Commercial shipping and the maritime strategy

Naval War College Review, Spring, 2008 by Steve Carmel

The new national maritime strategy, entitled "A Cooperative Maritime Strategy for the Twenty-first Century," is designed to recognize the changes and challenges wrought by globalization in the maritime commons. The great facilitator of globalization is, of course, commercial shipping. The progressive growth of maritime trade over the centuries has produced an international system of trade that, in the words of that great oracle of seapower Alfred Thayer Mahan, "forms an articulated system, not only of prodigious size and activity, but of an excessive sensitiveness, unequaled in former ages." (1) Improvements in speed and consistency of service coupled with enormous reductions in the cost of sea cargo transportation have shaped the evolving system of global manufacturing in ways unforeseeable just twenty years ago. Any strategy that devotes as much attention as the new maritime strategy to that aspect of life on the global commons will cause those who participate in that realm to take a keen interest in it; hence, an analysis of that strategy from the perspective of the commercial shipping industry is warranted.

As a point of departure for that analysis, it is appropriate to quote Vice Admiral John Morgan's and Rear Admiral Charles Martoglio's seminal "thousand-ship navy" article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings: "Policing the maritime commons will require substantially more capability than the United States or any individual nation can deliver. It will take a combination of national, international and private industry cooperation to provide the platforms, people and protocols necessary to secure the seas against the transnational threat." (2) They go on to note the importance of understanding the nature of the threat that the United States and most trading nations face. A coherent analysis should focus on two key points they highlight. The first is the potential for cooperation of private industry--or better, the opportunity forgone by failure to co-opt effectively the commercial shipping community in this effort. The second point involves the specific capabilities that community can bring to the table if allowed to. Maersk Line Limited (MLL), especially, wants to participate.

Admiral Morgan, the Navy's chief of strategy, has spoken on this topic several times and appears to clearly understand what the industry can offer and, more importantly, what is lost by failing to engage it. The very fact that this article appears in the Naval War College Review indicates that others in the Navy appreciate that potential. Perhaps the message has not diffused far enough, however, as few, if any, day-to-day tactical-level discussions mention the existence of Maersk or its brethren, except as objects (not part) of the maritime strategy. This is not to say that there has not been engagement, but engagement in formulating a strategy and participating in its execution are very different things.

The primary purpose of this article, then, is to help raise awareness among sea service officers of what the commercial shipping industry can offer. Secondly, it addresses the nature of the threat, which necessarily means the environment, which in turn, as a practical matter, is constituted by the daily operations of the commercial shipping industry. These two points--understanding the environment and commercial shipping participation in the maritime strategy--represent an intersection of naval and commercial operations, and one in which the upshot for global maritime security is not completely clear. Shippers have a very different worldview than that of the leaders of the U.S. Navy, which is understandable as their roles and missions differ, but that difference may not be as well appreciated as it should be. It is important to understand how those worldviews diverge.

WHAT DO COMMERCIAL SHIPPERS BRING TO THE TABLE?

In a word, they bring presence--overwhelming, persistent global presence. Maersk ships and others are out there in far larger numbers across more of the ocean than most people appreciate. A few statistics might bring home the point. The global Maersk shipping group alone--a single company--has a fleet of over a thousand ships of various types, including containerships, tankers, LNG/LPG carriers, RO/ROs, and ROPAX, * with about 120 vessels on order in yards around the world. Maersk takes delivery of, on average, forty new ships per year. Within that total the container fleet consists of over 550 vessels. The largest has a length of about 1,300 feet and a capacity of well in excess of eleven thousand twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), in containers, the vast majority of which are inaccessible when the vessel is loaded. Consider the logistical challenges of external radiation scanning of such a vessel. To sense a container located on the bottom of the pile, a scanner must be able to see through ten other loaded containers (the ship is twenty-two bays wide) and down through fifty feet of water, and with sufficient sensitivity to discriminate which is the offending container.