In response to pirate attacks in the Western Indian Ocean, countries worldwide have increasingly authorized the deployment of armed guards from private military and security companies (PMSCs) on merchant ships. This widespread trend contradicts states’ commitment to retain a monopoly on violence and discourage the presence of arms on civilian vessels. This book conceptualizes the extensive use of PMSCs as a form of institutional isomorphism, combining the functionalist, ideational, political and organizational arguments used to account for the privatization of security on land into a synthetic explanation of the commercialization of vessel protection.
This handbook offers a critical and substantial analysis of maritime security and documents the most pressing strategic, economic, socio-cultural and legal questions surrounding it. Written by leading international experts, this comprehensive volume presents a wide variety of theoretical positions on maritime security, detailing its achievements and outlining outstanding issues faced by those in the field. The book includes studies which cover the entire spectrum of activity along which maritime security is developing, including, piracy, cyber security, energy security, terrorism, narco-subs and illegal fishing. Demonstrating the transformative character and potential of the topic, the book is divided into two parts. The first part exhibits a range of perspectives and new approaches to maritime security, and the second explores emerging developments in the practice of security at sea, as well as regional studies written by local maritime security experts. Taken together, these contributions provide a compelling account of the evolving maritime security environment, casting fresh light on theoretical and empirical aspects. The book will be of much interest to practitioners and students of maritime security, naval studies, security studies, maritime history, and International Relations in general. Chapter 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial] (CC-BY-NC)] 4.0 license.
In Maritime Security Cooperation in the Guinea: Prospects and Challenges, Kamal-Deen Ali provides ground-breaking analyses of the maritime security situation in the Gulf of Guinea and its implications for shipping, energy security, sustainable fisheries as well as national and regional security. The book juxtaposes the growing strategic importance of the Gulf of Guinea against the rising insecurity in the maritime domain, especially from piracy. Ali points out key gaps in prevailing regional and international approaches to maritime security cooperation in the Gulf of Guinea and sets out several suggestions for combating piracy as well as other maritime security threats while effectively enhancing maritime security cooperation in the region.
This book offers a unique and scholarly perspective on a little-studied subject: maritime crime and policing. The seas and oceans cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface and 90 percent of world trade by volume travels by sea. Furthermore, the refugee crisis has produced an inflow of people attempting to find a better life, particularly in Northwest Europe and the UK, which has had an impact on the maritime domains of European ports. While there has been attention paid to the role of maritime policing by scholars in maritime security studies, little attention has been paid by criminologists and policing studies scholars. This book aims to fill this gap. Bringing together a range of international scholars, this book covers a variety of topics pertinent to maritime crime and its policing, such as fraud, piracy and armed robbery at sea, illegal and unregulated fishing, smuggling, people trafficking, illegal immigration, illegal dumping and pollution, arms trafficking, terrorism, and cargo theft. It brings together new perspectives on several key criminological themes such as transnational organised crime, criminalisation, and securitisation and provides a bold new direction for the landlocked discipline of criminology and policing studies. An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology, politics, migration studies, and all those interested in the policing of the sea.
It can be easy to forget the critical role that maritime transport plays in the global economy, but international maritime transportation is still responsible for around 90% of global trade. Protecting the maritime infrastructure essential for this trade from terrorism is a major concern for the international community. This book originates from the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) Counter-Terrorism Lessons from Maritime Piracy and Narcotics Interdiction, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in May 2019. Participants in the three-day workshop included policymakers, senior military officers, and academics from NATO member states, international organizations, and two partner nations: Colombia and Israel. Their extensive discussions focused on methods for protecting critical maritime infrastructure, such as ports, supplies, and personnel, from seaborne terrorist attacks. Presentations and roundtables also addressed the human and social factors that contribute to the defense against terrorism in the maritime domain. The book is divided into three sections: organized crime and narcotrafficking; maritime piracy; and terrorism, and aims to bridge the gaps between these three substantive areas of maritime security research. These have remained largely separate areas of research in the past, with the result that valuable maritime security lessons from counter-piracy and counter-narcotics operations have not been fully incorporated into counter-terrorism best practice. The book facilitates the transmission of lessons learned from counter-piracy and counter-narcotic operations to formulate recommendations for best practice and technological innovations to manage maritime terrorism, and will be of interest to all those working in the field.
Due to the continuing expansion of the notion of security, various national, regional and international institutions now find themselves addressing contemporary security issues. While institutions may evolve by adjusting themselves to new challenges, they can also fundamentally alter the intricate balance between security and current legal frameworks. This volume explores the tensions that occur when institutions address contemporary security threats, in both public and international law contexts. As part of the Connecting International with Public Law series, it provides important and valuable insights into the legal issues and perspectives which surround the institutional responses to contemporary security challenges. It is essential reading for scholars, practitioners and policy makers seeking to understand the legal significance of security institutions and the implications of their evolution on the rule of law and legitimacy.
There is a sprawling scholarship on violence, crime, and corrupt state rule; yet few have interpreted these challenges as transformative at the global scale and as a potential source of alternative, non-state, legitimacy. This volume challenges "Westphalian conservativism" in a provocative yet plausible manner, shedding light at the ubiquity and diversity of unfolding non-state agendas and at their effect on the imagined state community. Focusing on civil war parties, warlords, commercial providers of security, multinational companies and criminal organizations, the book directs attention to theoretical questions and policy challenges arising from non-state armed expansion. To accomplish this, the contributors present a range of case studies and comparisons within three thematic sections: the first takes stock of how, when, and in what measure state and state-system legitimacy are challenged by non-state violent or criminal activity; the second addresses the nature, effectiveness, and side-effects of different state-mandated reaction to non-state activities; and third focuses on the recombination of state and non-state actors contributing to processes of socio-political transformation. This volume provides a current analysis of different armed and violent actors encroaching on the state's monopoly of violence. It seeks to spark debate about global political change and will be of interest to students and scholars of global governance, global security, and international relations.
Maritime security is of vital importance to the South China Sea, a critical sea route for maritime transport of East Asian countries including China. The adjacent countries have rendered overlapping territorial and/or maritime claims in the South China Sea which complicate the situation of maintaining maritime security and developing regional cooperation there. This book focuses on contemporary maritime security in the South China Sea as well as its connected sea area, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. It identifies and examines selected security issues concerning the safety of navigation, crackdown on transnational crimes including sea piracy and maritime terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution. In the context of non-traditional security, issues such as maritime environmental security and search and rescue at sea are included. The book explores ways and means of international cooperation in dealing with these maritime security issues.
The aim of this study is to fill a significant gap in the existing literature on the role of non-state actors, ranging from rebels and criminal gangs at one extreme to the corporate security industry at the other. As part of the general privatisation of the security sector in the western world, combined with the US-led war on terror, non-state actors have increasingly been tied to the foreign policy priorities of the dominant western military powers. Iraq and Afghanistan are the examples often used, and are well-described in other chapters in this book. In sub-Saharan Africa, as in many fragile states around the world, this picture is blurred, and it is often difficult to make clear distinctions between public and private, or between illegal and legal etc., (non)-state actors.
According to much of the academic literature, the nature of war changed dramatically in the last part of the twentieth century, especially after the end of the Cold War. According to this logic there is a dichotomy between war as a social phenomenon and warfare as the domain of the state, as envisaged by the late Prussian military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, in the shape of the “Trinitarian War”. The lack of capacity on the part of predominately Third World states to control conflicts has led to low-intensity conflicts (LIC), which can be witnessed, for instance, in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Sri Lanka. Since the end of the Cold War it has been common for weak state rulers with formal state legitimacy but not empirical legitimacy to have continued to enjoy international recognition because of international fears that they are the only barrier against a total collapse. Amongst other things this paved the way for an expansion of the market for private military and security companies (PMSC) such as the South African-based Executive Outcomes (EO) in the 1990s. However, the lack of state capacity led to a sub-contracting, willingly or unwillingly, of the state’s monopoly on the use of force to non-state actors, PMSCs and semi-state actors, like local militias, warlords, criminal gangs and vigilant groups, in an attempt to secure weak state leaders’ positions. In the competition for state control internationally recognised leaders have an advantage over their non-state rivals because they can seek military help outside their countries with the agreement of the international community and in accordance with international law.
This volume investigates the nature of threats facing, or perceived as facing, some of the key players involved in Asian maritime politics. The articles in this collection present case studies on Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia as a whole and focus on domestic definitions of threats and conceptualisations of security. These studies map the differing understandings of danger in this region and explore how contending narratives of "threats" and "security" affect the national maritime security policy deliberations within the countries of this region. Those interested in maritime security and management in Asia will find this collection an invaluable addition to the literature on this topic.
