Abstract
There are multiple sources of instability on the world’s oceans. On a state level, geostrategic ambition and competition at sea have become almost inseparable from disputes over maritime territory and sovereignty creating littoral environments rife with geopolitical tension. At the same time, lawlessness, including illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, people smuggling and other transnational, transboundary maritime security threats, is growing in prominence and poses a significant challenge to good order at sea. The ramifications of this new reality at sea directly impinge upon security and stability on land and are driving significant changes in the operationalisation of maritime security and defence.
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Notes
- 1.
However, of course it is necessary to take into account the region-specific contexts and nuances. In East Asia, for instance, government authorities have long been grappling with such transboundary and transnational challenges at sea such as IUU fishing, human trafficking, arms and drugs smuggling, as well as illicit trade. As such, enforcement actions carried out against such lawlessness have long become a part of a traditional set of missions performed by maritime agencies in this region.
- 2.
The increasing emphasis by major so-called Western powers on the free and open use of the seas particularly in East and South Asia, but also in Europe and the Arctic is a demonstration of the importance of this issue. See Alex N. Wong, Briefing on the Indo-Pacific Strategy, US Department of State, April 2, 2018, https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/04/280134.htm; Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Priority Policy for Development Cooperation FY 2017, April 2017, 9–10, https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000259285.pdf.
- 3.
Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, “Beyond Seablindness: A New Agenda for Maritime Security Studies,” International Affairs 93, no. 6 (2017): 1297–1298.
- 4.
Lyle J. Morris, “Crossing Interagency Lines: Enhancing Navy-Coast Guard Cooperation in Gray Zone Conflicts of East Asia,” Asia-Pacific Journal of Ocean Law and Policy 3 (2018): 278–279.
- 5.
Ian Speller, Understanding Naval Warfare (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 154.
- 6.
Prabhakaran Paleri, Coast Guards of the World and Emerging Maritime Threats, Ocean Policy Studies, Special ed. (Tokyo: Ocean Policy Research Foundation and The Nippon Foundation, 2009), 51.
- 7.
Ian Speller, Understanding Naval Warfare, 154–155.
- 8.
Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), 311.
- 9.
Bernard Cole, Asian Maritime Strategies: Navigating Troubled Waters (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 33.
- 10.
Examples of this include the mass movement of refugees across the Mediterranean since 2015 or the use of the sea as a means of transport for terrorist and other criminal activities. For an overview of these issues, see United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Combatting Transnational Organised Crime Committed at Sea, Issue Paper (New York: United Nations, 2013).
- 11.
See Lyle Morris, “Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty: The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia,” Naval War College Review 70, no. 2 (2017): 75–112.
- 12.
See United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The Sea Route to Europe: The Mediterranean Passage in the Age of Refugees (New York: UNHCR, 2015).
- 13.
See Rolf Tamnes and Kristine Offerdal, “Introduction,” in Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic: Regional Dynamics in a Global World, ed. Rolf Tamnes and Kristine Offerdal (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 1–11.
- 14.
It is important to note that this clear delineation may for some countries exist more in theory than in practice, especially when the navy, for example, has to step in to intervene on behalf of its MLEA counterpart simply because the latter lacks the requisite capability to perform certain tasks.
- 15.
Till (2009), 315.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Per M. Norheim-Martinsen, “New Sources of Military Change—Armed Forces as Normal Organisations,” Defence Studies 16, no. 3 (2016), 312–326, 319–320.
- 18.
See Christian Bueger, “What Is Maritime Security?” Marine Policy 53 (2015), 159–164.
- 19.
Paleri, Coast Guards of the World and Emerging Maritime Threats, 189.
- 20.
Harold J. Kearsley, Maritime Power and the Twenty-First Century (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1992), 46.
- 21.
“Vietnam Coast Guard—Core Force in National Security Protection,” The Voice of Vietnam, August 28, 2018.
- 22.
Theo Farrell, “The Dynamics of British Military Transformation,” International Affairs 84, no. 4 (2008), 783.
- 23.
Bueger, 163.
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Bowers, I., Koh, S.L.C. (2019). Introduction. In: Bowers, I., Koh, S. (eds) Grey and White Hulls. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9242-9_1
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