Christian Bueger

Author Archives: admin


by

Attending SHADE: The key military coordination mechanism in the Western Indian Ocean

The Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) mechanism is a brainchild of the responses to piracy off the coast of Somalia. It is the key instrument through which the various navies coordinate each others activities and arrange for the International Coordinated Transit Corridor, and convoys and patrols in the Western Indian Ocean region. It is also the main mechanism through which the transport industry and navies collaborate on a strategic level. The successful coordination in SHADE is one of the key factors explaining the decline of Somali piracy.

On the 27th of May, the 48th SHADE meeting took place as usually held in Bahrain. This time it was complemented by an online participation platform through which I had the honor to address the participants.

At the meeting, I presented some of the key insights from the SafeSeas survey of regional maritime security alignments in the Indo Pacific. I provided an overview and emphasized that institutional proliferation is problematic. In consequence, SHADE must ask how it sits in this environment, and how it wants to continue its work in the long run.

This is ever more important as SHADE in the meantime is a platform for discussing various maritime security issues. As reflected in the presentations at the meeting this includes, illegal fishing, smuggling, or the security situations around the Yemeni coast and Strait of Hormuz.


by

EU-China Expert Meeting on Maritime Security

On the 26th and 27th of May, I had the pleasure to attend the 2nd expert meeting of the EU and China on maritime security organized by the European External Action Service in collaboration with the National Institute for South CHina Sea Studies.

The first session centered on different interpretations of the Indo-Pacific as a recent regional construct and how the EU is planning to engage with the region in the framework of its new Indo-Pacific strategy. The second session focused on the Indian Ocean and the challenges linked to blue crime. In my contribution to this session, I stressed the importance of taking a holistic understanding and paying attention to the inter-linkages between blue crimes and the associated problem of institutional proliferation in the region. I also flagged climate change and submarine data cable protection as two vital future issues on the maritime security agenda, and new fields for EU-China collaboration.

The second day focused on the South China Sea and on identifying pathways for better collaboration in the area.


by

What are the root causes of maritime piracy? A SafeSeas Webinar

What the root causes of maritime piracy are and how they can be addressed through external assistance remains one of the most pertinent questions of maritime security policy. This was the core problem that we addressed in a recent SafeSeas webinar.

The event centered around the recently published book “Piratelands. Governance and Maritime Piracy” by Ursula Daxecker and Brandon Prins (Oxford University Press). In addition to the authors, four commentators contributed to the debate: Stig Jarle Hansen, Anja Shortland, Jessica Larsen, and myself.

In my contribution, I stressed the importance of thinking local and paying more attention to the sub-national level of root causes, the need to better understand the inter-linkages of blue crimes, as well as working towards predictive models that can tell us what to do now to prevent the rise of the pirates of tomorrow.

A video recording of the event is available on the SafeSeas Youtube Channel. Follow the channel for future events.


by

Climate Change & Cables: Presentation at UK Maritime Threat Group

On the 22nd of April I had the pleasure to give a presentation together with Tim Edmunds at the UK Maritime Threat Group. In the presentation we introduced the work and main findings of SafeSeas. In my part of the presentation I particularly flagged questions of the impact of climate change on maritime security as well as the importance of submarine data cables drawing on our recently published article.

A summary and discussion of the presentation is available on the SafeSeas website.


by

Annual Conference of the International Studies Association (ISA)

From the 6th to the 9th of April I am attending the annual conference of the ISA. The conference which continues to be the main meeting place for scholars in International Relations is fully virtual this year. I am giving short presentations at three different roundtables which concern key themes that I am concerned about theoretically at the moment.

The first roundtable, organised by Simon Pratt from the (U Bristol) and Rebecca Adler-NIssen (U Copenhagen) discusses how we can better study implicit and tacit knowledge and how the concept of “folk theory” might be useful to do so.

The second roundtable is a discussion on the potential of international political design. Design is here understood as redirecting social science towards the making of a diverse range of objects, and going beyond written text. Given my interests in working with practitioners, co-production, the design discourse provides interesting new directions. The roundtable is organized by Jon Austin and Anna Leander (Graduate Institute, Geneva).

The third roundtable that Filippo Costa Brunelli (St Andrews) and I have organized concerns the informalization of world politics. Scholars from different corners of International Relations will reflect on their work on informality, when and how global governors and statesmen turn to informal forums, such as the G groups, or world conferences, and what the consequences of this shift is. At the roundtable I will talk about my long term research with the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS), which is a paradigmatic case of a contemporary informal governance mechanism.


by

New article on the security of submarine data cables

More then 90 per cent of the worlds communication travels through the global submarine data cable network. Although this is a vital infrastructure we know relatively little about how the network works, how cables are protected and what forms of global politics they are part of. In a new article co-authored with Tobias Liebetrau forthcoming with the journal Contemporary Security Policy, we explore the current state of research and what political questions the network raises, ranging from hybrid threats and accidents to global governance, geopolitical contestation and digital sovereignty.

The article titled “Protecting hidden infrastructure: The security politics of the global submarine data cable network” is available as a pre-print on Academia. The published version is available here.


by

The limits of capacity building

At a recent event I have presented and discussed the main insights from our research on capacity building for maritime security drawing on our recently published book on the Western Indian Ocean, but also the ongoing work in the AMARIS project on maritime security in Ghana.

The presentation was in the frame of the Marlog Titbits lunch seminars on maritime governance. Watch the recordings on You Tube.

A summary of the key arguments presented was also published with Lloyds List, which can be accessed here.


by

The World Ocean Summit

This week I am attending the Economist’s World Ocean Summit. It’s applaudable that the event this year is open and free. Summits such as these are increasingly important in ocean governance.

Judged by the agenda we are looking at a blend of deep crisis rhetoric and what Evgeny Morozov nicely coined as “solutionism”: The idea that the internet, big data, surveillance and innovative financing will fix the ocean’s problems. While some high level politicians will give grand speeches at the event, the tone is, that private solutions are required. It is foundation money and start ups that are meant to address the problems featured: fishing, plastic and zero emissions.

Yet, what is the role of the state in all of this? Law, law enforcement, blue crime and maritime security do not feature in the debate. Ocean governance will only work, if industry, foundations and the state work hand in hand. Wasn’t that one of the lessons of the pandemic after all?


by

Podcast on practices and pragmatic ordering

What does it imply to study international practices? How do international orders change? How can practice theory and pragmatist philosophy translated into models useful for empirical research? These are some of the questions that we explore in an edition of the Practice Theory podcast available here.

The discussion with the hosts Elizabeth Shove and Stanley Blue takes as starting point the recently published article “Pragmatic ordering: Informality, experimentation, and the maritime security agenda”. Co-authored with Tim Edmunds the article was recently published as online first with Review of International Studies. Contact me to receive a copy.