Sea Control - Sea Control 472 - Littoral Security with Dr. Prakash Gopal

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Dr. Prakash Gopal joins the program to discuss his dissertation topic, littoral security. Dr Prakash Gopal is a former Indian naval officer with over two decades of experience in maritime security operations, policy and strategy. He was a Research Fellow at the National Maritime Foundation, India from 2016-18. In 2018 Prakash took up a PhD position at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, University of Wollongong. He completed his PhD in April 2023. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Today I'm joined by Dr. Prakash Gopal, and we're going to discuss his dissertation topic, Literal Security. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime peace and security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. And if you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. I think our latest offer is our annual fiction contest. So if you're interested, that's SimSec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps.

You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, shipmates, and welcome aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Dr. Prakash Bhopal, and we're going to discuss his dissertation on littoral security. I guess I should have asked before we even started, Prakash, how are you pronouncing, are you saying littoral or literal? Littoral, just the way you said it then. Okay, literal security it is.

But, Prakash, welcome aboard. Could you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, please? Hi, Jared. Thanks. It's great to be here on SimSec. It's a podcast that I've listened to for many years now and I greatly admire. So it's a real privilege to be on board with you here today. So my name is Prakash. I'm a former Indian Navy surface warfare officer. I served in the Indian Navy for about two decades. And then I got drawn into the academic side of what navies do, which

is why I found myself in the PhD program here at the University of Wollongong in lovely New South Wales, Australia. So I've just completed my PhD, graduated in March, which is a huge sort of monkey off the back of my shoulders. And yeah, my dissertation was on littoral security and study of Australian and Indian architectures in that space. so let me ask one congratulations on having wrapped up in march and any plans for this dissertation to make its way out into the wild in something other than podcast form oh yes indeed in fact that's one of the things that i'm just begun work on which is to convert this into a monograph and and publish it into a book it's it's uh it's in a pretty decent shape

as it is. But, you know, a PhD dissertation is not quite something that people enjoy reading. And my challenge is to make it sort of enjoyable for the potential book reader to be able to read that and get something out of it. Yes. Well, as someone who reads a lot of dissertations, I can confirm to you that the academic writing style has nothing to do with like the art of the written word that most academics are capable of and for whatever reason the community chooses to write in that specific manner. But I look forward to seeing it out in print that other people can enjoy what I did. But as a reminder to listeners, all opinions today are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated.

So why did you choose this as your dissertation topic? There's a bit of a personal story behind that. So, as I mentioned, I'm essentially a Navy guy, served as a surface warfare officer in the Indian Navy, and did all the big ship stuff out at sea, blue water stuff that Navy people tend to do. But I was fortunate in the sense that one of my staff appointments was as the naval advisor to the head of the Indian Coast Guard. And that appointment really allowed me to see the way the Coast Guard functioned quite

up close and personal. Now, as a Navy person, I always imagined the Coast Guard to be a Navy for shallower waters. But in India, particularly, after the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, the Coast Guard had been given quite a wide mandate, and that sort of overlapped with the jurisdiction of the police on land and customs and fisheries and all those agencies. And I saw how the Coast Guard was trying to engage these multiple stakeholders to develop a robust security framework. It was then that I realized that there were gaps in security infrastructure at the junction of the maritime and terrestrial domains. It was simultaneously nobody's land or water and everybody's land or water. And moreover, these areas are vulnerable to threats

from both the maritime and terrestrial domains. And that really got me thinking about this literal space. And here I am nearly a decade after that stint with a PhD dissertation behind me. But more importantly, I'm convinced that this is a space that requires a perspective that's different to the way we approach maritime and terrestrial or territorial security. Now, discourse on the literal space is not new.

A lot of people have written about it, but most such works engage with the role of the literal space in the context of maritime security. What had not been studied adequately was the impact of maritime and terrestrial domains on the interface between these two, which is essentially what my research seeks to do. Your primary argument here is the literal needs to be viewed as a functional as opposed to a geographical zone. What is the difference between those two? Now, this question, Jared, is quite central to the research.

One of the first tasks for me was to define the literal area. Unless I had a working, practical definition of the literal space, I could not describe its security requirements. And honestly, I got a bit stuck at that point. My first instinct was that of a principal warfare officer, to pick up a divider and measure ranges on a chart and try and figure out what distance from the coastline on either side could be called the literal area. And as you can imagine, this was an absolutely non-productive approach. And I was very and truly stuck at that stage and

having serious doubts as to whether what I had set out to study was a thing at all. But then like all fortunate PhD students, my supervisor came to my rescue and he asked me in quite simple terms to list out some key features that I thought were common to literal areas in most states and that would require to be protected against threats. So I made a table of such critical facilities that are generally found in most littoral areas and voila, it became quite apparent to me that for the purposes of security, there could be no uniformly prescriptive methodology for defining the littoral area. And moreover, it's not useful to define that space using purely geophysical parameters as distance from the coastline, because such characterizations are unable to account for variations in vulnerabilities, threats, and risks across different coastal and offshore areas. So instead, I proposed a definition of the literal space on the basis of factors such as the presence of critical infrastructure facilities, population centers, and the simultaneous influence

of maritime and terrestrial domains. Again, this is not a new approach. In fact, it's very similar to most areas of national security interest, which are never really based on purely geophysical characteristics, but more on what lies within that space that is of significant interest to a state. But of course, being attuned to the comfort of finite numbers, such as the limits of territorial seas and the exclusive economic zones, it took me some time to get to a definition that makes sense from a security policy and strategy perspective. Hence, the emphasis on a functional rather than a geographical space. What are the security requirements in Littoral and how are those different from other areas? A basic premise of the literal area as I see it is that whatever needs security within that space faces threats from both the maritime and terrestrial domains. Now, these could include deliberate acts of terrorism, sabotage, illegal criminal activities, and even natural disasters.

So when we have an area that's susceptible to threats from two different domains, a security architecture is not the mere amalgamation or the arithmetic sum of arrangements in the terrestrial and maritime domains. There is an important piece in the middle which consists of enabling structures that promote a coordinated approach to security in that literal space. For instance, a port. The fact that you have the coast guard patrolling the seabed approaches to a port, and the police force doing the same on the landward side is not adequate. How are they talking to each other? Have their jurisdictional rights been established within

the national legal regime? How will they engage with, say, an IUU fishing problem, which involves illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing in the maritime domain, and unloading of the catch on the terrestrial domain. So how do the Navy, the Coast Guard, the State Police, the fisheries folks speak to each other? And all these things require distinct policy, legal, organizational, and operational aspects to be put into place. I must also qualify that countries already do these things, some better than others.

But what was missing is a framework that identifies the critical elements that states can take, adapt, mold as per their requirements, and put in place. This research identifies the vital elements of such a framework and shows how they can come together to provide a robust security architecture. I make an important assertion in my dissertation, which I think is worth repeating here. A robust, literal security framework does not entail the creation of new organizations or vast, unwieldy, and expensive structures. It is not about that at all. What it is about is focusing some time and thought on creating, enabling, and coordinating structures. It is the policy and legal aspects that are most efficient in my view. If we can get those right, then it's just a matter of identifying who does what and then go ahead and doing it.

It's not about new ships or boats or weapons or people. It's just about how to get the best out of the agencies that are already involved in that effort. You studied Australia and India for this. What architecture already exists in those two countries to facilitate liberal security? These countries are very different. which is exactly the reason why I picked them. The rationale being, if I could identify common elements in the arrangements in these countries with such diverse needs,

those would most likely be the critical ingredients of a universal literal security architecture. Now, there are, of course, some common elements. Both countries are heavily dependent on the seas for trade, energy security, and economic activity. Both countries spend close to 2% of their GDP on defence Both are considered middle powers with some influence in their immediate region

and an outlook that promotes a cooperative approach to stabilising the international order But there are significant dissimilarities The Australian coastline is nearly 5 times longer than India's thereby bringing a much larger area into littoral considerations. There are stark differences in the nature of the respective neighbourhoods, which imply that the type and intensity of threats faced by each of these countries vary significantly.

And, as I realise, the defence and homeland security organisations within Australia and India are also vastly different. Australia does not have a coast guard, but has developed a homeland security structure that is drawn from the post-911 U.S. security architecture. So the Department of Home Affairs in Australia is the principal ministry that engages with littoral security needs. Now, within the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Border Force is the principal agency that, together with the Defence Force, deals with the issue of littoral security. Now, in Australia, the Maritime Border Command is a really interesting multi-agency organization,

which is also Australia's de facto coast guard. It utilizes personnel and assets from both the Border Force and the Defense Force to conduct the entire range of civil maritime security operations, from surveillance to interdiction, with support from other agencies. In India, the literal security architecture was significantly overhauled after the terror attacks of 2008 on the city of Mumbai. Now, India has a coast guard, which together with its navy, is responsible for seaward security of the literal area. Both these agencies come under the Ministry of Defense. But all agencies that deal with landward security of the literal space are state agencies.

And it is in this interface that there are significant policy and legal gaps, creating a coordination vacuum. So the Navy and the Coast Guard share responsibility and accountability without being adequately empowered through legal provisions to execute their charter. So there are some interesting contrasts in the way literal security is exercised in these countries. What recommendations did you have for improving these countries' literal security? Despite the strong urge to do so, I've been somewhat cautious in making very prescriptive recommendations for Australia and India. I've had to constantly get myself off that path, aided by my supervisor, of course. And that's because the aim of examining Australia and India was to validate that literal security requires a distinct framework and that a generic framework can be developed. While I have studied these countries in detail, I'm aware that, as is the case with most national security pursuits,

like the bulk of an iceberg, most material lies hidden in the classified domain. So despite all the research, there is a lot that I don't know. And in a number of aspects, there are several unknown unknowns for me. However, where's the fun in not having an opinion? So I have some recommendations for both countries. I think your supervisor isn't on this call. Just let her rip. Yeah, I think I will take that liberty here.

Your pH done. So you're OK. Yeah. So I think the most important thing, both countries lack a national security strategy, which to my mind is a key requirement for developing effectively. downstream policies. To Australia's credit, however, there is a robust policy framework for littoral security, and I think there is an interesting reason why that's happened. I think it's the nature of the Australian continent, the island nature of the continent

country, that makes all threats to Australia have a maritime and therefore a littoral aspect to it. However, in the case of India, the situation is quite different. India's national security apparatus is under tremendous pressure from diverse sources of threat. The most critical existential threat to India comes from over its land borders, but as the Mumbai incident demonstrated, it cannot afford to neglect its maritime and littoral spaces. So there is a national level prioritization and allocation of resources that is essential in the case of India, which is missing.

And the absence of a national security strategy and downstream policy and legal articulations are acutely felt in such a scenario. But where India's sort of literal security arrangements are really good are in disaster management and cybersecurity. And that's because there is a strong policy foundation for those aspects that enable a robust organizational and operational framework. They've done a commendable job in these two areas, and the results are quite sort of evident. Now, you focused on peacetime security. Why is that? And then how does that situation change in time of war? yes

that was one of the assumptions that I made up front in my dissertation that it would be about peacetime and that's because I think during periods of conflict states establish emergency transient arrangements for security which are high intensity

but are limited in time frame to a short term duration of conflict kind of of time And moreover, these arrangements are governed by the immediate requirements of prevailing or emerging better off in a conflict. They're intense, short-term, whereas peacetime security arrangements are based upon long-term policies, strategies, and operational capabilities that need to be sustained through evolving vulnerability and threat environments. environments. And therefore, the study of peacetime literal security arrangements yields a much accurate

understanding of national security capabilities designed to protect critical facilities. Well, I'm afraid that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Prakash Gopal. Prakash, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Well, I'm available on LinkedIn, Twitter. I tweet with the handle Fathoms1. There's an interesting sort of bit of history to that. I'm six feet tall.

A fathom is six feet, so Fathoms1. And, yeah, I'm continuing to work at ANCORS. I'm working on a couple of very interesting projects here. One is related to Australia's future defense needs and a potentially deteriorating strategic environment in the Western Pacific. And the other on the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative. which is a more comprehensive look at oceans management in the region. And as I mentioned earlier, I've started taking initial steps to publish my PhD research as a book.

So hopefully I'll be able to do that in the next year or so. It's exciting times ahead indeed. Well, I look forward to seeing the book out there in the wild and amplifying it once it gets out there. So please hit us up on Twitter. Happy to support you there. But thank you again for joining us. To the listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

We'll be right back.