The view from Washington, D.C., where I've lived the past half-dozen years, is admittedly jaded. This is the town that invented the hidden agenda. The lesson you learn here is that things are rarely what they seem, that any course of action can be viewed from contrary perspectives supported by equally valid arguments. While politicians may invoke grand language (“freedom”, “justice”, “morality”), down in the trenches it's self-interest that prevails.

Conflicting constituencies, so the political scientists say, may well be the fundamental stuff of democracy but as one wise man frequently reminded me, “in the end everything comes down to money and power.”

Which brings up the matter of security and trade.

Nobody, of course, wants the country left exposed to terrorism but the question beginning to loom larger for traders is 'at what cost security?' Will the United States adopt a regimen of presumed protection of ports and trade corridors so restrictive that we choke off the sources of much of our vitality?

In a much discussed new book about how this administration formulates national security policy, The One Percent Doctrine, journalist Ron Susskind describes the approach that has prevailed since 9/11, first articulated by Vice President Cheney: “If there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction-and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time-the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.” Such conviction, observers point out, effectively strips away analysis and debate from policy-making. Suspicion replaces evidence as the new threshold for action. Meanwhile, resources are disbursed as if they were inexhaustible.

Various pending federal directives suggest that the 'one percent doctrine' may be equally in play when it comes to trade secuirty-which is starting to prompt serious reservations from those actually engaged in trade. The Retail Industry Leaders Association, for one, has taken a high profile position challenging proposed legislation that would require all cargo containers bound for the U.S. to be individually inspected in their port of origin (impossible to physically execute, impossible to administer).

Waiting in the wings is the Transportation Worker Identification Card, to be issued by the Transportation Security Administration. In its current iteration, TSA plans to require every port worker-longshoremen, truckers-to undergo a background check. But as industry sources point out, there are lots of workers who won't pass-and in sectors that are already having a tough time getting enough labor, this will only compound problems.

In future issues of World Trade our security correspondent April Terreri will be discussing these trade-offs in depth.

There's no simple answer but one thing is increasingly clear-playing politics with trade is bad business! We've already seen one damning example of what happens with the Dubai Ports World fiasco (who is going to make the needed substantive capital investments in America's ports with all the major ocean carriers non-U.S. owned?).

One approach worth looking at, much more manageable and less costly, is the voluntary compliance process that is being promoted by the Business Alliance for Secure Commerce (BASC). A Columbia-based organization that grew out of the need to certify that international shipments embarking from that country were narcotics-free, BASC (www.wbasco.org) has taken the lead in modeling ways to secure the supply chain through public-private collaboration-think C-TPAT on a global basis. The program is in operation in multiple countries and various national customs agencies, including the U.S., are participating.

Whatever happens, for the U.S. to impose a security agenda inspired by public hysteria exploited by fear-mongering politicians would undermine trade and add to our problems.