Maritime Law Enforcement in the Indo-Pacific: Building Capacity to Confront Militia Groups and Maritime Crime
Abstract
Maritime Asia remains crucial to global economic growth and prosperity. Nearly 40% of the worlds seaborne trade transits the South China Sea each year and nine of the top ten busiest container ports in the world are located in the Indo-Pacific region. But uncertainties also pervade the region as governments struggle to combat numerous security challenges, while violent non-state actors and trans-border criminal groups continue to exploit the environment. Academic research to understand and counter these challenges has focused predominantly on political violence on land, especially in the aftermath of 9/11. But armed groups increasingly use the maritime domain to support their operations and help achieve their political and economic objectives. A collective sea-blindness thus inhibits a complete description of the security challenges that proliferate and how best to address them.In this project, we tackle important shortcomings in extant research on the maritime security challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Identifying the need for comprehensive data on maritime crime, we propose to build two novel geo-spatial datasets on criminal activity, political and social conflict, and maritime law enforcement capacity using open-sourced information. Combining this newly collected information with other existing country and event databases, we will develop a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between regional structural conditions (geostrategic rivalry and resource competition), the local environment (poverty, joblessness, institutional capacity and maritime law enforcement projection) and the activities of non-state groups. Further, an important component of this study will examine how strategic competition among regional actors connects to the decision-making and activities of non-state criminal and political groups. Using grid-cells to map inter-state rivalries and resource competition in the region, we use statistical analyses including hierarchical models to estimate how the interaction between traditional security threats at the macro-level and non-traditional security concerns at the local level affect the level of cooperation or conflict among states and the scale of criminal events.This project makes several broader contributions. By building two novel datasets on littoral capabilities and non-traditional security threats, it opens the door to systematic empirical research on the emerging challenges in the region. The project helps conceptualize the nature of the non-traditional security challenges and informs policymakers in choosing effective strategies to confront them. It also measures the nature and extent of formal and informal maritime law enforcement cooperation, which can help establish the overall effectiveness of coordinated force projection in the region. At the local level, the data offer policymakers and practitioners unprecedented spatial specificity for describing patterns of maritime crime and conflict. It aids practitioners in identifying the hotspots of illicit activity and determining the right maritime law enforcement response. An expected outcome of the project is a visualization tool that will enable users to chart the spatial and temporal movement of criminal and terrorist elements as well as the force posture and location of maritime law enforcement capacity at the sub-national level. Finally, this project contributes to the DoDs effort in building state capacity to respond against the actions of criminal non-state groups in the region, while also assessing various approaches to enhancing regional cooperation to confront this challenge.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 04, 2020
- Source ID
- N000142112030
Entities
People
- Brandon Prins
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Tennessee