The Future Maritime Operating Environment and the Role of Naval Power

Exploitation of deep-sea ocean minerals is often strategically significant and that also raises the
political stakes surrounding their development. This is most obvious with regard to hydrocarbons,
and some existing maritime disputes have been exacerbated when governments suspect or are
certain that vast energy resources lie within disputed waters. The Sino-Japanese dispute in the
East China Sea is, for example, inflamed by Tokyo’s fear that Beijing will syphon off Japan’s
share of a large oil and gas field that straddles the two countries’ EEZs. 106 Developing deep ocean
resources might be viewed by governments as a means of reducing a dependence on a foreign
source that is viewed as a strategic vulnerability. Under a policy that was only abandoned in
early-2015, China’s use of its near-monopoly of the production of rare earth minerals as a
diplomatic lever, with export restrictions used to signal displeasure to foreign governments, led
Japan to consider the development of similar deposits within its EEZ, despite the high cost of
doing so. 107 Furthermore, the increasing importance of deep-sea resources might influence (perhaps
even help precipitate) conflict on land. Russia’s decision to seize Crimea from Ukraine in early-2014
was not likely determined, but it might have been influenced, by the presence in Ukraine’s Crimean
EEZ of oil and gas fields. 108 Moscow’s acquisition of these resources has significantly reduced
Kyiv’s domestic production and threatens to increase its energy dependence on Russia. Lastly,
deep-sea mineral extraction has the potential to heighten inter-state competition, even in waters
where tensions are relatively limited. A permit issued by the International Seabed Authority (ISA)
in 2011 to allow Beijing to explore for deep-sea minerals off the coast of Madagascar alarmed
some Indian Ocean states already sensitive about Chinese naval activities in those waters. 109
3.4 Seaborne Trade as a Security Issue
The reliance on container traffic is a growing challenge to maritime security due to the difficulty
presented by efforts to create an effective screening regime. If stowaways, some of whom are
serving criminal or terrorist groups, continue to pose a major problem in the modern maritime
trading system, in the post-9/11 world the vulnerabilities presented by reliance on containers are
now seen as the greater danger. 110 Such concerns are not far-fetched and it is difficult to predict
when they will be overcome, if at all. We do know, however, that the “bad guys” of whatever
stripe have been interested in using containers for illicit purposes in the past, and it is only logical
to assume that they still are. In August 2003, for example, reports emerged that a senior member
106 Evans, “Enforcing Free Trade.”
107 Cecilia Jamasmie, “China scraps decade-old rare earth export quotas”, Mining.com, 6 January 2015
[accessed on 7 January 2014 at www.mining.com/china-scraps-decade-old-rare-earths-export-quotas-
44322/]. See also Behr et al., “Maritime Security in a Multipolar World: Towards an EU Strategy for the
Maritime Commons”, p. 4 and Alessandro Bruni, “The Sino-Japanese Dispute over the Senkaku Islands
Highlights the Beginning of the end of China’s Rare Earth Monopoly”, Investorintel.com, 19 September 2012
[accessed on 26 August 2014 at http://investorintel.com/r+are-earth-intel/the-sino-japanese-dispute-overthe-senkaku-islands-highlights-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-chinas-rare-earths-monopoly/].
108 This argument is made in Frank Umbach, “Energy was a Key factor in Russia’s Move on Crimea”,
World Review (online), 23 June 2014. With regard to Crimea’s offshore resources, see William J. Broad,
“In Taking Crimea, Putin Gains a Sea of Oil Resources”, The New York Times, 17 May 2014, and Pavel Baev,
“The Black Sea Dimensions of the Russia-EU Dialogue”, Paper presented at the 4 th Annual Energy and
the Black Sea Basin conference, Istanbul, 18 May 2005 [accessed on 11 September 2014 at
www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=385].
109 Joel D. Adriano, “Deep-sea mining stirs risk concerns”, Asia Times, 5 August 2011.
110 According to the International Maritime Organisation, between 1998 and 2011, 130,000 stowaways
were found on ships. See Hoovestal, Globalization Contained, p. 77.
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