Maritime Security and History

Maritime security research examines how states, international organizations, and non-state actors manage threats to the world's shipping lanes, with piracy, smuggling, and politically motivated violence at sea as its central concerns. Because roughly ninety percent of global trade moves by ship, disruptions in chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca or the waters off Somalia carry consequences that ripple from commodity prices to humanitarian supply chains. Scholars in this area draw on international law, diplomatic history, and regional politics to understand why some counter-piracy coalitions succeed while others fragment, and how legal jurisdictions—which were largely designed for land-based states—apply awkwardly to crimes committed on the open ocean. Active debates continue over how to distinguish piracy from terrorism under international frameworks, and whether multilateral enforcement operations produce lasting deterrence or simply displace criminal networks to less-patrolled waters.

Works

41,851

Total citations

81,140

Keywords

Maritime SecurityPiracyAsia-PacificDiplomacyInternational LawCounter-Piracy Operations