Tag Archives: Navy
Coal to Oil and the Great Green Fleet
It has been more than a month since the Senate failed to pass legislation that would have blocked U.S. Navy efforts to develop and use biofuels. This passage of time means it might now be possible to make a less emotional and more measured comparison of the Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” to the decision-making processes behind previous [...]
Economics and Somali Piracy
While the consensus seems to be that Somali piracy is in a terminal decline, over the weekend the Washington Post’s Wonkblog highlighted an interesting academic study from last year that attempted to determine the costs of Somali piracy since 2008.
Read MoreAn International Response to Maritime Insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea
The International Crisis Group (ICG) recently released a report* on maritime security challenges in the Gulf of Guinea. As usual from ICG, the analysis is excellent and informative, with reasonable policy recommendations to address the problems associated with increasing security challenges afloat (piracy, oil theft, smuggling, illegal fishing) in the region. Unfortunately, there is little [...]
Maritime Janus
January is named for the Roman God Janus, the two-faced deity of the doorway or the threshold. With one face looking toward the future, and the other contemplating the past, Janus inspires the annual reviews of naval affairs as well as the predictions for the future that we see in the naval blogosphere. New [...]
Read MoreWho Defeated the Somali Pirates?
The New York Times published a piece last week describing the “sharp” decline in piracy off the coast of Somalia It cited data provided by the US Navy demonstrating that attacks had significantly fallen off in 2012 compared to 2011 and 2010. The decline was attributed to industry having implemented better security measures, the large-scale participation [...]
Read MoreWinter is Coming
Heat waves, rising temperatures, and retreating ice grab headlines today. However, receding sea ice in the Arctic and a concurrent increase in shipping traffic will intensify attention on the globe’s (still) frigid northern reaches. Though the United States issued a forward-looking Arctic policy with National Security Presidential Directive 66 in 2009, it has not seriously faced the implications [...]
Read More“Time Macho”
Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter has garnered record-setting attention for her Atlantic article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” While primarily addressing women, I thought her piece also captured the essence of changes occurring in men; many men my age do think more about so-called “work-life” balance than the men of generations past. When we have families, [...]
Read MoreWho’ll get the Lion’s share?
In the last week, during a visit to the People’s Republic of China, Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng En Hen has reaffirmed bilateral military ties between the two countries with his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie. Since the Agreement on Defence Exchanges and Security Cooperation was signed in 2008, there have been regular exchanges between the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and [...]