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William A. Donohue (Michigan State University), Franziska Pugh (Michigan State University), Sharmaake Sabrie (Georgetown University) Somali pirates take a very business-like approach to their craft. “We attack big ships that can pay us. However, after capturing several ships we have learned about what type of ships to target and which ship owner is able or … Read more

By Hassan M. Eltaher Threats to the maritime industry include threats to ships/vessels, ports, port facilities, passenger terminals, national and international waterways including their locks and approaches; international straits and multinational rivers; navigation facilities; waterside and landside moorings; human and multi-modal vehicular traffic; seaplane operations, and finally threats to Mobile Offshore Drilling Units (MODUs). To … Read more

By Victor Asal and Justin V. Hastings Maritime terrorism is not a prominent research topic. Terrorist attacks against maritime targets are very rare. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) only notes 199 out of 98,000 attacks in 40 years, which is less than 0.2% of the total. Even rarer are attacks on water where the terrorists … Read more

By Simon J. Smith and Carmen Gebhard Counter-piracy operations and maritime engagement in the Gulf of Aden is a puzzling case for anyone interested in the political and institutional problems underlying the attempts by both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to cooperate in security matters. Since late 2008, both … Read more

Brian Benjamin Crisher and Mark Souva, Florida State University Naval power is a crucial element of state power, yet existing naval datasets are limited to a small number of states and ship types. Here we present 147 years of naval data on all the world’s navies from 1865 to 2011. This country-year dataset, which we … Read more

By Anamika Twyman-Ghoshal The lack of reliable piracy data has been identified as one of the main obstacles to contemporary maritime piracy research (Worrall, 2000; Ong-Webb, 2007). Research to date has focused on selected types of piracy or on particular geographical regions where piracy occurs, usually relying on single sources of data or being wholly … Read more

By Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Danilo Marcondes de Souza Neto In the fluid, highly uncertain context of the post-Cold War period, rising powers have begun to engage more intensely in region-building, redefining their strategic vicinities through a combination of inter-state cooperation and military build-up. Although this topic has been addressed in depth with respect to … Read more

by P.V. Rao The unstable and fragile political regimes of many of the African littoral countries in the Indian Ocean Region compound the problems of managing their maritime domains. Maritime criminal and illegal operations are confined not only to the coastal states but also to the island states of the continent. The inability of these … Read more

Paul Hallwood and Thomas J. Miceli University of Connecticut Modern day maritime piracy is a world-wide phenomenon that poses a serious threat to international shipping.  An economic approach to the control of maritime piracy is based on the general economic theory of law enforcement that views offenders (pirates) as rational decision makers who would respond … Read more

Global Directions, Merton College Oxford in Conjunction with the Royal Navy Hudson Trust Anja Shortland, Julia Amos and Sarah Percy The third international maritime security conference was held at Merton College, Oxford on 1 and 2 April 2014 with over forty delegates. It involved two days of lively conversation, stimulated by short presentations on various … Read more