Category Archives: Asia-Pacific

Analysis relating to USPACOM.

Whither the Private Maritime Security Companies of South and Southeast Asia?

April 16, 2014 Guest Author 8 Comments

This feature is special to our Private Military Contractor (PMC)s Week – a look at PMCs’ utility and future, especially in the maritime domain.

In a week-long operation in June 2010, 6 vessels were attacked and robbed over a 130-mile span while in a nearby strait armed security contractors kept watch for the pirate threat.¹ The same waters have played host to a “sophisticated syndicate…deploying speedboats from motherships” with raiding parties able to “board, rob, and disembark a vessel with ﬁfteen minutes without the bridge knowing.”² The location was not the Somali coastline or the Bab el-Mandeb, but rather 4,000 miles to the east, among the Anambas Islands and the Singapore Strait.

2011 Crude Oil Flows through Southeast Asia. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

For the past decade or so, when people thought of private military contractors (PMCs)³ they typically thought of land-force outfits like the Academi formerly known as Blackwater and its founder Erik Prince. During this same period, the word “piracy” generally brought to mind skiffs plying the waters of the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Guinea. Others have written elsewhere on this site that some of the more interesting uses of PMCs during this timeframe have in fact been in combating (or attempting to combat) the now-diminished pirate scourge off East Africa in the form of private maritime security companies (PMSCs). Yet historically one of the greatest epicenters of piracy has been in the waters of South and Southeast Asia. If the region, already home to PMSCs operating in a variety of capacities and more than one-third of the world’s seaborne-oil trade, faces a resurgence of piracy, it may see a similar growth in PMSCs.⁴ This article will touch briefly on the historic precedents, preconditions encouraging the presence of PMSCs, and regional factors affecting their utility.

Precedents and Prevalence

South and Southeast Asia have long been home to private and quasi-private security arrangements. Cdr. Chris Rawley, U.S. Navy Reserve, notes that “historically, the line between privateering and piracy has been a thin one. From the 15th to the 19th century, pirates were often employed as a political tool by the Malay states to resist colonization by disrupting trade of the British and Dutch. Conversely, in the mid-1800s, the British East India Company’s private armies protected shipping in Malacca from pirates.”

The history of Singapore’s founding and growth under British rule is itself closely tied to this blurred public-private partnership. When the British arrived at Malaysian Singapore and sought local allies to protect their trade and investment, the recently displaced Temenggong, sea lord of the orang laut sea people, who themselves were noted for their marauding maritime prowess, presented himself as an acceptable solution. The Temenggongs thus served as part local officials, pressured to resettle their power base to neighboring Johor, and part maritime security contractors for hire, serving British counter-piracy operations in the early 1800s and port security for Singapore.⁵

In recent years, PMSCs have provided a range of services in South and Southeast Asia. According to The Diplomat’s Zachary Keck, “PMCs operating in Southeast Asia have primarily been focused on providing maritime security to clients, particularly in combating piracy. This has been especially true in narrow chokepoints like the Malacca Straits” and has included companies such as Background Asia and Counter Terrorism International (CTI).

In addition to providing these escort vessels and transit/cargo security aboard merchant vessels, PMSCs have worked extensively on port security (Gray Page, Pilgrim Elite, and the Glenn Defense Marine Asia group now know for the ‘Fat Leonard’ scandal), training and maritime hardening efforts (Trident Group), crisis response, and fisheries protection in countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) (Hart).⁶ PMSC experts James Bridger and Claude Berube remark that in contrast with Africa, the companies in South and Southeast Asia place a greater focus on port vs transit security, due in part to the prevalence of at-berth and in-port crime, as well as training, vessel hardening, and security planning.

Preconditions

Attacks and attempts in 2013: South Asia and Southeast Asia. Source: IMB.

What conditions have given rise to this most recent cast of companies? In Carolin Liss’s 2011 book Oceans of Crime, she attributes the rise of PMSCs in South and Southeast Asia to several factors including states divesting former functions and the changed security landscape. This includes relatively more powerful transnational actors, both those interested in stability such as multinational corporations and multilateral institutions and those, such as terrorist organizations, interested in the opposite. Another element of the changed landscape facilitating PMCs’ rise is to Liss the disappearance of the Cold War struggle between the United States and Soviet Union, and the attendant opportunities for training of regional security forces.⁷ Further, post-Cold War terrorism heightened the focus of governments and the shipping industry on maritime security, as the threat joined piracy as a perceived regional risk to maritime assets, although it has so far failed to be nearly as impactful.⁸

In general PMSCs may find a market whenever the threats to maritime assets – be they from criminals, separatists, or environmental, corporate, or territorial disputes – appear to outweigh states’ capacities to safeguard those assets. The perception of corruption or distrust of the competency and fairness of states’ protective functions will similarly further the reception for external services.

How do these threat measures stack up in South and Southeast Asia? The first thing to note is the wide variance among the nations and waters of the region – as can be expected from such an diverse expanse generalities are hard to come by, so the following is a survey rather than a summation of the area.

With regards to the historical scourge of piracy, a recent report by the insurance firm Allianz made headlines for describing a 700 percent rise in actual and attempted attacks occurring in Indonesian waters in a 5-year span, from 15 in 2009 to 106 in 2013,⁹ although most of these were robberies at berth or at anchor.¹⁰ The International Maritime Bureau (IMB)’s April 2014 update notes that Indonesian “Pirates / robbers are normally armed with guns, knives and, or machetes…attacking vessels during the night.”¹¹ Derived from IMB statistics, the Allianz report also notes that in 2013 South Asia’s 26 incidents and Southeast Asia’s 128 combined to far outstrip Africa’s total of 89 incidents, with only 7 of the latter considered acts of Somali piracy.¹²

Attacks and Attempts in 2013. Source: IMB.

While privation is often portrayed as a leading spur for illicit maritime activities, analyst Karsten von Hoesslin contends that groups operating in Southeast Asia exhibit “more sophistication and structural coordination, reflecting the existence of organizations that go well beyond opportunistic marauders seeking to merely compensate for economic hardship.”¹³ In 2012 von Hoesslin noted such syndicates active in the Philippines, conducting kidnapping and robbery (K&R) operations, with robbery and hijacking organizations plentiful in Indonesia’s Anambas Islands and Riau Islands Archipelago.¹⁴

On the other hand, IMB’s April 2014 update demonstrates the fluid nature of piracy, stating only three years later that “attacks have dropped significantly in the vicinity off Anambas / Natuna / Mangkai islands / Subi Besar / Merundung area” and “dropped substantially” in the Strait of Malacca since 2005, although no such improvement is noted for the Singapore Straits.¹⁵ The year 2005 is significant as the year that Gerakan Aceh Merdaka (GAM) separatists and previous perpetrators of maritime assaults at the entrance to the Malacca Strait signed a post-Tsunami peace accord with the Indonesian government.¹⁶

Attacks and Attempts in 2014 to April. Source: IMB.

The assets most at risk in Southeast Asia are in general not the more than 60,000 tankers and container vessels that ply the waters but tugs and other small vessels with low freeboards. Nonetheless, Erek Sanchez, a maritime security contractor, notes that insurance companies now require nearly all merchant vessels to “have a security team aboard or have a proven static anti-boarding mechanism that satisfies the requirements set by the insurance company,” meaning there is plenty of business to be had.

Adding to PMSCs’ potential in the region is the lack of enthusiasm for joint patrols by multinational forces in and around Indonesian waters due to sensitivity of competing territorial claims. While understandable from a sovereignty perspective, vessels must as a result rely on the prospect of the strengthening of individual naval forces or seek additional protection.

Although the majority of attacks in the region – whether at sea, at anchor, or in port – are short-run robberies, when hijackings do occur they are often inside jobs. An interesting variant on hijackings occurs in the Sulu Sea between rival fishing companies who “attempt to deplete the maritime assets and platforms of their competitors.”¹⁷ This points to another factor that might increase the region’s potential for PMSCs – that of maritime resource competition.

According to Rawley, “Poorly managed fisheries and maritime crime in SE Asia are inextricably linked. In the 1990s, over-fishing partially caused the loss of livelihood of coastal communities that contributed to the surge in piracy near Malacca. Southeast Asian countries that cannot afford adequate coast guards might reach out to NGOs or PMCs for fisheries enforcement patrols in their territorial waters.”

Taken together, the sustained incidence of piracy and robbery, especially near Indonesian waters, along with resource competition between companies, states, and fishermen indicates that there will be a ready market for PMSCs in the region for some time to come. In Part 2 I will look at factors that might lessen the need for or hinder the operations of PMSCs in South and Southeast Asia, as well as provide a brief outlook on their future uses in the region.

LT Scott Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the former editor of Surface Warfare magazine. He is the founder and vice president of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), a graduate of Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval War College, and a member of the Truman National Security Project’s Defense Council.

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1. Risk Intelligence, “2010 Statistics Fact File.” Marisk.dk
2. Karsten von Hoesslin, “Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea in Southeast Asia: Organized and Fluid,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2012): 35:7-8, 542-552: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2012.684652
3. I use this term interchangeably with private security contractors (PSCs).
4. U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate of 2011, updated April 4th, 2013: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10671
5. Carl A. Trocki, Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johor and Singapore, 1784-1885 (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2007), 24.
6. Carolin Liss, Oceans of Crime: Maritime Piracy and Transnational Security in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011), 331.
7. Ibid, 323.
8. Ibid, 327.
9. “Safety and Shipping Review 2014,” Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, 27: http://www.agcs.allianz.com/assets/PDFs/Reports/Shipping-Review-2014.pdf
10. Attacks in territorial waters, whether against vessels underway, at anchor, or moored, by definition under the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) are not considered pirate attacks and when possible I will attempt to distinguish between sea robbery and piracy, although the terms are frequently conflated.
11. International Maritime Bureau: http://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/prone-areas-and-warnings
12. Allianz, 27
13. Von Hoesslin, 541-542.
14. Ibid, 544.
15. IMB.
16. Von Hoesslin, 545.
17. Ibid, 545.

Asia-Pacific, Global Analysis, Territorial and Law of the Sea Disputes

Why There Is No ‘New Maritime Dispute’ Between Indonesia and China

April 10, 2014 Guest Author Leave a comment

This has been adapted from a blog post that first appeared on Strat.Buzz and was pulled from our friends at ASPI’s The Strategist.

In the last two weeks, there have been a number of articles circulating (including here, here, here and here) that Indonesia has formally recognised a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.

This discussion has originated from statements (see here, and here for example) attributed to Indonesian Navy Commodore Fahru Zaini, an assistant to the first deputy of the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs (Menkopolhukam):

China has claimed Natuna waters as their territorial waters. This arbitrary claim is related to the dispute over Spratly and Paracel Islands between China and the Philippines. This dispute will have a large impact on the security of Natuna waters.

Commodore Zaini is also quoted as saying ‘…we have come to Natuna to see firsthand the strategic position of the TNI, especially in its ability, strength and its deployment of troops, just in case anything should happen in this region’.

This might give the overall impression that Indonesia’s defence modernisation and deployment plans are driven by China’s recent assertiveness in the South China Sea, and that now Jakarta has officially staked out its policy to challenge Beijing.

This impression is false for several reasons.

First, officially, there’s no maritime ‘dispute’ between Indonesia and China. Following the statement by Commodore Zaini, Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Michael Tene said that ‘Indonesia has no maritime border with China’ and that Indonesia isn’t a claimant state to the South China Sea dispute. Indeed, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa clarified further on March 19,

We have to be absolutely clear about this…There are three seemingly related but separate issues. Firstly, there is no territorial dispute between Indonesia and China, especially about the Natunas. In fact, we are cooperating with China in possibly bringing about foreign direct investment plans in the Natunas. Second, we are not a claimant state in the South China Sea. Third, on the nine-dash line, it is true that we do not accept that. This is why we have asked for a formal explanation from China regarding their claims’ legal basis and background.

This policy is of course not new. Jakarta lodged a complaint with the UN in 2010 regarding the nine-dash line. In fact, Indonesia has consistently argued for the importance of the Natunas and how it should handle the South China Sea since the mid-1990s. I’ve described Jakarta’s key interests in the Natunas elsewhere.

Daniel Novotny’s book also has a long list of quotations from various Indonesian policymakers since the 1990s that basically echoed Commodore Zaini’s sentiments: Indonesia is concerned that the Natunas and its EEZs could be endangered by China’s nine-dash line, but it will never officially admit a dispute with China because that would give credence to Beijing’s claims. Former Foreign Minister Ali Alatas perhaps said it best, ‘the repetition of an untruth will eventually make it appear as truth’.

We can debate the merits of this position, but ultimately, there’s no significant policy shift on the matter. I would add a caveat however that the status quo between China and Indonesia over the Natunas might remain until the day Beijing publicly challenges Indonesia’s rights to explore the natural resources within the Natunas and its EEZs.

Second, on the military build-up, the Natunas area has been a central feature in Indonesia’s external defence thinking since the 1990s. The largest ever tri-service military exercise under Suharto’s tenure in 1996 was based on a scenario in the Natuna islands. This has been the pattern for subsequent exercises since; though there’s an additional ‘Ambalat component’ to it recently.

The statements that the TNI leadership has been making lately about ‘flashpoint defense’ and how its latest military assets would be deployed in the Natunas should be taken with a grain of salt.

For one thing, the ‘flashpoint defense’ (and the role of the Natunas in it) and the military modernisation plans have been on the books since the mid-2000s and publicly described in 2010.

For another, the procurement of advanced platforms like the Sukhois and Leopard MBTs and others is part of the Minimum Essential Force (MEF) concept that has been around since mid-2000s. The MEF was designed less for a China threat and more for an organisational and technological revamp and to meet existing operational requirements. The urgency becomes salient when we consider that the TNI lost numerous men due to accidents and platform decay in the past decade.

Indonesia isn’t building up its military power against a resurgent China, but the current political climate does provide the TNI leadership with the opportunity to further push for their pre-existing plans and to deflect criticisms from civil society activists arguing against expensive weaponry.

Finally, we can speculate whether Commodore Zaini was speaking for the Indonesian government. The clarification from the Foreign Ministry, however, suggests he wasn’t. Does this mean Commodore Zaini was speaking for the TNI? One of my contacts close with the defence establishment in Jakarta suggests that wasn’t the case either. There haven’t been any significant changes or plans made regarding the Natunas and the South China Sea at TNI headquarters.

We should also consider the fact that the Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs isn’t a decision making body like the Ministry of Defense. They coordinate policies, they don’t formally make them.

Why Commodore Zaini made the arguments isn’t clear. What is clear, I think, is: (1) he wasn’t authoritatively tasked with announcing a major policy shift (nor is there actually a policy shift), and (2) he was merely echoing long-held Indonesian policy sentiments.

For these reasons, I think the articles that have suggested an official policy change from Indonesia on the Natuna Islands and South China Sea may have taken things out of their proper context.

Evan A. Laksmana is currently a Fulbright Presidential PhD Scholar in political science with the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is also a researcher with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Asia-Pacific, Global Analysis

Air-Sea Battle in Orbit

March 21, 2014 Guest Author 2 Comments

The threat of China’s Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) systems looms large in the minds of U.S. military thinkers and planners. The threat posed to U.S. naval forces by anti-ship ballistic missiles, submarines, and swarms of small combatants are well known to the readers of this blog. Air-Sea Battle, however, will not simply be fought in the air and seas of the Asia-Pacific but in space as well. The Air-Sea Battle Concept recognizes that “all domains will be contested by an adversary—space, cyberspace, air, maritime, and land.” While space is usually thought of as an Air Force domain, the Navy can make an important contribution to ensure the success of U.S. operations.

Space systems are a key source of U.S. military advantage. The United States has been uniquely successful in leveraging satellite communications, space-based intelligence capabilities, and the GPS constellation to enable global power projection and precision strike. This tremendous success has also made the United States particularly vulnerable to attacks on its space assets. Seeking to exploit this vulnerability China has invested heavily in counter-space systems. The potential of China’s counter-space program was illustrated most clearly by its successful test of a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon in 2007, destroying an obsolete Chinese satellite and filling low earth orbit with thousands of pieces of debris.

While the dependence of U.S. forces on space systems is relatively common knowledge, less appreciated is China’s increasing dependence on space to accomplish its own military missions. China uses space assets not to enable global power projection (at least, not yet) but as key parts of its A2/AD kill chain. China is building a maritime reconnaissance-strike complex, much like the one fielded by the Soviet Union during the cold war, including optical and radar imaging satellites as well as electronic intelligence satellites, that will allow it to locate U.S. ships at sea. Weather satellites will also aid China’s over-the-horizon radars tracking U.S. ships in the Western Pacific. Once Chinese satellites locate U.S. carrier groups and other targets, the Beidou satellite constellation, China’s counterpart to GPS, will guide long-range missiles to their targets.

Faced with the threat to important U.S. space assets and the threat from Chinese space assets, what contributions can the Navy make to the Air-Sea Battle fight in space?

The Navy can help mitigate the U.S. dependence on space assets. While current operations are dependent on targeting, navigation, and weather information from space assets, the Navy operated for decades before the first satellite was launched. Relearning how to operate without space assets- navigating and targeting weapons without GPS, for instance- will make U.S. forces more resilient in the face of threats to U.S. space systems. The Navy can also try to reduce its reliance on space systems when acquiring new weapons and platforms. Unmanned aviation, for instance, is a major consumer of satellite communication bandwidth. Finding alternatives to vulnerable satellite communications should be a major part of the Navy’s embrace of unmanned systems for maritime surveillance and carrier operations.

The threat from adversary space surveillance is not a new one. The Soviet Union deployed radar and electronic intelligence satellites to track and guide attacks on U.S. carrier groups as part of its own A2/AD effort. In response, the Navy developed countermeasures and deception tactics to blunt the threat from Soviet satellites. Relearning tactics such as emissions control (EMCON), maneuvering to avoid the orbital path of surveillance satellites, and dispersed formations to confuse tracking and targeting, will improve the chances of U.S. forces surviving Chinese A2/AD systems.

The Navy could also go on the offensive in space. As demonstrated in 2008’s Operation Burnt Frost, the Aegis ballistic missile defense (BMD) system is capable of destroying targets in space. While the Missile Defense Agency called Operation Burnt Frost a “one-time Aegis BMD mission,” any SM-3 equipped Aegis ship with the same software modifications as the USS Lake Erie would be capable of attacking satellites in low earth orbit. Laura Grego, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, describes the 43 Aegis BMD ships and the two Aegis Ashore sites that make up the Phased Adaptive Approach as “the largest destructive ASAT capability ever fielded.” How widely to install the necessary software modifications and how to balance the escort and BMD missions of Aegis ships with their potential counter-space role will be important decisions for the Navy to address in the face of China’s A2/AD challenge.

Air-Sea Battle depends on the success of joint operations in all domains. While space is not a traditional Navy domain, threats from space pose a challenge to naval operations and the Navy possesses unique capabilities to respond to these threats and should be integrated into efforts to address the challenge of contesting the space domain.

Matthew Hallex is a defense analyst who lives and works in northern Virginia. His opinions are his own and do not represent those of his employer or clients.

Asia-Pacific, Global Analysis

Indonesia’s Skin in the Game

March 19, 2014 Guest Author 3 Comments

Indonesia Faces the Reality of Chinese Maritime Claims

With the possibility of a March snow day shutting down the U.S. government’s Washington, DC, offices on Monday, I had the pleasure of being able to do an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation News Radio-Sydney’s Tracey Lee Holmes on Indonesian and Chinese maritime strategies. Tracey brought up interesting points about the reported 700% rise in “piracy” in Indonesian waters from 2009-2014 creating the opportunity for counter-piracy partnerships with others, notably China’s navy, which could leverage its operational experience from years working in the Gulf of Aden. You can listen to my thoughts here.

The spur for the interview was an article I wrote for The Diplomat on several controversies ensnaring Indonesia’s navy in February. I ended that article with a nod to Indonesia’s efforts, under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, or “SBY,” to maintain good ties with China in the face of tension over territorial claims with other nations in the region. During this period Indonesia tried to play the role of conciliator within ASEAN, by attempting to bridge the “pro-China” and confrontation camps in Code of Conduct discussions among others. In an example of this conflict avoidance, a recently aired CCTV documentary highlighting a 2010 incident of Indonesian naval vessels’ reluctance to apprehend a Chinese trawler in Indonesian-claimed waters in the face of Chinese vessels demanding they stand down.

However, my late-night ramblings in the interview prevented me from effectively elucidating how in the past week this relationship has changed. On March 12th, Indonesia admitted for the first time that China’s 9-dash line South China Sea claims included bits of Indonesia’s Riau Province in the Natuna islands. Earlier, and perhaps in preparation for the acknowledgement of the disagreement, Indonesia’s military announced it would beef up its presence in the disputed islands – ostensibly to prevent “infiltration.”

While the move towards tension is disconcerting, as some say, the first step is to admit you have a problem. Additional variables are Indonesia’s upcoming parliamentary (April) and presidential elections (July), in which Jakarta’s mayor, Joko Widodo, is likely to win but has yet to state explicit foreign policy positions.

By interesting coincidence the end of this month will bring an assemblage of competing interests to the waters of the same Natuna Islands, as Indonesia plays host to the 2014 Komodo Joint Exercise, practicing Humanitarian Assistance / Disaster Response (HA/DR). Following on the heels of a similarly inclusive HA/DR+Military Medicine Exercise, Komodo is slated to bring together China, Indonesia, the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, and others. Whether it can increase interoperability or defuse tension is an open question, but it’s worth a try.

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Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.