Sea Control 349 - Maritime Security Approaches of European NATO Members with Julian Pawlak and Dr. Antoni Pienkos
00:00 Hello, Hashimates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guests today are Julian Pawlak and Dr. Anthony Piancos. They published a report writing on behalf of the Casimir Pulaski Foundation entitled One Team, One Playground, Various Players, Maritime Security Approaches of European NATO Members. So Julian, Antony, thank you for coming on today. I'd like to start by asking each of you to introduce yourselves a little bit to our audience. So Julian, would you like to start?
00:38 Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Jared, for having us. Yeah, my name is Julian Pavlak. I'm a research associate with the German Armed Forces University in Hamburg and the German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies. It's the think tank of the German Bundeswehr. Well, thank you very much. And Antoni, how about you? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Thank you very much for the invitation. It's a great pleasure. Just to shortly introduce myself,
01:10 I have a few years think tank background, Polish think tanks, private ones. And now I'm working at the defense industry, Polish armament group, where I'm a member of the team responsible for delivering new frigates for Polish Navy. So it's quite connected with the subject we will also probably discuss today. And in 2020, I finished my PhD thesis at Warsaw University, connected with NATO maritime dimension.
01:44 Well, thank you both again for coming on. As a reminder, the audience, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So Julian, I'll start with you. Did you come up with a common definition for maritime security for this paper and what was the definition that you settled on or what's your personal definition yeah important question and i think as you pointing out with the question
02:07 correctly the term maritime security is a broad one so if we remind us of the maritime security matrix by christian brueger there are four directions of maritime security national security, speak sea power, marine environment, economic development or blue economy, and human security. So in this report, we concentrate on the security aspect or the naval dimension and the maritime security approaches as the analysis titles are there with the state's approaches on how to gain or achieve their maritime security we look briefly at their naval legacy and concentrate on the current strategic context the maritime security interests and the duties of the naval forces and anthony how did you define maritime security if i just may supplement what julian
03:07 said i think it's important to state that maritime security for me is a kind of process not a state of affairs so it's not given as a gift you need to constantly take action to to secure this this this process but if you succeed you can then secure the free flow of goods by the sea space neutralize some threats for your infrastructure onshore and offshore and pursue also some other national interests. So I think it's a very important part of securing the whole national security. But as I mentioned, it's very important to see this idea as a process because when we analyze, for example, these countries in our report,
04:05 We see that some countries, for example, try to maybe not treat it as a kind of process you need to secure itself, but rather as a kind of gift from, for example, international organizations. and then your maritime security can be obsolete. And I think that's the most important issue here. So that's a big part of the discussion, yes. Well, thank you. As a just note to the listener, we are recording this on 26 March. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is ongoing. So there's something that we don't touch on in the course of this discussion
04:54 that's happened since then. that's that's the reason why but your answer Anthony leads us right into our next question how and why did you choose to focus on Poland Portugal and Greece yeah we choose them because the study is based on NATO's core which is traditionally maritime in nature the North Atlantic as its geographical focal point which is also presented in the alliance's name as we all know but nato's maritime domain is more than the north atlantic and because of that the report is motivated by stressing the diverse landscape of nato's maritime sphere by looking at the maritime footprint of some of the member states so it was suitable to identify
05:41 states with different approaches and from different geographical directions besides the three cases of france norway and germany we choose poland which represents the group of central and eastern european member states at the baltic and black sea for instance greece as a case from the mediterranean region whilst portugal is a maritime nation with a broad outreach extensive coastlines and exclusive economic zones in the north atlantic so what those cases do is helping to underline the maritime plurality existing in NATO. Well, let's start with Poland then. What is Poland's historical relationship with the sea and what are its current maritime interests?
06:28 Oh, well, it's a very important question. I think I'm from Poland and I can say that in Poland, besides that maritime security is not the most important issue in the Security discussions in Poland, but the question of connections with the sea, historical connection, the naval heritage of Poland, it's a hot subject in the, let's say, professional discussion regarding the security issues in Poland. From the very beginning of Polish statehood, we have a sea connection, we have a sea access, to be honest, most of the time very broad one. Of course, mostly in the Baltic Sea, with just a short period also with the Black Sea access, but it was a really broad one. But during the First Polish Republic, meaning from the very beginning of the statehood till the partition period in 18th, 19th century, we had no clear and ambitious naval policy.
07:52 To be honest, most of the powers in Poland were not concerned, let's say, with the naval policy, with building naval forces or even conducting, let's say, more maritime policy, like conducting the commercial shipping or something like that. It might look strange because, for example, we have a really outstanding export of grain and wood for the shipbuilding industry in Western European countries. a lot of polish people's gain a huge fortune on on this export but still it was conducted not by polish ships or even by companies or entities connected with poland but mostly from other countries like netherlands or united kingdom that was changed between two world wars Then the Second Polish Republic changed the view on the sea matters and started to conduct really sea-oriented policy connected with building Gdynia seaport, buying some naval assets in Western countries. So it was a really short 20-year period, yes, but with really intensive naval policy, which was hardly ended by the Second World War.
09:43 And with the September 1939, with the withdrawing of most of Polish naval forces to United Kingdom, just at the beginning of the war, what was planned, to be honest, but what changed and influenced the discussions about naval forces still today, to be honest, in Poland. because still we have a lot of commentators in Poland which mentioned this case as an argument against the naval forces build-up. So that was a turning point in naval policy. And then we have a Cold War, which was even worse because we have no possibility to conduct independent policy also in the
10:40 sea sphere so that was the last point which built the situation when we don't have a policy, naval policy naval maritime approach and also
10:56 not a wide support of Polish peoples for building naval forces or even discussing it more broadly in the public domain. So this is the one point. And the second very opposite is Polish maritime interest, where we have very strong connections with the sea,
11:26 growing each day, especially now in this case with Ukrainian war, when every European country talk about building energy independency from Russian oil and gas. And Poland started a few years ago with building an LNG terminal in Świnoujście in the western part of Poland. Also Baltic Pipe and many, many other investments making Poland probably in the next year
12:00 totally independent from russian supplying suppliers of natural gas and the same but in maybe not so intensive ways the situation with the oil and russian imported oil and also offshore wind infrastructure we in this year many decisions regarding building this wind offshore farms were made by polish authorities so in upcoming years we can see that almost 20 percent of power in polish system will be supplied by the offshore wind farms if everything goes well so we see that it's a very strange situation let's say in the european context that we have from one side we have very weak uh maybe not weak but the national the heritage connected with the sea is not a good one and we can we don't have a experience from the past with naval policy and
13:16 the necessity of conducting it and on the second we are very very strong dependent on the naval police naval on the sea and on the maritime trade and so on so it's it's a kind of very specific situation in the european context i think no other country in europe has such a such a complicated situation regarding the relations between the country and the sea well what's the governing document for modern polish national security and how is that document treat the maritime domain? The main document is Polish or Poland's national security strategy from 2020. And the main conclusion we found or we took from it is, as Anthony just pointed out in the historic context, that the maritime domain as a whole is still marginalized
14:19 in the polish security discourse so this document contains only two guidelines for assessing what interests poland has in the maritime domain to boost the economic development of the country and to increase the diversification of oil and gas supply sources by expanding the imports and import capacities and to build also new entry points to the polish system so a very economic standpoint. However, in the context of security, there's only one remark, of course, regarding Russia and mentioning, for instance, abilities in the Baltic Sea region, its exercises, or also activities of hybrid nature. Importantly to note is that there are two documents from 2017, which point into two different directions so you have on the one hand poland's strategic concept
15:22 for maritime security so an explicit concept for the maritime domain which explicitly is arguing on the relevance of the maritime domain for poland and how to deal with it effectively on the other you have a specific defense concept of the republic of poland and keeping in mind that both documents have been published in the same year the defense concept only at one point mentions the navy and the baltic sea in particular stating that the navy will also play a significant role by defending our coastline and denying enemy supremacy over the Southern Baltic Sea. So this contrast exemplifies the difficult position
16:11 for the Polish Navy in the current context. And what's the state of the modern Polish Navy? Oh, it's a really long story, again connected with this heritage we discussed earlier because the current shape of the Polish Navy is still strongly connected with the fact that the Polish Navy was a part of the Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War times. And the role of the Polish Navy in this context was just auxiliary forces
16:51 connected mainly with the amphibious operations, minesweeping, and auxiliary missions like rescue ones and so on. So the compositions of the forces
17:07 was mainly the big amount of minesweepers, auxiliary vessels like reconnaissance, rescue, and and so on and just a small small forces of strike units like one destroyer on something like that and few submarines and it's still clearly visible but of course we have some
17:38 modernization plans in in for the polish navy uh two main programs in the recent 20 years were to buy new mine hunters freely state-of-the-art mine hunters of magnetic steel so really modern one and the second one was to buy the naval strike missiles onshore based but a big component for sure very important from the defense of our territory
18:16 point of view so not other naval missions of course but from the perspective of our national security here in the eastern flank it's for sure very important one but still that left our
18:32 strike, naval strike component with two Oliver Hazard Prey frigates which need to be decommissioned in upcoming years for sure it's not a question, it's
18:47 necessity to decommission them in let's say five or in the worst case scenario ten years and just one Russian kilo, ex-Russian
19:04 kilo submarine with the rest, the former Norwegian one submarines decommissioned in this year. So very small component. The good information is that last year MOD
19:20 decided to launch the project of acquiring new free frigates for Polish Navy which will be I think really change the situation in Polish Navy but still we need to at least eight years
19:38 to acquire three of them and to put them on the service and because it will be built in Poland, it's the first thing and the second one is that Polish not have a big experience
19:54 in such a shipbuilding program so it will be a challenge for sure and it's also a plan to buy some submarines it's in the polish armed forces modernization plan till 2035 but still it's a really remote perspective now i think and bearing in mind the situation in ukraine i think the priorities will be still again changing more at land forces and anti-air defense
20:30 anti-tank weapons and so on I think the frigates which might be a last program in few years for the Polish Navy sorry just one another batch of
20:47 mine hunters coming in next years three of them so total number of sticks So that's the current situation of Polish Navy. Well, as we see the news trickle out of the Black Sea, I mean, those mine hunters may be very important in the near future. So I definitely don't want to ignore those.
21:08 And it's a specialization of Polish Navy, mine hunting. So I think it's an important impact for NATO forces. So for sure it's a good player. Let's shift over to Portugal. Well, how is the Portuguese perspective different from the Polish one? Yeah, what we have seen in the case of Poland is how the focus on the continental or land domain, of course, defined by an obvious threat on Poland's and NATO's eastern flank, makes this domain traditionally a more present and important one in Polish security and defense efforts. So the maritime domain is seen rather complementary, as Anthony pointed out. And Portugal, literally on the other side, is a different picture.
22:00 So it is almost entirely surrounded by the sea with only one neighbor, Spain, leaving it far from any comparable threat or aggressor in its environment. And whilst Poland's direct sea access is limited to the Baltic, the Portuguese maritime areas, including its exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf, are corresponding to 42 times its land territory. Its search and rescue zone of responsibility amounts to almost 6 million square kilometers. Hence, with such responsibility, of course, the perspective and interest in the maritime domain is different. The Portuguese Navy has to follow Portugal's commitment to its islands in the Atlantic, the Azores and Madeira, but also in supporting, for instance, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, particularly in the Portuguese-speaking countries and community as its former colonies, for instance. Yet simultaneously, the Navy is committed to EU operations and also NATO's collective defense.
23:11 So the Defesa de Portugal 2015 document states that the Navy should possess, for example, amphibious and submarine capabilities, and that two frigates simultaneously should participate in NATO operations as the standing NATO maritime groups. So in the end, the contrast of both approaches summarizes also the challenge for NATO to agree on the several member states' interests. And after all, whilst the Polish Navy can be described as seen with lesser relevance as the Polish Land and Air Forces, the The Portuguese Navy and the maritime domain at all is an important tool for the country, and if one would be able to rate the most relevant service of its armed forces. So a follow-up question is, has Portugal been able to fulfill its own ambition there to have two frigates participating at all times in the standing NATO maritime groups? Or is it more a matter of they have one deployed and then one ready for any other commitments?
24:24 I know that they are frequently deploying into the standing NATO maritime groups. I'm not so sure if it's all the time two frigates, actually. I don't know if Anthony knows, but at least they are frequently deploying vessels there. That's for sure. i just cannot that i'm i'm pretty sure that it's not a two at that at once it's uh but uh i've two years ago i conducted a study about participation of naval forces european naval forces in standing nato maritime groups and portugal was one of the most active countries
25:12 in these formations. So I think that's the clear sign of also the Portugal maritime ambitions, especially that they are not really
25:27 concerned about the eastern flank or Mediterranean situation, which are the main focus of the standing NATO maritime groups in the recent years. So it's also the sign of remote ambitions of portugal i think then we'll shift to greece how is greece balancing its own maritime ambitions nato commitments and then ongoing tension with another nato member turkey well so it's one of most interesting cases i think in nato it's the the frictions between
26:01 Turkey and Greece and I think firstly we should emphasize that NATO is one of the main factors stabilizing the relations between these two countries with a really quite long history
26:18 of doing that of the very beginning of membership of these two countries in NATO so NATO is quite experienced in this matter But it's also clearly visible that both countries try to use their relations with NATO countries, specific NATO countries, to leverage the situation on this dispute between them. Like, for example, France's support for Greece or also, of course, the United States with the very changing situation regarding the relations between Turkey and the United States and Greece also trying to take advantage of these frictions.
27:10 So, I think what is really important looking at this matter is that we can, I think, raise the thesis that the main task of Greece naval forces in the peace time is securing the territory integrity, which is pretty obvious. But it's not maybe so obvious for other European countries, NATO countries, that it's the main concern of the Greece naval forces is to have still an active presence in these dispute waters between Greece and Turkey. So that's, I think, also the main driver of Greece naval forces modernization. so it's what is also not so so obvious for other european countries because it's not the participation for example in nato maritime groups or connected forces of of western countries but i think the main driver is the the these disputes with with turkey what is also interesting i think that both countries during the many years are acquiring pretty the same even naval assets like german submarines of the same type or frigates what clearly indicates us that
28:38 they have they might have the same this is the same view on this dispute that that's the main driver of the naval forces modernizations because they are acquiring the same assets to compete. But from the other hand you have also
29:01 really strong Greece naval assets participation in these standing NATO maritime groups. Of course mainly when they were conducting operation in the western mediterranean and in the black sea so it's more regional context not for example we don't have any greece frigates in standing nato maritime group one in baltic sea but still a big footprint
29:29 mainly of course connected with the migra migration crisis in the aegean sea of course and other illegal activities in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. To sum up, maybe looking at all of these issues so NATO membership disputes with
29:58 Turkey and migration crisis, all these challenges which Greece is facing is facing we can see that greece have really i think a big potential of naval forces especially relatively with connection with the economic uh power and with the population and so on so it's one i think important remark The second one is that Greece has also a biggest merchant fleet raising the Greece flag all over the world.
30:45 But still, we can clearly see that the maritime interests of Greece are mainly regional oriented. So it's, I think, a very interesting case when we have a really global footprint of your merchant vessels all over the world and still your naval assets are mainly close to your seashores and very regional oriented. So it's, I think, also the interesting case. And that's one of the reasons why we choose Greece also in this report as an example. What overlap do you see between the strategic documents for these different countries? oh that's of course we have 20 i think 25 nato member members with c-axis or even 26 so
31:53 of course the c-interests of most all of them are very diverse but we can i think in these cases which we analyzed we can see the one main point which is highlighted in all the national documents of all of these countries and is clearly visible in their operations is nato it's maybe my may sounds trivial but it's i think it's very important matter that it's the i think the only one thing connected all these countries that's why the nato 360 degrees approach is so important because we have really different interests but of course we can see some group of countries connected with some regions or some threats like for example eastern eastern flank countries like poland baltic states
32:55 romania very regional oriented on the securing the eastern flank with not uh with not navy as a main priority but mostly concerned with denying to conducting the operation by russian forces in the baltic and black sea the second group is the countries mainly concerned about the situation in the mediterranean some legal activities there like spain italy or greece as a i think really good example of this group of countries the third one we can see i think it's like portugal the countries mainly concerned with the security of sea line of communication not only in the in the seas around europe but also in more remote regions like persian gulf or arabian sea and so on like portugal netherlands denmark i think maybe some specifics of course
34:06 in which case but so we can see some a group of countries with some similar interests but i think the the main issue connected all of them is is nato and it's a i think a good information and a good sign that all of the countries see this clearly as a one of the main uh connecting Julian maybe you would like to add something yeah if I would only add like this issue of overlap represents as mentioned in the beginning
34:42 this core somehow of not only of this study but of yeah again NATO's nature the plurality of interests and of approaches which is yet bound within this one alliance and to accept that some
34:58 member states have other interests concerns or fears that oneself but keeping in mind that this overlap can be found in the strategic interests so of course in the maritime domain as good order at sea and free and secure sea lines of communication but also in general in peace prosperity democratic values also and that in the end as nato says one nation would stand for all and all for one. Well, thank you. And one final question, Julian, I believe this will probably go to you, but I told you both prior recording, we'd largely skip over France and Germany. It's not that I don't care about either of those countries. I mean, I spent three years sailing around with the Germans as an exchange officer and another two years teaching at the
35:48 Führungsakademie in Hamburg. So I care quite a bit about Germany, but we've discussed them both pretty extensively to date on the podcast. But I did want to ask the literal 100 billion euro question for germany with a massive uptick in defense spending on the table uh dependent of course on bundestag approval um what percentage of that do you see going to the german navy and what would the navy want to do with it or what are you hearing that the navy might want to do with it yeah very uh very interesting and timely question yeah as you know um since nato's two percent target was established in 2006 and confirmed in 2014, Germany was all the time reliable in not achieving the target over the years. And its defense budget is currently somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5 GDP.
36:36 So this special fund, however, is intended mostly to deal with urgent and concrete issues and will not really help to achieve the 2% target over the years or decades. And the Navy actually profited last year in 2021 actually a lot from the then-made procurement decisions for example the decision to buy two 212 cd submarines or to acquire the p8 prosaicon maritime patrol aircraft to bridge the time until the franco-german moss maritime airborne weapon system will be finished and therewith at the moment it's critical to assess if the german navy will actually profit a lot from this special fund with the invasion of ukraine accordingly to or accordingly the focus lies predominantly on land and air forces in the discourse or debate to support territorial and
37:39 collective defense and in addition Germany will lead NATO's YGTF the very high readiness joint task force next year and should be equipped properly so the navy actually as you ask in your question could make usage of some additional vessels though there is the option of adding two more planned F-126 frigates to the fleet or buying even more P-8 Poseidon but yeah again this would represent long-term process processes and yesterday actually the chief of german navy vice admiral kark said in an interview that he told the defense minister he has seven priorities for the navy the first three are ammunition ammunition ammunition and the second three are spare parts spare parts spare parts and communication devices so you see such proposal
38:33 can be fulfilled rather quickly compared to the acquisition of new vessels and it's even more realistic than the wish list of large procurement new vessels etc so it's still interesting because there's
38:49 no final decision made public yet so it remains to be seen how the money will be spent eventually Thank you for the comprehensive answer. I had no great expectation that We would see a sudden influx of vessels into the German Navy.
39:06 The vessel procurement, as fun as it sounds like, is normally like a decade-long process. So if we were talking about a three-year time window to get through $100 billion, you could procure some long lead time items that you used to build later. But I don't see how you would use those. You can't go from a standing start to a vessel within three years, I don't think. I mean, I guess you could. there is a pretty massive shipbuilding industry but uh that's you're talking about retooling it and having it do other things than what it's currently doing yeah true and maybe just to add you also need the personnel and to train the personnel and you know already uh yeah are you
39:49 are looking for a personal at the moment as well so um yeah that would be the next thing but yeah we'll see well that is unfortunately all that we have time for i'd like to thank my guests Julian Pavlak and Dr. Antony Pienkos. Julian, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? You can find me on Twitter via you Pavlak. And what I'm working on, I think the last time I've been guest here at SeaControl,
40:16 I stated that my main project is my PhD research and it still is. So I still have some work to do. I'm looking at security strategies in Northern and Eastern Europe. And yeah, this continues to be my main task to be finished in the future and Anthony
40:34 where can we find you and what's your next project okay so I'm not very visible at social medias because of my now current personal professional position at Polish Armament Group but my
40:50 I think main project now it's to publish my PhD thesis I think it's now it's even more important to do it from Polish perspective bearing in mind the current
41:07 situation of Ukraine and eastern flank and maybe we should think about the second part of our report with Ljubljana with some other countries because we have still only six coverts so
41:22 a lot of them ahead of us to discuss and built an even more broad view on European NATO countries in maritime interest so it's I think the second idea
41:40 to elaborate I look forward to your comprehensive report on the Swiss Navy in the GEMT state but thank you both again for coming on to listeners thank you for tuning in we'll see you next time thank you
41:55 © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon
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