The Royal United Services Institute (U.K.) has announced a two-day event to be held on Wednesday and Thursday, 04 and 05 July 2012. The conference, which is entitled “The Use of the Sea for Global Security and Prosperity,” advertises the following theme:
The NATO-led operation off Libya highlighted the contribution of sea-based forces in delivering a range of military and political options. The multi-national air- and sea-based operation supporting the United Nations mandate to protect Libyan civilians sparked a resurgence in the understanding of the maritime contribution in supporting defence and security policy choices. Naval aviation, submarine, surface warship, task group and support ship operations provided a range of options including deterrent and coercive effects, conducting humanitarian assistance including evacuation and relief operations, executing maritime security taskings and carrying out high-end combat operations. The sea base that supported these tasks enabled the effective application of a range of joint and multi-agency operations.
Economic and wider security concerns are once again in the UK’s political and public consciousness, especially reliance upon the use of the sea for the security of its national interests. In July 2011, the Centre for Economics and Business Research published a report titled Back to the Future – Britain Must Relearn that it is a Maritime Nation. Highlighting a six-fold growth in UK maritime trade in the next two decades and noting an increasing reliance on imported energy resources due to declining indigenous output, the report underlined the UK’s ever-increasing dependence on the use of the sea and argued that a consequence of this was a need to place maritime matters at the forefront of national policy-making1. With a government foreign policy that continues to require the UK to engage internationally and not to shrink from global commitments, ranging from the South China Sea to the South Atlantic to the Arctic, the strategic profile of maritime matters is high once again in the UK’s strategic debate.
To obtain more information or to register, visit www.rusi.org/maritimeconference
