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Entering the U.S. embassy in Kabul, for example, a visitor is scrutinized at a dozen different fallback layers of security. First he has to sign in, have his passport checked and business verified at a gatehouse. Searchlights sometimes follow him across the courtyard, closed-circuit TV cameras beam his image to half a dozen screens inside. Behind the electronically controlled door, credentials are checked again, cameras and tape recorders yielded. An electronic detection booth checks further for hidden weapons; Marines stand ready to frisk thoroughly. Finally, when a member of the embassy staff emerges to provide a personal escort, the thoroughly inhibited visitor is allowed to penetrate into the inner sanctum.
The trend for the future, according to State Department Security Planner Lambert Heyniger, will be to design "smaller, less conspicuous buildings, possibly raised off the ground to make them that much more difficult for attackers to enter." Many new embassies have already traded aesthetics for security considerations. The new Swedish embassy in Cairo is a forbidding concrete structure with a single street entrance, narrow slits for windows, and a protected inner courtyard backing on the Nile—for quick escape by boat if necessary. More than anything, it is said to resemble Hitler's bunker. Finally, another comparatively hardhearted approach gaining adherents even in the U.S. State Department is simply to be tougher in striking back next time—as the Soviets would probably be. "Tehran would never happen to the Soviets," says U.S. Antiterrorism Expert Robert Kupperman. "If it did, they would wipe out a hunk of the city, even if they lost everybody in their embassy. That has its deterrent effect."
Considering the increased peril that their lives are in, diplomats hardly enjoy hearing that their embassies and their duties are not as important as they once were. But a growing number of critics believe that many of the traditional forms and norms of diplomacy—and the role of the ambassador—are already not only out of date but possibly obsolescent. Italy's Ducci goes so far as to raise the possibility of abolishing permanent missions and replacing them with special roving legates, not unlike those of the 16th century. "An exchange of embassies between friendly countries is at worst superfluous," he argues, "and between unfriendly countries it is at best risky."
Few deny that summitry and shuttle diplomacy have pretty much ended the traditional role of the ambassador as a decision maker and formulator of policy. "Not such a long time ago, instructions came by couriers on horseback or by ship," says a West German diplomat. "Now," says a Bonn Chancellery colleague, "if Schmidt wants to talk to Giscard, he picks up the phone."