"Argo F*** Yourself"

In the recent film “Argo” there is a scene as the embassy in Tehran is being stormed by the Iranian students in which an embassy security officer explains to the Marines that they are not to shoot because if any of the Iranian attackers are killed it is likely that the Marines and embassy staff would be killed in the ensuing violence or in a subsequent show trial, or they could start a war between the United States and Iran. At last someone explained the reality of protecting a diplomatic/consular mission on another nation’s soil.


Today, in the 21st Century, the United States Government is in the business of building fortresses – only we call them embassies (or consulates general, or consulates) – and we are building them around the world, more than 294 worldwide. At best they are protected by a relative handful of U.S. Marine Security Guards, agents of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security from the U.S. Department of State, a series of passive barriers of varied design, and by the police and ultimately the armed forces of the country in which the building is located.

Under Article 22 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the protection of an embassy is the responsibility of the government hosting that embassy, diplomatic, or consular mission. This responsibility has been reinforced by subsequent other international agreements reflecting the growing use of terror against diplomats by various groups around the world. In a sense, this reflects the same imbalance of capabilities noted by Nelson – no embassy in the world can hold out against a sustained and determined attack given its limited space, manpower, and defense capabilities. What security force or passive defenses any embassy has are to be used only as a stop gap measure until the arrival on the scene of the forces of the host government.

Britain’s greatest naval hero, Lord Nelson, reputedly declared that, “A ship’s a fool to fight a fort.” Of course, he spoke at time when the largest warships were less than a football field in length and carried a limited amount of hot for their hundred plus guns (divided into two batteries one along each side of the ship). By contrast, a fort with uninterrupted supply lines giving it access to a potentially limitless supply of ammunition for its guns, which could be both more numerous and more powerful than those carried aboard the ships of the day.

As much as I enjoy studying the works of Vauban, the master of fortification, and walking around surviving examples, the reality is that the 20th Century and aviation brought an end to the dominance of forts and fortresses. France’s Maginot Line is generally considered to be its final high water mark and proof of the folly in building and defending stone and concrete monuments. The mantra for today’s armed forces with their full arsenal of land, sea, and air assets is that if you can see it you can kill it. “Find it, fix it, kill it.”

In 1531 Machiavelli wrote that fortresses “are not needed by those that have good armies…but fortresses without good armies are incompetent for defense.” The problem hasn’t gotten any better over the last five centuries. George Patton reminded us of this in 1944 looking at Germany’s Siegfried Line (the West Wall). He declared “it a monument to human stupidity. When natural obstacles—oceans and mountains—can be so readily overcome, anything that man makes, man can overcome.” Embassies, however, have no armies to defend them other than the police and troops of the government hosting them.

We need embassies to maintain the ties that prevent us from needing to use armies, but we need to recognize that the protection of these buildings and the personnel within them are in fact the responsibility of the government to which they are accredited. The U.S. spent $187 million on its new embassy in Rabat while it spent $247 million in Kiev. And yet it is impossible for the United States to build an impregnable embassy. Governments that fail to fulfill that responsibility must be held to account for their failure. That is the way to defend these buildings and these personnel.

Hold the Fort!

One of the more interesting pieces of legislation and related political activity in the United States is the Congressionally mandated Base Re-Alignment and Closure, more commonly referred to for obvious reasons as BRAC. BRAC is probably unique on this planet as it is the process by which the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Armed Services compare their real estate holdings against current and projected needs. Property determined to be surplus to those needs is then released by DoD for the use of other federal, state, or local government agencies or put up for sale. The concept dates back to the 1960s and you can find its history on Wikipedia and on the Global Security.Org website. The latest BRAC round began in 2005 and the Commission’s own website presents its full report. As you may imagine, however, this can be a process fraught with pressure from every direction as industry, business, community, political interests, as well as the different levels of government compete for a particular piece of real estate.

But I also want you to visit The Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park because the 2005 BRAC report states that the military will leave Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, Virginia in 2011. CFMNP is pushing for Fort Monroe to then become a National Park, supported by the Civil War Preservation Trust and other preservation organizations, and me (for what that’s worth) and I hope will be supported by you. It this proposed park is to become reality, it will need strong public support and time for the National Park Service to plan and budget for its preservation and presentation to the public.

Construction of Fort Monroe was begun in 1819 in the vicinity of the Old Point Comfort Lighthouse (built in 1802 and still there today). It was planned as a first class fortification for the defense of Hampton Roads and the James River (leading ultimately to Richmond). The fort was part of what is called the Third System of forts intended to strengthen the young nation’s Atlantic coast defenses after the demonstrated ease with which British forces invaded American territory during the War of 1812. It was named for the fifth president, James Monroe (1817-1825) and designed by the French military engineer Simon Bernard, who bore the American brevet rank of a brigadier-general based upon the recommendation of the Marquis de Lafayette and his own prior service at that rank to Emperor Napoleon I.

Called Fortress Monroe until officially changed to Fort Monroe in 1832, the new masonry, granite, and earth fort was located on the point of Old Point Comfort and linked to the mainland by a narrow isthmus and a single bridge. The fort was given a perimeter circuit of 2,394 yards and encompassed 63 acres. Its placement and its design as a regularly bastioned work with seven fronts or faces, was expected to make it impossible to take by siege, which it never was.

Although Bernard designed and began the construction of Fort Monroe, it was not actually completed until 1847, long after his return to France in 1831. At that time it already hosted the U.S. Army’s first service school – the Artillery School of Practice since 1824, and in the first half of the 20th Century it would host that school’s successor, the Coast Artillery School, making Fort Monroe the center for harbor defense training and for related research and development programs. Monroe would later serve as Headquarters, U.S. Continental Command (CONARC). Today’s Fort Monroe covers 570 acres (including the fort) and hosts the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), as well as Army Accessions Command, Headquarters Cadet Command, and other Army, Navy, and defense organizations.

Although Fort Monroe never saw battle, its story is deeply entwined with our nation’s history. Robert E. Lee was stationed there from 1831-1834. The Fort’s Casemate Museum also includes the cell in which Confederate President Jefferson Davis was held after his capture at the end of the Civil War. During that war, the Union garrison at Fort Monroe rendered it an important base of support for operations along the Confederacy’s Atlantic coast and against its capitol city of Richmond in 1862 and again in 1864-1865. Southern slaves also recognized this Northern outpost as an outlet to freedom and made active use of its existence throughout the war.

If you are interested in the subject of forts and fortifications in general, whether in the United States, Europe, or anywhere in the world, you may also want to visit the website of The Fortress Study Group and join this active international group of scholars, historians, and enthusiasts.