Christian Bueger

Tag Archives: multi-national military gatherings


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Naval symposium in Singapore

Among international naval conferences, the International Maritime Security Conference (IMSC) of the Singapore Navy stands as the most significant for Southeast Asian countries. Over the past few days, I had the pleasure to attend at Changi Exhibition Centre.

The event featured distinguished speakers from academia alongside representatives from the maritime security forces of Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Participants reaffirmed their commitment to information sharing, capacity building, and upholding the status quo, while addressing current challenges. As in previous years, IMSC was also a major gathering of global maritime security experts, including participants from China, Europe, and the United States.

Key take aways:

  • The South China Sea situation remains central to the regional maritime security agenda, though discussions carried a more optimistic tone than in previous years.
  • Critical maritime infrastructure protection has emerged as a priority for regional states, with particular focus on subsea data cables. ASEAN could potentially develop coordinated efforts in this direction.
  • The proliferation of autonomous weapon systems and strategies for responding to grey zone operations represent the most challenging issues currently facing the region.

This shows how such events are a useful barometer for how security discourse is developing, which is one of the arguments which I am developing in a new project on the impact of global military gatherings.


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Italian Seapower Symposium focuses on the seabed as new frontier

Italy hosts the most important European gathering of navies every two years. The 14th Transregional Seapower Symposium took place in Venice last week. 🚢

🌍 67 navies and over 50 heads of navies from across the globe attended and were joined by representatives from industry, academia and international organizations.

📅 The symposium started in 1996 as a meeting for the Mediterranean but soon assumed its current global profile and has been growing into a major global dialogue and agenda setting event.

🌊 This year’s iteration, which I had the pleasure to attend, was focused on the seabed as a new strategic frontier. For a number of years, and specifically since the 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Italy and its navy has been spearheading much of the discussion of how to respond to the new uncertainties at sea.

📺 The recording of the events is available on Youtube.

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Inside Naval Exercises: SEACAT in Singapore

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?

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