Sea Control - Sea Control 517 - Understanding Maritime Security with Dr. Christian Bueger and Dr. Tim Edmunds

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

LinksUnderstanding Maritime Security, by Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, Oxford University Press, May 31, 2024.Sea Control 196 – Blue Crime with Professor Christian Bueger, CIMSEC, August 23, 2020.Sea Control 251 – Undersea, Out of Mind with Dr. Christian Bueger and Dr. Tobias Liebetrau, CIMSEC, May 20, 2021.Sea Control 344 – The Western Indian Ocean’s Militarization Dilemma,CIMSEC, May 12, 2022.Sea Control 225 - IUU Fishing and the Evolution of Sea Shepherd with Dr. Claude Berube, CIMSEC, January 31, 2021.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Today's guests are Dr. Christian Buger, making his fourth appearance on the program, and Dr. Tim Edmonds. Together, they've co-authored a new book, Understanding Maritime Security, which will be released May 31st. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime 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. 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. And now, Kim Ruzman. You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the

Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, Shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guests today are Dr. Christian Brugger and Dr. Tim Edmonds, co-authors of the forthcoming book. I say forthcoming, it'll probably be out by the time we publish this here, but Understanding Maritime Security. You can listen to Christian's previous visits with us on Sea Control 196, Blue Crime and Sea Control 251, Undersea, Out of Mine, and Sea Control 344, The Western Indian Ocean's Militarization Dilemma. So Christian, would you mind starting by refreshing the listeners on the background? You may be the guest we've had on the most since I've been doing this for four years. It's a great pleasure to be back. I'm Christian Bueger. I'm

a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen and have been studying maritime security now for more than a decade. Well, thank you for coming back on. Tim, you're appearing with us for the first time. Could you share a little bit about your background, please? Yeah, so my name is Tim Edmonds. I'm professor of international security and director of the global insecurity center at the university of bristol in the uk uh i also uh co-direct the safe seas network on maritime security with christian and jan stockbrook stockburger at the university of copenhagen and i've been working on maritime security having initially been drawn in to the topic by christian uh for around 10 years now as well he's like that he's like a

gravitational force pulling people into the maritime security discussion for that we are grateful because that's really our audience here. But thank you both again for joining us here today. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions that you're going to hear today are our own and not representative of any of the institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Christian, I'll start with you then. What are the competing visions for how the ocean should be governed and how do we get where we are today? Now, when we are looking into maritime security as a concept and agenda, it's very important actually that it has a long trajectory. The discussion on security at sea quite obviously is an old one and there's a number of foundational

struggles on which maritime security builds up on and in the book we are basically trying to solve that in that we are going through these foundational struggles and one of these foundational struggles is between different visions of how the oceans should be governed and that includes quite obviously the idea of freedom of the sea the idea of the sea as being under territorial control but also the idea that the oceans belong to humankind and these are basically three radically different visions of how we should govern and secure the oceans and that provides the background for contemporary understandings of maritime security that have been developing since the 2000s basically so maritime security is still a young discussion very important

to keep in mind tim what are or were the four waves of the maritime security agenda and what are you sort of forecasting as a potential fifth wave yeah so we we we build on on uh the the analysis that christian's just outlined on the sort of underlying struggles of security at sea to then try and tell the story of the contemporary maritime security agenda as it has developed since the late 1990s as a kind of coherent domain of international policy and international security. And we trace this really to an unsettling of a political order at sea that that appeared to have reached some form of settlement, in part due to the end of the Cold War and the naval confrontation associated with that, but also because the finalisation of UNCLOS had appeared to reach a form of compromise

between the four areas of struggle we outline in the book. And that unsettling came about partly because of a rethinking of what was security and what wasn't, but also the rise of a series of or at least a new attention to a series of non-state security issues at sea. And initially, we look at the first wave of maritime security that was primarily concerned with the problem of maritime terrorism and led to a series of interventions and to try and understand better what was going on at sea, bringing ships and ports into this into the maritime security uh into maritime security discussions uh then we see that consolidate and and develop even further with the rise of with the second wave associated particularly with the rise of piracy um off the off the coast of somalia

which established many of the core components of the maritime security toolkit that we talk about in the book around maritime domain awareness around cooperation in maritime security operations interagency work collaborations with shipping and so on and then a third wave in which subsequent to the to the containment of piracy off the coast of somalia in which many of those structures endured and then broadened out and consolidated the lessons learned from the counter-piracy effort into a whole range of other issues in maritime security whether that was smuggling by sea of various sorts, illicit fishing and so on and so on. And then finally, a fourth wave in which that agenda then proliferates and is spread through capacity building,

but also becomes linked to wider agendas around the blue economy and around blue justice, for example. So we see the kind of this this sort of consolidation of the maritime security agenda as a coherent thing um through the process of these of these four waves and it's spread globally now we we we also indicate a fifth wave which we think we're in the in the middle of um of an we're an emerging fifth wave or perhaps even a new era of maritime security uh that is characterized much more by um a resurgence in in great power competition and geopolitics at sea on the one hand which is leading increasingly to dynamics of militarization and interstate competition when we think about maritime security. But also on the other, a push towards planetary thinking, particularly around

marine environmental degradation and climate change, which has led to things like the 30 by 30 target of the COP 15, but also the finalization of the BBNJ treaty to try and track all these shared global environmental problems that are causing um uh you know such a such a such a marine environmental emergency at sea at the moment i can ask one follow-up for clarification tim when i think about things like the cod wars the turbot wars all these fish wars that we saw occurring but basically from like the 1950s through the 1980s is your contention here then that was kind of wrapped up with the ratification of uncloth because it clarified a lot of the things that people were in conflict about? Yeah, I think, well, UNCLOS helped to settle many of

those issues. And obviously, if we're looking at the Cod Wars, it settled the main bones of contention around the Cod Wars. But we also, in the book, look at the Turbot War, which was in some ways a much more modern confrontation between Canada and Spain over sustainability of turbot stocks in the North Atlantic. And I think that was a much more modern interstate military dispute between states that, of course, took place after UNCLOS. And was not entirely accommodated by UNCLOS. So I think, you know, there is even under UNCLOS, there is significant space for these kinds of these kinds of disputes to take place. And and and of course, the interesting thing about the turbot war was that it was directly linked to issues of sustainability and environmental management of fish stocks, both as a resource and as for their own for their own intrinsic value. Christian, based on everything you've studied and compiled here,

how would you classify the current conflict in the Red Sea? Well, the Red Sea has revealed all the complexity of the maritime security agenda in a fascinating way. First of all, we are looking at a non-state actor equipped with relatively cheap missiles and and drones that can cause a lot of havoc on international shipping we see the limits of naval power today the US Navy and its partners is struggling to protect shipping in an appropriate way and the same time we also see the complexity of different maritime issues and how they connected to each other and the paradigmatic case here was the sinking of the ruby mar

a couple of weeks back a ship that was shot down by missiles was loitering in the red sea for about two weeks and on on the way it actually damaged subsea data cables let's not forget Yet maritime security today is also about a diverse range of maritime infrastructures in the sea. So the anchor damaged the four cables, one of the superhighways connecting Asia and Europe with data. And now basically the ship sank and we're looking at an environmental catastrophe here as well 17,000 tons of fertilizer

would probably turn the Red Sea into a Green Sea if the salvage operation is not going on very soon. So the Red Sea in that sense shows us how interwoven environmental issues are, non-state security threats, the limits of naval power today. And it is hard to imagine how the crisis will actually be resolved anytime soon.

And perhaps to add one additional dimension, we also see how fragile the consent between international navies in the meantime is. We are no longer in this phase where everyone acts in concert with each other. we have seen in addressing Somali piracy in 2008 to 2012. So yes, there's a basic constant among states that maritime security is very important, but there's an increasingly less common understanding of how these issues should actually be addressed. And in that sense,

the Red Sea is a good reflection of what we call the fifth wave, where things become a little bit bit more complicated, as Tim has explained earlier. And for the listeners, I'll timestamp this to recording on the 30th of March. So if there's something that's happened in the Red Sea after that timeframe, that's the reason that we're not addressing it or talking about it. Tim, what was the chase of the thunder and how does it illustrate the difficulties of enforcement at sea? So the chase, in the book, we talk about the chase of the thunder as an illustration of this of the kind of scale and and challenge that illegal fishing uh activities pose globally and the thunder the chase of the thunder is a really striking case it's actually a documentary

i think from 2018 that you can watch on it if if you want to try and find it um about the pursuit of a notorious illegal fishing vessel called the thunder uh that was uh fishing for patagonian tooth fish in antarctic waters and the thunder had uh had been engaged in rapacious uh industrial scale uh illegal fishing activities for many years and in fact had been placed on an interpol purple notice which is the most most uh perhaps the most one of the most significant um uh sort of most wanted indicators for for illegal fishing vessels um from interpol um and was finally brought to bear actually by by an NGO Sea Shepherd um fishing in waters in the Antarctic and then pursued over a period of 110 days to nearly 10,000 nautical miles in a chase that

involved um basically um Sea Shepherd vessels trying to keep uh keep in touch and with with the thunder to see where it was so we didn't lose sight of it but also to try and disrupt illicit fishing activities and eventually the thunder was running out of fuel reported a collision and began to sink off the coast of Sao Tome and Princep and was arrested and its crew was arrested by local maritime enforcement and later prosecuted or at least the officers were and the case is really interesting for lots of reasons first because it shows the integration of of various um maritime domain awareness uh centers to try and track and coordinate between different actors to keep a track on exactly where this ship where this vessel

was and what it was doing so it couldn't just disappear again it shows the significance and importance of um ngos like sea shepherd in playing an actual enforcement role and actually assisting in the capacities of states to address to address challenges like illegal fishing but also I think perhaps perhaps more more than that is illustrative of the of the challenges both of enforcement and prosecution in dealing with illegal fishing at scale illicit fishing is big business the thunder was operating at an industrial scale I think it had caught something like 76 million million dollars worth of illegal fish. It was difficult to track for many years because it was operating at sea with its AIS turned off. It could essentially act with impunity.

And even when it was identified, prosecution was very difficult. It, in fact, had been caught under the purple notice, I think, in Malaysia that same year and had been let go with a fine of around $90,000 and then continued its activities. When it finally was caught and the crew was caught, the vessel had actually been operating under seven different flags over the course of its lifetime, seven different names. So tracking that vessel over the course of its activities is an indication of how tricky that is.

While prosecutions were brought against three of the officers, leading to a to a significant fine um the beneficial ownership of the vessel was still unclear wrapped in shell companies based in nigeria in seychelles and so on um and in the end it was the officers rather than the owners who were prosecuted because precisely because uh of the of the clandestine illicit nature of um of the vessel and the and the and the ownership regime it was operating under. I'll pause here for the listeners. If you want to learn a little bit more about Sea Shepherd, we'll link it in the show notes, but you can go back to Sea Control 225 with Dr. Claude Baraby. Also just sort of highlight the point is like, I think a lot

of people are going to have hesitation initially thinking that this is a more of a dry policy document. Your book is filled with stories like the one you just outlined, which is a gripping reading from chapter to chapter as you hear all these stories that are not widely reported. There is this niche audience that pays attention to them. But if you're not in that niche audience, stories like the Thunder completely elude your awareness. And this was the first time reading about it. So I found it fascinating. Christian, I'll start with you for the final question here. I found chapter seven most interesting as it introduces all the tools available to maritime security practitioners. Could you explain what you mean by informality and experimentalism

and why those tools are common for maritime security? Yeah, informality and experimentalism are forms of dealing with the high complexity and the sheer number of actors that are usually involved in maritime security. And my favorite chapter of the book is actually the chapter just before that which is the who is who of maritime security and as we're trying to show there in a systematic way how many different kinds of actors are actually involved in maritime security on a governmental level sometimes it can be up to 23 different agencies and departments but quite obviously also the industry is very diverse We talk a lot about shipping industries, diverse in its own right, but quite obviously there are

other maritime industries, the energy industry and so on. There's quite a lot of international organizations involved in one way or the other. There's no central entity for maritime security on an international level. There's no UN office for maritime security, for instance. Instead, it's diverse and dispersed. And quite obviously, we just spoke about Sea Shepherd, that is just one example of an NGO that is engaged in maritime security. There are many different ones on a local, but also on a global level. Now, in order to create coherence across maritime security responses, you basically you need a format of bringing all of these actors together. Now informal ways of doing so basically operate outside of formalized international organizations and are

basically trying to bring actors together in a loose network structure. So for instance the current response in the Red Sea was led by the combined maritime forces, which is also a loose partnership. In the fight against Somali piracy, the contact group on piracy off the coast of Somalia, but also the so-called shared awareness and deconfliction meeting, these were very, very important formats for bringing all different kind of actors together, foster a shared understanding and then also work towards a shared problem solving strategy and we see this these kind of formats basically globally around the world they're usually on a regional level and these are pragmatic problem-oriented responses the same time the longer that they exist the more

problematic becomes the informality because formal matters institutions are also good in many ways because they are less vulnerable and you can hold them better accountable and so on. So it's actually also a bit problematic that we see informal organizations as main response. When we call these experimental, it is mainly because it is actually remarkable how much the history of maritime security solutions is one of trying things out, doing things differently. And maritime domain awareness is a good example for that, the idea of creating regional information sharing structures.

A beautiful example, for instance, is also the corridor that they set up in the Gulf of Aden for counter-piracy purposes, where for the first time they were actually modeling ship transfer through algorithms and actually managed to optimize the patrol program in that kind of way. Today, this is a much more standardized way of patrolling, working with computer modeling. So it's a beautiful example of how these experiments then also settle and bring new insights. So very, very important part of the toolbox of maritime security that has emerged over these four waves that Tim was talking about earlier. yeah and i think just to add to that i think one of the the features of the four ways is is both the the establishment of these various solutions to maritime security but based up to maritime security challenges based on experiment based on lessons learned their consolidation and also their increasing spread into a standard toolkit of maritime security and and in chapter

seven we actually go on to to look at at the various components of of what we think that talk it are now part of that are one one component of that is is informality and experimentation but we also look at maritime security operations multi-agency operations the various mechanisms and entities that have been established to coordinate between agencies and between between different countries in in those operations we look at maritime security strategies as a way of trying to cohere and make sense of this of this agenda that brings together lots of different departmental agency interests, countries and so on, and how states use maritime security strategies to kind of order, prioritise and signal their intentions in maritime security.

We do we look at we spend some time on maritime domain awareness and information sharing. And then finally, we look at capacity building and how capacity building has been used to both consolidate and and proliferate the maritime security toolbox. Well, gentlemen, unfortunately, that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Tim Edmonds, Dr. Christian Buger. Tim, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? So you can find me at the University of Bristol. If you type Tim Edmonds Bristol, it brings up my my university research page, which has got information about all my current projects and so on. And at the moment, I'm particularly interested in the intersection between maritime security and marine environmental protection and the kind of challenges and tensions and opportunities that that offers. I'm also working with Christian a little bit on critical maritime infrastructure protection with a particular focus on on the North Sea, actually, which is quite interesting because it brings us back, at least for a European or for a

Brit, right back to home waters from looking into the West Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific and so on in previous years. I mean, we had a pretty good case study for you this week. As I said, we're recording this on the 30th of March. So a bridge fell into the water here in Baltimore about four days ago that is going to have some major international shipping impacts that can contribute to any future case studies you have. Christian, where can we find you and what's your next project? Well, you can always find me on my personal website

at bueber.info, where I also can detail some observations that I have on current events and so on. If you read the conclusion of the book, this is what keeps me occupied at the moment. It is primarily about thinking the different specialities of the sea cyber security outer space how it actually matters for the maritime security agenda and the big intellectual uh project in the background

looks into infrastructures and how they have fundamentally transformed the oceans the oceans now is a heavily industrialized space and that has implications for how we can think about maritime security and security at sea it implies that we are gradually moving towards this critical maritime infrastructure protection agenda where resilience is a core component where we are back with state adversary threats race zone threats and also need to feature in both resilience as well as stronger deterrence measures so i think we are living through quite interesting times and above all we should not forget that our relationship to the oceans has been fundamentally changing over the last decade so we are now talking about heavily industrialized

sea spaces where our security thinking has to adopt to so this is basically what keeps me busy at the moment and also over the coming years. Well, thank you both again for joining us. To the listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Thank you. I'm going out.