open design. Its not perfect but I think it does the trick. A real fortress would be mostly underground with no windows and no visible chancery.
When embassies were blowing up in the 1980's and 1990's I don't recall the angst by editorial writers demanding improvements in security for Embassies which were housed in former dilapidated hotels. This is the easiest editorial to write - complaints that with no real specific solution. If the writer actually had to sit on a board that reviews these designs - maybe he could understand the need to balance the concerns of editorial writers and the need to protect real human beings from being vaporized or wounded in any attack. There were writers that complained about the new Embassy building in Port-Au-Prince - once again a Fortress Embassy! Glad the designers disregarded those comments by building a hardened structure that survived the recent earthquake with minimal damage.
I find it hilarious that critiques about the designs of US Embassies is used by some to hoist up their most intriguing anti-American paranoid conspiracy theories. When I see equal opportunity critiques of Russian embassies and the FSB or the Chinese embassies and their intelligence services or Venezuelean embassy designs and their spy agency, maybe I'll pay attention. Until then, any critique of the nefarious design of the US Embassy in Jordan has to be considered farcical. Come on - if any embassy needs a hardened design, shouldn't it be one in the Middle East? As for the design for the new US Embassy in London - I am still laughing out loud over all the critiques about its Fortress design. I mean I recall all those German bunkers on the Atlantic Wall during the WWII that had an exterior made FROM GLASS!!! Those horrible Americans just designed an embassy with a glass exterior - WHAT A BUNKER! (this is irony for those many posters lacking some)
I lived in Paris for a few years during the Cold War, and the idea of having to go to the the US Embassy for any reason was a terrifying one. There was a buffer area in which you were searched by armed guards. At the time, this shocked me. But then I used to stroll past the Soviet Embassy, which was street front on the Left Bank in a 17th century building. There was one guard on duty who used to doff his cap when the ladies walked by. And believe you me, it was far more welcoming.
Anyone who has read Neil Stephenson's dystopian novel, Snow Crash, is familiar with the snooping, paranoid and irrelevant entity the author portrays as the US Government. We are on that path.
Gee - I guess I and Nural-Cubicle have way different ideas about the US Embassy in Paris. I find it a beautiful building constructed in accordance to architectural laws in Paris. Here is an excerpt describing the site:
"The four-story Chancery is neo-classical in style and balances the northwest corner of the Place de la Concorde. The base of the Chancery is in very hard Villebois-Montalieu stone from the Isère region. The walls are constructed of Anstrude stone with brick backing. This stone, from the Yonne region, was specially selected for durability and to match the color of the other buildings on the Place de la Concorde."
Not quite a Fortress Embassy, huh? Since France is responsible for outside security for all embassies maybe he should lodge a complaint with the Gendarmerie on the not nice gendarmes. And sorry, protecting a building from attack does not make a country "snooping, paranoid or irrelevant." I suggest the poster read the Gulag Archipelago to get a better idea of the country that kind guard was protecting at that time.
You miss the point. There's safeguarding one's personnel and then there's a scale so large (and a style so unfriendly) that it suggests, above and beyond the conventional covenants and understandings regarding foreign embassies, a slap at local sovereignty.
Listen - if this is solely a non-biased review of the architectural designs of new embassy buildings, OK that legitimate. But it seems to me that the focus on new US Embassy buildings (and not Russian, Chinese, North Korean) is predicated on people's biases that A.) US = empire, B.) US = evil, C.) US Embassies = fortresses of evil empire. This whole discussion is based on the mostly glass design of the new US Embassy building in London or your seeming bias about security measures in the 1980's surrounding the neo-classical U.S. Embassy in Paris. I am at a total loss how either embassy design sparks the notion of a fortress. At this point, I feel that any design, a light filled glass ball by I.M. Pei, would likely spark more comment on Fortress Embassies as long as its designed by the U.S. for their embassy.
Every embassy from any country requires host country approval and in some cases, conformance to local design standards. If countries would like to exercise their sovereignty, they have every right to say no to a bigger footprint for a new embassy. Are US Embassies likely bigger than some other countries embassies - sure. But I'm willing to bet that that China, Russia, France, Japan can give them a run for the money depending on the country. But I will give you one point, US embassies do represent a rejection of sovereignty of the host country. That's because all embassies (in and from every country) perform the same rejection by their inherent purpose and inviolability. Embassy grounds are considered under international law as the soil of that particular country.
All I'm saying is that US embassy bashing is just a canard to indulge in some old-fashioned US bashing. If you want to engage in anti-American speak, please drop the pretense that it's really concern for building design or tight security measures.
My wife, who works at the US Embassy, and I live in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The embassy resembles a fort, but is fairly approachable by foot. Once you have been in a place where they blew up the embassy you attitudes morphs to "They cannot make it strong enough". Dar is on a different planet than Cambridge
Maybe this blogger should simply spend more time writing about subjects he is expert in, one if which is probably not architecture. You might want to consider architectural reviews such as:
http://bit.ly/cgCrpf
They're not "hitting back", you fool, they're attacking Americans *first*. Americans weren't attacking Afghanistan or Pakistan at random before 9/11; it's Americans who are "hitting back" at an Islamic world that keeps attacking them for no reason. Get your causality straight, please.
Given the very real security issues, how could this have been done much better. It is a vast improvement on the concrete bunker style.
Maybe that glass cube might resemble the "shining city on a hill?" ...yeah yeah, bring on the nasty comments now.
Seriously though, it is about the best we can do in trying circumstances...unless of course you would like to visit the widows, widowers, and orphans of the dead DoS folks that would be killed in an "open" design.
Thanks for your rational comment. Its also worth noting the lack of open designs found in embassies from most G10 countries - most have some sort of fence after all.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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