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Transforming Maritime Forces: Capacity Building
for Non-Traditional Challenges
Dr Stanley Weeks
Although distant in geography from the Asia-Pacific region, the task in
Albania of restructuring and modernisation of maritime forces provides
an interesting and instructive case study with much applicability to certain
countries of the Asia-Pacific region. For a year and a half (June 2004 to
December 2005), the author faced these restructuring challenges every
day as the Senior Naval Advisor on Science Applications International
Corporation’s ‘Defense Modernization and Restructuring Team’ in the
Albanian Ministry of Defense in Tirana.
The task in Albania, as in many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, is the restructuring
and modernisation of maritime forces essential to deal with today’s challenges to
maritime security. 1 Today’s challenges increasingly include more non-traditional
and civil maritime/maritime law enforcement threats such as illegal trafficking (in
drugs, people and goods), marine environmental protection, maritime and coastal
surveillance, fisheries protection and marine navigation safety. These challenges, and
the new post-Cold War global security environment, not to mention the heightened
threats of maritime piracy and maritime terrorism, add new dimensions to the more
traditional military maritime defence missions. Restructuring and modernisation of
maritime forces to deal with today’s challenges is no simple matter for any country,
and even more difficult for many developing countries that, like Albania, face other
pressing demands for limited resources. 2 Despite this difficulty, after required changes,
maritime forces can and should be more effective and better adapted to current
missions — but only if the priorities and details of such transformation are correctly
planned and implemented.
In Albania, the start point — today’s Albanian maritime forces — reflected a unique
historical legacy. 3 The end goal of transformation for the Albanian Navy was a future
Objective Maritime Force, adapted to Albania’s new role as it becomes a full North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member by the end of this decade. Any country’s
historical legacy may influence significantly current attempts to transform its maritime
forces. Albania was a Warsaw Pact ally of the Soviet Union from 1945 until the early
1960s, and then was the sole European ally of Maoist China through the mid 1970s,
followed by a break with China and total isolation until 1991. These unique Albanian
sets of relationships resulted in political, economic and military isolation from the
rest of Europe and even from neighbouring Adriatic and Balkan countries such as (the
former) Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy. The military legacy of Albania, particularly after