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Introduction A fter the preceding two chapters provided an overview of EU–Japan security relations from the European and a Japanese perspective, this chapter will introduce the first example of an operational security cooperation, which was not confined to government-to-government cooperation but involved military-to-military cooperation in the field, namely, in the counter-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia. While neither the Japanese government nor the European Union considered the counter-piracy mission
3 The digital age, media sport and mega-events: piracy and symbiosis in the cultural industries What are the implications of the digital age and new media for media sport and the mediation of sport mega-events like the Olympics? We began to address this question in the preceding chapter and in this one we explore it further. Whereas the previous chapter focused more on the internet’s positive implications, in this one we are more concerned with the threat and realities of the internet’s negative implications. However we return to consider the more positive
children now do the same. We send them to fancy dress or Halloween parties dressed as pirates with an eye-patch, sword and a large, flamboyant captain’s hat. ‘Piracy has always been romanticised by writers and film-makers and many people often harbour visions of bearded renegades sailing seas of endless blue, something akin to a maritime “Robin Hood” of sorts’ (Abhyankar 2006: 1). As adults our fascination with pirates continues and is reflective and constitutive of a dominant Western cultural narrative of the pirate. In many countries, including Germany, there is a
The sea and International Relations is a path-breaking collection which opens up the conversation about the sea in International Relations (IR), and probes the value of analysing the sea in IR terms. While the world’s oceans cover more than 70 percent of its surface, the sea has largely vanished as an object of enquiry in IR, being treated either as a corollary of land or as time. Yet, the sea is the quintessential international space, and its importance to global politics has become all the more obvious in recent years. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights from IR, historical sociology, blue humanities and critical ocean studies, The sea and International Relations breaks with this trend of oceanic amnesia, and kickstarts a theoretical, conceptual and empirical discussion about the sea and IR, offering novel takes on the spatiality of world politics by highlighting theoretical puzzles, analysing broad historical perspectives and addressing contemporary challenges. In bringing the sea back into IR, The sea and International Relations reconceptualises the canvas of IR to include the oceans not only as travel time, but as a social, political, economic and military space which affects the workings of world politics. As such, The sea and International Relations is as ambitious as it is timely. Together, the contributions to the volume emphasise the pressing need to think of the world with the sea rather than ignoring it in order to address not only the ecological fate of the globe, but changing forms of international order.
exclusiveness of the flag State’s enforcement jurisdiction is not absolute. It admits of many exceptions, principally aimed at combatting criminal activity on the high seas which is recognised to be an acute and current threat to international peace and security. 40 It is to these exceptions that we now turn. Piracy and other threats to the safety of navigation 41
physical spaces are constructed on board the site of the merchant vessel. This will be addressed in various historical scenarios, but specifically by drawing on empirical reflections of seafarers who have transited the Horn of Africa at the peril of contemporary piracy. In bringing the sea back into International Relations (IR), more specifically critical security studies, this process perpetuates
the practice of piracy. Predation on the high seas is as old as war and trade but, as de Carvalho and Leira’s contribution to this volume shows, it acquired unique form and function in the age of mercantile empires, both as (legitimate) privateering and (outlaw) piracy. In particular, maritime predation both exploited and subverted freedom of navigation as state-sponsored and non-state actors alike
exterminate the group on the Chinese mainland, nothing even remotely resembling access, much less sympathy or a reversal of Beijing’s long-time stance on the group has ever been forthcoming. On the other hand, in the case of IPRs, China cannot adopt anti-piracy protections fast enough, though enforcement of those provisions already on the books is proving to be a challenge in the Chinese context, where counterfeiting runs wild. Despite these apparently disparate results, the grouping together of these two cases is justified by a single salient detail: both campaigns
sea changed. But it must be said that the inverse is also true. And the production of political space alerts us to the relational (Jackson and Nexon, 1999 ) processes delineating ‘land’ from ‘sea’. The sea is also important to understanding processes that traverse the dry and the wet such as piracy and privateering. If IR scholars are to understand international politics, then we need to focus on how
civilian vessels transiting the Red Sea via the Suez Canal and the world's navies who monitor the sea lanes. As such, it is the operational base for the myriad of anti-piracy forces surveying and policing the Red Sea and Somali coasts. Indeed the ‘Djibouti Code of Conduct’, which guides much anti-piracy activity, underscores quite how central Djibouti's port is to the anti-piracy industry. 4 Until recently Djibouti's government maintained close relations with Dubai and the UAE. Yet a