ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to place the Australian developments in their wider global context through an exploration of trends in the maritime domain. It examines broad shifts, including how changes in international law are altering the frameworks within which constabulary operations occur. The chapter goes on to look at the increasing strategic significance of fish, developing partly out of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the allocation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), but also as a result of growing resource scarcity. Together these factors raise the possibility of conflicts arising out of tension over resources, and nowhere is this more likely than in the Indo-Pacific. This chapter concludes by examining the relationship between naval diplomacy and constabulary operations, and the degree to which the theoretical clarity between these concepts is fading as a result of recent on-water incidents.
