On 18 and 19 January 2018, a conference on Europe, Maritime Security and Small Navies will be held at King’s College in London. The conference is organised jointly by the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies at King’s College, the Centre for Military History and Strategic Studies at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University.
The conference seeks to identify gaps in the field of maritime security and the role of small navies in Europe, including information sharing, capacity building and capability development alongside actions (collaborative or otherwise) aimed at achieving more efficient and effective maritime security operations. With an increasingly connected, contested and complex international maritime security climate, this conference also aims to develop better understandings of the strategic utility and operational nuances of smaller navies in addressing emergent threats (both in coastal and blue-water spaces).
This is crucial given that 75% of the EU’s external trade and 30% of its internal trade is seaborne. In addition, this conference wishes to examine how maritime security and naval development in Europe will evolve given that economic forecasts will likely limit the potential procurement of ‘larger’ naval assets in the future, which means that European states will increasingly have to do more with less in their own maritime domain.
Threats to European maritime security are multifaceted and perpetrated by a broad collection of transnational actors with diverse objectives; ranging from piracy and armed robbery against merchant vessels, illegal migration flows in the Mediterranean and the exploitation of marine resources to the growing accessibility of the Arctic (due to climate change), geo-political tensions in the Black Sea, and an increasingly mobile Islamist terrorist threat. The maritime environment will likely be the frontline of European security within the next decade.
The complete call for papers for the conference Europe, Maritime Security and Small Navies is available on the King’s College website. Deadline for abstracts is 30 August 2017.
