A tale of two embassies

Guess which embassy in Berlin is the only one to have closed a public road in front of it? Despite the turmoil in the Middle East and in the wake of the multiple US embassy closures, you can still walk right past the Syrian, Egyptian, Israeli and American embassies. The embassy with the highest level of security in Berlin is the British.

British Embassy, Berlin

The move to close Wilhelmstrasse, the road leading past the British embassy, came in November 2003, after an attack on the British consulate in Istanbul left 32 dead. The British ambassador to Germany at the time, Sir Peter Torry, claimed "the level of threat is now so high that we have to take the risk of a car bomb extremely seriously." Initially the road was completely closed off with 27 blocks of concrete. Since then the concrete has been replaced with bollards and a permanent presence of security guards so that pedestrians and cyclists can get through, but no cars.

The British embassy has a very central location, just around the corner from the Brandenburg Gate. Wilhelmstrasse is a wide road, and used to be a main axis route for traffic, and its closure understandably rankles the locals - a survey showed 90% of Berliners think the road should be reopened. The German embassy in London is on Belgrave Square - imagine the reaction if the German government insisted that the road outside be blocked off.

Even if there had been a terrorist attack in Berlin, permanently closing a major road would be an extreme response. But the road closure was a reaction to an attack in Istanbul. Presumably the reasoning for raising the level of security in Berlin rather than anywhere else was due to the large Turkish diaspora in Germany. Leaving aside the problematic assumption that the Turkish population in Berlin constituted a real threat, you would think that once everything had gone back to normal in Istanbul, Wilhelmstrasse could be reopened. After all, the road outside the British consulate in Istanbul is open to cars! It just goes to show that since 9/11, so-called "security threats" can so easily be manipulated to justify the most absurd decisions and policies, and there is often no logical consistency. The recent closure of 22 US embassies was just the latest example.

Nordic Embassies, Berlin

The most paranoid embassy in Berlin is the British. At the other end of the spectrum are the Nordic embassies. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland have sensibly decided to club together in one building, and it operates as an open house. One of the headings on their website is "canteen." Monday to Friday between 11am and 3pm, the canteen is open to the public, and offers a three course meal for under 10 Euros. You can see the menu online and you can plan your visit accordingly - today you have the choice of beef roulade, prawn skewers or stuffed mushrooms. At the canteen's long tables you might well find yourself sitting next to diplomats and ambassadors. You might think that this would only be possible with strict security checks. But there are no security scanners, no requirement to leave bags outside, and not even a basic ID check at the entrance.

Of course, the Nordic countries haven't become embroiled in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps Britain is at a greater risk of terrorism than the Scandinavian countries - there has been no equivalent of 7/7 in Stockholm. Except that last year Norway suffered its worst atrocity in decades when Anders Breivik killed 77 on a shooting spree. And across the road from the nordic embassies is the Syrian embassy, arguably a potential target for extremist opponents of Assad's regime. Isn't there a potential risk of a car bomb targeting the Syrian embassy?

The British embassy in Berlin faces no greater threat than the nordic embassies and there is no legitimate justification for maintaining the closure of Wilhelmstrasse. Terrorist attacks are incredibly rare - as Dan Gardner points out in his book Risk, the death toll due to international terrorism in the whole of Western Europe between 1968 and 2007 was 1233. To put this in context, in 2012 1754 people died in road accidents in Britain alone.

The risk of a terrorist attack is incredibly low, but it does exist - the question is how we react. As Phyllis Bennis put it in an article on Aljazeera, 9/11 needn't have changed the world - it was 9/12 that did. Closing Wilhelmstrasse simply gives Britain a bad international reputation. Every day, the thousands of people who walk past are given the impression of a country which is paralysed by fear as the union jack flies above above the bollards and police patrols. The nordic embassies demonstrate a much healthier response which Britain would do well to learn from.