Australian Maritime Issues 2005 - Royal Australian Navy

AUSTRALIAN MARITIME ISSUES 2005: SPC-A ANNUAL
This, with the vast increase in rapidity of communication, has multiplied and
strengthened the bonds knitting together the interests of nations to one another,
till the whole now forms an articulated system not only of prodigious size and
activity, but of excessive sensitiveness, unequalled in former ages.
Even so, there can be little doubt that the 21st century version of the system remains
extremely vulnerable to a whole range of things. It is vulnerable to old-fashioned sporadic
state-based attacks such as those that occurred during the Iran-Iraq tanker war, as well
as to misuse and disorder by people who have an interest in instability such as African
warlords, because that is how they manage to prosper in the first place. And of course,
it is vulnerable to those who object to the system as a whole, such as Al Qaeda and its
regional affiliates.
So what is the role of navies in defending this system in the 21st century? This essentially
involves two basic tasks: the first is dealing with disorder, and the second is maritime
power projection. A consideration of the myriad of issues falling within the first task
highlights the fact that maritime security today is becoming a wider, broader concept
than it was in the past. For instance, in the year 2001 the International Maritime Bureau
(IMB) issued a report lamenting the increase in piracy in Indonesian waters, and
attributing this to a general breakdown in law and order in the area, and to the activities
of separatist guerillas in Aceh and elsewhere. This was creating a vicious downwards
spiral; it disrupted passing shipping and local fishing activities, damaged local and
national economies, thereby reducing the revenues and authority of local governments
and weakening their capacity to maintain good order at sea and - more to the point from
the terrorist’s angle - ashore.
Furthermore, the success of other crimes at sea, such as drug, arms, and people
smuggling, elevates the visibility of people who challenge civilised states and everything
they stand for; it undermines national prosperity, security and the ability to connect
with other countries. Countries that fail for such reasons tend, moreover, to become
the security concern of others. This demonstrates both the intimate, two-way linkages
between good order at sea and good order on land and the simple fact that, without it, the
human ability to fully exploit the potential value of the sea will be severely constrained.
The Director of the IMB’s concluded, unambiguously: ‘Security along the coast has to be
tightened.’ To a greater or lesser extent, this recommendation should be extended to all
the world’s seas.
Added to this, increasing concern over the degradation of the marine environment led to
the establishment by the United Nations in 1995 of the Independent World Commission
on the Oceans (IWCO), to investigate threats to marine resources and possible ways of
protecting them. The report, released in 1998, made sombre reading. It argued that there
was a ‘crisis of the oceans’ caused by pollution, jurisdictional disputes, over-exploitation
and widespread ignorance. What takes hundreds, even thousands of years to develop
can be unknowingly destroyed in days, and all too often is. Already two-thirds of the
world’s population lives within 100 km of the coast, and the pressure this puts on the
fragile environment of the ocean is tremendous and bound to get worse, when the total
population doubles over the next few generations.