Since the end of the Cold War, failed or failing states and ungoverned territories within otherwise viable states have become a more common phenomenon. These territories generate all manner of security problems, such as civil conflict and humanitarian crises, arms and drug smuggling, piracy, and refugee flows. The events of 9/11 demonstrated how terrorists can use sanctuaries in the most remote and hitherto ignored territories of the world to mount devastating attacks against the United States and its friends and allies.
Despite the increasing urgency of dealing with the threats emanating from ungoverned territories, the international community has not proven adept at developing eff ective responses. Although analysts and policymakers are aware that ungoverned territories contribute to larger security threats such as terrorism, the phenomenon has not been generally defi ned as a distinct problem that requires unique strategies and policies to address.
Our new AFRICOM seeks to address the problem of gray regions:
GEN. WARD: First, let me thank you for coming this morning to listen to Admiral Ulrich and I talk about the African Partnership Station. And I think it provides a good example of what the newly established U.S. Africa Command is about as it relates to helping out partner nations on the continent of Africa build their capacity to better govern their spaces, to have more effects in providing for the security of their people, as well as doing the things that are important in assuring the development of the continent in ways that promote increased globalization of their economies, as well as the development of their societies for the betterment of their people.
The problem with the international community addressing this problem is that a system that assumes each member state has sole jurisdiction over anything happening within its defined borders cannot address a problem that results from member states failing to have power to control all that happens within their borders.
And even our efforts are constrained by needing the cooperation of the country that is nominally responsible for gray areas within their borders because we accept the international system.
And the terrorists take advantage of the fact that the nominal sovereign cannot control them and that foreign powers can make nothing more than intermittent efforts to control them.
Which is why I suggest the Lexington rule:
By mapping out the gray areas between countries we would establish our right to send military forces into land "free of control" to destroy threats. Or establish friendly de facto governments that will control the territory and prevent threats from originating in that territory.
We'd have to update it quarterly, allowing nominal states to make their case that they do control the territory we've designated free of control. We'd need to have additional penalties for failure to control territory and rewards for establishing control.
So let's get working on the Lexington Rule. Assuming state control is an increasingly dangerous fiction in an age of vicious terror groups that aspire to government-level violence.
We should recognize sovereignty only as far as a a state can demonstrate its control. It's time to use gray on large portions of the world map and label them, "here be monsters" and let any state that wants to operate in those lands do so with the blessings of the international community.
The one bright spot is in addressing the problem of the vast gray of international waters. Piracy, one force that exploits the lack of sovereignty at sea, is on the increase over last year:
Maritime pirate attacks worldwide shot up 14 percent in the first nine months of 2007 from a year earlier, with Somalia and Nigeria showing the biggest increases, an international watchdog said Tuesday.
While Africa remains problematic, Southeast Asia's Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest waterways, has been relatively quiet, the International Maritime Bureau said in its report.
A total of 198 attacks on ships were reported between January and September this year, up from 174 in the same period in 2006, the IMB said.
Africa stands out in this article. But piracy is only the most visible result of having ungoverned space at sea. Terrorists can take advantage of that lack of sovereignty to strike us from the sea. And in this area, AFRICOM will have a greater freedom of action (from the same transcript that had General Ward's comments):
ADM. ULRICH: Thank you, Kip, for that introduction.
We advertised that we were to talk today about African Partnership, that we could operate off the west coast of Africa in the coming months to provide and build capacity for maritime safety and security; I think it's important that we start with, what is maritime safety and security?
It's kind of a new term that has come up in the last five to six years. It was generated by a sense that although we've been doing maritime safety and security for decades and generations, and indeed hundreds of years, we've kind of pulled it all together and looked at it in a different fashion. And it was driven, by, of course, the terrorist attacks, that have taken our transportation infrastructure and have turned that around against us, whether it be airplanes, trains, subways, buses, trucks, cars. It's just a matter of time before they use our maritime infrastructure against us as well. ...
So we looked at how we [tracked aircraft traffic] in the air -- you know,
with little, tiny airplanes moving very, very fast in three dimensions -- and why we couldn't do it in the maritime domain with really, really fat ships that move very slow in normally in two dimensions.
And so we've changed our whole way of looking at this, and we've had some great success in this whole new discipline of maritime safety and security.
And what we found was that it took different partners what I call different places and different faces, to put this all together. And in fact, right about that time, they came -- the United States came out with a new document called the Strategy for Maritime Safety. And I'm going to read some of the words from it, because it's just -- and it's in your packet -- just so striking. That says that why we need maritime safety and security -- it says that we need to protect against ocean-related terrorists; hostile, criminal and dangerous acts; that we need to do this with international cooperation, seek new partnerships, and so forth and so on. It's a great document. I really highly recommend you read it.
And then the maritime component of the national military strategy says we ought to foster trust and confidence, we ought to expand our maritime relationships. And then the United States Navy came out and said we need to build one force. We need partnership amongst joint interagency international organizations and NGOs.
And at the same time that was going on, the -- our African friends, the nations that have started getting together in several symposium and other different fora -- and they issued what is also is in your package, called the Benin communique, this time last year, where we said: We, the ministers attending the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Safety and Security Conference, agree to commit to address the following elements of maritime governance -- partnership, maritime domain awareness -- and agree to continue engagement with international maritime partners to improve our maritime safety and security.
So that's the background. Maritime safety and security is the common theme here.
We know there are monsters on land and sea that seek to kill us. But only at sea do we have the real authority to simply act on our own; and the practical freedom (which we we lack on land) to collect allies to help us police the gray coastal waters.
AFRICOM may help us on land make the best out of our international rules that prevent us from policing gray areas on land. But it is far from ideal.
