OPINION:
Air is essential — a couple of minutes without it is proof enough — and clean air is the best kind. While we’re breathing, most of us prefer that the air we inhale is clean. The air in much of China, for example, is so foul there’s a growing business for taking tourists to Taipei or Manila on what are called “breathing tours.”
Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry have joined their agencies to create a “clean air force,” or maybe a “clear air force,” to monitor the air quality at diplomatic posts around the world. It’s intended to promote good health for the American diplomats and the local population alike.
“Environmental challenges like climate change, overfishing, the acidification of our oceans, air pollution — none of these challenges respect international borders,” Mr. Kerry, sure of no attempts at effective contradiction, said at a signing ceremony in Washington. “They injure us all, however. They affect people everywhere.” The EPA-State Department partnership, according to a written mission statement, “reflects efficient use of government resources and a whole-of-government approach to diplomacy.”
Still, the folks who, until recently, were stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, might question whether a squad of technicians with air-monitoring instruments would quite fit the definition of a “whole-of-government approach to diplomacy.” On Feb. 11, they were forced to drop everything to flee before the gathering storm of Islamic jihadis (sorry, President Obama, but there wasn’t a Christian or Jew in the whole of the invasion force) who struck the capital of that Gulf nation. Given the billions spent by the United States on intelligence-gathering, an embassy might expect that a “whole-of-government approach” would include a little more help than advice to get out of Dodge before the invaders arrive.
Days earlier, a force of Houthi rebels stormed the presidential palace and took the president hostage in what the ever-alert United Nations Security Council now calls a coup d’etat. Mr. Kerry’s State Department didn’t order an evacuation until the eleventh hour. Even then, embassy staff members were forced to rely on a commercial charter flight to escape the collapsing city. The U.S. Marine guard was required to destroy its cache of weapons to keep them out of the hands of the rebels, and to disable personal sidearms before the Marines were allowed to board their flight. Sensitive documents were left behind, as well as 20 embassy cars and trucks. It was only good luck (and divine providence with no help from Allah) that the Sanaa scramble didn’t turn out to be a repeat of the Benghazi tragedy.
Ms. McCarthy has an environmentalist’s view of air power, which is, after all, her business. She not long ago braved the frigid chill at the X Games in Aspen, Colorado, to campaign against global warming, as if the air over the continent couldn’t use a little warmth this month. Mr. Kerry, on the other hand, needs a different kind of air power, one with enough military-grade steel to keep Americans safe in dangerous places. Given that the Pentagon has also declared climate change a national security issue, the only appropriate air force might be one armed with air-monitoring devices.
In the Obama era, a “whole-of-government approach to diplomacy” means protecting the air at the embassy, not necessarily the people who breathe that air.
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