Why the U.S. Should Embrace Seasteading

In search of the pioneer spirit and a Compact of Free Association

Sea-based Nations (SBNs) are only a small manifestation of much larger trends in the post-Westphalian world.  Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and panarchists have long discussed different options – from colonizing the sea or space to simply creating non-territorial nations – as alternatives to the current nation-state system.

 

These aspirations found a home amongst Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires, with Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of Paypal, at the forefront.  Peter initially built Paypal to be a new, international currency similar to Bitcoin, but was hindered by legislation.  Nonetheless, the aspiration to create non-state options remains – and more importantly, those pursuing such this vision seem to have both the brainpower and the money to bring it to fruition.

 

Hence, operating on the assumption that new states will at some point appear in one shape or another, it’s in the interests of the U.S. to embrace them rather than alienate them.  And, we have a golden opportunity to do so through the seasteading movement.  Even though Peter Thiel & Co are libertarians seeking to escape the grips of the government, they’re also U.S. citizens and affluent, having contributed a great deal to the U.S. economy and its corporate leverage around the world.  As Ian Sundstrom pointed out in his post on the subject, “Who would benefit most from Seasteading?” every ocean-going vessel must fly the flag of an existing nation.  It would be tempting for libertarians to choose a country with basically no law – let’s say Somalia – but if the U.S. Government offers some degree of legislative autonomy in combination with a security pact, that’s likely to be a more tempting option.

 

Experiments of this sort have been continuing in the U.S. for hundreds of years, the best-known example being the Navajo Nation, a semi-autonomous Native Tribal territory occupying parts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.  The Navajo Nation has its own constitution and laws, but the United States still asserts plenary power.  Likewise the U.S. and many small Pacific maritime entities have entered into various forms of Compacts of Free Association, providing near-autonomy and legal and foreign defense in exchange for relatively small set of prescribed laws and limitations on their actions.  Somaliland is another interesting experiment of semi-autonomous semi-anarchism that works, in the regional context, surprisingly well.  To be sure, there are plenty of areas of potential conflict between the U.S. Government and new SBNs in addition to the host of other problems previous CIMSEC bloggers duly pointed out – including security, international competition etc.  However, there are also many benefits.  It’s easy to see the pragmatic possibilities of expansion in the seas for overcrowded nations or those threatened by rising sea levels, as well as the worth of strategic outposts for others.  But the core benefit for America is vastly different in my opinion…

 

Corporations are people…and nation-states too?

America is a pioneering nation, which was built on the virtue of individual entrepreneurs innovating and exploring.  Now these individual have taken that spirit of innovation and seek to apply it to new forms of governance.  As Randy Hencken, the Director of the Seasteading Institute, mentioned in his CIMSEC interview earlier this week, seasteads might provide the ideal opportunity to test new governance models.  The traditional form of the nation-state is slowly losing its momentum due to globalization, which helps humans bypass the controls of and necessities for states, we want to be on the leading edge of what comes next – however the post-Westphalian transition happens.  It may be seasteading, or it may be other forms of governments – and in whatever shape or color they come, they’ll still need to work with, and to a degree rely on, current nation states.  The seasteading movement is in its very early, shaky phase, and now is the ideal time for the U.S. Government to lend it a hand, work to form coherent legislation, and help the movement to influence international conventions.  Just like the pioneers once discovered America, it’s now time to discover other forms of governance.

 

Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof (CEO, Shabakat Corporation and President, SIC Group) is a Swedish research and communications entrepreneur.  She began a strategic communication company carrying out campaigns for the U.S. Military in Afghanistan, Wise Strategic Communication (WSC), and started a second company in Libya and Egypt, Shabakat Corporation, during the Arab Spring. 

SeaUnsteady: Personal Sovereignty?

First they stopped painting everything grey, then they stopped safety checking their cell-phone chargers… eventually, it all went to hell.

Serious SeaSteading has primarily been the vestige of free market pioneers, entrepreneurs looking for a freer, more open space to conduct business. An important part of that ideal is personal sovereignty: life, liberty, and property. For a giant sea-going vessel, property will be a huge issue.

Can seasteaders truly own their state-rooms, their offices, or their facilities? Those familiar with ship-board life realize the amount of maintenance that often needs to be done in order to keep a ship sound. A normal suburban neighborhood doesn’t need to manage the distribution of weight amongst the properties to ensure landworthiness and structural integrity. Obviously, heavy weight and modification restrictions will apply to property. In this light, how would a seastead be governed? It is easier to leave your neighbors to their own devices when what they own and where won’t cause you to heel or when their home modifications won’t cause your deck to buckle. A homeowners’ association is bad enough when your poorly cut lawn won’t potentially undermine the integrity of the neighborhood’s fire-fighting systems or the water-tight integrity of hull frames.

Can a seastead ever be the libertarian paradise their conceivers wish it to be? Taxes alone may be excessive due to the the constant maintenance necessary for a huge metal hull in which a whole community is living day-to-day. The wear-and-tear would be greater than on any cruise ship. Additionally, along the line of thinking about national sovereignty brought up by CDR Hodges, what happens to the citizens of a seastead during periods of necessary hull repair? Ship’s return to dry-dock in order to have critical maintenance accomplished. How would nations grant access rights to seasteaders in a maintenance period? How do the sovereignties of two nations accomodate each other when one is dry-docked in another? If certain seasteaders are not allowed off the ship while in certain ports, would they essentially become accidental prisoners? Who would accept a refugee nation if their vessel were damaged beyond repair?

The problems with seasteading reach far beyond the black-box problems of how the ship-as-whole exerts influence over it’s surroundings legally, politically, and kinetically. When one transplants a community of free-thinking individuals onto a ship for more than the temporary joys of a pleasure cruise, the constraining dictats and harrowing risks of a life at sea must set the conditions for its survival. The challenge will be building a nation that cruises without treating the community like a crew.

Matt Hipple is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Sea-Based Nations and Sovereignty: What Makes a Nation-state?

Not your typical pirate mothership

To me, one of the more interesting assertions made by Randy Henrickson in his CIMSEC interview was this: “To avoid legally being a pirate, seasteads will have to flag themselves with the flag of an existing nation and partner up. As seasteading matures and grows, we foresee seasteads eventually breaking off when they have enough of their own economic power and population to no longer need to be binded to existing governments, when they’re at a point where they can be recognized by others as a micro-nation.”

 

There are a couple of interesting elements here: first, the notion that activities which are legal and even encouraged when done under the aegis of a flag might be considered illegal if done without such protection (although, depending on the specific activities Henrickson contemplates, piracy might not be the specific crime); second why would a nation be willing to “spin-off” an economically fruitful “micro-nation” whether at sea or on land?

 

This second question underscores the ambition of the seasteading project.  Up to this point in human history, every time a new nation-state has emerged, it has been tied with a specific piece of territory.  And, unfortunately, most newly sovereign states have experienced some degree of violence in achieving their independence.  Whether independence was achieved by revolution, decolonization, or partition, a greater or lesser degree of political violence has frequently accompanied it, either before or shortly after independence.  Partly, this stems from the physical, historical, and emotional attachment that human beings have to territory.  Partly it stems from the challenges of identity in forming both a nation and a state.[1]  But it also stems from the economic benefit that the larger nation derives from activity within the smaller territory.   To suppose that a flag state would willingly give up the economic benefit they derive from a productive seastead may be a bit optimistic.

 

Of course, the flag nation willingly letting go is only half the problem facing a seastead as it tries to make the transition to micro-nation.  If the emerging nation is not recognized by the international community, either broadly, or at least by a champion powerful enough to coerce non-interference, the seastead is left for all practical purposes as a ship without a flag (which may be what Mr. Hencken meant by a pirate vessel).  Established U.S. statutory and case law, as well as some international law, suggests that such a vessel enjoys no protection against any state which seeks to exercise jurisdiction over it.  A flagged vessel enjoys the sovereign protection of the flag state; an unflagged vessel or a vessel flagged to a nation not recognized as sovereign has no such protection.

 

That sovereignty is really the heart of the question.  A seastead seeking to transition to a sea-based nation is trying to manufacture sovereignty where there previously was none.  On the day before transition, the seastead is effectively a ship—a little shard of another nation’s sovereignty acting on a global commons.  On the day after, the ship has ceased to be a shard of another nation and has become a nation in its own right—a small one, to be sure—but a nation with all the same rights, responsibilities, and sovereignty of any other nation.

 

Michael Walzer, an influential thinker on just war theory and international relations, offers a view on morality in the international system, centered on the concept of sovereignty.  Drastically simplified, Walzer offers the view that the only crime in the international system that justifies the use of force is aggression, which he defines as the violation of a nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.  While some aspects Walzer’s theory are not universally accepted, he neatly encapsulate a powerful school of thinking which highlights a couple of challenges that the aspiring seasteader, especially of the mobile variety, must overcome.

 

First, sovereignty has traditionally been closely aligned with territorial integrity.  Inherent in the notion of territorial integrity is, well, territory.  How do you define sovereignty and territorial integrity in the case of a platform that is inherently mobile and not tied to any territory at all?  Whatever other challenges may attend the new nation of South Sudan, no one in the international community is worried that the nation will decide to pick up the country and move because they like the climate, resources, or economic opportunities better in Morocco.  If a seastead were to maneuver into the EEZ of a coastal nation, whose sovereignty would have precedence?  Outside of an EEZ, why should other sea-faring nations accede to a new entity exerting sovereignty over a portion of the sea that was previously open to everyone?  If the sea based nation wanted to move elsewhere on the high seas, would they exert sovereignty over that new location, too?

 

In search of a better deal

The Second—and by my view the more difficult challenge—is explaining the incentive for the international community to accept the sovereignty of a newly formed sea-based nation at all.  While the threat may be small, the aspiring nation offers a potential challenger for resources, ranging from seabed minerals to the tax revenues brought in by businesses.  With sovereignty comes the right to defend that sovereignty—what incentive does a coastal state have to welcome the introduction of another armed power into their region?  It would also be surprising if Palestinians, Kurds, or others national groups who lack both territory and sovereignty do not raise some objection to the justice of granting sovereignty to a seastead with little of the cultural, political, and social identity that marks a nation, while they themselves remain disenfranchised.   If a seastead wants admission to the club of nation-states, they will likely need to explain how the club will benefit by their membership.  While not insuperable, this will be a high bar to reach.

 

CDR Doyle Hodges is a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy. He has commanded a rescue and salvage ship in the Pacific and a destroyer in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Middle East.  He is the Chairman of the U.S. Naval Academy’s Seamanship and Navigation Department. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, or the U.S. Naval Academy.

 


[1] For a good discussion of the challenges of statehood without nationhood, see Lemay-Hébert, N., 2009, ‘Statebuilding without Nation-building? Legitimacy, State Failure and the Limits of the Institutionalist Approach’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding’, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 21-45.  For a good discussion of the necessary components of nationhood see Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities.  New York: Verso. 2006.

Sea-based Nation Security

 

“I’m going to work and live on THAT?”

This was my initial response when arriving  (via helicopter) 1000m away from Iraq’s Al Basrah Oil Terminal (ABOT).  As part of a coalition maritime security group, security forces have been protecting Iraq’s economic gem for over a decade, and over the course of that time many security lessons have been identified.  So naturally, I can’t help but relate these issues to the concept of Seasteading and my corresponding thoughts on security, which will be the focus of this post.

 

Home, sweet light crude home.

 

Point or Area Defense?  

One of the first questions to settle is whether the infrastructure be treated as a single point in the ocean, designed to be defended in 360 degrees.  It is possible that to have full coverage, the seastead will require roving patrols.  Non-Lethal technology (such as the LRAD), although only somewhat effective at distracting incoming small boats, must be employed in various positions for overlapping coverage.  In point defense, this will therefore require dedicated security personnel, on watch 24-hours a day, to field effective coverage.     If a seastead could utilize multiple supporting infrastructures in the near vicinity, or was a considered part of a country’s territorial archipelago, tactical considerations might alternately suggest an area defense approach to defend the seastead. This would entail routine patrols of the area and require more centralized security programs.  If the seastead decided to employ maritime patrols as a means to interdict unknown approaching vessels, the employment of patrol craft would be determined by the size of the area and amount of working security boats.

 

Buffer Zone

Another important question to consider is the distance from the seastead that will be considered a warning zone.  Implementing current anti-piracy measures may defend against approaching vessels through deterrents and security systems, but the infrastructure must also consider the terrorist/extremist threat of waterborne attacks.  Anecdotally it seemed to me that infrastructures often attract the best fish, so these platforms may also attract fishermen.  Considerations must be made to keeping unauthorized fishermen away from the platform, as the possibility of a water-borne improvised explosive device (WBIED) attack increases with added fishing traffic.  In addition to local fishing, the potential of large, commercial traffic – e.g. supertankers, liquid natural gas (LNG) ships – poses a kinetic threat to a seastead.  This threat must be gamed as both a non-malicious (navigational safety hazard) and malicious (terrorist hijack).  After determining the distance for the buffer zone, the seastead must also include a means to thwart approaching ships that look likely to violate it.  Patrolling security vessels capable of providing shouldering and defensive capability must be considered, yet their implementation weighed against the complex operational control required of maintaining security zones for a large infrastructure.

 

Personnel Control

The issue of entry/exit point control is a great point raised by Mr. Harmon in the video linked above.  This is an important aspect of security on a maritime platform, yet the seastead must weigh the thoroughness of processing against the costs of excessive time requirements.  A detailed inspection of incoming personnel may require the halting of offload or possibly return of vessels.  If a suspicious individual or group is identified, what detention facilities will the infrastructure maintain until further transfer is warranted?  At-sea vessel inspections from boarding teams, prior to their arrival at the seastead can be an effective means of providing entry control, yet this requires a dedicated boarding team with transportation.

 

Piracy 

As a final question to consider, is the seastead prepared to be boarded by pirates or other criminals and held for ransom?  While in his interview earlier this week Randy Hencken prevents compelling arguments against the threat of piracy afflicting seasteads, history has shown that human ingenuity – evil as well as good – often find a way to capitalize on societies in flux.  Therefore seasteads need to be prepared.  What security controls will be in place to prevent, thwart, and recover from piracy?  Is the platform capable of receiving airborne inserted counter-piracy forces?  Are the personnel living/working onboard the seastead well-versed in piracy scenarios and prepared to respond accordingly?  If pirated, “who ya gonna call”?

 

Seasteading is a great concept for advancing maritime occupancy and development, yet just as the concept is entering our collective discussion, so must the security challenges.

 

A.J. “Squared-Away” is a husband, father, and U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer. He has deployed on patrol boats, destroyers, and aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and aboard Iraqi oil terminals. He is currently a student at an advanced military planner course. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.