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123 Muchattentionhasbeengiven to the ways governments are changing the useoftheirgroundforces,especiallywhenitcomestoconductingpeacekeeping, stability operations, and counterinsurgency. This attention is no surprise given that NATO countries have more than 250,000 military personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These ground forces have learned the hard lessons of stability operations and are reequipping with better-designed uniforms and with vehicles better suited for terrain and IED-defense, and are training for conducting non-warfighting missions. For ground forces, change is necessary not only for success but also for survival in nonpermissive environments. These lessons also inform how military forces are changing in permissive environments where the U.S. military does not conduct combat operations. Ground forces are not the only ones changing to suit twenty-first century missions. Naval forces are changing too. NATO-, EU-, and U.S.-led naval coalitions around the world are providing port security, patrolling strategic lanes of communication, combating piracy, delivering humanitarian assistance, conducting medical diplomacy, and cooperating with NGOs to promote development. These are very different missions from those for which warships were designed. In particular, the U.S. Navy is adapting to build partners’ coast guards and navies to localize maritime-borne threats before they impact freedom of navigation or exploit the maritime commons for illicit activities. Furthermore, navies provide logistics platforms for NGOs to conduct fisheries conservation, provide medical assistance, and deliver relief supplies. Underlyingthechangeinnaviesisanefforttoexportsecuritytobuilddefense relationships that promote specific security interests, develop allied and friendly military capabilities for self-defense and coalition operations, and provide foreign forces peacetime and contingency access. Given its shrinking fleet and global challenges, the U.S. Navy has embraced security cooperation to augment its own force to improve maritime security. Senior Navy strategists Vice Adm. John Morgan and Rear Adm. Charles Martogolio wrote in 2005, “policing the 6 Promoting Maritime Security 124 Chapter 6 maritime commons will require substantially more capability than the United States or any individual nation can deliver.”1 They recognized that a superpower has limits, and transnational actors increasingly generate maritime insecurity by capitalizing on weak security structures. As such, the United States seeks partnerships with international navies to create the proverbial thousand-ship navy, which can respond to piracy, smuggling, and other illegal activities and can protect important sea-lanes. Where no able partners exist, the United States will help build national capabilities. To be sure, the concept does not anticipate one thousand ships or confine itself to navy vessels only. Instead, global maritime partnerships include coast guards, commercial shipping companies, and port operators. This is logically based on the importance of seaborne trade, the size of the world’s oceans, and globalization.2 Maritime activities cross the public– private and national–international divides, therefore any attempt to improve maritime security must be comprehensive. Embracing Thomas Friedman’s vision of a flat world, Adm. Michael Mullen, who served as chief of naval operations and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said we need to rid ourselves “of the old notion—held by so many for so long— that maritime strategy exists solely to fight and win wars at sea, and the rest will take care of itself. In a globalized, flat world the rest matters a lot”3 (emphasis added). Consequently, the U.S Navy has been cooperating with partners that exist and creating new partners capable of working alongside many navies of the world. Lt. Cdr. Jon Bartee argues that these activities should become more formalized as foreign maritime defense, which he defines as participation by “U.S. civilian and military agencies to assist a government in developing or asserting sovereignty within its own internationally recognized territorial waters.”4 While this is a very large endeavor, and it will take decades to judge its effect, the rest of this chapter examines the rationale for maritime cooperation and the concepts to confront maritime security challenges. Maritime Security Challenges A little more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water, 80 percent of the world’s population lives on or near a coast, and 90 percent of international commerce travels by sea. These facts have been true throughout human history, but there is increasing awareness of the dangers to maritime security and the challenges posed by its absence. In 2005 the UN General Assembly was “concerned that marine pollution from all sources, including vessels and, in particular , land-based sources, constitutes a serious threat to human health and safety, endangers fish stocks, marine biodiversity and marine and coastal habitats and has...

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