Knowledge

Maritime security capacity-building is a growing field of international activity. It is an area that requires further study, as a field in its own right, but also as an archetype to develop insights for capacity-building and security sector reform in other arenas. This article is one of the first to analyse this field of activity. Our empirical focus is on the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region. Here, international actors have launched multiple capacity-building projects, initially in response to Somali piracy. We document the significance, extent and variety of capacity-building activities in this region and examine the ways in which capacity-building at sea has incorporated innovative characteristics that develop and expand the capacity-building agenda as traditionally understood. Our conclusion highlights the need to pay more attention to the maritime domain in international security and development studies and considers ways in which the maritime capacity-building experience may offer important lessons for other fields of international policy.

In this introduction to a special section of the September 2019 issue of International Affairs, we revisit the main themes and arguments of our article ‘Beyond seablindness: a new agenda for maritime security studies’, published in this journal in November 2017. We reiterate our call for more scholarly attention to be paid to the maritime environment in international relations and security studies. We argue that the contemporary maritime security agenda should be understood as an interlinked set of challenges of growing global, regional and national significance, and comprising issues of national, environmental, economic and human security. We suggest that maritime security is characterized by four main characteristics, including its interconnected nature, its transnationality, its liminality—in the sense of implicating both land and sea—and its national and institutional cross-jurisdictionality. Each of the five articles in the special section explores aspects of the contemporary maritime security agenda, including themes of geopolitics, international law, interconnectivity, maritime security governance and the changing spatial order at sea.

This chapter provides first a discussion of how maritime security has been conceptualized and theorized and how the field has evolved. It discusses the more particular debates on dedicated maritime security issues: piracy, terrorism, smuggling, environmental crimes and the protection of critical maritime infrastructure. Although the oceans have featured occasionally in the literature on security, peace and development, it is fair to say that for decades scholars were suffering from what some have referred to as collective ‘seablindness’. A range of maritime insecurities have been extensively analysed. These include piracy; terrorism; various forms of smuggling; environmental crimes, hereunder illegal fishing; as well as a nascent literature on maritime critical infrastructures. With ongoing crises in different parts of the world’s oceans, maritime insecurity will continue to be recognized as one of the core dimensions of violence and insecurity. Maritime security also needs to be seen in the context of other international policy areas.

This report forms part of the ambitious CBS Maritime research initiative entitled “Competitive Challenges and Strategic Development Potential in Global Maritime Industries” which was launched with the generous support of the Danish Maritime Fund. The competitiveness initiative targets specific maritime industries (including shipping, offshore energy, ports, and maritime service and equipment suppliers) as well as addresses topics that cut across maritime industries (regulation and competitiveness). The topics and narrower research questions addressed in the initiative were developed in close dialogue between CBS Maritime and the maritime industries in Denmark. CBS Maritime is a Business in Society (BiS) Platform at Copenhagen Business School committed to the big question of how to achieve economic and social progress in the maritime industries. CBS Maritime aims to strengthen a maritime focus at CBS and create the foundation for CBS as a stronger partner for the maritime industries, as well as for other universities and business school with a devotion to maritime economics research. The competitiveness initiative comprises a number of PhD projects and five short term mapping projects, the latter aiming at developing key concepts and building up a basic industry knowledge base for further development of CBS Maritime research and teaching. This report attempts to map the opportunities and challenges for the maritime industry in an increasingly accessible Arctic Ocean

In this video, Professor Christian Bueger (University of Copenhagen) presents the insights of a research project from the SafeSeas network. The presentation builds on a study of capacity building to fight piracy in the Western Indian Ocean.

The agenda of objectual International Relations has shown why object matters, how they arise and with what effects. Far less attention has been paid to how objects are maintained and stabilized over time and how their coherence is achieved. To add this dimension to the debate, we suggest turning to the infrastructures of object maintenance. Infrastructures are social material arrangements that maintain objects and enable their use. We introduce a framework for the study of object infrastructures and illustrate it by drawing on the case of "maritime piracy". Providing a historical reconstruction of the infrastructures that produce piracy as an international object, we show that the growing proliferation of these infrastructures does not lead to an internal coherence of the object over time, but rather objectual fracturing and instability. We reveal how objects are often multiple rather than unitary. The article adds an important new dimension to the study of objects in International Relations.

The success of the Seychelles Coast Guard shows how regional states, however tiny, can play an outsized role not only in countering piracy but also in maritime security in general. By taking quick and sharp action against malicious actors, small states can make a major contribution to regional maritime security. To stop the ominous return of piracy and address other maritime crimes like illegal fishing, smuggling, and pollution crimes across the world’s oceans, the contributions of small states will be crucial. Drawing on the Seychelles example, small states should overcome the sea blindness that pervades in many governments, recognize the sustainable development benefits from the blue economy, and understand security at sea as a political priority, while making efficient use of external security assistance.

The European Union (EU) seeks to become a global maritime-security actor, yet strategic challenges influence its maritime-security strategy process. Is there a distinctive and coherent EU approach to global maritime security, and how should the EU address the growing range of maritime challenges, including the intensification of militarized competition in the Indo-Pacific?

Offshore wind energy production has seen a significant expansion in recent years. With technologies rapidly improving and prices dropping, it is now one of the key instruments in the green energy transition. The implications of offshore wind farm expansion for maritime security and ocean governance have, so far, received sparse attention in the literature. This article offers one of the first thorough analyses of the security of offshore wind farms and related installations, such as underwater electricity cables, energy islands, and hydrogen plants. The technical vulnerabilities of wind farm systems is reviewed and threats from terrorism, crime and State hostilities, including physical and cyber risk scenarios, are discussed. The expansion of green offshore energy production must keep pace with the changing threat landscape that follows from it. Prospective solutions for the protection of wind farms systems, including surveillance, patrols and self-protection are discussed. The current repertoire of maritime security solutions is in many ways capable of dealing with the threats and risks effectively if adjusted accordingly. The analysis builds important new bridges between debates in energy security and maritime security, as well as the implications of climate change adaption and mitigation for security at sea.