ABSTRACT
In 2010, a number of US government agencies co-published a document outlining the blueprints for implementing Maritime security sector reform (United States Department of State, 2010). The document presents the practices and standards of the US Departments of State, Defence, Homeland Security, Transportation and Justice, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as aligned on the need for developing states and regions to initiate maritime security. The report was synopsised by the US Institute for Peace, a think tank that produces policy options in the field of conflict management and peacebuilding (Sandoz, 2012). Both documents emerge from a perspective that integrates security with development practices. In the same period the African Union published its 2050 Africa’s integrated maritime strategy (AU, 2012). In this paper I will examine the influence of maritime security sector reform (MSSR) on the developmental maritime strategy of the African Union. The approaches being taken by various international actors in the Indian Ocean Region arise from a tension between commercial and military strategies of globalisation and the desire to exercise sovereign jurisdiction over exclusive economic zones (EEZ).1 These tensions are manifest in distinctive attitudes to the practice of zoning. In the manner by which these tensions are reconciled, or managed, we are able to observe spatio-temporal strategies of control and command at sea. Our understanding of emerging governance mechanisms on the open sea
is enriched not only by appreciating the difference between the US and AU approaches but also by sensing what they have in common.
