Posts Tagged embassies

With Embassy Closures, the U.S. Errs on the Side of Caution

With Embassy Closures, the U.S. Errs on the Side of Caution is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

Summary

Global, nonspecific threats such as those that prompted recent U.S. embassy closures and travel warnings have rarely proved credible. These precautionary measures appear to be the result of two separate threats, one attack against an unspecified U.S. embassy and another against travel infrastructure — presumably an airliner. In response to the embassy threat, the U.S. government announced Aug. 4 that it had extended the closure of several embassies in the Middle East until Aug. 10 and that African posts would now be among the embassies closed. In response to the airline threat, Washington issued a global travel alert running from Aug. 2 to Aug. 31. The travel warning and the closures have commanded the media’s attention and have led to much speculation about the source and the credibility of the threats, but more often than not these threats fail to materialize. Read the rest of this entry »

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Keeping Embassies Safe

From CNN:

Before entering a high-threat area like Benghazi, or indeed any other unstable environment, it is essential to determine if the mission is worth the risk. In assessing Benghazi, the first question that comes to mind is:  What was so important about having a diplomatic presence in a city characterized as unstable; a city the British, French and United Nations had effectively abandoned because of warring militias and earlier bombings?  Why was the United States still there? All assessments about the viability of the mission and all plans to protect U.S. diplomatic compounds around the world have to begin with answers to this question.

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