Enhancing maritime domain awareness (MDA) is one of the corner stones of maritime security. Yet, it only works if countries develop a culture of sharing and collaboration across agencies and regional seas.
Practicing MDA through multi-national exercises is a key component of developing such a culture. As part of my ongoing research on the international practice of exercises, last week I had the opportunity to get some first hand experience of how the U.S. navy aims at advancing regional MDA . I participated in the exercise SEACAT 2024.
SEACAT is one of the oldest MDA exercises. Starting as a counter-terrorism exercise in 2002, it was focused on MDA through the 2016 Maritime Security Initiative, and was broadened to the Indo-Pacific in 2019. Over that history it has grown in size, with 2024 seeing more than 200 participants, including many from outside Southeast Asia. What happens at such exercises? What can be learned from them?
The Information Fusion Center (IFC) of the Republic of Singapore Navy has been a pioneer in regional maritime domain awareness. It’s information products and fact sheets influence regional responses, it’s information sharing system connects agencies of the region, and the its international liaison officer system provides an important way of making sense of incoming incident data and triggering responses. With this architecture the IFC provides an important standard for how regions can advance their maritime surveillance, information sharing and maritime security cooperation.
Participants at the 2024 RMPP, Changi Naval Base, Singapore.Continue reading →
Shetland Islands is the proto-type of an energy island and at the heart of the green energy transition in the North Sea. Moving from oil and gas to renewable energy production is at the heart of the islands transformation. From the 19th to 22nd of May, I conducted a field visit together with Professor Andrew Neal from the University of Edinburgh to discuss with local experts the transition and explore the multitude of infrastructures on the islands, how they are entangled and how they are protected.
The visit was part of the Copenhagen Edinburgh partnership project on ‘Securing the Green Transition in the North Sea.’ A field report is in the making.
The First Sea Lord’s Seapower Conference is the Royal Navy’s annual flagship event, and I had the pleasure to attend and speak at this years iteration.
The 2024 edition was titled “Future navy: Maritime in the 2040s” and the debate firmly focused on the question of what mid-term challenges the Royal Navy faces and through what posture it could address them.
The event was co-organized with the Council on Geostrategy. The Council, founded in 2001, is a relatively young think tanks — if compared to the traditional British intellectual power houses, such as RUSI or Chatham House. The Council’s mission is “to strengthen Britain and re-assert [its] leadership” and it wants to “promote robust ideas” to boost the countries “discursive, diplomatic and military power”.
During my recent visit to Seychelles, I participated in an event jointly organized by the University of Seychelles and Khalifa University (UAE). The symposium focused on the strategic consequences of Indo-Pacific thinking and geostrategic rivalries for small island states.
Drawing on my earlier research on small states in the Indo-Pacific, how islands face a militarization dilemma, and how they are able to expand their action space through creole foreign policy, I argued during my talk that Seychelles needs to highly alert to geopolitical dynamics and the new vulnerabilities it causes, and indeed needs to rethink its repertoire of foreign policy tools.
Panelists of the Symposium on the Indo Pacific, University of Seychelles, 7.3.2024
As a champion of the blue economy, and its high profile in counter-piracy, Seychelles has navigated such troubled waters extremely well in the past. However, it is now also time for new ideas.
What such new ideas might be, and how Seychelles could utilize its presidency of the Indian Ocean Commission to shape the global agenda, was one of the core issues of my discussion with representatives from the ministry of foreign affairs. Global ocean politics clearly can benefit from leadership of small states, such as Seychelles.
The recording of my recent talk at the MILAN exercises of the Indian Navy is now available on Youtube. In the presentation I revisit the shifts in global ocean politics that navies will have to address in their strategy, and show how critical maritime infrastructure protection is an important point of strategic convergence and global naval cooperation.
In December 2023 I had the pleasure to participate in the 8th Indian Ocean Naval Symposium organized by the Thai Navy.
The Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) is one of the most important maritime security arrangement in the region. It is the only format that brings security actors from south east Asia, the bay of Bengal and the western Indian Ocean together to discuss security at sea. It also includes important maritime states, including China, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia as observers.
The seabed is rapidly becoming a new space of concern in security politics. In Europe, largely triggered by the 2022 sabotage of he Nord Stream pipelines, but also investments by Russia in subsea capabilities, NATO countries are reevaluating their dependency on subsea infrastructures such as pipelines and data and electricity cables.
As part of their EU presidency, the Spanish Navy hosted a Forum focused on the issue on November, 16th at naval headquarters in Madrid. Titled the “Seabed, a new area of interest and dispute”, 150 participants, including high level representatives from all major European navies, discussed the importance of the seabed, and different responses.
The first panel focused on the strategic picture, deep seabed mining and subsea data cables. In the second panels, the navies of Spain, Italy and France provided an overview of the defense and coordination projects they are currently developing. The French representative showed how the navy is implementing its dedicated seabed strategy, while Italy discussed how their response is structured by technological innovation, maritime stakeholder communities, a legal review and the creation of a new coordination center.
In my contribution to panel 1, I firstly argued for the need to think maritime security in dimensional terms. I then demonstrated how substantively our dependency on the seabed has been accelerating in the past two decades, a trend that will continue with the green energy transition is unfolding. Two make that point, I provided a review of how the seabed has been used throughout history. I then investigated the hypothetical landscape of threats based on our recent article on the issue. I ended in an evaluation of current European responses and its challenges.
The main responses are led by NATO and the EU. NATO has developed a coordination cell in its headquarters which organizes a stakeholder network described as ‘community of trust’. At NATO Maritime Command a center for critical infrastructure protection is being developed which will operate in a similar way as the NATO Shipping Center to enhance information sharing and coordination with industry.
The EU is currently evaluating the vulnerability of subsea infrastructures, and has recently launched its EU Maritime Security Strategy that entails significant plans for infrastructure protection. A key actor driving the agenda is the European Defense Agency.
More efforts will be needed, however, in improving maritime domain awareness and subsea awareness, reliable information sharing and standards for the self-protection by the industry.
What’s the state of progress and arising challenges for maritime security in the Western Indian Ocean? From 14.-16.11. I had the pleasure to follow large parts of a ministerial conference addressing this issue in Mauritius online. I chaired one session on the first day and provided comments in the concluding sessions.
Below is the write up of my intervention:
Towards holistic maritime security: Finetuning the maritime security system in the Western Indian Ocean
Maritime security solutions in the Western Indian Ocean have made significant progress. A decade after the crisis caused by piracy attacks in the region, a sustainable and well-functioning maritime security structure has been built.
While often referred to as a maritime security ‘architecture’, this term seems no longer appropriate. An architecture is a metaphor that points to a project in planning and construction. Maritime security has progressed in the region to a degree, that it is now better to refer to a ‘system’ – a system that needs to be finetuned and improved, but which has been well established.
While the global attention for the oceans continues to be unprecedented, maritime security and critical maritime infrastructure protection lack an institutional home within the United Nations system. While different UN agencies deal with aspects of the agenda, the debate is dispersed and lacks a holistic outlook. This includes the International Maritime Organization, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the UN Environment Programme, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction or the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Maritime security has also been high on the agenda of the UN Security Council. This risks global fragmentation and the question of the relation between regional and global ocean governance continues to be unsettled.
On November 9th I had the pleasure to discuss with UN bodies in Geneva how this situation can be addressed.
