Christian Bueger

Tag Archives: Maritime Security


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On tour – Upcoming talks on maritime security

📢 Exciting News: Upcoming Talks on Maritime Security and Book Launch! 📚🌊

I’m thrilled to announce a series of talks I’ll be giving on maritime security as part of the launch of our new book, “Understanding Maritime Security.” Here’s where you can catch me in the coming weeks:

🇺🇸 28.10. – The Future of Maritime Security, book presentation, U.S. Naval War College, Newport
🇺🇸 29.10. – ‘Shadow Fleets and Critical Infrastructure: Maritime Security in the Baltic and North Sea’, Maritime Security Regime Roundtable, NATO Center of Excellence Combined Joined Operations from the Sea, Norfolk
🇵🇹 31.10. – The Environment on the Collective Maritime Security Agenda: Fighting Fishery Crime, VI Atlantic Centre Seminar, on “Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUU Fishing) in the wide Atlantic”, Atlantic Center, Portuguese Navy, Lisbon.
🇵🇹 31.10. – Understanding Maritime Security, book presentation, University of Lisbon and online.
🇩🇪 6.11. – Understanding Maritime Security, book presentation, University of Hamburg.
🇨🇭 8.11. – ‘Securing the Seas: A Comprehensive Assessment of Global Maritime Security, report launch, UNIDIR, Geneva and online, register here.
🇬🇧 22.11. – The Future of Maritime Security, Book Launch and Roundtable, RUSI, London.
🇲🇺 26.11. – Pirates, Smugglers and Oil Spills: Maritime Security in the Western Indian Ocean, book launch and roundtable, Charles Telfair Center, Mauritius. register here.

Join me as we explore critical issues in maritime security, from shadow fleets and critical infrastructure to environmental challenges and the future of our oceans.

If you’re interested in maritime affairs, international relations, or environmental issues, I’d love to see you at one of these events. Let’s connect and discuss the future of our seas!


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Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue in New Delhi – Special Address

The Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD) is one of the major strategic dialogue formats in India. Organized as a collaboration between the Indian Ministry of Defense, the Indian Navy and the National Maritime Foundation it focuses on the maritime domain.

One of the key purposes of the forum is to discuss the Indian maritime policy of SAGAR – Security and Growth for All in the Region – and advance its related action plan known as the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI).

NMF Leadership

I had the pleasure to attend the 2024 dialogue in October and to deliver one of the special addresses at the event. Here is the script of my talk which investigated the future of maritime security in the region:

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Publication roundup: Maritime Security, the Atlantic and Climate Change

In addition to our book Understanding Maritime Security that had been in the making for a long time, several shorter pieces have come out in the last months. Here is a short roundup (all open access).

In three publications I explore features of the critical maritime infrastructure protection agenda.

✘ The chapter Maritime Security in an Age of Infrastructure argues that we have to re-adjust strategy to deal with the fact that the seas are increasingly becoming a crowded and industrialized infrastructure space.

✘ The article Maritime Security and the Wind with Tim Edmunds uses the framework of our book and investigates what threats and risks are linked to the expansion of offshore wind farms around the world. Incorporating the security of such installations will become more and more important.

✘ In an article with Tobias Liebetrau, we explore how critical maritime infrastructure protection can learn lessons from counter-piracy and cyber security responses in order to design institutional set ups.

Other articles explore features of the global ocean politics agenda:

✘ A recent working paper takes me to the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic will be of increasing importance in global ocean politics, and I discuss how maritime domain awareness can become an important tool for strengthening regional cooperation under the recent Declaration on Atlantic Cooperation.

✘ I have had also the pleasure to contribute to an article on the pressing question of how we can reduce the climate impact on shipping, lead authored by Jan Stockbruegger. The article explores the question of why policy-makers continue to struggle to reduce the emissions of the maritime transport industry.

✎ Interesting things in the pipeline include a discussion of grey shipping, an exploration why the global maritime domain awareness architecture is so messy, an argument for why the UN needs a more coherent maritime security approach, and a review of the EU’s approach to the oceans.


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Visit to the Information Fusion Center Singapore

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.
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Mediterranean Connectivity: Strategies, Threats and Opportunities – event in Rome

For centuries, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the world’s busiest waterways. Since the opening of the Suez Canal, it has served not only as the key transport corridor for shipping between Asia and Europe but has also become a global super data highway in the age of fiber optic communications.

The Mediterranean is an increasingly important hub for energy. New underwater power cables are connecting North Africa with the Southern European electricity grid. Extensive fossil fuel exploitation in the Eastern Mediterranean is in its early stages.

Like other regional seas, the Mediterranean is becoming an industrialized space of maritime infrastructures.

The 24th Mediterranean Strategy Group meeting of the German Marshall Fund took up the challenge to reflect on what this connectivity implies for the region under the theme of “connectivity.” 45 experts from 15 countries discussed the issue in Rome.

Panelists of discussion on subsea data cables in the Mediterranean, Rome, 4.6.2024
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2nd symposium on critical maritime infrastructure protection focused on the North Sea

The North Sea is a strategic space for the green transition. It is a paradigmatic space for heavily industrialized regional seas with a high density of infrastructure. Efficient and reliable critical maritime infrastructure protection is hence vital for the region. As part of the Edinburgh-Copenhagen partnership and in collaboration with the SafeSeas, we held a second symposium on the North Sea in Edinburgh from 23rd to 24th of May.

Drawing on the insights of the first symposium, which had focused on industry needs, the threat landscape and the responses by governments and regional organizations in the North Sea, this event investigated legal gaps, operations at sea, the cyber-physical protection nexus, as well as societal and market responses to the new threat landscape.

At the event I outlined the changing face of maritime security in the age of infrastructure, drawing on our book Understanding Maritime Security, the importance to recognize the entanglement of infrastructures and security debates, and the need to understand the North Sea as a laboratory.

The summary is available on the SafeSeas website.


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The EU’s regional seas – event in Brussels

What are the challenges that the European Union’s maritime security policies need to address in different regional seas? This was the overarching question of a one day seminar held at the Royal Higher Institute for Defence and organized as part of the Belgian presidency of the European Council.

The event titled Enhancing Maritime Security at the Edges of Europe focused on four regionals seas: The North Sea, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea.

Panelists at Brussels event. Photo: Chris Trelawny.

In my talk, I firstly introduced a couple of general observations about maritime security from our book Understanding Maritime Security, firstly stressing the importance of maritime security as a connector, and secondly emphasizing the importance of thinking maritime security in 6D.

I then argued that we have to start thinking about regional seas as dense infrastructure spaces which are highly industrialized. In such environments the key problem is not necessarily freedom of navigation or territorial control, but caring for, protecting, and safeguarding critical maritime infrastructures, including shipping lanes, energy platforms, pipelines and cables.


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Why navies need to coordinate better in the Western Indian Ocean – new commentary

In a new commentary published with RUSI, I argue that the number of multi-national operations in the Western Indian Ocean region requires better coordination. I show which operations are currently active, and that new coordination tools, such as an improved SHADE mechanism are required. Read it here.


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Discussion on Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific

What are the political and strategic implications of the new world political region, the Indo-Pacific? This continues to be a question that puzzles many think tanks and strategy makers. More and more states and regional organizations develop genuine strategies for this region, and debate if and how they have a role in the region. Since the Indo-Pacific is in the first instance an aquatic region, such debates often directly point to maritime security.

Maritime security, as we have come to conceptualize it, is comprised of three dimensions: 1) Inter-state relations and conflicts emerging from disputes over territorial claims, borders and resources and grey zone activities that can be harmful to international connectivity or the marine environment; 2) extremist violence at sea, comprised of terrorist organizations using or directly targeting maritime activity, or spillover from such activities into the sea; 3) transnational organized crime, or ‘blue crime’ including marine piracy, the smuggling of narcotics and other illicit goods, irregular migration, or illegal fishing and deliberate pollution. In many ways, it is the latter category that forms the conceptual heart of maritime security and it’s relate field of study, not the least since such threats are often transnational and emerging.

In the Indo-Pacific debate, often the opposite is the case. The new regional lenses often imply a focus on great powers and their relations. It is the inter-state dimension that gains most of the attention. Too quickly the discourse turns to what happens in the capitals of Washington, Beijing, London and Paris. The challenges that matter the most to smaller states, such as islands, the livelihood of coastal populations, or to the maritime industry quickly fade into the background: blue crimes, piracy, illegal fishing, climate change mitigation. Such issues are not only important because they directly affect the lives and human security of billions of people. They are also issues that can only be addressed through international cooperation. They are also issues that cannot be addressed by military means in the first place.

Re-centering the understanding of maritime security in the Indo-Pacific in such challenges, is an important reminder that our futures are not by necessity determined by great power rivalry. An action space of cooperation and shared global problem solving persists; an alternative future is possible. Navies will have an important part in that future, but solving the emerging challenges in the Indo-Pacific order implies to think beyond great powers and the military instrument.

These are some reflections that came out of my participation in an event on October 26th organized by the European Council on Foreign Relations Indo-Pacific Strategy Group, titled Comprehensive Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific.


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SafeSeas event on Brexit and maritime security

The SafeSeas network on maritime security, held a one day workshop on February 28th at the University of Bristol on the challenges that arise for the UK in managing and securing the sea. The event featured a range of high level UK governmental representatives as well as academics from the UK which explored together the threats and risks the UK has to deal with, how to achieve synergies between the wide array of maritime security agencies, and how to balance the tasks at home and abroad.

I chaired one of the three panels, which was particularly concerned about inter-agency coordination and increasing efficiency in maritime security governance. The panel in particular highlighted the importance of trust between practitioners as the key to achieve better coordination.