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Abstract by the author: The Indo-Pacific, combines a panoply of regions and blends multiple security architectures. Some regions are dominated by non-traditional security threats, while others are unstable and rife with security dilemma. Instability and disorder are most palpable in the maritime domain, especially in the geographical region of the western Pacific. From the beginning of 2020, China has intensified its assertiveness in the South China Sea, including the announcement of two administrative districts and transgressions by its survey ship Haiyang Dizhi 8. Some attribute these developments to the COVID-19 outbreak. Enhanced US posture in the region seems to have little effect on Chinese revanchism. This article assesses the spurt of developments in the South China Sea during the COVID-19 pandemic. It establishes the conceptual framework for analysing the change in the regional order. It evaluates the regional security architecture of the western Pacific and the efficacy of the putative order. The prospective change in the security order of the western Pacific and response is also examined.
Abstract by the author: This article details the evolution of maritime security from the perspective of its impact on the historical architecture of sea space. It argues that, as the fundamental unit of governance, zoning provides keen insight into the mechanics of maritime security. The article observes that Britain's Hovering Acts in the late eighteenth century represent the earliest example of modern zonation at sea and that they exhibit a shift from early modern territorial claims based on imperium and dominium. The article explores the way these hovering zones shaped the rationale underlying contemporary maritime security. It finds that maritime security has effectively relegated national security to a minor spatial belt of state power, while elevating non-traditional understandings of security to the level of global existential threat. The future of maritime security is under construction. Increasingly segmented by interconnecting, overlapping, multi-functional zones that seek to regulate all free movement and usage of the sea, security developments are reorganizing the maritime sphere. Nonetheless, the article argues, despite the novelty of this development, a historical military logic persists in new formations of security-oriented practices of maritime governance.
Abstract by the authors: Climate change has been recognised as a major issue for coastal populations. Under this context, the potential socio-economic, environmental and health impacts at local, regional and global scales have received considerable attention by scientists. The knowledge gained feed official strategic documents, which aim to increase awareness but also propose and apply management and mitigation measures towards reducing risks for human beings and the natural environment. Dependencies between human security, social vulnerability of coastal communities and the occurrence of maritime crime have also been studied. There is a consensus on the need to deepen the understanding of the links between climate change effects and threats to maritime security, but it remains to be seen if existing knowledge on the interplay between climate change and maritime security has been translated into policy. This article offers a synthesis on recent evidence and knowledge gained to elaborate the nexus between climate change impacts, social vulnerabilities and the occurrence of maritime criminality. We further explore the extent to which official documents account for the maritime dimension of climate change security. Despite the existence of an embryonic official discourse linking climate change and maritime security, our analysis reveals significant gaps between the concerns raised by the academic community and what is acknowledged in national and regional official strategic documents. Informing decision-makers and stakeholders about the possible dependencies between climate change and maritime security is thus a crucial step towards improving global ocean governance.
Abstract by the authors: Does the rule of law matter to maritime security? One way into the question is to examine whether states show a discursive commitment that maritime security practices must comply with international law. International law thus provides tools for argument for or against the validity of certain practices. The proposition is thus not only that international law matters to maritime security, but legal argument does too. In this article, these claims will be explored in relation to the South China Sea dispute. The dispute involves Chinese claims to enjoy special rights within the ‘nine-dash line’ on official maps which appears to lay claim to much of the South China Sea. Within this area sovereignty remains disputed over numerous islands and other maritime features. Many of the claimant states have engaged in island-building activities, although none on the scale of China. Ideas matter in such contests, affecting perceptions of reality and of what is possible. International law provides one such set of ideas. Law may be a useful tool in consolidating gains or defeating a rival's claims. For China, law is a key domain in which it is seeking to consolidate control over the South China Sea. The article places the relevant Chinese legal arguments in the context of China's historic engagement with the law of the sea. It argues that the flaw in China's approach has been to underestimate the extent to which it impinges on other states' national interests in the maritime domain, interests they conceptualize in legal terms.
Abstract by the authors: This paper revolves around the role that food-from-the-sea plays in European maritime security. It aims to illustrate the links between food, fisheries, and maritime security by considering these as coexisting attributes of security in general and of maritime (in)security, in particular. The article analyzes three dimensions of this issue: the links between food security, maritime security and maritime policy; the principles that inspire the Common Fisheries Policy and their implications for the food system; and the complexity involved in the trade relations between European markets (EU) and non European suppliers (the case of Cape Verde). The relevant conclusions that can be established are i) the EU's food security policy shows little sign of changing the course of its fisheries policy objectives; ii) The different dimensions of the relationship between fisheries and food security should not be neglected. In fact, from a local perspective, the concept of food sovereignty could be applied to some of the European Union's coastal territories. Therefore, European decision-makers should not ignore the fact that subsistence fisheries are still a strategy in some European coastal areas, where access to maritime resources is the key to their economies. •Food insecurity is not limited to the developing world.•EU ocean policy tackles food security challenges.•Ideological basis of food notion are seldom taken into consideration in EU policies.•Small scale fisheries are still a strategy in some European coastal areas.•EU documents on maritime and fisheries policies do not mention food sovereignty.
Abstract by the authors: At a time when the European Union is intensifying its electronic frontier through unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, and remotely piloted aircraft and satellite remote sensing devices, it is crucial to ask what this ‘view from above’ in effect enables. Although creating enhanced visibility in the Mediterranean basin of migrants’ crossings, the technological solutions provided by the European Union do not prioritize search and rescue. In analyzing European Union policy documents regarding visibility-making at Europe’s maritime borders, as well as the rationale presented by the industry delivering the technological backbone, this article shows how the ‘view from above’ is not only constructed through data but feeds back into data-generating ‘vision machines’. The working together of the scopic/visual/ocular and the digital/algorithmic/metrical is coined ‘postvisuality’ – a term highlighting the entanglement of image and code and the subsuming of the visual under the digital, or digitality. Postvisuality is framed by Europe’s long history of racial securitization, which in this case facilitates migrants’ data doubles becoming a key locus for financialization and the generation of a surplus for the security and defense industries.
Abstract by the authors: This article offers an ethnographic account of everyday identity (re)configuration in submarine policing by the Dutch Customs Diving Team (CDT) officers of illegal underwater drug trafficking in the Port of Rotterdam (PoR). In so doing, it explores what it means to perform drug inspections that depend on international collaboration and intelligence sharing, and also depend on the cooperation of ships’ crews, enabling the CDT to deal with challenging submarine circumstances. The findings emerge from a qualitative analysis, using an Othering framework, of data collected during fieldwork in 2011 in the PoR. The main argument of this contribution is that to prevent drug trafficking from entering in the port (and its European hinterland) and by legitimately interrupting the trade flow, the CDT must become a justifiable intervention itself. However, given the low number of drug seizures since the CDT’s inception, its legitimacy and efficacy are called into question at a time of hypersecuritization on the one hand and austere policing on the other; a bifurcating context in which CDT officers feel the need to (re)configure a superior policing Self through an inferior policed Other for which (discriminating) stigmas that exist about drug trafficking, maritime shipping and (counter-narcotics) policing are (unwillingly) used and amplified.
Abstract by the author: The article focuses on the different considerations involved in maritime security in the Persian Gulf region. Topics include withdrawal of Washington from Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and application of maximum pressure on Iran through economic and diplomatic sanctions, events in Persian Gulf in 2019 which underscores growing tension and the prospects of military confrontation, and massive hydrocarbon resources held by the Persian Gulf states.
Abstract by the author: In 2004, a Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry report into Australia’s Maritime Strategy recommended the Australian Defence Force (ADF) implement a “modern maritime strategy”. Chairman of the Defence sub-committee, Bruce Scott, wrote that the committee was “convinced that an effective maritime strategy will be the foundation of Australia’s military strategy, and serve Australia well, into the 21stcentury”. Written at a time when the focus of the ADF was on the ‘war on terror’ and the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the 151 page report highlighted gaps in Australia’s maritime strategic thinking.
Abstract by the authors: Oral examines the key challenges that have shaped the evolution of the regime of straits used for international law dating back to the early jurists of the nineteenth century. He discusses the dynamics that shaped the development of the regime of straits under international law over the centuries leading to the adoption of Part III of UNCLOS on the regime of straits. He also examines the Malacca and Singapore Straits, the Strait of Bab al Mandab, and the Strait of Hormuz as key choke points for the transport of oil that are facing security threats from piracy, robbery, and terrorism.
Abstract by the author: Maritime corridors such as the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb have long been vitally important to the interests of the US and the global community. Now due to Russia's and China's interests and activities in the Arctic, the Bering Strait is an emerging maritime corridor that is becoming increasingly vital to the economic and national security interests of the United States and its allies. Once a region of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States, rapidly changing environmental conditions and the resulting increase in human activity have made the Arctic an arena for potential Great Power competition between Russia, China, and the US. Any threat, perceived or real, to the freedom of access to these maritime corridors usually elicits a strong and swift response by the US and its allies. Both China and Russia are taking the long view in their Arctic strategies, setting the necessary conditions to assert themselves in the region.
Abstract by the authors: The so-called freedom of navigation through the Malacca straits and the South China Sea, some of the world’s busiest trade routes, has long been of concern to scholars and practitioners of international politics in the region. Increasing tensions around territorial disputes recently propelled the issue to the forefront of global foreign and security policy making. Yet, despite the frequent invocation of threats to the ‘freedom of navigation’ for the justification of military measures to protect the ‘liberal rules-based order’, the substance of this rule or norm remains ambiguous and the nature of the threatened order unclear. Located at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australian discourses represent a suitable case for clarifying both. Starting from the original provisions on navigational regimes in international law, this study analyses the meanings that officials, think tank analysts and academics have been attributing to the freedom of navigation and contextualize them in the evolving debate about order. Focusing on political rather than legal discourses, it finds that concerns with the freedom of navigation are largely unrelated to the safety of maritime transport. Instead, they serve as proxy for an increasingly static imagination of international order – written backward in time – to be secured.
Abstract by the authors: Dating to the early Cold War, Canada and the US have disagreed on the status of the Northwest Passage. For Canada, the waters of the Arctic Archipelago are internal, historic waters. For the US, the sea route is an international strait. Despite this fundamental disagreement, cooperation between the two states in the Arctic has long been effective and friendly. In part, this can be attributed to decades of careful diplomacy, which has strategically set aside the intractable legal questions in favour of a comfortable “agree-to-disagree” arrangement. In the age of MAGA diplomacy under President Donald Trump, this successful system appears at risk. With discussion of Arctic freedom of navigation voyages for the US Navy becoming commonplace, and the old diplomatic safeguards breaking down in favour a new zero-sum foreign policy approach, Canada may soon face a new challenge to its Arctic sovereignty.
Abstract by the authors: Since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the security situation of Europe’s eastern ‘frontline states’ has undergone significant changes. In and around the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea, the scope and scale of military activity has grown, as has the frequency of Russian–Western military encounters. Despite the many similarities between the three regions, and despite the increased risk of negative spillover from one region to another, there are also noteworthy regional differences. As of today, the security challenges appear to be more severe and pressing in the southern and central part of the ‘frontline’ than in the northern.
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