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Conference Concept

In July 2011, just after the 2011 RUSI Future Maritime Operations Conference, the Centre for Economics and Business Research published a report titled Back to the Future - Britain Must Relearn that 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-making. [1]

As an island, the UK has always been a maritime nation. It is not so much that the UK is becoming a maritime nation 'again', but simply that politico-strategic focus on land matters (in terms of defence policy) as a result of the Cold War and the recent strategic embroilments in Iraq and Afghanistan saw the maritime element of the UK's national security slip from political and public consciousness and its reliance upon the use of the sea for its security - especially maritime trade - taken for granted.

Moreover, it is true to say that maritime matters are returning to the forefront of strategic thinking in the UK. With a government foreign policy which continues to require the UK to engage internationally and not to shrink from global commitments which range from the South China Sea to the South Atlantic to the Arctic, and with Somali piracy, energy security, natural disasters (of which Haiti and Japan are but two of many recent examples) and operations in Libya demonstrating clearly the continuing importance of security at sea, the strategic profile of maritime matters is high once again in the UK's strategic debate.

The next phase is for this focus to be translated across into the construction of both a robust cross-governmental strategic approach to national maritime security and an appropriate level of capability within government security structures to enable it to support its national and international commitments to maritime security. In the latter case, this includes a Royal Navy - and other organisations with maritime responsibilities such as HM Revenues and Customs, the Police and the Coast Guard - supported by sufficient assets, capability and resources.

The UK debate is now moving on from a focus on the October 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and the difficult decisions taken by the Coalition Government in respect to the Royal Navy and her sister services. Yet the focus is now shifting towards SDSR 2015, and the RUSI Future Maritime Operations Conference 2012 will be part of RUSI's wider activities which will shape a framework for analysis of core maritime issues which should be part of the UK Government's and wider UK maritime community thinking as it frames the debate relating to SDSR 2015, as well as raising the profile of other issues relating to the importance of the use of the sea in support of national and international security.

Supported by First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope and produced in partnership with the Royal Navy, the conference will attract a range of senior international speakers from across governments, navies, international organisations, industry and academia. A full-house of high-level participants (the 2011 conference was, once again, oversubscribed) will hear international perspectives on understanding and addressing future maritime challenges and common approaches to delivering maritime security.

[1] The central themes of the report were debated at a closed workshop held at RUSI in May 2011, during the build-up to the Future Maritime Operations Conference 2011.

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