The maritime dimension of European security

The maritime dimension of European security: seapower and the European Union. By Basil Germond. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2015. 241pp. £68.00. ISBN 978 1 137 01780 2. Available as e-book. Over the last decade, maritime security has become a major challenge for the European Union and the migration crisis has placed this in the international limelight. With this context in mind, Basil Germond's The maritime dimension of European security has been published at a crucial time. The book provides a stimulating analysis of the importance of sea power and how the maritime dimension of European security shapes the EU's external and security policies. At a broader level, Germond also discusses the maritime policies of those individual member states and other relevant actors (NATO, US, Turkey) whose activities are interrelated with the EU's. The first part of the book offers a critical reading of the place of sea power in the twenty-first century. Germond proposes that powerful navies will ultimately increase the influence of the state (p. 11). In this context, naval forces, albeit not the main element of sea power, are perceived as its most important vector (p. 33). The author identifies four important components of maritime power, namely the projection of security, the non-military dimension, the environmental dimension and securitization and representation. As one of the most important components, the projection of security includes the state's ability to address transnational threats at sea. Germond argues that this is not merely limited to military interventions, but encompasses a broad array of operations including deterrence actions and humanitarian assistance and search and rescue operations (p. 25)

Context (archaeology · Dimension (graph theory · Economics · Economy · European union · Geography · International trade · Limelight · Maritime Security · Political economy · Political science · Securitization · Sociology · State (computer science · Computer Science · Engineering · Law · Maritime Security and History