Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security

This new handbook features essays by some of the world’s premier researchers and practitioners in the field of naval strategy and security.

The volume covers naval security issues in diverse regions of the world, from the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean to the Arctic and the piracy-prone waters off Africa’s coasts. It outlines major policy challenges arising from competing claims, transnational organized crime and maritime terrorism, and details national and alliance reactions to these problems. Naval security as a concept has gained increasing attention in recent years with the rise in modern piracy and the perpetual, but so far largely unproven threat of maritime terrorism. This handbook provides detailed analyses on operational, judicial, and legislative consequences that contemporary naval security threats pose, but it puts a specific emphasis on naval strategy. With a public very much focused on the softer roles naval forces play (humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, naval diplomacy, good order at sea), the overarching role of navies has been pushed into the background. In fact, navies and seapower have been notably absent from many academic discussions and deliberations of maritime security. This book provides a much-desired addition to the literature for researchers and analysts in the social sciences on the relationship between comprehensive security policy and military means on, under, and from the sea. It comprehensively and intelligibly explains the state of naval security in this century and the role of naval forces within it to a wider audience.

This book will be of much interest to students of naval security and naval strategy, security studies and IR, as well as practitioners in the field.

Joachim Krause is professor of International Relations at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel, Germany, and has published more than 20 books, including, most recently,Afghanistan, Pakistan and Western Strategy (Routledge, 2013, co-edited with Charles King Mallory IV).

Sebastian Bruns is a maritime security and naval strategy specialist, based at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Kiel, Germany.