JUNE 2008 HOT TOPICS

What Is the Challenge of Piracy and Terrorism at Sea, and What Can We Do About It?

As one of the globe's principal maritime trading states—accounting for nearly 20 percent of all international sea-borne freight in any given year—the United States has a direct, vested interest in securing the oceanic environment. Commodities shipped by sea currently constitute a full quarter of the U.S. gross domestic product, more than double what it was in 1970. Beyond economic considerations, the marine transportation system plays an important role in U.S. national security: The U.S. Departments of Defense and Transportation have jointly designated 17 U.S. ports—13 of which also act as commercial trading hubs—as strategic facilities critical in expediting major overseas military deployments.

In this context, a RAND Corporation report assesses the nature of maritime piracy and terrorism and finds that nonstate violence on the seas poses a significant threat. The challenges stemming from piracy are complex and multifaceted, having direct implications for political and economic stability, the safety and welfare of mariners, and—should an attack occur in a congested choke point traversed by heavily laden oil tankers—environmental security. Equally, cruise ships, passenger ferries, and cargo carriers provide opportunities for terrorists to not only inflict human casualties and smuggle weapons but also to undermine the West by disrupting the dynamics of the global “just-enough, just-in-time” freight delivery system.

The study investigated the possible link between piracy and terrorism—a growing concern in the United States and other prominent flag states—but found no evidence supporting such a conflation. This absence arguably reflects the diametrically opposed objectives of pirates and terrorists: The former depend on thriving sea-based trade to support their “business,” while the latter (at least in the context of contemporary jihadist extremism) actively seek to destroy it.

The report recognizes the leading role that the United States has taken to help foster a nascent regime of maritime security by spearheading such initiatives as the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT). But the report contends that these measures remain limited in scope—largely because they pay scant regard to contingencies other than containerized shipping—and lack a transparent means for definitively gauging their utility.

As for what can be done, the report highlights at least four policy-level contributions that Washington could make to better safeguard the world's oceans: (1) further expand the post-9/11 security regime; (2) inform maritime security collaboration by conducting regular, focused threat assessments; (3) help redefine the mandates of multilateral security arrangements to allow them to play a greater role in countering maritime threats; and (4) encourage the commercial maritime industry to make better use of enabling communication and defensive technologies and to accept more transparency in its corporate structures.

The report concludes with some suggestions for where U.S. funds could be usefully directed. These include boosting the coastal monitoring and interdiction capabilities of states in areas of strategic importance, actively supporting the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur, augmenting port security management, and sponsoring research into cost-effective initiatives for better securing ships and oceanic freight.

READ THE RESEARCH BRIEF: Piracy and Terrorism at Sea: A Rising Challenge for U.S. Security

Improving the Debate Over U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies

Is the struggle against terrorism more similar to an all-out war or a police action? Are recalcitrant allies a distraction or a valuable sounding board to encourage the United States to modify faulty plans? Is restraint a dangerous weakness or a vital strength? Such questions underlie the debate over what U.S. counterterrorism should be, but the evidence available to adjudicate among such conflicting opinions is often sparse and contradictory.

A RAND study tested whether a RAND-developed approach called assumption-based planning (ABP)—which RAND has used to help organizations focus on identifying and addressing the key assumptions and, thus, vulnerabilities underlying organizations' plans—could help contentious groups more systematically debate alternative U.S. counterterrorism strategies. The test entailed two sets of workshops—one with academic and policymaker experts and another with a lay audience assembled in collaboration with the League of Woman Voters—to test whether ABP could help participants compare alternative plans and how the approach would perform in a contentious group setting.

Overall, ABP provided individuals who held very different views of the best U.S. counterterrorism strategy with a structure to dispassionately debate the fundamental assumptions underlying different strategies and to find the implicit and sometimes vulnerable assumptions underlying those plans. More substantively, ABP showed that each of the alternative plans considered had significant, vulnerable, and load-bearing assumptions and suggested interesting similarities and differences in the key assumptions underlying them.

READ MORE: Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies: Can Assumption-Based Planning Help Elevate the Debate?

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