From FTM by Dimitri Tokmetzis / Birte Schohaus
The North Sea is an industrial area in the making, important for the energy, data and food supply of the whole of Europe.
It’s high time to take safety in, on and around the North Sea seriously, says professor of international relations Christian Bueger.
Is professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen.
Directs the Ocean Infrastructures Research Group and the Copenhagen Ocean Hub.
Sits on the board of the SafeSeas network on maritime security.
His most recent book is Understanding Maritime Security (Oxford University Press).
Countries are jostling for control in the South China Sea.
Somali pirates regularly make headlines when attacking boats in the Arabian Peninsula.
In the Mediterranean, coastguards and navies have their hands full combating human and drug smuggling.
By comparison, the North Sea looks like a calm European inland sea.
But appearances are deceptive, says Christian Bueger.
He is a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, specialising in maritime security.
The Dane investigates all aspects of maritime security: from piracy to conflicts between states and from sabotage to espionage .
His conclusion: security in the North Sea is at risk.
In an interview with FTM, the professor explains what makes the situation in, on and around the North Sea so complicated and, in his opinion, dangerous.
Bueger talks about the tactics of the Russian authorities, unclear regulations and powers and the security risk of the visible infrastructure on the seabed.
He argues for a different view.
When did you, as a security expert, start paying attention to the North Sea?
“For me, it was one of the outcomes of the Brexit process: that we need to start paying attention to the North Sea.
Because before Brexit it was mainly a European [sea], with the Norwegians having a close partnership with the European Union.
Right after Brexit, we had a couple of these incidents between French and British fishermen, leading basically to new forms of uncertainty and insecurity.
That was initially what brought me to the North Sea as a type of security region.”
A joint investigation by Follow the Money and Belgian newspaper De Tijd showed this week that Russian ships have been engaging in suspicious activities in the North Sea since 2014.
Security services suspect Russia of using both military and civilian ships for espionage and sabotage of data and electricity cables, gas pipelines and other infrastructure on the seabed.
But the big impetus for navies, security services and experts to pay closer attention to security, according to Bueger, was the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022: before the new section of this pipeline, which would transport Russian gas to Germany, could be put into use, both the new and old parts of Nord Stream were blown up near the Danish island of Bornholm.
(Investigations so far don’t point to Russia as the culprit, as media and experts first suspected, but to Ukraine.
In all likelihood, a Ukrainian team from a sailboat planted and detonated the explosives.)
A year later, in October 2023, the Chinese container ship Newnew Polarbear destroyed a gas pipeline and some data cables with a dragging anchor – presumably on purpose.
Security services suspect Russia of using both military and civilian ships for espionage and sabotage of data and electricity cables, gas pipelines and other infrastructure on the seabed.
But the big impetus for navies, security services and experts to pay closer attention to security, according to Bueger, was the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022: before the new section of this pipeline, which would transport Russian gas to Germany, could be put into use, both the new and old parts of Nord Stream were blown up near the Danish island of Bornholm.
(Investigations so far don’t point to Russia as the culprit, as media and experts first suspected, but to Ukraine.
In all likelihood, a Ukrainian team from a sailboat planted and detonated the explosives.)
A year later, in October 2023, the Chinese container ship Newnew Polarbear destroyed a gas pipeline and some data cables with a dragging anchor – presumably on purpose.
What are the biggest security threats for the North Sea?
“I think it would be a series of mysterious accidents that cause damage to the environment, largely, which would be primarily staged to demonstrate our ongoing vulnerability: that whatever we do, it’s not enough.
So that would be, for me, the most worrying and most realistic threat in the region.
It could be a shadow fleet, it could be an attack on a life pipeline.
We’re seeing quite a series of mysterious accidents.
It could continue and it could be much worse.
So far we’ve just been lucky.
There are a lot of bilateral arrangements between the states, and that is largely energy cooperation in the end.
...
It's not security cooperation: you have quite a number of environmental agreements.
But it's largely interpreted in terms of preventing accidents and things like that.
And not necessarily in security terms.”
What strategies does Russia use in the North Sea and how long have they been doing that for?
“Russian fishing vessels are being used for intelligence operations, and that is not a new thing.
In 2014, the UK Royal Navy took me out at sea.
On the bridge, they had a picture of a fishing vessel.
I asked them ‘why do you have this picture hanging there’, and then the guy said: ‘ah this is one of the Russian spy vessels.’ We know what they look like.
When we see it, we report that.”
Bueger emphasises that this form of espionage – also known as greyzone tactics – has existed for decades.
In Soviet times, Soviet ships carried a security officer from the secret service on board.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, things calmed down a bit.
In the 1990s, European countries hoped for a rapprochement, and exchanges took place between research vessels.
That changed around 2014, at about the same time as Russia's annexation of Crimea.
During the same period, Western countries became more active in the Arctic.
Due to climate change, the Arctic becomes navigable in summer, which greatly reduces the travel time between China and Europe.
New gas fields are also being developed in the north of Russia.
Russia is therefore trying to strengthen its grip on the area and keep other powers out.
Since then, there has been a significant increase in greyzone tactics by civilian ships.
This is now official policy in Russia, says Bueger.
It is described in black and white in the new maritime doctrine drawn up in 2022.
Civilian ships, such as fishing boats, container ships and oil tankers, must cooperate in military missions.
“One of the explanations is also that the Russian Navy is just overstretched.
So they are trying to find alternative means to exert influence.
The point of doing that is not actually to find out anything.
It’s more about putting the threat out, or demonstrating the vulnerability: ‘Hey, we can sail along your cables and cut at any time.’ You literally cannot do anything.
It’s just about keeping us busy, worrying about the threat.
And this works really, really well.”
All those cables and pipes are easy to find, they are simply located on all kinds of maps.
Is that wise?
“This is what we call the visibility paradox: if you want to protect the infrastructure from accidents, then you need to put it on the [nautical] map as accurately as possible, but at the same time, if you want to protect it from deliberately being targeted, then you should hide it.
You can’t get out of this.”
What can the North Sea countries do when a ship displays suspicious behaviour in their exclusive economic zones, an area 12 to 200 nautical miles from the shore?
“Exclusive Economic Zones are a tricky legal construct, and many countries have not fully clarified what their legislation is.
So for instance, I learned from the German federal police that is in charge of patrolling the exclusive economic zone that there is no criminal offence in the German law for the exclusive economic zone.
So basically if you find a Russian vessel tempering with the pipeline or a cable, the only thing that the federal police can do is say ‘hello, can you please stop that?’ and they don’t have any power to arrest.”
How can security in the North Sea be improved?
“Europe doesn't have a secure information-sharing network, which would involve military actors.
And because of that … the Belgians launched a new initiative a couple of weeks ago and negotiated a memorandum of understanding for the North Sea, which is primarily focused on information-sharing between the North Sea countries, excluding France.
So what the Belgians are planning is to set up an entirely new information-sharing network, which would be secure and trusted, and also deals with how the industry can actually feed into that network.
“If you find a Russian vessel tempering with a pipeline, the only thing that the German federal police can do is say ‘hello, can you please stop that?’”
When it comes to the [role of] companies, I think we can see different models: the Norwegian position is largely that much of the protection should be handled by the industry, because it's just cheaper and they have the technical knowledge.
In the UK, we see the idea is more that it should be a governmental task.
Of course, the UK has this sophisticated maritime security infrastructure – but it's not really clear who should be in charge of handling that.”
Does stricter action make sense?
“There is some reluctance.
For example, many experts have been calling for the Danes to inspect the Russian vessels and check for insurance certificates and so on.
Denmark is afraid of doing that.
You don't know what kind of repercussions this could have elsewhere in terms of threats to infrastructure.
Can joint EU policy help? For example, a joint navy? And what’s NATO’s role in all this?
“NATO has been very, very, very active – in particular since the Nord Stream incident it has put emphasis on the region again; their first reaction was sending military ships, including by the Italian navy, to the region.
The European Union is a complex entity.
And here we have on the one side all the work on critical infrastructures in general, but the implementation of that is largely in the hands of nation states, and of the member states.
I've been advocating for a long time that the solution lies on these regional sea levels: the Mediterranean is a radically different context and set up to the North Sea.
The North Sea is an interesting template, because it's so much simpler: you're only dealing with Norway and the UK – both NATO states.
And, of course, in the Mediterranean, this is all a lot more complex, because of the North African countries, but then also Israel, Greece, Turkey, and all these tensions in that particular space.
It would be good to harmonise the law on a regional level so that we have clear cut interpretations of what is allowed and what can be criminalised in the specific exclusive economic zone.
And then if the next Russian research vessel passes by, you at least have some legal foundations in terms of telling the Russian Navy, ‘hey, what you're doing here does not fall under our interpretation of the freedom of scientific exploration.’ So clarifying that legal space is one of the things that is utterly missing.”
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