This text explores the motives for attacks on maritime trade over the last five centuries and assesses the strategic utility of that form of naval action. The author has also written "Navies, Deterrence and American Independence".

What is being done to counter threats of maritime terrorism and how effective are the safeguards? The author presents evidence that Al-Qaeda aims to disrupt the seaborne trading system, the backbone of the model global economy, and would use a crude nuclear explosive device or radiological bomb to do so if it could obtain one and position it to go off in a port-city, shipping strait or waterway that plays a key role in international trade. Improving maritime trade is especially important for the US and Canada, member states of the EU, Australia and New Zealand and for China, Japan and South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and other East Asian economies that have extensive direct seaborne trade. It is doubly vital for places like Singapore, Hong Kong and Rotterdam that are not only very large global seaports but also giant giant container transshipment hubs. This book discusses some major threats to seaborne trade and its land links in the global supply chain, their potential impact and the new security measures in place or pending for ships, ports and cargo containers, and recommendations for preventing or handling a catastrophic terrorist attack designed to disrupt world trade.

Policymakers have become increasingly concerned in recent years about the possibility of future maritime terrorist attacks. Though the historical occurrence of such attacks has been limited, recognition that maritime vessels and facilities may be particularly vulnerable to terrorism has galvanized concerns. In addition, some plausible maritime attacks could have very significant consequences, in the form of mass casualties, severe property damage, and attendant disruption of commerce. Understanding the nature of maritime terrorism risk requires an investigation of threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences associated with potential attacks, as grounded both by relevant historical data and by intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of known terrorist groups. These risks also provide the context for understanding government institutions that will respond to future attacks, and particularly so with regard to the US civil justice system. In principle, civil liability operates to redistribute the harms associated with legally redressable claims, so that related costs are borne by the parties responsible for having caused them. In connection with maritime terrorism, civil liability creates that prospect that independent commercial defendants will be held responsible for damages caused by terrorist attacks. This book explores risks and U.S. civil liability rules as they may apply in the context of these types of attacks.

An international roster of top scholars explores the role of naval power and maritime trade in creating the modern international system. This book is both a history of maritime strategy, sea power, and seaborne commerce from the nineteenth century to the present day and an examination of current strategic issues.

A total of 2,463 actual or attempted acts of piracy were registered around the world between 2000 and the end of 2006. This represents an annual average incident rate of 352, a substantial increase over the mean of 209 recorded for the period of 1994 1999. The concentration of pirate attacks continues to be greatest in Southeast Asia, especially in the waters around the Indonesian archipelago (including stretches of the Malacca Straits that fall under the territorial jurisdiction of the Jakarta government), which accounted for roughly 25 percent of all global incidents during 2006. Seven main factors have contributed to the general emergence of piracy in the contemporary era. First and most fundamentally, there has been a massive increase in commercial maritime traffic. Combined with the large number of ports around the world, this growth has provided pirates with an almost limitless range of tempting, high-payoff target. Second is the higher incidence of seaborne commercial traffic that passes through narrow and congested maritime chokepoints. These bottlenecks require ships to significantly reduce speed to ensure safe passage, which dramatically heightens their exposure to midsea interception and attack.

This thesis finds that the increasing cost of international trade resulting from certain post-9/11 maritime trade security policies may help to promote terrorism. By inadvertently levying disproportionate non-tariff trade barriers against those countries most likely to harbor terrorist organizations, these programs restrict lesser-developed nations' ability to develop, and thus leave them more susceptible to becoming terrorist safe havens. In support of this argument, the thesis is divided into three main sections. The first demonstrates the strong link between a nation's foreign trade and its level of development through a brief survey of international trade theory, by highlighting the reliance of some international actors on trade promotion as a means for increasing development, and by analyzing several case studies in which it is clear that trade played an instrumental role in increasing overall development. The second section expands upon this argument by examining the relationship between underdevelopment and terrorism. It investigates the issue by quantitatively analyzing terrorist attacks against the United States according to the level of development in those countries liable for producing or harboring the groups responsible for the attack. The third section looks at the effect of post-9/11 maritime trade security measures on trade and more specifically the policies' adverse effects on developing countries. It outlines key U.S. maritime trade security programs - namely the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism and the Container Security Initiative - and how some of their components constitute non-tariff barriers, especially for developing countries. At an international level, the chapter explores the costs associated with the International Ship and Port Security Code as well as Authorized Economic Operator programs. The thesis concludes by acknowledging that if trade promotes development, and low development is related to a nation's propensity to harboring terrorism, then there is a logical if indirect link between trade and terrorism. If domestic and international maritime trade security programs disproportionately limit trading opportunities for the countries most likely to harbor terrorist groups, it becomes clear that such programs may inadvertently promote the conditions found to be most closely linked to countries that harbor terrorist organizations.