Sea Control 588: Outsourcing Security at Sea with Pieter Zhao

All right, welcome to Seat Control, Seat Control fans. This is Jay. My guest today is Peter Zhao, and we're going to talk about his recent Naval War College Review article called "Outsourcing Security at Sea," the return of private maritime security companies and their role in 21st century maritime security. It sounds like a really fun topic, so looking forward to giving you that. First off, Peter, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Yes, thank you so much, Jay. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be on the podcast, so my name is Peter. I'm a PhD candidate at the U.S. Machine University in Blooderdam, which is the second city in the Netherlands for those who are not too familiar. It's quite an important city because we have a big port, so we're the biggest port outside Asia, so it's a city with a strong maritime character, and I think that character also influenced me academically. My PhD is on the delegation of defense and security capabilities at sea, specifically to non-state and irregular actors, which are traditionally considered state or military terrain, and that's also very much related to this paper that we'll be discussing during this episode. Before starting my PhD, I get history. I did my bachelor's and master's in history here at the U.S. Machine University, and then I did a second master's in international security studies at the Paris School of International Affairs, which is at Sea on Spilling Paris, and I did part of that degree at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, so I managed to spend some time in the U.S. as well, so that was good, and that was focused on the maritime domain within these studies, quite a lot of different topics within the maritime domain. So yeah. Cool, very cool. As a reminder, listeners, the opinions here are our own and not representative of any institution which we might be otherwise associated. Before I get into just stuff, particularly on the article, do you have a, I guess what inspired you? I was going to ask about what inspired you to write the article, what inspired you to get involved in maritime issues, aside from living in Rotterdam, there's no good question. When I studied history, I always focused on the history of international relations in our program here that was one of the kind of specializations you could do, and when looking into the history of international relations, you kind of need to specialize in something, and I always was very interested in the kind of role of the maritime domain in international relations, which is sometimes a bit of a understudy domain. Also in the history of conflict and war, it's often very land-centered, and I was very interested in the maritime domain in all those discussions in, I think, in international relations, literature, they often like to use the term sea blindness. So, yes, partly just an interest for myself, but I guess it's also good to go and focus on something, and this really sparked my interest in it, and I've really, yeah, I've never really went and let go of it, so, yeah, I stayed with the maritime. Well, good, we're glad you stayed, welcome aboard, keep sailing. Was there any particular, for this article in particular, was there any recent event that inspired you writing this piece? It covers a lot of historical background for those, and we'll put a show link up to here. It's an open source article from a US Naval War College Review, so easy, everybody can check it out. But anything in particular that inspired you to write this, write on this particular topic. Yeah, so I wrote the piece about two years ago, I got published this year because we did some changes to it, but, yeah, back in when I was kind of finishing my graduate study, here in the Netherlands, there was a lot of discussion about the, well, legalization of private maritime security companies, because at that time, most flagstates had already, well, either legalized or facilitated the use of private maritime security companies for, for counter-piracy transits in the high risk, in the former high risk area. And in the Netherlands, this was a long discussion because the Netherlands initially had a very principled stance that, well, the monopoly on the legal use of forces with state, so they were not going to allow the use of private maritime security companies. And they held on to this stance for a long time, so in order to provide commercial shipping with protection, they set up these vessel protection detachments, which were provided by the Dutch Marine Corps. That ships could request when they were transiting the high risk area, but yeah, this was often considered not ideal by the shipping community in the Netherlands because it was relatively expensive, there was a lot of bureaucratic, well, obstacles that came up when ships wanted to request such a vessel protection detachments. So therefore, there was a big influence, a big lobby by the shipping industry to the Dutch government and parliament to legalize the use of private maritime security companies like at that time, most other European flagstates and, of course, non-European flagstates had already done. And eventually, this law was passed in 2022, so quite recent. And that's around the time that I wrote the article, but, of course, I didn't really focus just on the Netherlands. I kind of focused on the broader development, because I was also quite interested in kind of more the historical perspective, but I think the discussion in the Netherlands kind of inspired me to ride this piece and, yeah, it's still, yeah, it's not as much of an ongoing discussion anymore here in the Netherlands since 2022, there are three private maritime security companies that are licensed to provide protection. But of course, in recent years with the Houthi attacks and the Red Sea, a lot of transits have been rerouted. So, yeah, it's been kind of an issue that has gone into the background a little bit, but yeah. >> Right. Since related to that, you wrote a maritime security business even going back to where we, before we'd call it that, like the British East and the Accompanied Navy, it's ebbed in flowed or oscillated with its most recent high water mark, maybe around 2011 with the small EOFs, the coast of East Africa. Since you began riding the article and got published there, do you believe the use of private maritime security companies is on another upswing, even though it may be of not a big deal in the Netherlands as necessarily as much as it was, do you think that's, you know, is it a growth industry? >> Yeah, well, that's a good question and there's a lot of discussion about this in kind of social media channels of people kind of dealing with these issues, because, yeah, with the last the last two years, in November 2023, there was a kind of an upsurge in Somali policy incidents, which kind of corresponded with the Houthi attacks, so there were some discussions whether this was connected, maybe there was some communication or it was just opportunistic behavior via Somali pirates because, of course, the naval missions in the area kind of switched there, kind of started moving to the, started looking at the Houthi threats, so their guards were down to the Somali piracy problem, so therefore there were some discussions whether this was connected to each other, could be, but at the same time, there was also an upsurge in demand for private maritime security companies, but yeah, of course, a private maritime security company is not really going to help you against the threats coming from the Houthi threat, well, maybe you could use private maritime security companies to avoid hijacking, but that hasn't really been the main kind of modus operandi by the Houthis, so against ballistic or cruise missiles that's not going to work, although there has been some discussion that maybe it would be, it would be helpful against the USV threats or the unmanned service vessels, there have been some videos that have rotated, that have kind of been around on the internet, in which you saw a private security detail kind of shooting a USV and destroying it before it could reach the ship, but of course, that's not really a responsible way of dealing with this threat because most of the ships just rerouted and did not transit the Red Sea anymore, so therefore, yeah, there has been a bit of an upsurge in the market because of the partly because of the research in Somali piracy in November of 2023, over 2024, over the entire year, but then at the same time because the number of transits has declined. A lot of private maritime security companies are also facing a market where there's less demand because the transits are just not going through, so yeah, it's hard to say, it's also hard to get any reliable data on this, so yeah, I get most of my data from talking to people in the industry, but yeah, it's interesting to look out for and I think in the coming years now that the Boothies have stopped, or at least, it was only last week that they announced to halt attacks in the Red Sea, and in any case, if shipping companies decide to return to the Red Sea, we know that will take a long time because these contracts go up to six months, so yeah, it's hard to say what will happen in the coming months, but before the Boothies threat, and before, also before that, you had COVID, which also decline transits in global shipping in general, but estimates are that 80% of ships transit in the former high risk area had some form of private arm protection or arm protection, so in that sense, you could say that the market has more, let's consolidate it, and that this is now a just a mainstream practice for ships transit in the region. Are you aware from your research or just asking around, are there, are they, are they getting used in other certain high risk areas, Demolacas, Straits, places like that? Are you aware of just side note? Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. While in the historical literature on the literature on private maritime security companies, first kind of mentions of them is often in relation to the Melaka Straits, which of course has in the global piracy hotspots has always been on the radar, but the the market really consolidated due to the Somali piracy threat because of the specific form of piracy there, so it was really hijacking of entire ships, which caused the shipping industry too much to ignore while in the Melaka Straits, it's often also more hidden run, so theft, and therefore shipping companies might not consider that worth hiring a complete security team for because it's too expensive. So yeah, there's currently, as far as I'm aware, not as much private maritime security companies active in the Melaka Straits as there used to be maybe in the early 2000s, and of course, another piracy hotspot is the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa, but there the, it's also quite a difficult, a different threat because it often happens within territorial waters, or at least within the EEZ, and coastal states are not a huge fan, of course, of ships having onboard armed guards, so often the private maritime security companies operating in the Gulf of Guinea, which definitely are, they definitely operate there. They provide escort vessels, which are often crewed by either coast guard or local naval personnel, and then often with maybe liaison from the private maritime security companies. So you also see the development there, although I have to admit that I haven't really looked into that region as much, so I'm not an expert on that at all, but the form is very different, but yeah, you can, at least it shows that these private maritime security companies are also trying to see new markets and see other potential threats or uses that they could jump on, so I've also in discussions with representatives from the industry, I've also where people talk about patrols for illegal fishing, for example, which is also a big issue in a lot of countries that can deal with the illegal fishing issue, but also I've heard discussions, recent discussions, this is very recent, so I have not been able to find much more on this, but in the Netherlands with the undersea infrastructure threat, which of course has been in news recently. There have been calls by the Dutch Navy that they are unable to patrol the Dutch EEZ at all times, so therefore they are considering parking a bit commercial parties as well, and I wouldn't be surprised at these were the same companies that have been approached for the counter-piracy threat as well, but that is very recent, so, but yeah, opportunities are out there, and you know, with these kinds of developments historically, you can often see that once an actor like a private maritime security company becomes consolidated in the maritime security environment, they will try and find other avenues, of course, to offer their services. Since you've, I'll go back a little way, since this article goes into a lot of history there, which is really cool. When you said private maritime security companies, they want to keep themselves in business even when their main perhaps line goes away, because you talk a little bit about that historically, I think most folks on Simsec who are listening are a little familiar with the pirate-privateer difference and a little bit of the history of that, but anything you want to go into for those folks who aren't, or that you probably know more than most of us about that, so difference between private and privateer, how that, you know, issues with that, how that can one can evolve into the other. Yeah, a good question. Yeah, there's of course a big literature on the history of piracy and privateering, and maybe to give some more information about the article itself, because the interest in the topic came a little bit from this literature that exists on the historical cases of privateering. Because when reading about the discussions in the Netherlands about private maritime security companies, I start reading more about private maritime security companies in general, and then most of the literature about this topic often sees it in line with the discussion on private military companies on land, for example, but I often feel like it's often treated as if it's a new phenomenon, but of course the historical record of maritime warfare and security includes a lot of non-state actors or non-state and irregular actors, maybe a term that we would use today. So yeah, I was kind of interested in this historical aspect and kind of seeing it as a long line of non-state and irregular actors in maritime warfare and security in which these private maritime security companies are kind of a new form, but they kind of fit into this longer line. So the article basically tries to look at the history of other non-state or regular actors in the history of maritime warfare and security, and specifically the characteristics or dynamics that underpin their use and their mobilization in the historical context, and then it finds that while these characteristics or dynamics are quite similar to the contemporary dynamics underpinning the use of private maritime security companies, because of course states are dealing with limited capabilities. I mean, that's always the case. It's always about kind of maximizing your resources, and especially in the historical sense, states often had limited economic, at least the state often had limited naval capabilities, so therefore, privateering was considered a cost-effective way of dealing with the all the different kind of maritime security threats that they had to balance. So that's quite similar, as you see today, in the discussions on private maritime security companies, like I mentioned in the Netherlands, it was all about cost-effectiveness, so that was one kind of pillar, an economic pillar, you could say that underpin both dynamics. Then the second pillar, you could say, is about political will, because specifically later in the 18th and late 17th century, for example, the French case that he shows that the French state at some point invested heavily into its navy, but at some point decided that it was more, it wanted to focus more on the ghetto course strategy, as is a very famous word in naval literature, so they start promoting the private, they start encouraging privateering more as opposed to their standing navy, which is more of a political choice, it wasn't really as much of an, of course, it was also an economic consideration, but it was very much a political choice as well, because they kind of decided to defend the standing navy, so in a sense, it's a political will issue as well. So is it for the course, just that's attacking merchant shipping primarily, right? Yeah, so it's about commerce rating, it's about commerce rating, over, over, yeah, it's like kind of a preference for commerce rating, with privateering, vessels as opposed to the British, which folks more on the battlefield fleet and the royal navy, so you can see a clear divergence there, and there's a very good paper on this by Brian Moby, I think in 2010 or 2009, and there's, there's some good literature on this topic, so yeah, economic, political, and of course also, military, because a development that you very clearly see in the historical and the contemporary is that, militaries often feel like the protection of commerce is not necessarily a core task for the navy, that's something that you could very clearly see in the contemporary discussion about private maritime security companies, so in the Dutch case, at some point, the Marine Corps, which at first considered this an important task when they were, when these vessel protection detachments were first established, at some point started thinking, well, this is very much a low-intensity task and kind of something that shouldn't really be assigned to a, well, elite train unit like the Marine Corps, so that is that really the core task for the navy and it takes away capabilities that could be used for other core tasks, especially in an age of returned kind of peer-to-peer competition or at least preparation for peer-to-peer competition, so I felt like these kind of economic, political, military pillars are, you can recognize them, in most of the historical case studies and in the contemporary case studies, and that was kind of the motivation to ride the paper. And yeah, I'm kind of building on that idea for my PhD as well, in which I tried to zoom out from the private maritime security companies because, of course, this delegation of defense and security capabilities, which are traditionally state or military terrain, are also visible in other developments, as you talk about the South China Sea, for example, the boots on the ground or in the water, as it were, are not really navies that are kind of being assertive, but it's coast guards or more often fishing vessels, which are maritime militia. And the potential attacks in the Baltics and the cables, that's not like a foreign, you know, a naval vessel, they're correct, those are also private entities. Yeah, exactly. We're public private in which the blur, the kind of blurry line. So I think yeah, this whole discussion about hybrid warfare at sea also kind of fits into this discussion. And yeah, I think it's interesting as well to see, maybe to come back to your previous question, that the historical record is also not as simple as just saying non-state or state or public or private because the lines are often very blurred in the privateering literature. There's a lot of discussion about whether you could really consider this a non-state venture because, of course, it's very much related to the state as well. And often, the public and private ownership was very much blurred. Sometimes private years would be commissioned on a naval ship, for example. So it's not as easy to make that distinction. I think that's definitely something you see today as well. And therefore, it's also interesting to see that it's not a simple delegation by the state to a non-state actor or by the public to their private, but sometimes it's also the private kind of taking the step and then the public kind of following along. So yeah, I think it's interesting to look into the blurred, this kind of blurred character. So yeah. Yeah, it seems like every few years are more often someone publishes an article in maybe naval war college review or proceedings in the US about bringing back bringing back privateers as the US navy struggles and most other navy struggle with getting their fleet up to size that they want that that rear someone comes up with, "Hey, you know, here's how we used to we used to solve this problem." So yeah, but this I really like it. Go ahead, sorry. And the article I also mentioned that in the the 1856 declaration of Paris, which is when privateering is officially outlaw, of course, it's not a sudden stop, but of course the United States, it's often mentioned, is not one of the secretaries and they never ratified this declaration. So in a sense, because we were a dinky, the US was a dinky navy at the time, basically, it was not a it was not a world class, so we needed to help. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because there's very much, of course, also related to the discussion about privateering being a weapon of the weaker power and kind of this discussion about asymmetric warfare. So, which is also, again, a term that is used a lot today. So these parallels are visible, but of course, maybe in another form, I mean, privateering is quite an historical. I'm also in the article specifically saying that it's not, it's, you know, the simple historical parallels often serve as nice headlines for for an article, you know, the return of the private here, that, yeah, I'm arguing that you shouldn't really look at the specifically, at the actors, but more of the dynamics that kind of underpin their use, and then you can see that these kind of overlapping characteristics for dynamics are out there, and it's interesting to analyze them, because that, of course, can tell us a little bit about potential effects and consequences today as well. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, again, article is very in depth, really well researched. I started looking up some of your references for that just for, to nerd out a bit, so I encourage folks to do that. I guess last big question here, from all that research, do you, do you see there's uses that nations, non-state actors, NGOs might have for private maritime security companies that they aren't currently aren't discussed or are underused, not used at all, it seems like there could be a lot to do with this. Yeah, well, I think it's a good question, of course, I'm also a little bit be historian, so I feel like I'm not sure if I should be the one to tell the world's navies that they should be privatizing more, but yeah, I think it's an interesting question, I think it's interesting to see what the future holds for these private maritime security companies as they are searching for new kind of markets or threats that they could work on. In recent conversations I've had, we've also, I've also heard a talk of, for example, well, and that besides the maritime domain awareness patrols, kind of the lower intensity tasks, but also I've heard counter-mining, for example, I've also heard discussions about that, so yeah, I definitely think there are a lot of people thinking about different uses that could be for these private maritime security companies, so yeah, it's interesting to keep an eye out for those developments, and like I said as well, it's also interesting to take a bit broader and look at what is being, what is done in other kind of non-state, with other non-state actors in the maritime domain, so yeah, for example, the maritime leadership, but also I've heard discussions for the US case about the merchant marine that should maybe be reinstated to offset certain certain capabilities for the navies, so yeah, I feel like it's a it's a very dynamic topic that might show a lot of changes in the coming in the coming years, maybe in the coming century, so yeah, but as an historian I tried to stay clear of predicting the future. That's probably wise, but you do have a lot of great historical examples in the article there, so I think there are people go like, yeah, I didn't think about that, so anyway, courage folks to look at that, so I'll just close off, let's work on me, find you online, and where are you looking at, what are you working on next, besides your PhD, anything else? Yeah, thank you, while I'll primarily be focusing on my PhD, I am very much in the early stages of the research, so yeah, primarily looking at this same kind of topic from a broader perspective, so navigating defense and security capabilities, which are traditionally exclusively state or military terrain array away from these actors to the non-state and irregular actors or non-meditary actors, so that's what I'm mainly looking at, and I also recently joined the Irregular Warfare Initiative as a fellow, so yeah, I'll also be working with the other fellows and the other people at the Irregular Warfare Initiative to further expand this topic and look at Irregular Warfare as a concept in the maritime domain specifically, and where I can be found, well, my email will be down in the show notes, I'm sure you can find my people page from the university, and besides that, you can find me a LinkedIn where I try to share my publications and my research and any comments, I recently joined Blue Sky as well, I haven't really posted on it yet, but I'm also going to try to keep that up, so those are my social media handles, and I'm excited to exchange thoughts with anyone who thinks he or she might have any additions or insights that might be relevant to my research as well. Fantastic, thanks so much, and shout out to the IDI folks too, they're doing good work over there, people aren't that familiar, I'll put a, we'll put several links up on the show notes here, so that keeps going. Well, thanks again, look forward to speaking with you whenever you, when you're your next article, I'm sure, whatever it's going to be, you get out there, it's going to be fascinating, so we look forward to talking about that, and for all the listeners, thanks again for listening, and we will see you next time, out. [Music] [Music]