The Pitfalls of a Maritime Police Force

On Monday EU foreign and defense ministers resolved to use naval power to go after human trafficking at its sources in North Africa. A tidal wave of refugees has crashed on European shores in recent years as tens of thousands of people flee armed strife and economic upheaval in Africa and the Middle East. The Mediterranean Sea has become a conduit for what Germans call a Völkerwanderung, a mass migration across the frontiers of civilization. Large-scale movements of Germanic tribesmen brought havoc to the Roman Empire in its dying days, giving rise to the term. European leaders hope deploying a forward maritime strategy will spare the European Union a Roman fate.

Navies exist mainly to defeat foes. Sure, they provide succor following humanitarian or natural disasters, but their primary function is to break things and kill people. That makes for a fundamental difference of outlook between outwardly similar services. Combating lawbreaking, then, is different from vanquishing those who use lethal force for political purposes. That shapes how seamen view the world—and conduct themselves toward real people in the course of their duties.

That’s one reason the U.S. Coast Guard typically places law-enforcement detachments aboard U.S. Navy vessels to help execute this sort of non-combat mission. (Quirks of American domestic law are another, admittedly.) Coastguardsmen are just better at police duty—and less prone to do things that might create ill will toward the government doing the policing. In any event, it will be interesting to watch what mix of naval and law-enforcement assets the EU mission deploys. It’s possible the early reporting about this enterprise is using the term “naval” broadly and imprecisely, to encompass any official body that goes to sea.

Organizational cultures aside, quelling human trafficking promises to prove dicey because the EU naval contingent, a.k.a. EUNAVFOR Med, has only a few general options—none especially appealing. For one, it can go after boats after they’ve put to sea. That would mean stopping the vessels and removing the refugees beforehand. Like Somali pirates, human traffickers merit rough treatment. Nevertheless, EU navies can’t just sink boats full of refugees. Some sort of clash could result from stopping, evacuating and impounding or destroying small craft at sea. Casualties to civilians or naval personnel make bad headlines apart from their immediate human cost.

Or, the EU navies can go after the boats in port, before they take on passengers. That could prove tricky from an intelligence standpoint. How do you know a boat’s going to take on refugees and put out to sea before it does? Intelligence collection and analysis could prove trying—especially when it involves working with the local authorities in failing or failed states. Such partners are innately unreliable. 

And then there’s the legal dimension. The EU mission will unfold on iffy legal ground. Governments that refuse to or cannot enforce their borders are not discharging the responsibilities that accompany the privileges of sovereignty. Libya, for instance, is largely a failed state. Yet it still exists as a legal entity. As news reports on this rightly point out, a coastal state can consent to EUNAVFOR Med operations in its territorial waters or on its land territory. That’s the Somali model. The Somali transitional federal government approved the counterpiracy expedition to its offshore seas. Brussels can simplify the problem if it can negotiate access to North African territorial seas.

Short of that, the UN Security Council would probably have to authorize forays into coastal states’ territorial seas or harbors. Overriding sovereignty is a big deal. Doing so would mean not just getting the requisite majority vote but convincing all five permanent council members to go along. Presumably European governments Great Britain and France would vote aye, joined in all likelihood by the United States.

What about China and Russia, though? Moscow will probably be ill-disposed toward such a resolution, having assented to the 2011 resolution authorizing a no-fly zone and humanitarian mission over Libya—and having seen the operation morph swiftly into the overthrow of client Moammar Gadhafi. Putin & Co. could well balk at issuing a new blank check—while at the same time taking glee in making mischief at Western expense.

So it turns out that a seemingly straightforward maritime venture entails manifold intricacies and pitfalls. Will EUNAVFOR Med get it done? Maybe so. I briefed the EUNAVFOR mission to the Gulf of Aden back in 2009 and was impressed with the professionalism of European naval officials. That’s cause for hope. Still, EU navies and their political masters have a lot to sort out in a hurry. Here’s wishing them well.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010. He is RCD’s new national security columnist. The views voiced here are his alone.