Naval Peacekeeping and Piracy: Time for a Critical Turn in the Debate

Abstract

Although peacekeeping operations on the ocean have never held a central position in security studies or peace and conflict studies, a small body of work has been produced on what has been called ‘naval peacekeeping’. This article argues that empirical insights provided by intervention against piracy in the Horn of Africa from 2008 suggest a critical turn in the naval peacekeeping debate, from a perspective primarily concerned with identifying unconventional threats at sea and justifying new roles for navies in addressing such threats, to a new perspective concerned with a critical vision on peace and security on the oceans and a more reflexive approach to the notion of peacekeeping at sea. The naval peacekeeping debate needs to encompass such factors as the origins and connections of ocean governance to land-based structural roots, local, regional and global dynamics, as well as historical conditions underlying the problems at sea.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author's research is supported by funds from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (Foundation for Science and Technology), Portugal (ref. SFRH/BD/72879/2010).

Notes

According to international law, only attacks and robberies committed on the high seas are defined as piracy. All the other situations, such as attacks against ships within territorial seas or in ports, are classified as armed robbery at sea (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Art.101). In this respect, the literature on piracy, in general, bypasses this jurisdictional element and employs the term ‘piracy’ in a broad sense. This article follows this general tendency.

Michael Pugh, Jeremy Ginifer and Eric Grove, ‘Sea Power, Security and Peacekeeping after the Cold War’, in Michael Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping: A Framework for United Nations Operations, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994, p.10.

Michael Pugh, ‘Is Mahan Still Alive? State Naval Power in the International System’, Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol.16, No.2 (at: http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/JCS/issue/view/998).

Ibid.

Robert Stephens Staley II, The Wave of the Future: The United Nations and Naval Peacekeeping, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992; Pugh (see n.2 above), p.42; Rob McLaughlin, United Nations Naval Peace Operations in the Territorial Sea, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009; James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen (eds), Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations: Stability from the Sea, London: Routledge, 2009.

Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008, pp.136–7.

An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping, UN doc., A/47/277-S/24111, 1992 (at: www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html).

Jeffrey I. Sands, ‘Blue Hulls: Multinational Naval Cooperation and the United Nations’, CRM 93-40, US Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria, VA, 1993, p.1.

Ibid.; D.L. Sim, ‘Men of War for Missions of Peace: Naval Forces in Support of United Nations Resolutions’, Research Report 8-94, Strategic Research Department, US Naval War College, Newport, RI, 1994.

Gwyn Prins, ‘The United Nations and Peace-Keeping in the Post-Cold War World: The Case of Naval Power’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol.22, No. 2, 1991, pp.135–55; Staley II (see n.5 above).

Juan Carlos Neves, ‘United Nations Peace-Keeping Operations in the Gulf of Fonseca by Argentine Naval Units’, Research Report 01-93, Strategic Research Department, US Naval War College, Newport, RI, 1993; Jeremy J. Blackham, ‘Maritime Peacekeeping’, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Journal, Vol.138, No.4,1993, pp.18–23.

Staley II (see n.5 above); Jeremy Ginifer, ‘The UN at Sea? The New Relevance of Maritime Operations’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.1, No.3, 1994, pp.320–35.

Pugh (see n.2 above).

Ibid., pp.42, 237, 241.

Ibid., pp.236–7.

Staley II (see n.5 above).

Ibid., pp.43–4.

McLaughlin (see n.5 above).

Wirtz and Larsen (see n.5 above), p.3.

Ibid.

See especially: Pugh (n.2 above), pp.250–67; Wirtz and Larsen (n.5 above), pp.181–4; McLaughlin (n.5 above), pp.50–5; Sands (n.8 above), pp.10–24; Neves (n.11 above); Sim (n.9 above).

Jeremy Ginifer, ‘A Conceptual Framework for UN Naval Operations’, in Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping (n.2 above), pp.60–1; Pugh (ibid.), p.33.

In summary, the ‘second generation’ refers to the expanded multidimensional peacekeeping inaugurated in the early 1990s; the ‘third generation’ refers to the more robust peacekeeping in the 2000s and is characterized by empowered mandates with authorization to use force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. For a comprehensive review of peacekeeping generations, see Ramsbotham et al. (n.6 above), pp.134–50.

For a more detailed contextualization of these functions within the UN naval operations' historical record, see Pugh (n.2 above), pp.250–67; Wirtz and Larsen (n.5 above), pp.181–4.

Jessica Piombo and Michael Malley, ‘Beyond Protecting the Land and the Sea’, in James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen (eds), Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations: Stability from the Sea, London: Routledge, 2009, pp.61–80; Ginifer (see n.12 above), p.325.

Pugh (see n.2 above), p.256.

Ginifer (see n.22 above), p.69.

Jeremy Ginifer and Eric Grove, ‘UN Management of Naval Operations’, in Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping (n.2 above), p.126.

Ibid., p.140.

Ibid., pp.131–2; Ginifer (see n.12 above), pp.328–9.

Pugh (see n.2 above), p.42; Ginifer (see n.12 above), p.322.

See, for example, the taxonomy of peacekeeping functions in Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, p.127.

Ginifer (see n.12 above), p.320; Pugh (see n.2 above), p.33; Staley (see n.5 above), p.13.

Jeremy Ginifer and Michael Pugh, ‘Conclusion’, in Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping (n.2 above), p.236.

Pugh (see n.2 above), pp.32–4. See also: Ginifer (n.12 above), pp.322,326; John Ferris, ‘SSTR as History: The British Royal Navy Experience, 1815–1930’, in James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen (eds), Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations: Stability from the Sea, London: Routledge, 2009, p.38.

UN Security Council resolutions 1816, 1838, 1844, 1846 and 1851 (all 2008) (at: www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions08.htm).

S/RES/1846(2008) (see n.36 above), p.4.

Ibid., p.2.

‘Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1846 (2008)’, UN doc., S/2009/590, 13 Nov. 2009, pp.4–6 (at: www.un.org/Docs/sc/sgrep09.htm).

Ginifer (see n.12 above), p.322; Pugh (see n.2 above), p.34; Michael Pugh and Frank Gregory, ‘Maritime Constabulary Roles for Non-military Security’, in Pugh (ed.), Maritime Security and Peacekeeping (n.2 above), pp.74–101.

Ferris (see n.35 above), p.38.

See, e.g., Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, London: Frank Cass, 2004, p.311.

Here understood within the eclectic orientation of critical security studies which encompass constructivist, poststructuralist and post-Marxist perspectives on security. See Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997; Robert W. Cox, Approaches to World Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.88.

Cox (see n.43 above), p.89.

The Ocean: Our Future – the Report of the Independent World Commission on the Oceans (chaired by Mário Soares), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp.16,26.

See Raimo Väyrynen (ed.), New Directions on Conflict Theory: Conflict Resolution and Conflict Transformation, London: Sage, 1991; John Paul Lederach, Preparing for Peace. Conflict Transformation across Cultures, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Oliver P. Richmond (ed.), Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding: Critical Developments and Approaches, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp.1–2.

For critiques of the ‘liberal peace’ project, see: David Chandler, ‘The Responsibility to Protect? Imposing the Liberal Peace’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.11, No.1, 2004, pp.59–81; Richmond (see n.47 above); Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Indigenous Peace-Making versus the Liberal Peace’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol.43, No.2, 2008, pp.139–63; Roger Mac Ginty (ed.), The Liberal Peace and Post-war Reconstruction, Abingdon: Routledge, 2009; Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper and Mandy Turner (eds), Whose Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding, London: Palgrave, 2008; Neil Cooper, ‘On the Crisis in the Liberal Peace’, Conflict, Security & Development, Vol.7, No.4, 2007, pp.605–16.

Vivienne Jabri, ‘War, Government, Politics: A Critical Response to the Hegemony of the Liberal Peace’, in Oliver P. Richmond (ed.), Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding: Critical Developments and Approaches, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p.49.

Here understood in the sense proposed by Cox (see n.43 above), pp.87–8.

The Ocean (see n.45 above), p.35.

The theory of securitization is built around the argument that security is a speech act, which means that the act of uttering security is in itself what makes something a security problem: ‘the word “security” is the act … by saying it something is done’. Øle Wæver, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, p.55). See also Barry Buzan, Øle Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998.

Terms employed by Wæver in his characterization of security as a product of elite speech acts (see n.52 above, p.54).

Waever (see n.52 above), p.55.

Ibid., pp.54,57.

US Navy, US Marine Corps and US Coast Guard, ‘Naval Operations Concept 2010 (NOC 10)’, p.35 (at: www.navy.mil/maritime/noc/NOC2010.pdf).

NATO Parliamentary Assembly, ‘Committee report – Maritime Security: NATO and EU Roles and Co-ordination’, 7 Mar. 2010 (at: www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=2087).

From Wæver's perspective, de-securitization is minimizing security. It is returning the issue to its ordinary agenda, which means to claim ‘less security, more politics!’ (see n.52 above), pp.55–6.