Redefining Maritime Security for the 21st Century and U.S.-China Strategic Competition
This article is part of a series of thought pieces published alongside our report, Maritime Security in an Age of Uncertainty. The views included here are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the US Department of Defense, US Navy or US Naval War College.
The concept of maritime security is evolving due to a myriad of challenges and opportunities emerging in the 21st century. If the United States is to remain the world’s premier seapower and able to counter Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s efforts to reconceive maritime security in ways that favor the People’s Republic of China over U.S. and allied interests, then greater strategic attention is needed to define what constitutes maritime security for the remainder of this century and to develop modern-day maritime statecraft to support this conception.
In one sense, a reconception of maritime security is possible given that there is no agreed-upon definition of the concept to overcome. Even the latest tri-service U.S. maritime strategy, jointly published in 2020 by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard, includes a helpful glossary of terms, but does not define the term “maritime security.” The document explains simply that it is “a Tri-Service Maritime Strategy that focuses on China and Russia, the two most significant threats to this era of global peace and prosperity.”
Yet, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) also published that same year its own maritime strategy (as required by U.S. law), one that includes defense and national security considerations as well as civilian and commercial concerns. The term maritime security is used in these respective Department of Defense and DOT documents in distinct ways, the latter being focused more on security of US-flagged vessels, shipbuilding, secure transportation, and the like.
As these dual strategies indicate, in its modern application, the term maritime security can be viewed as an amalgam of efforts aimed at ensuring that national maritime interests, writ large, are protected, both at home and abroad. As Christian Bueger explains, the concept of maritime security can be characterized today as being highly complex, inter- or multidisciplinary, and as a rapidly changing and evolving field of study.
Specifically, today’s concept of maritime security connects a broader and more diverse collection of issues, interests, and actors than conceived in the past. These interests and stakeholders include naval enterprises and assets, commercial shipping, industries such as fishing, tourism, and aquaculture, oceanographic research, as well as coastal law enforcement forces and operations, among others. The concept of a “blue economy,” for instance, is also a new part of this more expansive view of maritime security, one that focuses holistically on development of the maritime domain through technological innovation, sustainable development, data analytics, and more as elements that enhance maritime development and, thus, security generally. In fact, the potential uses of data to better understand the maritime domain is what the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls the “new blue economy,” a notion expected to advance and inform development of the maritime sector across the United States and beyond. This is an important way in which the concept of maritime security is changing: by expanding into other disciplines and expanding our understanding of what constitutes the maritime domain.
How else is the idea of maritime security changing? The concept of maritime security is expanding as those involved in the maritime realm adapt to modern challenges and opportunities, as outlined below.
First, in waters surrounding the Arctic, the Antarctic, and other bodies of water that continue to warm, there is increased volume of traffic in these once-remote, inhospitable, or inaccessible areas. As a result, demand is also growing for maritime assets such as Coast Guard cutters, search and rescue personnel, ice breakers, and more. The opportunities raised by expanded access to remote and warming waters also will drive interest in accessing these areas by fishing fleets and fisheries officials, by research and marine enforcement ships, and by naval vessels, commercial vessels, cruise ships, and more. In turn, the growing number of actors, vessels, and assets distributed across a wider maritime space will increase the overall maritime security challenge.
There is also growing interest and activities related to undersea, deep sea, and seabed operations, particularly via various forms of drones or autonomous underwater vehicles. These activities and capabilities will prompt broader interest in maritime security, both in terms of protecting these assets and defending against them. As made evident in recently damaged pipelines and internet cables in Europe that are suspected of being sabotaged by malign state actors, “seabed warfare” is already a reality and a concern that is likely to grow. Such incidents have led to greater interest in developing more effective and timely maritime security-oriented responses.
Developing autonomous undersea vessels, especially where used in once-remote, challenging (deep sea), or sparsely-travelled areas, will advance ocean science, technology, and innovation as well as lead to more widespread access to and use by both commercial and military actors.
A related way in which the concept of maritime security is expanding is evident in what the world has seen play out in Russia’s war on Ukraine: even small countries, including those without navies or coast guards, can have strategic effects in wartime by employing asymmetric measures, field-adapted technological innovations, and novel strategies and tactics at seawhether over it, on the surface, or under the sea. Ukraine has shown that although Russia largely destroyed its navy at the start of the Russo-Ukraine conflict dating back to 2014 and then again in 2022, Ukraine’s reformed naval and other armed forces have achieved some stunning victories in battle, including against Russia’s much larger naval forces.With the burgeoning blue economy concept promising maritime technological innovations as well as greater sustainability, smaller, developing, and island nation-states—for whom maritime and environmental concerns can be existential—are also playing a greater role in today’s maritime sector and helping to redefine the modern-day concept of maritime security.
A fourth way in which maritime security is expanding conceptually is in its ties to other sectors and fields of study, particularly energy security. Energy resources are transitioning away from land-based fossil fuel extraction toward sea-based locations and sourcing, be it for wind energy via offshore wind farms, near-shore hydro-electric energy installations, or undersea nuclear energy storage, and more.
Also related to energy transformation is growing interest in, and extraction efforts related to, the seabed. As interest in the seabed and the wealth of minerals, resources, and scientific discoveries potentially found there grows, we can expect exploration of this domain to lead to new maritime security challenges as well as opportunities. In fact, heightened interest in and growing capabilities to extract seabed resources are likely to provoke greater interest in state-led efforts to claim—and then to protect—exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and marine protected areas (MPAs) from external incursions. Consequently, competition over marine borders and undersea resource extraction will increase the risk of conflict, as we have seen play out in the South China Sea.
Finally, continuing “gray-zone” operations at sea, as conducted particularly by China in the South China Sea and elsewhere, pose a continuing and novel challenge to formal maritime processes and practices at sea. The West has yet to find ways to counter these operations effectively, short of resorting to military force or the threat thereof. In fact, the way in which maritime security is changing most is in terms of China, itself, as a growing and globally ambitious maritime power, with clearly revisionist aims in terms of global governance. While it is clear that China wishes to remain a global trade powerhouse (even amid an economic decline) and to expand its growing maritime presence abroad (including near U.S. shores), Xi Jinping’s specific geopolitical intentions remain murky. As a result, effective policy responses to China’s global maritime ambitions and activities are not yet evident. What is clear is that China’s maritime power is growing, that its fleet of ships outnumber those of the United States, and that its maritime power will not be readily countered by traditional means of ensuring maritime security.
The implications for U.S. interests of an expanded view of maritime security are many. One is that there will be fewer actors and assets to address a growing maritime space in which a variety of state and non-state actors are active. This means that the demand for maritime security will exceed the supply, if it doesn’t already. Second, China’s growing naval and maritime power as well as revisionist ambitions in terms of international governance and maritime practice will require more assertive and collective US and allied responses, preferably in ways that lead change rather than react to it. Finally, the long-standing sense of security provided by the United States’ two-ocean frontier is eroding given that we can expect to see more PRC, Russian, and perhaps other foreign-flagged naval and other types of vessels in or near U.S. ports, coastlines, and maritime space.
In terms of policy implications from these trendlines, four issues, in particular, merit attention and priority focus:
- The concept of maritime security is changing, meaning it is time for a re-imagined, more holistic, and broader re-definition of this term that addresses both civil and military dimensions. Doing so, in turn, necessitates coordination mechanisms to both devise a comprehensive U.S. strategy and to implement it effectively. Resourcing any such strategy is also key to its success. Because modern-day maritime strategy will include a whole-of-government array of interests, actors, and institutions, establishment of a new institution whose primary mission it is to focus on U.S. maritime interests writ large is one option, but not the only one. Wherever the mission rests, a means to coordinate these myriad interests is essential to ensure that they are met across the range of issues and actors that now invoke maritime security.
- It is also advisable to focus on China’s maritime abilities in a holistic sense. This includes taking into account China’s development of a blue economy at home and abroad alongside PRC interests in developing overseas ports and military bases in order to capture all of the maritime security dimensions of the China challenge.
- The time is right for a transformation in maritime diplomacy, or what the U.S. Secretary of the Navy has called “new maritime statecraft.” Diplomacy is an essential tool in ensuring maritime security, particularly in seeking to re-define the term and its reach across military, commercial, security, and economic domains. The United States can and ought to lead this effort to ensure U.S. and allied interests are addressed as maritime security challenges and opportunities expand.
- Finally, as maritime security has become a more important consideration for U.S. national and international security and prosperity, career opportunities in maritime-related fields also merit greater attention so that younger workers, scholars, and officers will be attracted to serve in maritime-related fields. This holds true for both private- and public-sector organizations. Some of this work is already underway in terms of promoting shipbuilding capabilities to ensure future US Navy assets. But more is needed to address the breadth of the existing and future maritime enterprise at home and abroad, including the growing demand for maritime security around the globe.
