THE FUTURE OF SEA POWER

| 43
The Evolving Dynamic of Armed Maritime
Crime and Terrorism in the Modern Era
Peter Chalk
port areas and port towns and cities. 4
The maritime realm remains particularly conducive to the type of irregular or
unconventional threat contingencies that have come to characterise transnational
security in the contemporary era. A vast area covering 140 million miles 2 , most of this
environment takes the form of high seas that lie beyond the strict control of any single
state. 1 These ‘over the horizon’ oceans are fringed and linked by a complex lattice of
territorial waters, estuaries and riverine systems that due to a lack of resources or will
(and in some cases both) frequently lack an effective regime of coastal surveillance.
Compounding matters is the largely unregulated nature of the international trading
system - a trait that is designed to minimise cost and maximise turnover, but one that
also inevitably exposes maritime commerce to nefarious criminal designs. 2 Combined,
these attributes and practices have served to ingrain the planet’s aquatic expanse with
the same type of unpredictable and lawless qualities that Thomas Hobbes once famously
wrote ensured life as ‘brutish, nasty and short’.
Two transnational threats that have particular pertinence to the oceanic realm are
armed maritime crime and terrorism. The former, which was once considered a scourge
consigned to the annals of history, has emerged as a salient issue in several regions
around the world, including the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Guinea, and the territorial
waters of several countries in Southeast and South Asia. The latter is a growing concern
of security and intelligence officials, many of whom appear to believe that the next major
strike against Western interests is as likely to emanate from a non-territorial theatre as
a land-based one.
This paper examines the evolving dynamic of armed maritime crime and terrorism in
the modern age. It discusses the scope and dimensions of these two manifestations of
maritime disorder, the key factors associated with their actual and potential growth and
the implications they hold for the future course of global sea power. For the purposes of
analysis, the following two definitions will be used:
• Armed maritime crime is defined as an act of boarding or attempting to board
any ship with the apparent intent to commit theft or any other crime and with the
apparent intent or capability to use force in furtherance of the act. 3
• Maritime terrorism is the undertaking of politically-motivated criminal violence
- or associated activities in furtherance of such acts - within the maritime realm
using or directed against vessels of fixed platforms at sea and/or members of their
passengers or crew and coastal facilities and settlements including tourist resorts,